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Abstract
It is of course recognised that technology is gendered and is implicated in gender relations. However, it continues to be the case that men’s experiences with technology are underexplored and the situation is even more problematic where digital media is concerned. Over the past 30 years we have witnessed a dramatic rise in the pervasiveness of digital media across many parts of the world and as associated with wide ranging aspects of our lives. This rise has been fuelled over the last decade by the emergence of Web 2.0 and particularly Social Networking Sites (SNS). Given this context, I believe it is necessary for us to undertake more work to understand men’s engagements with digital media, the implications this might have for masculinities and the analysis of gender relations more generally. To begin to unpack this area, I engage theorizations of the properties of digital media networks and integrate this with the masculinity studies field. Using this framework, I suggest we need to consider the rise in what I call networked masculinities - those masculinities (co)produced and reproduced with digitally networked publics. Through this analysis I discuss themes related to digital mediators, relationships, play and leisure, work and commerce, and ethics. I conclude that as masculinities can be, and are being, complicated and given agency by advancing notions and practices of connectivity, mobility, classification and convergence, those engaged with masculinity studies and digital media have much to contribute.
... Online content can be a rich source of information on current constructions of masculinities and much can be explored on the digital's role in masculinities construction (Light, 2013). This study compares and contrasts our current literature on masculinities with empirical qualitative datathat is, Filipino tweets. ...
... El contenido en línea puede ser una rica fuente de información sobre las construcciones actuales de masculinidades y se puede explorar mucho sobre el papel de lo digital en la construcción de masculinidades (Light, 2013). Este estudio compara y contrasta nuestra literatura actual sobre masculinidades con datos cualitativos empíricos, es decir, tweets filipinos. ...
... The photos also complemented the textual description of the self. Light (2013) coined the term networked masculinities -'those masculinities (co)produced and reproduced with digitally networked publics' (p.253) and that the (co)production and reproduction of masculinities 'potentially involve the input of other people' making people subject to 'being inscribed with particular readings' (p.257). He argued that the features of social network sites such as anonymity, reproducibility, replicability, scalability, persistence, and searchability of online content made possible 'hyper-public constructions of masculinity' (p. ...
Online content can be a rich source of information on current constructions of masculinities and much can be explored on the digital’s role in masculinities construction (Light, 2013). This study compares and contrasts our current literature on masculinities with empirical qualitative data – that is, Filipino tweets. To do this, I analyzed tweets containing the phrase “ang tunay na lalake” (the real man) and the hashtag “#angtunaynalalake”. Using qualitative content analysis, the following themes were generated: 1) Romance and Masculinities which highlights heteronormativity of romantic context and the concept of “more deserving real man” – a construct produced through networked masculinity and within the context of fandom and bigotry; 2) Masculine Capital – highlights how rites of passage, specifically circumcision, can be overshadowed by masculine capital to the point that failing to meet the required masculine capital would render one as ‘de-circumcised’; and lastly, 3) Online Resistance to Hegemonic Masculinity – shows the use of jokes, sarcasm, and confrontation in questioning hegemonic masculinity. The results show both concern and hope for gender advocacy.
... Acknowledging that technology is both gendered (Wajcman, 2010) and implicated in gender relations (Light, 2013), it is possible to note that male creators in our sample, sticking to the abovementioned classical depiction of Palestine as a war zone, display culturally established signs of "hyper-masculinity" (Mosher & Sirkin, 1984). ...
... Different studies (Light, 2013;Rodriguez & Hernandez, 2018;Van Oosten et al., 2017) have already illustrated how the online representation of bodiesespecially young bodies-culturally read as "men" often gears toward the performance of hyper-masculinity, characterized by the showcase of exaggerated culturally informed "manly" attributes, such as physical strength, the absence of emotion, and violence (Van Oosten et al., 2017). More specifically, feminist studies (Åse & Wendt, 2021) have illustrated how hyper-masculinity is mostly associable with periods when the dominance and form of masculinity itself are under threat (Moran, 2010). ...
Palestinians, like many other diasporic communities, have, on the one hand, articulated their personal experiences and their subjectivities through digitalized channels. On the other, they have used social networks as tools for resistance, to make their voices heard by global public opinion. Acknowledging that each social medium is a unique socio-technological environment, displaying particular affordances that shape its dynamics of communicative practices and social interactions, this paper focuses on TikTok, the most popular social network among Gen Zers, disclosing how the affordances of this platform shape and engender a new form of activism, that we will define “playful activism”. The study presents an inductive, multimodal discourse analysis of a sample of widely viewed and shared #freepalestine TikToks unveiling how young Palestinians use this network to construct their narratives through playful performances, which show a deep knowledge of the app’s affordances and a great capacity to adapt to TikTok`s cultural and discursive environment. However, most importantly, these playful performances allow them to spread their political messages among a youth audience that potentially had no previous interest (and probably not even knowledge) about Palestine, fostering both the humanization of Palestinians and building a new solidarity network.
... Combining qualitative content analysis and social media engagement principles (Light 2013;Waterloo et al. 2018), this research examines individuals' active engagement and interactions in WhatsApp groups, including actions such as liking, commenting, sharing, and other forms of engagement that allow individuals to articulate their viewpoints and reactions to content associated with the construction of masculinity. The research also discusses significant factors in these interactions, including the type of content (text, images, videos, memes, or WhatsApp stickers), individual characteristics and user motivation (age, religion, and interests). ...
This article explores how men shape their masculine identities within the WhatsApp groups of cycling communities in Bandung, Indonesia, in particular how dominating masculinity is exhibited in the social interactions between members of WhatsApp groups and how this influences the formation of masculine identities. The comprehensive netnographic study conducted in this research, spanning from 2020 to 2023, discerns two distinct modes of interaction that underscore this association. In virtual chat groups, hegemonic masculinity is maintained through messages focusing on core cycling-related activities, which are rooted in themes of competition and male dominance. Additionally, the use of chat fillers, including verbal, pictorial, and video postings, reinforces hegemonic masculinity, even if they digress from the core discussions. This study employs a qualitative methodology to illuminate the multifaceted ways in which individuals engage in reshaping formal sporting communities into playful male homosociality. The aims are to examine the ways in which men perform their masculine identities through internal competition and the perpetuation of masculine stereotypes within these virtual homosocial settings. Moreover, they engage in the internalisation of gender role stereotypes and stigmas, the endorsement of heterosexual masculinities, and the expression of transphobic sentiments to defend and perpetuate norms associated with hegemonic masculinity. The article argues that the circulation of and interaction with digital images associated with femininity and womanhood underpins male homosocial bonding within WhatsApp groups belonging to the cycling community in Bandung.
... Our goal was to provide a list of TV programs popular with youth, especially Black, Asian American, and White youth. In constructing this list, we drew on Nielsen reports about digital lives of Asian American adults and families (Nielsen, 2018), published articles on popular programming among U.S. adults with some race-specific data (Levin, 2017), and programs preferred in earlier published work with adolescents (e.g., Grower et al., 2019). We also made sure to include programming that featured leads who were racial minorities (e.g., Basketball Wives, Jane the Virgin, Power). ...
Men’s mainstream media exposure is often associated with traditional gender role endorsement, which in turn predicts negative mental health consequences. However, prior research often tested these associations among predominantly White, adult samples. The present study explored associations between consumption of three media genres that frequently feature men, endorsement of traditional gender roles, and mental health for a sample of Black, Asian American, and White male adolescents. Multigroup modeling indicated significant associations between media consumption and endorsement of traditional gender roles for all three groups and a significant association between traditional gender roles and mental distress among Asian American and White male adolescents. Results suggest that media may be a powerful force in young men’s gender beliefs and mental health regardless of racial background. Continued research is needed to elucidate how familial characteristics, such as mother’s education level, and features of boys’ cultural backgrounds, particularly for Black male adolescents, influence the extent to which traditional gender role endorsement predicts mental distress.
