QUEER MATERIALITIES AND INSTAGRAM LIVE INTERVIEWING: COMMUNITY ENTANGLEMENTS

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marissa Grace Willcox ◽  
Anna Catherine Hickey-Moody
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Self ◽  
Feminist Art ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
Activist Art ◽  
Digital Community ◽  
The World ◽  
New Type ◽  
Art Community

Digital community making through a live entanglement of the self and social media, offers up new pathways for thinking through human and nonhuman divides. Queer activism and feminist art on Instagram has made way for a reframing of what constitutes a ‘digital community’ (boyd 2011, Baym 2015, Oakley 2018). This paper thinks through the materiality of this feminist activist art community through the method of ‘Instagram live interviewing’. Drawing from a larger project that aims to understand the ways activist art practice on Instagram subverts heterosexual norms and patriarchal representation, we argue that the ‘live’ nature (Back, 2012) of the Instagram live interview (Hickey-Moody and Willcox, 2019) mobilizes a new type of queer materiality. By applying Karen Barad’s (2007) feminist new materialist theory of ‘intra-action’ to Rosi Braidotti's thinking about posthuman experience as intra-acting with aspects of the world that she classifys as non-human (2013), we reconceptualize some of the literature around digital community making to account for the needs of those often left out of heteronormative and mainstream narratives. This entanglement of liveness and intra-action in our methodology explores the feeling of ‘community’ as being a feeling that is central to human subjectivity and experience. Through a lens of queer materiality, we suggest that community can therefore be produced by more-than-human assemblages, and argue that a more nuanced account of digital community making which accounts for live Instagram intra-actions, and human to nonhuman relationality is needed.

FASHION BLOGGERS AS CELEBRITY EXPERTS IN RUSSIAN-SPOKEN SEGMENT OF SOCIAL MEDIA

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-156
Author(s):  
Zemfira K. Salamova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
The World

Social media has contributed to the spread of fashion, style or lifestyle blogging around the world. This study focuses on self-presentation strategies of Russian-speaking fashion bloggers. Its objects are Instagram accounts and YouTube channels of two Russian fashion bloggers: Alexander Rogov and Karina Nigay. The study also observes their appearances as guests in various interview shows on YouTube. Alexander Rogov received his initial fame through his television projects. Karina Nigay achieved popularity online on YouTube and Instagram, therefore she is a “pure” example of Internet celebritiy, whose rise to fame took place on the Internet. The article includes the following objectives 1) to study the self-branding of fashion bloggers on various online platforms; 2) to analyze the construction of fashion bloggers’ expert positions and its role in their personal brands. Turning to fashion blogging allows us to consider how its representatives build their personal brands and establish themselves as experts in the field of fashion and style in Russianlanguage social media.

scholarly journals Somewhere between here and there

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-76
Author(s):  
Crystal Abidin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Self ◽  
Digital Community

Despite our preparation for fieldwork, a majority of what ethnographers actually do in the field is based on ‘gut-feeling’, ‘sensing’, and ‘whim’. This paper is a piece of reflexive ethnography detailing a series of minor but important methodological decisions pertaining to researcher visibility throughout fieldwork in a digital community of social media Influencers. It details one anthropologist’s private negotiations during the foray into the Influencer industry by situating the self along various spectrums of conspicuousness. These confessional anecdotes of ‘behind the scenes’ labour can be taken as suggestions on how to negotiate one’s positionalities during ethnographic encounters between and betwixt physical and digital fieldsites. I detail these through six experiences from the field – as the esteemed guest, the exotic inbetweener, the willing apprentice, the trophy acquaintance, the concealed consultant, and the passing confidante – in which I negotiate being ‘seen’, being on ‘show’, and ‘seeing’ from somewhere between here and there.

scholarly journals Self-Production through the Banal and the Fictive

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmin Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Economy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
Ongoing Relationship ◽  
Self Production ◽  
Convergence Of Technologies

