Creating Gaps in Understanding: How Gen Z Disrupts Gender Norms on TikTok

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Ellen Wynne ◽  
William Wright ◽  
Donna Alvermann

Abstract Since its inception, social media has been an important method of constructing and performing identity, including gender identity. Identity work on social media is perhaps especially relevant to Gen Z (those born after 1996; Parker & Igielnik, 2020), who are the first generation with access to it in early childhood. In this article, we explore how Gen Z constructs and performs gender identity and other facets of intersectional identity on popular video platform TikTok by analyzing selected content from three TikTokers through the lenses of performativity, intersectionality, and automediality.

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Esethu Monakali

This article offers an analysis of the identity work of a black transgender woman through life history research. Identity work pertains to the ongoing effort of authoring oneself and positions the individual as the agent; not a passive recipient of identity scripts. The findings draw from three life history interviews. Using thematic analysis, the following themes emerge: institutionalisation of gender norms; gender and sexuality unintelligibility; transitioning and passing; and lastly, gender expression and public spaces. The discussion follows from a poststructuralist conception of identity, which frames identity as fluid and as being continually established. The study contends that identity work is a complex and fragmented process, which is shaped by other social identities. To that end, the study also acknowledges the role of collective agency in shaping gender identity.


Author(s):  
Corina-Maricica Seserman ◽  
Daniela Cojocaru

Today’s teenagers have a very close relationship with ICTs and the digital space related to them, as they have impacted the way the youth constructs their sense of self and the tools they use to perform their carefully constructed identity. One key element which influences the way one constructs their views by themselves is within the boundaries set by their biological sex and therefore through the behaviors associated with their asigned gender. Through the symbolic interactionist lense, or more specifically through Goffman's dramaturgical theory on the manner in which one presents him/herself in society, this paper looks at the manner in which teenagers use social media platforms and at the way they consume and create digital content in order to present their gender identity. The way teenagers consume and produce digital content differs and depends on how they interpret their ideals of femininity and masculinity, which are afterwards reproduced in the content they post on their social media pages. Therefore this research is an attempt to understand what are the factors teenagers take in account when consuming and producing content. What gender differences can be observed in regards to new media consumption? What difference can be observed in online activity behaviors between males and females? How do they feel about their gender identity concerning fitting in with their peer group? A mix-methodological approach was engaged in the data collection process. In the first stage of the research highschool students (n=324) from the city of Suceava (Romania) participated in taking an online survey. The initial intent was to meet with the young respondents in person, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic this was deemed impossible. For the second stage of data collection, six of the participants who took the online survey were invited to participate in a focus group designed to grasp a better understanding of the results from the previous stage. The discovered findings uncover engaging gender similarities and differences in social media consumption and the type, subject, matter and style in which they posted their content, but also in regards to the performance of the self between the online and offline space.


2021 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 163-166
Author(s):  
Liana Cusmano

Liana Cusmano’s interview with Toronto author Michelle Alfano offers reflections on gender identity and living through a child’s transitioning. The act of writing helped Alfano overcome the distress she felt during this difficult time. In her memoir The Unfinished Dollhouse, Michelle Alfano recounts the journey she underwent in accepting and embracing her son’s transgender identity. From tell-tale signs in early childhood and the mental and physical afflictions in the early teen years, to the reactions of family and friends and the final steps in a social and medical transition from female to male, Alfano explores the thoughts and feelings she experienced over the years as her son, River, fought to be his truest self.


2019 ◽  
pp. 0095327X1985930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nehemia Stern ◽  
Uzi Ben Shalom

This article explores the social media postings of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers on two different and unofficial Facebook groups. While scholars of armed forces and society have noted the growing importance that militaries have placed on digital media, there is little data regarding the unofficial uses and meanings that regular soldiers themselves make of social networking sites. With an anthropological focus on everyday experiences, we argue that the social media activity of IDF personnel highlights the quotidian aspects of military life in ways that reverberate beyond the strictly ideological or political facets of their service. Here, soldiers can express their frustrations with military bureaucracy, while also presenting a lighthearted (and positive) commentary on a shared rite of passage. This research opens a window into the lives and dilemmas of the first generation of Israeli soldiers to employ new media as a taken for granted aspect of their service.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-150
Author(s):  
Bagus Mustakim

Discussion of the piety of early childhood, currently in the shadow of an ideological debate of various political, social and religious identities. This kind of ideological debate is increasing along with the expansion of global social media networks in the digital age. In this ideological debate, a phenomenal animated film called "Nussa" emerged. This article focuses on the piety of early Islamic childhood represented by Nussa animation on the Youtube channel. The problem formulated in this article is why Nussa animation is offered as the piety of Islamic early childhood; How is the construction of early childhood piety offered in this animation; and how is this identity promoted? This article was developed with a media and cultural study approach. This research uses qualitative methods with the phenomenological  approach and interpretive discourse analysis methods. The author finds that the animation of Nussa actively produces piety as the identity of early Islamic childhood in ideological contestation with globalism and secular modernism. This piety is offered as an authentic Islamic identity for Islamic early childhood.


Author(s):  
Ian Callahan

In this chapter, the author challenges the commonsense claim that the internet provides equally accessible resources that are free from stigma, prejudice, or discrimination. Through the stories of university students in their own words, this intersectional analysis explores how the internet certainly offers substantial benefits to queer and nonconforming youth; however, interpersonal bias and systems of oppression pervade online forms of communication and social media applications. Additionally, the author troubles the notion that the internet is experienced as a ‘safe space' for anonymous or uninhibited explorations of queer identity. In fact, despite the internet's practical affordances of identity work, there are severe limits to tolerance and inclusion in online sociality, and because of this, doing queer identity work online has the potential to exacerbate the isolating effects of homophobia and discrimination.


2022 ◽  
pp. 149-168
Author(s):  
Ian Callahan

In this chapter, the author challenges the commonsense claim that the internet provides equally accessible resources that are free from stigma, prejudice, or discrimination. Through the stories of university students in their own words, this intersectional analysis explores how the internet certainly offers substantial benefits to queer and nonconforming youth; however, interpersonal bias and systems of oppression pervade online forms of communication and social media applications. Additionally, the author troubles the notion that the internet is experienced as a ‘safe space' for anonymous or uninhibited explorations of queer identity. In fact, despite the internet's practical affordances of identity work, there are severe limits to tolerance and inclusion in online sociality, and because of this, doing queer identity work online has the potential to exacerbate the isolating effects of homophobia and discrimination.


2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 421-425
Author(s):  
Ingrid H. Rima

My reflections are at least partly those of the child of an emigré who grew up to beome an economist. Since my father was an engineer from Germany's Barmen-Elberfeld textile city—also the city of Friedrich Engels—he clearly is not among the first generation of German scholars who were deprived of their professional positions as the Hitler regime came into power. Indeed, somewhat like Joseph Schumpeter, he came to America to grasp an opportunity rather than to avoid a threat. Like many of educated men of his generation, he was fluent in five languages and an ardent student of philosophy, history, and political economy. His move to America, after three or four trial visits, preceded my birth, because in those days before international air travel the seven day ocean voyage between Bremerhaven and New York was so daunting for a woman approaching childbirth that I was close to a year old before our arrival in America. My early childhood was uneventful except for the arrival of two siblings, and the only negative I recall from those early days was that I hated my first name, Ingrid (so carefully chosen by my parents), and longed to be called Jane, Anne or anything other than Ingrid.


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