... La caracterización del antifeminismo como un contra-movimiento de mayor sofisticación cognitiva y argumental, obliga a rastrear la manera en que esa sofisticación se produce, sobre todo en ambientes socio digitales, pues es ahí donde actualmente se da una buena parte de los contactos e intercambios entre personas, principalmente hombres, que comparten contenido y puntos de vista antifeministas (Salter y Bridgett, 2012;Light, 2013;Nagle, 2015;Chess y Shaw 2015;Engler, 2017;Jane, 2018;Dignam y Rohlinger, 2019;Johanssen 2022). Por dichas razones, este artículo elabora un análisis sobre los modos retóricos bajo los que se genera en plataformas como YouTube una mirada "objetiva" contra el feminismo. ...
Los actuales debates de género en redes socio-digitales han detonado la emergencia de posturas antifeministas que, a diferencia de expresiones misóginas, sexistas y/o machistas, se caracterizan por una mayor sofisticación argumental y cognitiva. Bajo dicho contexto, este artículo, por medio de una perspectiva teórico-metodológica que incluye dos modelos cualitativos de análisis, explora las maneras en que cuatro youtubers varones articulan una retórica “objetiva” antifeminista para convencer a sus seguidores, en nombre de la evidencia, sobre la supuesta falacia que representa el feminismo. Esta retórica no es producto de una fidelidad a la realidad social como defienden los youtubers en sus contenidos, sino de un ensamble entre elementos discursivos y tecnológicos que les posibilita adjudicarse una especie de autoridad empírica, mediante la cual rechazan los saberes y experiencias de sujetos feministas debido a su falta de “objetividad”. A partir de ello, se concluye que la autoridad empírica que se arrogan los youtubers les posibilita articular ideologías masculinas a través del valor de la prueba, apelando a la racionalidad y la objetividad que implica “ser hombre”, en contraste con la representación que crean en sus canales de las mujeres feministas como irracionales, carentes de “objetividad” y portadoras de un discurso falso.
... Nuestra aproximación parte del cruce entre identidad y la expresión de masculinidades en los espacios virtuales. Una revisión del estado de la cuestión revela que algunos trabajos iniciales de corte exploratorio planteaban ya desde inicios de la segunda década del presente siglo, el uso de redes sociodigitales en contextos de interacción mediada por computadora, en función de la expresión de masculinidades y las relaciones de género (Light, 2013;Bamman, Eisenstein y Schnoebelen, 2014). En estas primeras aproximaciones, se destaca el papel que jugaban redes como MySpace, Hi-5 y posteriormente Facebook, como espacios de entonces reciente aparición, que constituyeron una nueva alternativa a la blogósfera y otros entornos de Internet para la representación de la masculinidad y la propuesta de formas de relación distintas a los esquemas heteropatriarcales hegemónicos. ...
Con el objetivo de identificar la manera en que tienen lugar manifestaciones en torno a las masculinidades en una selección de perfiles mexicanos que publican contenidos en español tanto en Facebook como en TikTok, a partir de propuestas que se oponen a lo que Connell identifica como masculinidad hegemónica, se realizó un análisis de contenido sobre una muestra no probabilística de publicaciones y comentarios. Los principales resultados indican que las propuestas hechas en los sitios observados giran en torno a una paternidad participativa, dada en el contexto de relaciones de pareja respetuosas, con tolerancia a la diversidad sexo-genérica, resaltando además la libre expresión emocional como parte de un autocuidado que es tanto mental como físico. Algunas de las principales conclusiones sugieren que, a pesar de las resistencias a la estructura patriarcal que es posible observar en los espacios digitales estudiados, otras investigaciones revelan que sigue habiendo una gran cantidad de manifestaciones que manifiestan posiciones asimétricas de poder entre distintas identidades sexo-genéricas.
... Nuestra aproximación parte del cruce entre identidad y la expresión de masculinidades en los espacios virtuales. Una revisión del estado de la cuestión revela que algunos trabajos iniciales de corte exploratorio planteaban ya desde inicios de la segunda década del presente siglo, el uso de redes sociodigitales en contextos de interacción mediada por computadora, en función de la expresión de masculinidades y las relaciones de género (Light, 2013;Bamman, Eisenstein y Schnoebelen, 2014). En estas primeras aproximaciones, se destaca el papel que jugaban redes como MySpace, Hi-5 y posteriormente Facebook, como espacios de entonces reciente aparición, que constituyeron una nueva alternativa a la blogósfera y otros entornos de Internet para la representación de la masculinidad y la propuesta de formas de relación distintas a los esquemas heteropatriarcales hegemónicos. ...
With the objective of identifying the way in which manifestations around masculinities take place in a selection of Mexican profiles that publish content in Spanish on both Facebook and TikTok, around proposals that oppose what Connell identifies as hegemonic masculinity, a content analysis was carried out on a non-probabilistic sample of publications and comments. Main results indicate that the proposals made in the observed sites revolve around participatory parenthood, given in the context of respectful couple relationships, with tolerance for sex-gender diversity, also highlighting free emotional expression as part of self-care that is both mental and physical. Some of the main conclusions suggest that, despite the resistance to the patriarchal structure that can be observed in the digital spaces studied, other research reveals that there are still many manifestations that shows asymmetric positions of power between different sex-gender identities.
... This performative and public condition associated with masculinities should also be considered in terms of social media, as it could be a space to identify new liberated discourses or, in this sense, a space where hegemonic dynamics are reproduced. Platforms like Instagram are part of the daily lives of most young Spaniards (IAB Spain and Elogia, 2020), as well as in many other countries (Modica, 2020), where masculinities are being (co)produced, (re)presented and manifested among a digitally interconnected public (Light, 2013). The available studies at the moment indicate that Instagram reproduces hegemonic masculinity by means of publications showing drug and alcohol consumption (Dinsmore, 2014) or by showing muscular bodies (Baker & Walsh, 2018), among others. ...
Hegemonic masculinity has been especially linked, among other aspects, to unhealthy behaviors and heterosexuality. This study aimed to explore the discourses of masculinities with young Spanish men with different sexual orientations (heterosexuals, bisexuals, and homosexuals), comparing them with the social representations that are put into practice on Instagram. Three qualitative approaches were triangulated to seek a richer comprehension and interpretational level: discussion groups, semi-structured interviews, and an online non-participant observation on Instagram with a total of 26 young men aged between 18 and 24. Results indicate that hegemonic masculinity discourse is still significant when understanding and experiencing young men’s masculinities, promoting behaviors that put their health at risk and generating psychological discomfort, especially among non-heterosexual men. Our findings provide knowledge of the social framework that legitimizes and reproduces male domination in younger generations both online and offline and how this is reflected in men’s health.
... Despite being ubiquitous and embedded in everyday life, 'the centrality of the Internet is still under-theorized in much masculinities research, as are the effects of […] shifting patterns of […] leisure' (Anderson and McCormack, 2016: 11). Indeed, Light (2013) has lamented this curious relative absence of theorising of men's engagements with digital sociality in particular, while Morris and Anderson (2015) assert that 'few researchers have empirically investigated heterosexual masculinities on social networking sites'. One exception is the latter's recent study of Britain's most popular YouTube vloggers, which found that 'inclusive masculinities are a central component of popularity for male youth on YouTube' Anderson, 2015: 1201; our emphasis), with the softer and 'attenuated form' (Roberts, 2013) of masculinity, characterised by eschewing homophobia, misogyny and aggression, presented as being most prevalent. ...
