[Air-L] New open access book: Gender and Digital Media (2026, Routledge)

[Kata Kyrola]

** Cross‑posting for reach; thanks for understanding!**



Dear All,



We’re delighted to announce the publication of a new textbook, Gender and Digital Media: A Critical Companion (Routledge), edited by Hakan Ergül. The book is now available in both e‑book and print formats. The full book is freely accessible as Open Access (funded by UCL) via the link below. Please feel free to download and share!



https://www.routledge.com/Gender-and-Digital-Media-A-Critical-Companion/Ergul/p/book/9781032671314



The book offers an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the evolving relationship between gender and digital media. With chapters on queer and trans communities online, digital intimacy, feminist approaches to technology, gaming, fandom and fanfiction, digital diaspora, identity, representation, and gendered hate, it highlights how gender is shaped and expressed across intersections of class, race, age, sexuality, and technology. Our key objective is to foreground diversity—both in the topics explored and in the voices represented.



Positioned at the crossroads of media studies, cultural studies, sociology, and feminist approaches to technology—and extending into audience and fan studies, film and reception studies, Internet studies, critical race theory, posthuman thought, postcolonial theory, game studies, and transgender and queer studies—the book brings range of perspectives together through a shared critical orientation.



The book gathers situated knowledge and lived experiences from a wide range of cultural and geographical contexts. With contributions spanning Bangladesh to Chile, India to China, and including Iran, Palestine, Turkey, the UK, and the US, the volume weaves together voices that cross geopolitical, cultural, and epistemic boundaries, centering decolonial engagements with gender and digital media.


Each chapter is followed by a critical essay written by a graduate student. These short pieces draw on MA and PhD research or course assignments, offering concrete examples of how the book’s theories and methods can be mobilized in practice.


Gender and Digital Media: A Critical Companion is ideal for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in gender studies, media studies, cultural studies, media sociology, the arts and humanities, and the social sciences more broadly.


Here is the list of authors and their contributions:



Table of contents



Editorial introduction

Hakan Ergül


Chapter 1. Understanding gender and digital media: key concepts

Kate Gilchrist and Hakan Ergül


PART I: BECOMING gendered selves, desire, and the digital everyday


Chapter 2. Gender and identity in the postmodern, posthuman, and postdigital era

Sara Hawley

Essay 2. Flowing together, apart: an allo‑autoethnography of inscribing female kinship and intimacy

Tanya Geggie

Chapter 3. Queer and transgender studies of digital media
Kata Kyrölä

Essay 3. Kuaxingbie and transgender in the age of digital platforms

Zhuanxu Xu

Chapter 4. Dating and romance online: reimagining intimacy, transforming the self, and negotiating risk
Kate Gilchrist

Essay 4. Queer Indian youth and online intimacy: examining intimate relationships on social media
Jaskirat

Chapter 5. Fandom and digital media: a sandbox for creative gender, sexuality, and feminist configurations
Audrey Jean

Essay 5.  Self‑perception in slash fanfiction characters: queer gaze and desire towards the male body in Star Trek slash fanfiction

Audrey Jean


PART II: SEEING representation, race, and the politics of the gaze



Chapter 6. How we are seen: why representation still matters
Kata Kyrölä

Essay 6. Ambiguous representation of bisexuality in the film Chasing Amy

Yuanwanruo Chen

Chapter 7. Ten things I hate about genres: gender and genre in the post‑digital era
Lucía-Gloria Vázquez-Rodríguez

Essay 7. Challenging tradition: a comparative analysis of gender representation in shōnen through Hinata Hyuga and Mikasa Ackerman

Mala Annamma Mathew

Chapter 8. Understanding the historical foundations of race, beauty, and gendered hatred online
Karen Wilkes

Essay 8. Social media influencing

Laila Strachan


PART III: RESISTING belonging, activism, and masculinities online



Chapter 9. Gender and minoritised childhoods in the digital era
Feryal Awan

Essay 9. Digital politics of young activists in Chile
Laura Manzi Araneda

Chapter 10. The manosphere between the global and the local
Sama Khosravi Ooryad & Jacob Johanssen

Essay 10. Online hate, memes, and the rising Iranian manosphere
Sama Khosravi Ooryad

Chapter 11. Gender and belonging in digital diasporic spaces
Hakan Ergül

Essay 11. “This country rejected me before meeting me”: challenging migrant representation as Other in European media
Maya Aziz


Part IV: INTERVENING games, gendered technologies, and feminist futures



Chapter 12. Researching digital games, players, and gender
Diane Carr

Essay 12. Gaming and the abject in survival horror
Shiqing Li

Chapter 13. Haptic histories, virtual traces: excavating gender‑diverse XR innovation
Sarah Atkinson

Essay 13. Feminist epistemologies for preserving XR
Zeynep Abes


Dr. Kata Kyrölä
pronouns: they/them
Associate Professor in Media Studies
Co-Chair of UCL LGBTQ+ Equality Steering Group (LESG)
Department of Culture, Communication and Media
Knowledge Lab, IOE, University College London
https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/84463-kata-kyrola

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