Touch and contact during COVID‐19: Insights from queer digital spaces

Cheded, Mohammed; Skandalis, Alexandros

doi:10.1111/gwao.12697

Cited by 10 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 37 publications

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“…Online spaces are increasingly important for identity construction, negotiations and exploration when people exponentially use remote technologies to interact and connect with others. Moreover, although the boundary between online and offline spheres has been diminishing in the past years in terms of interaction, identity and work (Mesch and Talmud, 2006), we agree that anonymous online spaces and platforms are still needed to connect and talk about work-related experiences (Cheded and Skandalis, 2021). The increasing access to online spaces allows identities to be continuously worked on, contested and negotiated, through interactivity and in collaboration with other discussion participants (Brown and Coupland, 2015), without the potential restrictions of one’s workplace (Boyd, 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collaborative construction of the closet (in and out): The affordance of interactivity and gay and lesbian employees’ identity work online

Soini

Eräranta

2022

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For LGBQ employees, the disclosure and management of sexual identity in the workplace are likely to cause additional identity work. In this paper, we explore how such identity work is undertaken collectively by gays and lesbians on internet forums. Drawing on the literature on discursive identity work and social media affordances, we conduct a netnographic study of two internet forums, and analyse the ways in which these forums enable gay and lesbian employees’ identity work and guide their identity management processes. Overall, our study advances knowledge on sexual identity disclosure and management in three main ways. First, by shifting the focus from the identity disclosure accounts of individual gay and lesbian employees to online peer discussions around the topic, it sheds light on the broader context of identity management beyond the workplace. Second, our findings elucidate particular types of collaborative identity work – consulting, legitimating and questioning identity work – enabled by the affordance of interactivity of internet forums that inform and guide gays and lesbians’ identity management practices in organisations. Third, we identify and elaborate on specific discursive identity threats – the ‘falsehood’, ‘incoherence’, ‘exaggeration’ and ‘outdatedness’ of identity – which gay and lesbian employees are likely to encounter when reflecting on and performing specific identity management strategies, such as concealing or revealing their sexual orientation at work.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%