Despite being ubiquitous and embedded in everyday life, ‘the centrality of the Internet is still under-theorized in much masculinities research’. Contributing to the knowledge base in this area, here we place under the microscope the performance of hetero-masculinities undertaken by the three most popular YouTube gaming vloggers in 2015–2016: PewDiePie, VanossGaming and Sky Does Minecraft. The focus of this article thus sits at the intersection of YouTube vlogging and gaming cultures, a site that is of particular sociological interest given the latter’s associations with the (re)production and function of hegemonic masculinity. In examining the performances and constructions of gender by male gamers on YouTube, our research adds to the growing body of work highlighting the emergence of increasing levels of complexity in the construction of contemporary masculine identities.
The Philippines continues to grapple with a rising number of HIV cases, particularly among Filipino men who have sex with men. Notably, Filipino men living with HIV (FMLWH) are visible on Twitter (now X), despite Facebook’s dominance in the Philippines. The Twitterverse of FMLWH may be imagined as networked publics, with these users negotiating visibility management in the face of HIV-related stigmas and navigating context collapse in a high-visibility space. In this study, we explore the visibility management practices of Twitter users identifying as FMLWH and subsequently map their network structure. Our mixed-methods approach combined analysis of online trace data from 1447 public Twitter accounts with in-depth interviews conducted with 24 Twitter users. Findings revealed that FMLWH employed a range of visibility management practices on Twitter, including the use of succinct identifiers to disclose HIV status, the maintenance of pseudonymous identities, and a strategic shift from partial to greater visibility when engaging with other FMLWH in private communication spaces. Participants expressed a strong inclination to connect with fellow ‘blood brothers’ and were frequently directed to these users through algorithmic recommendations rather than word-of-mouth. An expansive network comprising 302,934 ‘follow’ ties connected all but two of the 1447 users. Network analysis also showed high reciprocity and short distances between actors. Despite these metrics, a relatively low degree of interconnectedness was found, suggesting that users formed their own smaller pockets of conversation. Overall, FMLWH exhibited a deliberate effort to manage their visibility on Twitter and demonstrated a level of connectivity and engagement that might not naturally occur in real-world settings. Furthermore, the affordances of Twitter facilitated the open disclosure of HIV status, traditionally considered a private and sensitive matter. These findings warrant further investigation into the formation of networked HIV social identities and the emergence of pseudonymous networked counter publics among FMLWH.
The role of digitally mediated networked publics in the co-production and negotiation of contemporary masculinities has not been widely researched in an African context. This paper explores networked masculinities on South African Black Twitter via the hashtag #MensConference, a fictional conference organized by men as a humorous rejection of Valentine’s Day. Drawing on a critical thematic analysis of a selection of tweets through the lens of critical masculinity studies, we uncover a wide range of masculinity discourses under the hashtag, across the traditional-liberal spectrum. While expressions of sexism and misogyny were widespread throughout the sample, men also upheld alternative and progressive models of manhood. The affordances of social media provided men with a space to express themselves, but also to police and contest notions of masculinity through in-group dynamics that worked to reinforce patriarchal hegemony. However, the interactions between black South African men on Twitter were defined by their specific social, economic and cultural context. The analysis demonstrates the critical role of social media, and Black Twitter in particular, as a key vehicle for both the reproduction and contestation of hegemonic masculinities in South Africa.
Dance has traditionally been marketed to boys and men by aligning it with traditional masculinities. Within a culture of shifting gender relations and declining homophobia, new possibilities emerge for dance to be marketed in different ways. This chapter examines such possibilities, analyzing the online marketing practices of dance organizations from Anglo-American cultures. Findings document how dance continues to be (re)positioned within orthodox discourses of (hetero)masculinity; at the same time, new marketing strategies promote the “all singing, all dancing boy” and the “(hetero)sexy male dancer.” Ultimately, these marketing strategies deploy various blends of old and new masculinities which consistently seek to safeguard dancers’ masculinities. The chapter raises concerns that this marketing approach is limited and short-sighted.
Age and gender intersect within power relations dynamics from which arise social hierarchies. Ageist and patriarchal systems perform power within an institutionalization of normative gendered hierarchy, validated by the media and legitimized through the hegemonic social culture. Aging masculinities have been mainly studied in health and social sciences’ scientific domains, without the gendered focus. By stemming from a feminist approach, this paper proposed the analysis of co-hashtag networks on Instagram to assess if these digital collective narratives perpetuate or challenge gendered and aging normative perspectives of masculinities. Results show that the semantic structure analyzed intercross age and normative masculinities anchor to soft-porn and patriarchal imaginaries. The data reveal expressions of multiple masculinities such as toxic and hybrid as central to the network. Nevertheless, these hashtags also convey normative understandings of what a man should be by opposition to femininities.
On 13 January 2019, Gillette launched a short film on YouTube entitled We Believe as part of a campaign addressing negative behaviour among men that perpetuates toxic masculinity. However, the video was subject to a large backlash with over 1 million downvotes on YouTube and thousands of critical comments accusing Gillette of playing into the ‘feminist agenda’. This article examines the configuration of the backlash, specifically examining the networked properties, structure and key actors of the backlash represented in the comments below the YouTube video to understand how masculinities are (co)produced and reproduced in a post-#MeToo digital sphere. The analysis incorporates social network and thematic analyses of the comments posted under the Gillette YouTube video. The study contributes insight into the structure and configuration of a digitally networked backlash public and identifies how digital tactics are employed by a masculine public to achieve digital hegemony in the networked sphere.
To further open the conversation about women's empowerment and global collaborations using new networking technologies, this chapter problematizes some prevalent ideas about creativity and social networking, notes suggested change that carry anti-feminist sentiments throughout the world, and suggests a number of ways that women and men can all benefit from an opening of queries about innovative ways of working together online. With the suggested expansions, the authors welcome more inclusive and invitational discussion about future digital media research and development.
Contemporary sport cultures have become sites for new practices of masculinity. In this chapter, we explore what this might mean for men’s engagement with dance. Anglo-American cultures traditionally constructed dance as a feminine activity, thus devaluing it, and making men who danced vulnerable to homophobia. But the emergence of new practices of masculinity offers the possibilities for dance to be repositioned, particularly through technological developments that allow sharing online of a range of representations of men dancing. In this chapter, we examine such possibilities through an analysis of YouTube videos of men dancing to ‘Single Ladies’. The Single Ladies dance video was originally performed by the internationally renowned singer and dancer Beyoncé Knowles, and involved a highly choreographed female ‘empowered sexuality’ dance aligned with postfeminist sensibility. The video produced a string of copycat videos performed by a diverse cross section of men and uploaded to YouTube. These videos suggest men at play with masculinity, offering differing blends of pastiche, parody, and drag. Here, we explore the possibilities afforded in such dance for the temporary escape or subversion of restrictive and essentialist forms of masculinity, as well as how such destabilizing practices might be recuperated. In so doing, we offer an analysis of the complexities of contemporary masculinities that may occur through the medium of dance within the affordances of social media. To do so, we first provide a brief genealogy of masculinity and dance in the context of the United Kingdom, before outlining our theoretical framework and multimodal analysis of YouTube videos of men dancing to Single Ladies.
