“Retweet for More”: The Serialization of Porn on the Twitter Alter Community

This article examines the notion of seriality in the context of the Filipino alter community, a network of Twitter users producing, distributing, and consuming pornographic images. The alter community is prominent among Filipino gay men who satisfy their need for sexual arousal, collective identity, and validation of their sexuality in the alter community. Seriality is influenced by technological features and affordances of a media platform. In the case of Twitter, the platform’s short form formats and real-time content generation fosters a particular kind of seriality. This essay analyzes data from online observations, content analysis of tweets and profiles, and interviews and is informed by theories on seriality, gay sexuality, and Internet studies. In situating seriality within the context of gay amateur porn economy, this article argues that serial pornography is instrumental in satisfying both present and long-standing affective, sexual, and social needs of gay men. These needs, this essay claims, stem from long history of minoritization of homosexuality. As Twitter renders older tweets ephemeral and quantifies social engagement, seriality enables gay men to satisfy the aforementioned needs longer. Furthermore, this essay proposes that serial porn on Twitter brings new insights to how seriality is conceived. Serial porn images are strategically and carefully constructed narratives of sexual encounters aimed at garnering higher social engagement and validation. Thus, serial narratives can resolve present and urgent affective tensions and needs that unravel within an ongoing life narrative rather than working toward supporting a plausible ending, as seen in other serial forms. This article contributes to an understanding of how pornographic images and serial narratives fit into consumerist culture and how platforms exploit long-standing affective needs of sexual minorities to ensure extended production and consumption of contents.

The epidemiology and examination of clinical outcomes in children with COVID-19: A research overview

COVID- 19 pandemic has affected hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, and so far, accounted for 0.39-12.3% of affected disease population. Even though a large number of studies have reviewed symptoms and characteristics of adults with COVID-19, only some of them have included a smaller number of children.This study aimed a) To examine the epidemiological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 infection reported in children from published studies b) To outline the signs and symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection reported in children from the research studies and c) To provide converging evidence of the clinical outcomes and prognosis of children affected with SARS-CoV-2 infection from reported studies. A literature review was conducted through online sources of data base available in the internet. Studies published from Jan 2020 up to September 2021 were included. The organism causing infection was the novel Corona virus (SARS-CoV-2). In children, almost 0.39-12.3% of the population was affected. A slight predominance of boys vs. girls was noted, but it was not statistically significant. The incubation period ranged from 2-14 days. Nearly 51% of children were presenting with mild disease and nearly 4% were asymptomatic. The children also presented with non-respiratory symptoms, but the exact figures were not available. Multisystem inflammatory response was the most common reported complication. Current findings indicate that children have a lower incidence of the disease, with milder predominance and better prognosis, but prolonged shedding of virus in the nasal and stools sample and being asymptomatic raises a concern of community transmission.

COLLABORATING AT MICROSCOPIC AND MASSIVE SCALES: THE CHALLENGE AND VALUE OF COVID ISOLATION FOR CRITICAL INTERNET STUDIES

Global events like a pandemic or climate change are massive in scope but experienced at the local, lived, microscopic level. What sorts of methodologies and mindsets can help critical internet researchers, functioning as interventionists or activists, find traction by oscillating between these levels? How can we push (further) against the boundaries of research methods to build stronger coalitions and more impactful outcomes for social change among groups of scholars/researchers? This panel presents four papers addressing these questions based on a large scale online autoethnography in 2020. This “Massive/Micro” project simultaneously used and studied the angst and novelty of isolation during a pandemic, activating researchers, activists, and artists to explore the massive yet microscopic properties of COVID-19 as a “glocal” phenomenon. The challenge? Working independently and microscopically through intense focus on the Self but also working with distributed, largely unknown collaborators, in multiple platforms. The emerging shape of the project itself showcases the challenges and possibilities of how research projects at scale can (or don’t) reflect and build social movements. The panel’s four papers situate the project through a kaleidoscope of perspectives featuring participants from 7 countries, who variously explore: the value of the project for precarious or early career researchers, how MMS worked as both collaborative space and critical pedagogy, how non-institutional or playful experimentation in asynchronous collaborations can lead to new synergies; and how MMS developed an independent life of its own, beyond studying COVID to generating multiple communities of future digital research practice.

THE CASE ACT: IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERNET STUDIES RESEARCH

Copyright policy is inextricably entangled with the work of academic researchers on Internet culture. This paper examines a new U.S. law, the CASE Act, which creates a new venue for resolving copyright disputes for up to $30,000. We discuss the implications of such a venue for U.S.-based internet studies research.

