[Air-L] Social media and postfeminism?

[Charles Ess]

Would absolutely second Terri Senft's recommendation of Cam-Girls, etc.
(having just cited it in my own work for similar reasons).

You might also find a couple of articles related to the pocketfilm winner of
2007, Porte de Choisy (which violates both bedroom and bathroom privacies) -

<http://www.festivalpocketfilms.fr/spip.php?article648>

- useful, beginning with the film itself as described and discussed by:

David, Gabriela. 2009. Clarifying the Mysteries of an Exposed Intimacy:
Another Intimate Representation Mise-en-scène. In Kristóf Nyíri (ed.),
Engagement and Exposure: Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social
Networking, 77­86. Vienna: Passagen Verlag.

As well as a companion chapter:
Reading, Anna. 2009. The Playful Panopticon? Ethics and the Coded Self in
Social Networking Sites. In Kristóf Nyíri (ed.), Engagement and Exposure:
Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking, 93-101. Vienna:
Passagen Verlag.
Reading argues, contra more conservative critiques of exposure, that these
forms of self-exposure constitute a re-taking of agency in a world of
surveillance that otherwise threatens to take agency away, coupled with the
pleasures of watching, including watching ourselves.

All in the name of research, of course ...
- charles ess

Associate Professor in Media Studies
Department of Media and Communication

Director, Centre for Research on Media Innovations
<http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/center/media-innovations/>

University of Oslo 
P.O. Box 1093 Blindern
NO-0317 
Oslo Norway

Lifetime member, AoIR



On 19.12.12 15:26, "Tyler Bickford" <tb2139 at columbia.edu> wrote:

> Hi all, 
> 
> Can anyone direct me to scholarship linking social networking sites and
> postfeminism? Or better, arguing that certain phenomena of social media
> reflect a postfeminist sensibility?
> 
> I'm thinking in particular of issues like self-branding, self-commodification,
> the public performance of private/intimate experience, and the critique of
> empowerment-through-consumption that seem to come up regularly in regard to
> both topics. For one example, Rob Horning frames his critique of Facebook in
> "Facebook in the Age of Facebook"
> (http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/facebook-in-the-age-of-facebook/) as a
> symptom of neoliberalism, but it seems to me like some of the phenomena he's
> pointing to are also characteristic of postfeminism, and I wonder if there's a
> gender critique here?
> 
> I've seen arguments that the growth of the service sector under neoliberalism
> reflects a sort of "feminization" of labor (though I'd like to disavow that
> phrase a bit). Or also the converse, Arlie Hochschild's arguments about the
> "commercialization of intimate life." Both perspectives seems relevant to
> social networking sites, where the immaterial labor that users produce is
> perhaps also gendered in similar ways? That is, rather than gendered practices
> *within* Facebook, maybe I'm asking about Facebook etc *as* a potentially
> gendered practice. And then maybe Horning and others' desperation about
> inauthenticity can be seen as at least homologous with anxious narratives
> about labor precarity and male decline in the "new economy"?
> 
> So perhaps my question is: postfeminism and neoliberalism have been linked,
> and neoliberalism and social media have been linked, but do we have to go
> through neoliberalism to connect the two, or has anyone directly linked social
> media practices to the postfeminist sensibility?
> 
> Apologies for the long post. This is coming from a place of ignorance, so
> please excuse me if I've missed anything obvious.
> 
> Thank you for your help!!
> 
> Best wishes,
> Tyler
> 
> 
> ________
> Tyler Bickford, PhD
> Core Lecturer
> Columbia University
> tb2139 at columbia.edu
> 845-418-4049
> http://www.tylerbickford.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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