Debates about human–machine relationships have intensified following the launch of the world’s first commercially available sex robot ‘Harmony’, a hyperrealistic sex doll with AI-capabilities. With the likely consumer market for these devices among white, male, heterosexual sex-doll owners, their views about sex robot technology and the niche online communities in which they discuss their doll relationships have received little scholarly attention. Through a qualitative analysis of the discursive practices of male users of a major sex doll forum, this study found complex and dynamic homosocial relations characterized men’s online interactions. In their discussion of a sex robot future, men negotiate competing structures of masculinity and sexuality and create a safe, online space for others to express their sexual desires and preferences. Using the concept of the ‘seam’ or join, the results reveal the way male users of sex dolls position themselves subjectively and are positioned by technology and the increasingly porous interface between human and machine.
“Grindr Studies” has emerged as an academic field and examines the cultural practices of especially gay men “on app,” including topics like self-presentation strategies, online/offline dynamics, and sexual racism. Grindr research builds upon decades of scholarly inquiries into online cultures, including studies of digital queer subcultures and online racism. In this chapter, Shield weaves together his own personal experiences in digital spaces for primarily gay men since the 1990s with the contemporaneous scholarly literature on gay sexuality and race online.
Scholars have noted that men who have sex with men (MSM) place value upon hegemonic masculinity, both in reference to the self as well as potential partners. The current study examined masculinity language, body language, and sports/working out language in MSM-specific mobile dating app profiles. Using selective self-presentation and self-categorization theory as a background, the current work uncovered a clear privileging of masculinity and a focus on the male body in participants' profile language directed at the self and others. Men who used body language in their profiles were more likely to be older, single, and North American, while men who used sports/ working out language were more likely to be college graduates from North America. Finally, the results indicated a connection between language regarding masculinity, the body, and sports/working out.
Whilst online dating has witnessed a dramatic rise in popularity as a form of dating, the incredibly fast rise of mobile applications points to a new method of relationship initiation. This chapter explores the accounts of 15 heterosexual young men aged 18–24. Using Tinder as a case study, this chapter argues that the affordances of the app create the possibilities of how mobile romance is experienced. The chapter begins by documenting these affordances that include Spatial Blurring , the Democratization of dating, Multimodal dating and Accelerated Elongated dating. The chapter then explores the interplay between these affordances and masculinity, first by highlighting how patriarchal norms become articulated through the marketization and gamification of dating and second, by exploring young men’s management of dating failure through self-sabotage and effortless achievement, personal branding and Facebook stalking. The chapter concludes by arguing that Tinder and mobile dating apps more broadly are relatively new practices and that young men and women will continue to learn how to use them and continue to develop their impact on gender relations.
Purpose – This qualitative study sought to explore the perceptions and reactions of males who participate in a female-dominated online consumption space. It looked at the process of males (re)negotiating their digital gendered identity on Pinterest.
Design/methodology/approach – A Grounded Theory-light approach was taken. Data were collected through twenty-one one-on-one semi-structured interviews with male Pinterest users. Subsequently, data were extensively coded and analyzed for key themes and patterns.
Findings – Three core categories emerged which speak to the ways males account for their practices on Pinterest as autonomous online agents. These categories were: awareness of Pinterest as a feminized digital space; limited sociality due to the solitary use of Pinterest (the exception being when collaborating with an intimate partner); and performed identities (k = 4) serving to justify the men’s activities on a female-dominated social networking site.
Research limitations/implications – The findings establish a firm theoretical basis for
understanding male Pinterest users as autonomous online agents. However, reflective of this relatively small, exploratory qualitative project, the process-based interview questions did not render particularly long or rich narratives. Future qualitative research might endeavor to ask deeper, more open-ended questions.
Originality/value – This is an original study of males’ use of Pinterest. Research on the identity projects of males entering fields traditionally occupied by women and coded as feminine is established there is a lack of understanding of how gender identity is (re)constructed digitally, especially on social media.
The Men’s Rights Activism (MRA) movement and its sub-movement The Red Pill (TRP), has flourished online, offering support and advice to men who feel their masculinity is being challenged by societal shifts. Whilst some insightful studies have been carried out, the small samples analysed by researchers limits the scope of studies, which is small compared to the large amounts of data that TRP produces. By extracting a significant quantity of content from a prominent MRA website, ReturnOfKings.com (RoK), whose creator is one of the most prominent figures in the manosphere and who has been featured in multiple studies. Research already completed can be expanded upon with topic modelling and neural networked machine learning, computational analysis that is proposed to augment methodologies of open coding by automatically and unbiasedly analysing conceptual clusters. The successes and limitations of this computational methodology shed light on its further uses in sociological research and has answered the question: What can topic modeling demonstrate about the men’s rights activism movement’s prescriptive masculinity? This methodology not only proved that it could replicate the results of a previous study, but also delivered insights into an increasingly political focus within TRP, and deeper perspectives into the concepts identified within the movement.
The study examines how the TFM Girls Instagram account, along with its followers, shapes and maintains dominant discourses of masculinity. Mixed-method analyses revealed that women were depicted more in bikinis, posed in overtly sexually suggestive poses, excluded the women’s eyes and faces, and included predominately White, fit, big-breasted women. There was a positive correlation between the number of likes/comments with breast size. There were also instances of misogyny and objectification manifested in the men’s comments attached to the photographs. The results highlight Instagram as a digital extension of fraternal social spaces. TFM Girls reinforces hegemonic masculinity on a macro-level by allowing virtual linkages among fraternity members across the United States and by fostering a national online frat house ripe with misogyny and objectification.
Globalization
have brought transformations to conditions of possibility—historical, social, material, economic, spatial, political, and cultural—at various scales: local, regional, national, and international. Fortunati et al. (2012) have identified that especially for new migrants information and communication technologies now play an important role in negotiating the changes as they migrate and resettle.
Young adults regularly engage in heavy drinking episodes with friends and share these practices via digital images and ongoing interactions on social media. This study explored the meanings and values that young adults attach to Facebook social media photo-sharing practices around drinking and socializing, and how these practices were gendered, in what ways, and with what effects. We conducted 24 friendship discussion groups (64 females, 41 males) and 15 individual interviews (10 females, 5 males) in which participants showed and discussed their (screen-recorded) Facebook pages. Analyses demonstrated that drinking photos facilitated valued forms of sociality, visibility, and popularity for all participants, but the labor involved in preparing for, taking, selecting, uploading, tagging, and untagging drinking photos was heavily gendered. The tensions inherent in performing femininity within the “culture of intoxication” meant that young women engaged more intensively with photographic activities related to online self-displays. Although young men have (and engage with) many drinking photos on their Facebook pages, they derided routine and excessive photo-taking and uploading activities, particularly practices around self-imaging/posing, as trivial, silly, and inherently feminine. Sharing drinking images online provides a site of pleasure, leisure, and self-display for both men and women, but was more complex and challenging for young women who are performing identities in a patriarchal, heteronormative, postfeminist, and commercially driven digital environment. The technological practices involved in producing online drinking photos reproduce regimes of gendered power.
A growth in cultural ideologies concerned with men and masculinities in contemporary American society has recently emerged. Men’s rights activist (MRA) groups embody a movement emphasizing the crisis of masculinity. Despite men’s privileged societal status, MRAs seek to establish resources for men to utilize in elevating their perceived subordinated position in society in relation to women and social minorities. Little research has systematically investigated MRAs on the Internet, which is rapidly becoming a primary source of information and social connectedness for people. Through a content analysis of the 12 most prominent MRA websites, we explore the various strategies used by contemporary men’s groups designed to provide support for men in their pursuit of social legitimacy and power. Two primary categories of MRAs with distinctive ideological strategies emerged from this analysis: Cyber Lads in Search of Masculinity and Virtual Victims in Search of Equality. Though both groups promoted men’s entitlement to social power, Cyber Lads utilized themes of explicit aggression towards and devaluation of women, while Virtual Victims adopted political and social movement rhetoric to address men’s issues. The implications of these websites are discussed in terms of gender equality and their potential effects on individual men and women.