The self is performed through the banal of the everyday on social media. The banality of the everyday constitutes an integral part of our communication on digital platforms. Taking this as part of our performative lives in the digital economy, the paper looks at ways in which we co-produce the self through the banality of the everyday as well as a wider imagination and engagement with the world. These wider engagements are termed as ‘fictive' not because they are unreal but through a conceptual notion of how the self is performed and imagined through wider world events in digital platforms and screen cultures where convergence of technologies allow us to be constantly consumed through the screen as we live out our daily lives. The narration of our lives through the banal and the fictive constantly co-produces the self through a situated domesticity of the everyday and equally through the eventful. In the process it reveals our ongoing relationship with the screen as an orifice for the production of self and the construction of a social reality beyond our immediate domesticity.

scholarly journals Daesh: Riches and Self-Alienation in a Fledging Pseudo-State

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Hans Albert Braunfisch
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Large Population ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Preventative Measures ◽  
The World ◽  
New Type ◽  
Armed Intervention

<p>Daesh, or Islamic State, holds captive the fears of populations the world over. However, with the advent of this new type of terror organization functioning as a pseudo-state, the approach to eliminating it must also be adapted, but in order to eliminate such a threat, it must first be understood. As of now, the understanding of Daesh widely varies depending upon the source. They are likened to other terror organizations, insurrections, unrecognized states, and caliphates of antiquity. To make the concept and understanding of Daesh more comprehensible to members of the private sector, the author utilizes a framework common for consultancies and management teams, the S.W.O.T. Analysis, to depict the organization’s assets, shortcomings, potentials for growth, and hazards. Following this analysis, the author paints Daesh as a product of its environment. With instability in the Middle East, a large population of disgruntled, young men, and globalization via social media, Daesh has become not only a pseudo-state to destroy, but an ideology that permeates inexistent cyber borders. As a result, implications for policy revision and reflection are vital for preventative measures. The author suggests leaders’ future approaches involve less armed intervention to preserve governments and greater investment in aid. These two methods create a stable environment in which the populace can focus on economic and personal development, as opposed to ideological conflict.</p>

Self and the Relationship with the Screen

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Yasmin Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Economy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
Ongoing Relationship ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Convergence Of Technologies

The self is performed through the banal of the everyday on social media. The banality of the everyday constitutes an integral part of our communication on digital platforms. Taking this as part of our performative lives in the digital economy, the paper looks at ways in which we co-produce the self through the banality of the everyday as well as a wider imagination and engagement with the world. These wider engagements are termed as ‘fictive' not because they are unreal but through a conceptual notion of how the self is performed and imagined through wider world events in digital platforms and screen cultures where convergence of technologies allow us to be constantly consumed through the screen as we live out our daily lives. The narration of our lives through the banal and the fictive constantly co-produces the self through a situated domesticity of the everyday and equally through the eventful. In the process it reveals our ongoing relationship with the screen as an orifice for the production of self and the construction of a social reality beyond our immediate domesticity.

scholarly journals Encounters with the World through Cultural Schoolbag Workshops for Teacher Students

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisbet Skregelid
Keyword(s):  
Art Education ◽  
Teaching Strategy ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
The Self ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Education Practice ◽  
The World ◽  
Teacher Students ◽  
To Come ◽  
Point Of Departure

This article raises some questions about encountering the world and subjectivation in art educational practices. Gert Biesta recently criticised the continuing emphasis on expressive and self-centred approaches and pedagogies in art education (2017, 2018). Biesta calls for a world-centred approach to education in general, as well as art education practices that move the focus from oneself to a greater openness towards the world. In my own art education practice, I attempt to enable this shift from what I see as an emphasis on merely the self to an emphasis on the world—a more sustainable approach to art education. I practise turning students towards the world that explores the possibility for subjectivation: that is, for subjects to come into existence. I frame this teaching strategy as educational dissensus (Skregelid, 2016, 2019a, 2019b, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c). This article discusses the notion of world-centredness in relation to the initial stages of a pilot study involving teacher students in The Cultural Schoolbag (TCS) workshops. The TCS workshop Teiporama, by the artist Sandra Norrbin, had an explorative character and was oriented towards process rather than focused on developing skills and an artistic object. At first glance, what happened in the workshops might seem like the expressive approach to art education that Biesta criticizes. However, I still believe the workshop revealed something more. This leads me to asking: How can an art practice having the self, the I, as a point of departure at the same time be a world-centred educational practice?

