Digital gender: Perspective, phenomena, practice

Abstract

Past research on gender online has made important land gains but under-theorizes the Internet as a passive, fixed, and somewhat insubstantial space or context. By contrast, this special issue draws on new material thinking to put into questions the very notion of “cyberspace” as a distinct realm. In this vein, the contents of this issue critically examine how the Internet and related digital technologies actively “work” to maintain or transform systems of oppression, as displayed, for example, in the digital doing(s) of gender. They also show how digital technologies and related concepts can be used to challenge current understandings of race, class, and gender and to produce and provoke new forms of knowledge. While the contents of this issue are drawn from different fields and display great diversity, the individual contributions of each author helps to chart out three potent venues for future Internet research: namely digital gender as perspective, phenomena, and practice.

The Violence of Impact: Unpacking Relations Between Gender, Media and Politics

“…For some, new social media and digital technologies hold the capacity to provide an alternate ontology which requires a more complex understanding of the role that media play in shaping society. Arvidsson and Foka (2015) argue ‘Internet research must let go of notions as lived within or without online spaces and instead re-imagine life as lived through digital technologies’. That is, while analytically it may be possible to separate social media from supposedly offline lived experiences, what these new technologies mean is that ontological boundaries between media and social lives are so blurred as to be inseparable.…”

From Boyfriend to Boy’s Love: South Korean Male ASMRtists’ Performances of Digital Care

“…This article fills the gap by exploring how South Korean male ASMRtists’ performances of care redefine, reinforce, and/or resist offline gender norms through the notion of digital gender. Viktor Arvidsson and Anna Foka (2015) define digital gender as an “interdependent origination, or shared becoming, of new social practices and gender roles around new uses of digital technology.” Digital gender reconceptualizes the Internet not as a passive arena but as a complicit doer whose specific uses “[take] part in the materialization of race, gender, and class. .…”

Gender, Class, and the Internet

“…Yet, does the internet really allow the subversion of gender roles or does the transformation of roles only involve highly specific publics (Arvidsson & Foka, 2015)? Or, on the contrary, does the internet tend to maintain gender roles, particularly for the less advantaged categories of the population?…”