To further open the conversation about women's empowerment and global collaborations using new networking technologies, this chapter problematizes some prevalent ideas about creativity and social networking, notes suggested change that carry anti-feminist sentiments throughout the world, and suggests a number of ways that women and men can all benefit from an opening of queries about innovative ways of working together online. With the suggested expansions, the authors welcome more inclusive and invitational discussion about future digital media research and development.
Based on an ethnography with men that use digital media in search of same sex
partners in São Paulo, Brazil, this paper discusses what motivates their use of
technological platforms. It also employs sociological and historical elements to
reflect upon the social aspects of desire that fuel this search and the new
visibility regime in which these men live. Finally, it analyses the moral,
symbolic and material restrictions that mold an economy of desire demanding
their discretion and secrecy.
On the world’s most utilised video-sharing social networking site, YouTube, Charlie McDonnell (Charlieissocoollike), Dan Howell (Danisnotonfire) and Jack and Finn Harries (JacksGap) are Britain’s most popular video-bloggers (vloggers). With more than two million regular subscribers to each of their channels, along with millions of casual viewers, they represent a new form of authentic online celebrity. These young men, whose YouTube careers began as teenagers, do not espouse a traditional form of masculinity; they are not sporty, macho or even expressly concerned with being perceived as heterosexual. Instead, they present a softer masculinity, eschewing the homophobia, misogyny and aggression attributed to boys of previous generations. These behaviours are theorised using Anderson’s Inclusive Masculinity Theory. Drawing on analysis of 115 video-blogs (vlogs), along with an in-depth interview with Charlie McDonnell, this article examines how these young men developed and exhibit their inclusive masculinities and attitudes, which we postulate are a reflection of dominant youth culture.
This article explores how queer digital storytellers understand and mobilize concepts of privacy and publicness as they engage in everyday activism through creating and sharing personal stories designed to contribute to cultural and political debates. Through the pre-production, production, and distribution phases of digital storytelling workshops and participation in a related online community, these storytellers actively negotiate the tensions and continuua among visibility and hiddenness; secrecy and pride; finite and fluid renditions of self; and individual and collective constructions of identity. We argue that the social change they aspire to is at least partially achieved through “networked identity work” on and offline with both intimate and imagined publics.
On adult video-conferencing sites, men present sexualized bodies as objects of the gaze through an interactive medium that enables, while it limits, the possibility of the passive and the feminine. Within this unstable subject/object framework, the men construct a masculine subjectivity and a male sexual identity. Male sexuality, through the medium of CU-SeeMe, is both an affirmational community performance and an individual erotic display. These sites combine established conventions of film and the evolving practices of electronic chat to produce new discourses of male sexual display.
As social network sites like MySpace and Facebook emerged, American teenagers began adopting them as spaces to mark identity and socialize with peers. Teens leveraged these sites for a wide array of everyday social practices - gossiping, flirting, joking around, sharing information, and simply hanging out. While social network sites were predominantly used by teens as a peer-based social outlet, the unchartered nature of these sites generated fear among adults. This dissertation documents my 2.5-year ethnographic study of American teens' engagement with social network sites and the ways in which their participation supported and complicated three practices - self-presentation, peer sociality, and negotiating adult society. My analysis centers on how social network sites can be understood as networked publics which are simultaneously (1) the space constructed through networked technologies and (2) the imagined community that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice. Networked publics support many of the same practices as unmediated publics, but their structural differences often inflect practices in unique ways. Four properties - persistence, searchability, replicability, and scalability - and three dynamics - invisible audiences, collapsed contexts, and the blurring of public and private - are examined and woven throughout the discussion. While teenagers primarily leverage social network sites to engage in common practices, the properties of these sites configured their practices and teens were forced to contend with the resultant dynamics. Often, in doing so, they reworked the technology for their purposes. As teenagers learned to navigate social network sites, they developed potent strategies for managing the complexities of and social awkwardness incurred by these sites. Their strategies reveal how new forms of social media are incorporated into everyday life, complicating some practices and reinforcing others. New technologies reshape public life, but teens' engagement also reconfigures the technology itself.
Dominant discourses around young people and social networking in the mass media are littered with negative connotations and moral panics. While some scholars challenge this negativity, their focus has predominantly been upon the formation of friendships, the construction of identity and the presentation of the self online. We argue that as well as engaging in such areas, young people are also appropriating social networking sites, such as YouTube, as spaces in which they can engage in what Jean Burgess terms, ‘Vernacular Creativity’ – a way of describing and surfacing creative practices that emerge from non-elite, specific everyday contexts. Using case study material we consider the processes of Vernacular Creativity as engaged with by young people in relation to doing graffiti with YouTube. Through this, and given that graffiti is a cultural practise traditionally associated with physical space, we also consider points of continuity and discontinuity in relation to Vernacular Creativity mediated with YouTube and the significance of such things in enabling young people to connect and create with like-minded others.
Gay men’s use of the Internet to meet other gay men for social and sexual purposes is now so common that some predict the end of gay bars and other face-to-face hooking-up settings. There is speculation that the Internet is responsible for increases in sexually transmissible infections and HIV incident infections in a number of cities, both in the USA and elsewhere. In New York City, where this study took place, the use of Internet by men to meet other men seeking sex without condoms, called bareback sex, has created concerns among public health and gay community HIV/AIDS workers. Is the Internet at fault here? If so, how does it work to incite such risk-taking, if it is that? If not, what then is going on inside these barebacking sites? This study of six popular bareback sites seeks to understand the nature of this new online sexual culture, by investigating, first, the actual sites as cultural production through the methodological approach of cybercartography. Then, in a second stage, users of these sites were interviewed. During the cybercartography, however, the investigation suggested that the recent conceptual recuperation of masculinity as an analytic in gender studies might offer some value in understanding what was happening sexually and culturally on these sites. Men’s sexual desires were also revealed to be forming and reforming in relation to the sites, and issues of race and ethnicity emerged to challenge singular notions of masculinity. This paper suggests that masculinity itself might need some recalibration if it is to come to grips with the performative richness of the Internet and its sexual potential. We may also need to understand these sites not simply as inciting risk-taking behaviour but as evolving sexual cultures in their own right.
This article is on the work of the European Research Network on Men in Europe project, “The Social Problem and Societal Problematization of Men and Masculinities” (2000-2003), funded by the European Commission. The Network comprises women and men researchers with a range of disciplinary backgrounds from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Poland, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom. The Network's initial focus is on men's relations to home and work, social exclusion, violence, and health. Some of the findings on the Network's fourth phase of work, namely the review of newspaper and media representations of men's practices in the ten countries, are presented. This is the last of four articles reviewing critical studies on men in the ten countries through different methods and approaches.
While many feminist scholars have investigated the hierarchical ranking of differences between men and women in both empirical and theoretical work, differences among men have received less analysis. This article examines the epistemological creation of male differences through analysis of data from semen banks' donor catalogues. Using methods of content and discourse analysis, the authors interpret the ways in which men are advertised to be different from one another. Through marketing semen and thus constructing men, semen banks diversify their merchandise and offer consumers interesting ways to select masculinity. In conclusion, the authors speculate on the effects of semen bank strategies on our concepts of masculinity and notions of reproduction.