TRACKING THE PILLING PIPELINE: LIMITATIONS, CHALLENGES AND A CALL FOR NEW METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS IN INCEL AND MANOSPHERE RESEARCH

The manosphere is an online network of disparate formations, which are united in their antipathy toward feminism, their reliance on evolutionary psychology and their belief that Western civilization is under threat. In recent years, a growing body of scholarship on the manosphere has emerged from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Much of this work sits within internet studies but there are also significant contributions from gender studies, social psychology and terrorism / cybersecurity studies. The purpose of this paper is to take stock of the current research, to identify methodological limitations, and to propose some new interdependent research frameworks and methods. To date, much of the work conducted on the manosphere and its various subgroups (e.g. incel) relies on gathering a dataset from one platform and subjecting it to either manual or machine analysis to identify key themes or characteristics. While this categorisation has been important, its frequent replication has led to a certain stagnation of knowledge, as we are missing the dynamic aspects of how and where ideas travel and interconnect. We call for a conceptual shift away from thinking of manosphere communities such as incel as isolated, homogenous identity groups, to conceiving of them instead as a multifaceted, ever-evolving online ecosystem. We map out a number of key pathways that need to be explored, outlining methodologies for each. Approaching the incel/manosphere as a dynamic ecosystem, we argue, will take knowledge of this phenomenon in important new directions, as well as opening up new space for inter-disciplinary collaboration.

THE SHAPE OF PLATFORM STUDIES: A MULTIDIMENSIONAL METHODOLOGICAL MODEL FOR A VICISSITUDINOUS CONCEPT

The study of platforms is on the rise in communication studies, science and technology studies (STS), game studies, internet studies, and the study of human-machine communication (HMC). While originally platform studies emerged from hardware studies as an integrated attempt to study the hardware, software, code, marketing, and use of computational technologies—especially, early on, videogame consoles, but never limited to them—its use has been broadened to include the study of software platforms, such as social media sites, and their user affordances, algorithmic decision making, terms of service, background code environments, and embeddedness in neoliberal capitalism: selling user data, acting as advertising mediums, etc. While a fruitful field with much work developed, there is a noticeable dearth of methodological theorising on the topic, even as there are numerous theoretical explorations. How exactly does one $2 platform studies? We propose a multidimensional approach to platform studies, in which work may be located along at least three major axes: computational—sociotechnical, pragmatic—critical, and interpersonal—structural. These three dimensions of platform studies are combinable, provisional, and subject to extension. While the three dimensions offered up for discussion here cannot speak to the entirely of what platform studies $2 or $2 , together and as a starting point these initial three define the shape of platform studies, track the work it has already done, and offer a solid framework and model for future investigations.

"EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED": NETWORKED CONSPIRITUALITY IN NEW AGE MEDIA

Conspirituality refers to the confluence of New Age spirituality and conspiracism that frame reality through holistic thinking—connecting events and energies, the inner self to the outer world in unseen ways. Conspirituality has thrived online: between the pleasure of the weekly horoscope and the obsession with the QAnon drop is a mode of causal promiscuity in which, as Q puts it, “future proves past.” This panel traces forms of conspirituality from MAGA mystics to New Age influencers, from technolibertarian imageboards to Silicon Valley vision quests. While conspirituality marks an online psychographic segmentation, it also traces a formal quality that organizes ways of navigating, knowing, and critiquing the internet, which is undergirded by New Age spirituality’s perennialism: a belief that different spiritual traditions are equally valid, because they all essentially worship the same divine source that emanates throughout the cosmos and the human body. The internet supercharges perennialism, providing a connective medium for New Age ideology of manifesting: the belief that we create our own reality. As users trawl the internet for snippets and statistics to feed their confirmation bias and populate their vision boards, the connective medium of the internet manifests toxicity and misinformation at scale. The papers in this panel develop a line of research on the coevolution of spirituality and technology from organized to new religious movements. Instead of demystification, we use ethnographic, textual, and hermeneutic approaches—examining internet users, governance, genealogies, and internet studies itself—to politicize networked conspirituality as vernacular theories of power and powerlessness.

WHAT DEAD-AND-DYING PLATFORMS DO FOR INTERNET STUDIES: SITUATING TECHNOLOGICAL FAILURE, DIGITAL AFTERLIFE, AND THE WEB THAT WAS

This panel explores internet histories through the lens of “platform death” as a way of understanding how digital communities grapple with technological failure, power dynamics, and the divergent notions of the digital afterlife. Collectively, the contributions address the cultural, geopolitical, economic, and socio-legal repercussions of what happens when various platforms fail, decline, or expire. We bring together five presentations that draw on different methods—including document analysis, semi-structured interviews, participant observation—to explore the frailty of platforms, their underlying infrastructures, and their trace data. Together, by examining and theoretically situating the histories of five different platforms (TroopTube, Fanfou, MySpace, YikYak, and Couchsurfing), we consider and complicate how the concept of “platform death” as a metaphor can help reveal the Web’s rhythmic temporality, digital media’s constant reinvention of forms, and the collision of hegemonic and fragile infrastructures in divergent cultural contexts. We ask: What are the theoretical implications of situating platforms as killable, ephemeral, precarious, or transient technologies? What—and who—kills platforms, and in what ways can they have uncertain digital afterlives and even resurrections? What can conceptualizations of dead and dying technologies tell us about the Internet’s growth and stagnation, its present and futures? What is (un)knowable about platforms that once were, and how can this knowledge inform our predictions of future technological failure? We aim to build community, collective imaginings, and future collaborations around a research agenda that centers mnemonic experimentation, comparative platform studies, and archival contestations.