The Shadow or the Self

2019 ◽  
pp. 149-168
Author(s):  
Lanette Cadle
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Real ◽  
Neil Gaiman ◽  
Intensive Use ◽  
The World ◽  
Use Of Social Media

This chapter examines Gaiman's intensive use of social media to create a shadow self that gives fans the access they crave to his inner processes and daily life. This means making selections, much like a curator faced with a massive archive must select pieces that form a cohesive exhibit, a process that is much more nuanced than the commercial call to create a "brand," an idea that is commonly touted within the world of business. Instead, it is a conscious construction of a shadow self, an embodiment that both is and is not the real Neil Gaiman.

Streams of the Self

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-116
Author(s):  
Kris Fallon
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Digital Photography ◽  
Smartphone Application ◽  
The Self ◽  
Photographic Observation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Social Profiles

This article offers a working draft of a larger qualitative analysis of the popular smartphone application Instagram. It offers a reading of the ubiquitous contemporary form of self-portraiture, the selfie, locating its origin in the longer evolution of digital photography into a form of social media. Though its function as a basic self-portrait and signifier for our various social profiles appears straightforward, it has somehow become the ‘face’ of online sociality and subjectivity, a portrait of the promise and peril of our online existence. And yet, a closer look at the various feeds and streams in which the selfie appears reveals that it is one genre amongst many, no more or less common than a variety of landscapes, still-lifes, and other modes of photographic observation. Taken together, these various views of the world reveal an emplaced mode of image-driven autobiography, one far more complex and nuanced than a straightforward meme would appear to be. Image Credit: Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

scholarly journals Alt. Health Influencers: how wellness culture and web culture have been weaponised to promote conspiracy theories and far-right extremism during the COVID-19 pandemic

2022 ◽  
pp. 136754942110626
Author(s):  
Stephanie Alice Baker
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
World Health Organisation ◽  
Participatory Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
World Health ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
The World

This article examines the proliferation of alt. health influencers during the COVID-19 pandemic. I analyse the self-presentation strategies used by four alt. health influencers to achieve visibility and status on Instagram over a 12-month period from 11 March 2020, when the pandemic was declared by the World Health Organisation. My analysis reveals the ways in which these influencers appeal to the utopian discourses of early web culture and the underlying principles of wellness culture to build and sustain an online following. While early accounts of micro-celebrity treat participatory culture as democratising and progressive, this article demonstrates how the participatory affordances of social media have been exploited to spread misinformation, conspiratorial thinking and far-right extremism. These findings develop previous work on ‘conspirituality’ by demonstrating how wellness culture and web culture can coalesce for authoritarian ends.

scholarly journals Does Digital Exclusion Undermine Social Media’s Democratizing Capacity?

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Mutsvairo ◽  
Massimo Ragnedda
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Positive Outcomes ◽  
Digital Networks ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
The Real ◽  
Digital Community ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Digital Exclusion ◽  
Western Democracies

AbstractClaims have been made that the advent of social media and its assumed ability to fuel social strife and organize anti-government protests has empowered people around the world to successfully challenge repressive authorities. However, in an era in which several issues ranging from digital colonialism to digital exclusion among other challenges, have become so dominant, it is our role as researchers to question some of these claims especially when they seem unsubstantiated. Sharing or finding solidarity is something that can be done on social media platforms but nothing is as critical as being part of the digital community. In that regard, questions surrounding digital exclusion are critical especially when discussing the extent to which social media influences democracy, questions that several scholars from every corner of the world are currently seized with. In this article, we not only identify social media’s potential but we also probe problems associated with beliefs that digital networks have the capacity to support democratization. Contemporary societies should be asking what the real gains of the fall of the Berlin Wall are in the work of these fundamental digital shifts, which have left both negative and positive outcomes on all countries including established Western democracies.

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