This article builds on a case study of the worldwide online dating site Match.com to develop a theoretical understanding of the place of communication and affect in the information economy. Drawing on theoretical debates, secondary sources, a qualitative survey of dating profiles and an analysis of the features and affordances of the Match.com site, the article argues that internet dating seeks to guide the technologically enhanced communicative and affective capacities of internet users to work in ways so that this produces economically valuable content. This is primarily achieved through branding, which as a technique of governance that seeks to work ‘from below’ and ‘empower’ users to deploy their freedom in certain particular, pre-programmed ways. The argument is that online dating provides a good illustration of how the information economy actively subsumes communicative action as a form of immaterial labour.
Cruising and connecting online investigates online chat sites as environments in which gay men can socialise and look for sex partners. We conducted original survey research of gay chat site (GCS) users in Melbourne and Sydney and looked at existing data collected in the Gay Community Periodic Surveys.
This article draws on anthropological work among two groups of technical specialists, mechanics in Malaysia and engineers in Sweden. From a cross-cultural perspective, it focuses on and critically examines ways in which masculine bonds are mediated and communicated through interactions with machines, in particular, motorbikes and cars. In these different social settings, technologies can be understood as means of an embodied communication for forming homosocial bonds. These masculine practices continuously exclude women and perpetuate highly genderized societal spheres where men form communities based on passion for machines. Such passion involves an anthropomorphization of the man-machine relationship in which the machines are transformed into subjects in what might be termed a heterosexual, masculine, technical sociability and subjectivity.
This article examines howU.S. engineers constructed their profession within the context of changing structural conditions and hegemonic masculinity between 1893 and 1920. The professionalization of engineering and the linkages between engineering practitioners and colleges were forged during this period. At the same time, conditions for the construction of a powerful masculine self-identity in the workplace were also changing. Engineers’reflective and informative writings about their field in the professional publication Engineering News, the Proceedings of the annual conferences of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, and two career guidance books (all from the 1893–1920 period) document how engineers constructed their profession as a masculine one.
This study uses an examination of the two largest internet affinity portals serving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) communities - PlanetOut.com and Gay.com - as an entry point into a broader discussion of gay marketing and surveillance in cyberspace. Informing this examination are arguments that the newfound courting of the ‘gay community’ by mainstream marketers represents a repositioning of gays and lesbians in commercial panoptic formations based on the perceived desirability of these populations as niche markets. This position is supported by the Janus-faced design of these online portals, which present themselves as inclusive communities to gay and lesbian consumers while simultaneously presenting themselves as surveilling entities to corporate clients. The marketing strategies deployed by these portals suggest that corporate actors believe that gays and lesbians can be enticed into self-surveillance by distancing solicitations for personal information from their economic aims and rearticulating them with images of community and romance.
Mobile phone social networking applications such as GRINDR are potential tools for recruitment of men who have sex with men (MSM) for HIV prevention research. Demographics and sexual risk behaviors of men recruited through GRINDR and through traditional media were compared. GRINDR participants were younger (mean age 31 vs. 42, p < 0.0001), more White identified (44 vs. 30 %, p < 0.01), and had more sex partners in the previous 14 days (1.88 vs. 1.10, p < 0.05) than other recruits. Email responses were less successful for enrollment than phone calls (5 vs. 50 %). This approach resulted in successful recruitment of younger and more educated, White identified MSM.
In this article the literature on masculinity, gender and technology or science provides the context for discussing two case studies where new information technology has recently been introduced. The empirical material is counter-intuitive to the general understanding that technology reflects and reinforces men's masculinity and the article provides a variety of theoretical interpretations for these findings.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate information communications technologies (ICT)‐mediated inclusion and exclusion in terms of sexuality through a study of a commercial social networking web site for gay men.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses an approach based on technological inscription and the commodification of difference to study Gaydar, a commercial social networking site.
Findings
Through the activities, events and interactions offered by Gaydar, the study identifies a series of contrasting identity constructions and market segmentations that are constructed through the cyclic commodification of difference. These are fuelled by a particular series of meanings attached to gay male sexualities which serve to keep gay men positioned as a niche market.
Research limitations/implications
The research centres on the study of one, albeit widely used, web site with a very specific set of purposes. The study offers a model for future research on sexuality and ICTs.
Originality/value
This study places sexuality centre stage in an ICT‐mediated environment and provides insights into the contemporary phenomenon of social networking. As a sexualised object, Gaydar presents a semiosis of politicised messages that question heteronormativity while simultaneously contributing to the definition of an increasingly globalised, commercialised and monolithic form of gay male sexuality defined against ICT.
Purpose
This paper aims to provide insights into the moral values embodied by a popular social networking site (SNS), Facebook.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based upon qualitative fieldwork, involving participant observation, conducted over a two‐year period. The authors adopt the position that technology as well as humans has a moral character in order to disclose ethical concerns that are not transparent to users of the site.
Findings
Much research on the ethics of information systems has focused on the way that people deploy particular technologies, and the consequences arising, with a view to making policy recommendations and ethical interventions. By focusing on technology as a moral actor with reach across and beyond the internet, the authors reveal the complex and diffuse nature of ethical responsibility and the consequent implications for governance of SNS.
Research limitations/implications
The authors situate their research in a body of work known as disclosive ethics, and argue for an ongoing process of evaluating SNS to reveal their moral importance. Along with that of other authors in the genre, this work is largely descriptive, but the paper engages with prior research by Brey and Introna to highlight the scope for theory development.
Practical implications
Governance measures that require the developers of social networking sites to revise their designs fail to address the diffuse nature of ethical responsibility in this case. Such technologies need to be opened up to scrutiny on a regular basis to increase public awareness of the issues and thereby disclose concerns to a wider audience. The authors suggest that there is value in studying the development and use of these technologies in their infancy, or if established, in the experiences of novice users. Furthermore, flash points in technological trajectories can prove useful sites of investigation.
Originality/value
Existing research on social networking sites either fails to address ethical concerns head on or adopts a tool view of the technologies so that the focus is on the ethical behaviour of users. The authors focus upon the agency, and hence the moral character, of technology to show both the possibilities for, and limitations of, ethical interventions in such cases.
In May-June 2002, 4,974 men who have sex with men (MSM), average age 31 years, completed a self-administered questionnaire online accessed through two popular gay Internet sites in the UK (gaydar and gay.com UK). Most men were white (95%), employed (83%), lived in the UK (91%) and self-identified as gay (85%). Nearly half (46%) had not been tested for HIV, while 6% said they were HIV-positive. One-third (31%) reported high-risk sexual behaviour in the previous three months, i.e. unprotected anal intercourse with a partner of unknown or discordant HIV status. Nearly all the men (82%) had looked for a sexual partner on the Internet and three-quarters had been doing so for more than a year. Almost half the men (47%) said they preferred to meet men through the Internet rather than in bars or other 'offline' venues. Although nearly 40% of men said the most important reason for using these Internet sites was to find sexual partners, a further 17% said they primarily used them to have contact with other men, 16% because they were bored, 12% for entertainment, 4% because they were lonely and 3% because they were addicted to it. The majority of men in this survey had favourable attitudes towards online health promotion. Most men thought that Internet sites should allow health workers into chat-rooms (75%); would click on a banner to find out about sexual health (78%); and said if they met a health worker in a chat-room they would find out what they had to say (84%). In multivariate analysis, being HIV-positive, older age and high-risk sexual behaviour were all independently associated with an increased frequency of using the Internet to look for sex (p<0.05). The Internet has emerged as an important meeting place for men who have sex with men. As online HIV prevention initiatives are developed it will be important to monitor the extent to which the favourable attitudes seen here are reflected in preventive behaviours.
