From A to Zines: Narrative Threat Modeling in U.S. Reproductive Health Media

Paper Title

From A to Zines: Narrative Threat Modeling in U.S. Reproductive Health Media

Publication Info

• Topic area: Reproductive privacy and feminist media analysis in the post-Roe U.S. context.
• Keywords: reproductive privacy, zines, narrative threat modeling, feminist HCI, abortion, digital privacy, embodied knowledge, activist media, healthcare, intersectionality.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Existing privacy guidance, particularly in the post-Roe U.S., is overly focused on digital tools like period-tracking apps, neglecting the broader, situated risks of legal, interpersonal, and institutional threats to reproductive autonomy.
• Significance: The fragmented and punitive reproductive privacy landscape in the U.S. necessitates new forms of privacy guidance that address embodied, relational, and contextual risks, especially for vulnerable populations.
• Motivation and related work: Prior work has highlighted the inadequacy of app-centric privacy advice and the need for feminist, relational approaches to privacy. However, there is little exploration of analog, grassroots media like zines as tools for situated privacy guidance and resistance.

Solution

• Proposed approach: Narrative threat modeling through zines, which use storytelling, aesthetics, and embodied knowledge to communicate privacy strategies and reproductive care guidance.
• Novelty:
  1. Introduction of narrative threat modeling as a situated, story-driven approach to privacy guidance.
  2. Empirical analysis of 212 reproductive health zines to understand how they communicate privacy, care, and resistance.
  3. Design implications for feminist privacy guidance that centers analog, contextual, and embodied practices.
  4. Exploration of zines as tools for epistemic resistance and relational care in reproductive justice.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Collection and analysis of 212 zines from Barnard College’s Zine Library.
  • Reflexive thematic analysis of narrative, aesthetic, and rhetorical strategies in zines.
  • Examination of how zines address bodily, digital, and interpersonal privacy risks.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Zines address privacy through bodily autonomy, institutional navigation, and relational care, with less emphasis on digital privacy.
  • They model privacy strategies through narrative storytelling, emotional resonance, and embodied knowledge, rather than prescriptive checklists.
  • Aesthetic practices, such as collage and handwritten text, serve as forms of resistance and epistemic authority.
• Advantage over baselines: Zines provide a relational, embodied, and context-sensitive approach to privacy guidance, addressing gaps in app-centric and technical privacy advice.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Analysis of zines spanning 1990–2024, with an average publication date of 2009.
  • Reflexive coding and thematic analysis of zines’ narrative, visual, and rhetorical elements.
  • Focus on how zines communicate reproductive care, privacy, and resistance in the post-Roe context.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited to one zine collection (Barnard College), predominantly U.S.-based.
  • Few zines created post-Roe; future work could explore newer zines and expand to decolonial perspectives.
  • Limited representation of miscarriage criminalization and digital privacy strategies.

Summary

This study analyzes 212 reproductive health zines to explore how they communicate privacy, care, and resistance in the post-Roe U.S. landscape. The authors propose narrative threat modeling, a situated, story-driven approach to privacy guidance that addresses legal, interpersonal, and embodied risks. Zines are shown to model privacy strategies through storytelling, aesthetics, and lived experience, offering an alternative to app-centric and technical privacy advice. The findings highlight the potential of zines as tools for feminist privacy guidance and reproductive justice, with implications for advocacy, education, and healthcare design.