The development of research on masculinity since the 1980s hasproduced rich evidence of the diversity of masculinities. This is now anestablished research field and has had many practical applications. Ithas not yet fully absorbed the wealth of ideas and debates aboutmasculinities and social change that come from the colonized and postcolonial world. Power has always been an important issue in understanding masculinities, and we now need to think about powerstructures on a world scale. Research on neoliberal globalization, onHIV/AIDS, and on elite masculinities, are significant sites for this work.The concept of hegemonic masculinity is still useful, but it should notbe equated with violence. We need to pay attention to incoherences in gender relations, and the politics of gendered institutions, in thinkingabout inequality and change.
Popular culture has recognized urban gay mens use of the Web over the last ten years, with gay Internet dating and Net-cruising featuring as narrative devices in hit television shows. Yet to date, the relationship between urban gay male culture and digital media technologies has received only limited critical attention, Gaydar Culture explores the integration of specific techno-cultural practices within contemporary gay male sub-culture. Taking British gay culture as its primary interest, the book locates its critical discussion within the wider global context of a proliferating model of Western metropolitan gay male culture, Making use of a series of case studies in the development of a theoretical framework through which past, present and future practices of digital immersion can be understood and critiqued; this book constitutes a timely intervention into the fields of digital media studies, cultural studies and the study of gender and sexuality.
This book explores the brave new world of social relations as they have evolved on the Internet. It examines how men and women negotiate their gender roles on an online forum the book calls BlueSky. The result is an analysis of the emerging social phenomenon of Internet-mediated communication and a study of the social and cultural effects of a medium that allows participants to assume identities of their own choosing. Despite the common assumption that the personas these men and women craft for themselves bear little resemblance to reality, the book discovers that the habitués of BlueSky stick ... More
This book explores the brave new world of social relations as they have evolved on the Internet. It examines how men and women negotiate their gender roles on an online forum the book calls BlueSky. The result is an analysis of the emerging social phenomenon of Internet-mediated communication and a study of the social and cultural effects of a medium that allows participants to assume identities of their own choosing. Despite the common assumption that the personas these men and women craft for themselves bear little resemblance to reality, the book discovers that the habitués of BlueSky stick surprisingly close to the facts of their actual lives and personalities.
This book explores the brave new world of social relations as they have evolved on the Internet. It examines how men and women negotiate their gender roles on an online forum the book calls BlueSky. The result is an analysis of the emerging social phenomenon of Internet-mediated communication and a study of the social and cultural effects of a medium that allows participants to assume identities of their own choosing. Despite the common assumption that the personas these men and women craft for themselves bear little resemblance to reality, the book discovers that the habitués of BlueSky stick ... More
This article is a case study of a Second Life region in reference to the prevailing attitudes of sexual conservatism and the growing acceptance of homosexual coupling. The site of Zeus is a contested site of legitimacy in view of tensions regarding masculinity as it applies to sex, sexuality, gender conformity and consumption practices. Furthermore, it is representative of the tensions between an acceptable, albeit conservative gay male identity, and the subversive hyper-sexual and hyper-masculine subject of desire.
Despite their ubiquity, pseudonyms are an under-theorized element of online participation, as is the use of real names (or names commonly used to personally identify someone). This absence has become especially acute in recent years as sites listing an individual’s real name have become common. This shift towards real names is not merely a technical convenience, but a specific political turn. As pseudonyms are often associated with Internet trolling and cyberbullying, it is useful to track the use of pseudonyms in history and to consider many of their positive functions. Ironically, pseudonyms help to solve a problem that Facebook creates – the single heterogeneous audience, i.e., the collapsed context.I describe three classes of pseudonyms: functional, where pseudonyms denote a specific social or technical function, such as eight character names or official titles; situational, where an external motivating force compels people to hide their real name identities (and of attributes) and personal, where an internal drive to adopt a different persona makes pseudonyms useful. I then describe how these uses operated in a pre-web 2.0 era, and how their use persists.
This article argues that the influence of heteronormativity on the conceptualization of women and technology in feminist constructivist technology studies creates serious problems for the analysis. This research aims to understand the coproduction of gender and technology in society, but does not approach the two elements in a symmetrical fashion. Hence, ethnographic studies can only exemplify how the gender of technology producers is reflected in the technology created. Masculine gender identity is stabilized as a cause for the masculinity of a technology that is shaped by social relationships. The criticism is fleshed out in a close examination of case study accounts of ethnographies among producers and users of technology. It is argued that a habitual reproduction of heteronormativity, present in the surrounding culture and in the technological communities studied, has prevented the adoption of approaches to the subject conducive to the objective of this feminist research. Acknowledging that destabilizing gender can undermine the critical thrust of feminist critique, the paper turns towards queer theory for ideas about how to produce criticism that does not rely on the stability of identity. The article closes with suggesting how a queer feminist approach could contribute to different readings of life with technology.
This article analyzes representations of feminism and sexuality on Suicide Girls (www.suicidegirls.com), a commercial site which features the online journals, profiles and nude photographs of young, heavily tattooed, punk women. It highlights the ways in which this site attempts to subvert the male gaze by changing contemporary photographic practices. It also interrogates the way in which the feminist potential of this site remains constrained by its inclusion of only a limited number of women of colour and only as a marketing `strategy' of diversity. It argues that rather than a critical race feminist commitment to inclusivity and structural change, this strategy of `diversity' is reflective of the internet tenet which holds that `content diversity is good business'. Thus, it concludes that rather than a feminist site which operates in the hope of broadening understandings of female sexuality, this site prioritizes profit to the detriment of feminist content.
• This article uses interviews with male cybersex participants to examine their experiences of cybersex and considers constructions of `self' and `sex' in their discussions. It asks how the adoption of a cybersex persona is understood by participants and how they characterize their cybersexual practices in order to develop a clearer picture of the ways in which new forms of communication technology are implicated in producing new forms of sexual practice and how these relate to contemporary perceptions of what sex is. •
While gay male culture becomes increasingly visible and accepted by mainstream Britain, other forms of homosexual desire remain firmly outside the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable by British society. This article considers how small groups of men are using the decentralized nature of the internet to engage in one such form of homosexuality, namely cottaging (British gay slang for sexual acts in public lavatories). Via an analysis of these `subaltern' spaces the article demonstrates that, far from being the domain of closeted homosexuals (and in contrast to the cultural stereotype), `cybercottages' are being constructed and populated by men who otherwise hold confident gay or bisexual identities both on- and off-line. As such, the cybercottage becomes a site of `nostalgized' performance and play, where gay men explore `older' articulations of male—male desire, outside of the confines of a sanitized commercial gay scene.
It is widely acknowledged that gender is a key category in pornography, yet the relation of the latter to contemporary masculinities remains relatively obscure. Although there is a substantial critical literature on the positioning and treatment of women in pornography, the connection between the consumption of pornographic images and the social construction of hegemonic masculinity has been more often presumed than examined. This lacuna becomes more apparent when juxtaposed with the profusion and proliferation of Internet porn in recent years. Rather than enter into existing antiporn or proporn debates, this article seeks to pose a different set of questions about the relationship between masculinity, technology, and pornography. It suggests that the Internet produces a qualitative change in the way in which viewers are affected by pornography and that this has implications for contemporary gender relations. Beyond men’s control over women’s bodies, Internet porn participates in the larger drama of a technological confrontation between men and nature—one in which control and the meaning of masculinity is perpetually at stake.
In this article, the author presents findings based on her research on BlueSky, an online interactive textbased forum. She discusses BlueSky participants' online performances of gendered and raced identities. Participants interpret their own and others' identities within the context of expectations and assumptions derived from offline U.S. culture, as well as from their membership in various computer-related subcultures. Given the predominance of white men on BlueSky, such identity interpretations also rely on expectations concerning masculinity and whiteness. The author explores BlueSky participants' understandings of themselves as “nerds” and considers the implications of this nerd identity for their relationship to hegemonic masculinity, especially to expectations of heterosexuality. Analyzing online identity performances in this way provides information pertaining not just to online interaction but to a better understanding of the social construction of gendered and raced identities more generally.
In this article, I discuss the pseudonyms created by French gay men on the Minitel, investigating both their internal morphology and their social functions. Although pseudonymous messages are common in English language environments such as electronic chatrooms, graffiti and personal advertisements, none are as syntactically complex or as hard to decipher as Minitel `pseudos'. Can the widespread use and opaque structure of the French pseudos be imputed to their function as an `anti-language', i.e. the dialectal style of a community that feels itself to be under threat of exposure? I conclude that the pseudos owe their complex structure more to the resulting eroticization of the encounter than to any fear of outsiders.
Since the 1960s, the predominance of modern contraceptive drugs for women has disciplined men and women to delegate responsibilities for contraception largely to women. Consequently, contraceptive use came to be excluded from hegemonic masculinity. The weak alignment of contraceptive technologies and hegemonic masculinities constitutes a major barrier for technological innovation in contraceptives for men. Based on an analysis of two large-scale clinical trials of hormonal contraceptives for men organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the article shows how the development of new contraceptives for men requires a renegotiation of masculine identities. Technological innovation in contraceptive technology is, thus, not only a story about the making of a new technology, it is also a story about constructing masculine identities.
Social networking website (SNS) Rate is the most popular online environment for young Estonians, which has more than 290000 active users. The study aims to examine visual self-presentations of young men (N = 108) in Rate. Quantitative content analysis methodology was used to analyze 599 profile images of young men belonging to a community 'Damn I'm Beautiful!'. The results indicate that media representations of men are often taken as role-models while constructing one's visual identities online. In particular, young men mostly pose alone in order to emphasize their looks and appear as willing sexual or romantic objects. They appear mostly in the public sphere, however, without being engaged in any purposeful activities. All in all, SNS profile images function on many levels in order to portray different versions of masculinity. The findings highlight the importance of photos as additional impression management tools and confirm their conscious use for identity 'performances' on SNS. © 2010 SAGE Public
In this study, we develop a theorisation of an internet dating site as a cultural artifact. The site, Gaydar, is targeted at gay men. We argue that contemporary received representations of their sexuality figure heavily in the site's focus by providing a cultural logic for the apparent ad hoc development trajectories of its varied commercial and non-commercial services. More specifically, we suggest that the growing sets of services related to the website are heavily enmeshed within current social practices and meanings. These practices and meanings are, in turn, shaped by the interactions and preferences of a variety of diverse groups involved in what is routinely seen within the mainstream literature as a singularly specific sexuality and cultural project. Thus, we attend to two areas—the influence of the various social engagements associated with Gaydar together with the further extension of its trajectory ‘beyond the web’. Through the case of Gaydar, we contribute a study that recognises the need for attention to sexuality in information systems research and one which illustrates sexuality as a pivotal aspect of culture. We also draw from anthropology to theorise ICTs as cultural artifacts and provide insights into the contemporary phenomena of ICT enabled social networking.
This study explored online personal ads of 294 heterosexual and homosexual men and women in the United States through a qualitative analysis and comparison of participant-generated “personal” and “preferred partner” narratives. Nine characteristics were identified and combined into three overarching categories: physical, lifestyle, and personality characteristics. These three personal and preferred partner characteristics were examined for difference by gender, sexual orientation, age and desired relationship type of the advertisers. Main effects emerged for all four predictors, most notably for age and desired relationship type. Additionally, this study explored the possibility that personal and preferred partner narratives contained similar constellations of characteristics, finding significant correlations on all three variables, lending support for the matching hypothesis in dating partner characteristics.
YouTube is a public video-sharing website where people can experience varying degrees of engagement with videos, ranging from casual viewing to sharing videos in order to maintain social relationships. Based on a one-year ethnographic project, this article analyzes how YouTube participants developed and maintained social networks by manipulating physical and interpretive access to their videos. The analysis reveals how circulating and sharing videos reflects different social relationships among youth. It also identifies varying degrees of ''publicness'' in video sharing. Some participants exhibited ''publicly private'' behavior, in which video makers' identities were revealed, but con- tent was relatively private because it was not widely accessed. In contrast, ''privately public'' behavior involved sharing widely accessible content with many viewers, while limiting access to detailed information about video producers' identities.
Are there systematic differences between people who use social network sites and those who stay away, despite a familiarity with them? Based on data from a survey administered to a diverse group of young adults, this article looks at the predictors of SNS usage, with particular focus on Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, and Friendster. Findings suggest that use of such sites is not randomly distributed across a group of highly wired users. A person’s gender, race and ethnicity, and parental educational background are all associated with use, but in most cases only when the aggregate concept of social network sites is disaggregated by service. Additionally, people with more experience and autonomy of use are more likely to be users of such sites. Unequal participation based on user background suggests that differential adoption of such services may be contributing to digital inequality.
Drawing on a 19-month ethnographic study, this essay explores how rural young people weave digital-media-generated source materials into their identity work, particularly as they navigate the politics of visibility's master narrative event: “coming out.” More so than in urban scenes where a critical mass of LGBTQ visibility is taken for granted, these stories resonate with the complex negotiation of visibility and family ties that consume rural young people's everyday lives. At the same time the amount rural youth absorb or rework these categories has everything to do with each person's capacity to enact and publicly assert them. This approach to studies of media effects calls for a deeply situated understanding of media engagements beyond reception of particular media texts.
Studies of men’s gendered experiences of information systems are needed. In order to support this claim, I introduce the area of Masculinity Studies to Information Systems research and, using this, present an exploratory analysis of an internet dating website for gay men - Gaydar. The information system which forms part of the Gaydar community is shown to shape, and by shaped by the members as they accept and challenge aspects of it as related to their identities. In doing this, I show how the intertwined processes of information systems development and use contribute to the creation of diverse interpretations of masculinity within a group of men. In sum, my analysis highlights different kinds of men and different versions of masculinity that can sometimes be associated with different experiences of information systems. The implications of this work centre on the need to expand our knowledge of men’s gendered experiences with information systems, to reflect upon processes of technology facilitated categorisation and to consider the influences that contribute to the roll out of particular software features along with the underlying rationales for market segmentation in the software and software based services industries.
Die Tryin' Video Games, Masculinity, Culture
- D A Burrill
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It's Not Just a Game: Contemporary Challenges for Games Research and the Internet
- G Crawford
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Gay Men and the Pornification of Everyday Life
- S Mowlabocus
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It's Different for Men
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Grooming, Gossip, Facebook and MySpace: What Can We Learn About these Sites From Those Who Won't Assimilate?
- Z Tufekcki
Tufekcki, Z. (2008). Grooming, Gossip, Facebook and MySpace: What Can
We Learn About these Sites From Those Who Won't Assimilate?
Information Communication and Society, 11(4), 544-564.
doi:10.1080/13691180801999050