How does one begin a blog post about a profoundly tragic event? With shock? Only, I’m not shocked. With anger? I am angry, but starting there doesn’t feel right. Empathy, I think, is how I have to start.  I can only imagine the pain and fear of the people of Isla Vista, and honestly can’t imagine the depth of pain felt by those who lost family members and loved ones in Friday’s shooting.

As we all fumble through this event—which feels like yet another blow in a terrible but patterned chain of violent events—I believe many of us can’t help but wonder: how did this happen? How does it keep happening?

As with all things, the “how” is a complex question, one for which complete answers are largely impossible.  In this case, however, I can identify two key interlocking factors: digital dualism and misogynistic culture.

Before Elliot Rodger killed anyone, he told people what he was going to do. He told them via YouTube and his blog. He said in both text and speech that he was lonely, angry, and  ill intentioned. In his immediately infamous “Retribution” video [intentionally not linked], Rodger declares:

You never showed me any mercy, so I will show you none…I’ll give you exactly what you deserve — all of you. All you girls who rejected me and looked down upon me and treated me like scum, while you gave yourself to other men. And all of you men for living a better life than me. All of you sexually active men. I hate you.

He then chillingly warns:

I will slaughter you all.

His parents saw the digitally mediated rants and contacted his therapist and a social worker, who contacted a mental health hotline. These were the proper steps. But those who interviewed Rodger found him to be a “perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human.” They deemed his involuntary holding unnecessary and a search of his apartment unwarranted. That is, authorities defined Rodger and assessed his intentions based upon face-to-face interaction, privileging this interaction over and above a “vast digital trail.” This is digital dualism taken to its worst imaginable conclusion.

But digital dualism did not work alone here. Plenty of “terrorists” and “extremists” have been targeted for their digital presence. “Jihad Jane” for instance, who plotted to kill Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks for an offensive depiction of the prophet, was investigated by the FBI due to her participation in online forums (she ultimately got 10 years in prison). In this vein, reports show that racially charged hate groups are leaving digital media in an effort to avoid the watchful and punishing eyes of law enforcement and a disapproving public. And yet, Rodger’s extensive written and spoken warnings were not enough. They, somehow, were not read as “extreme.”

They were not read as “extreme,” I argue, because they were embedded in a misogynistic culture, one in which anger—even violence—is a reasonable reaction to a lack of access to women’s bodies. The extremism of his hatred towards women, though raising red flags for his family and therapists, is given ambiguous status within a culture that allows for, perhaps expects, some degree of this hatred.   A misogynistic culture is one in which a heterosexual man’s loneliness and unfulfilled sexual desire can transfer onto women as the responsible parties. It is a culture in which hate speech and physical threats are debatable as an indication of mental instability. It is a culture in which a man who says what Rodger said, can, in any light, still come across as a “wonderful human.”

This is certainly not to say that misogyny and digital dualism are the only causes of this tragedy. There is a lot LOT more going on.  It is to say, however, that cultural ideologies can collide in unexpected ways, and the consequences of those collisions can unfold into unimaginable realities.

Follow Jenny on Twitter: @Jenny_L_Davis

The Merriam-Webster College Dictionary announced on Monday its addition of 150 new words.  Many of these are technologically derived. Selfie, hashtag, tweep, and catfish (false identity—not the sea creature) are all included. Many media outlets reporting on this are interested in how new technologies continue to influence language through the addition of informal terms first utilized by teen populations.

However, many of the words are not, in fact, technologically rooted. There are additions in food (e.g., turducken), geography (e.g., ‘yoopers), the environment (e.g., cap and trade) etc. My question is less about why these particular words—technological and not— were added, but rather, why so late? I  ate turducken my first Thanksgiving in grad school (before vegetarianism won me over), talked about cap and trade as an undergraduate, and have been ridiculed for referring to my Twitter network as “tweeps” for years. Where have you been, Merriam-Webster?

It turns out that some linguists—and the editors of mainstream dictionaries—are concerned about formalizing words without long shelf lives. They carefully vet words to make sure they have staying power. Asked by the Associated Press about possible tardiness with regards to “selfies”—especially in light of Oxford Dictionary naming it the 2013 word of the year—Merriam-Webster Editor Peter Sokolowski replied:

One of the most important things we have to watch is the trendiness of language, so we don’t want to put a word in that will then have to come out…We want to make sure a word is here to stay.

I argue that we need to re-think this logic. The logic of staying power and avoidance of trendiness made sense when 1) dictionaries were made out of paper and 2) trendy words were spoken instead of recorded. However, now that dictionaries are digital and trendy words are documented, I contend that we should cast as broad a definitional net as possible.

When dictionaries were made of paper, space was a finite commodity. Each new word took the physical space of another potential word, just as each page of the dictionary, or each volume, took potential space on a living room or office bookshelf. Once dictionaries were digitized, however, space ceased to be a scarce commodity. The inclusion of one word needn’t inhibit the inclusion of others. Bookshelves everywhere could sag a little less as curious consumers clicked links, Googled, highlighted, hovered, and right-clicked their way definitions. Spacially, then, there is no reason to worry that an included word will become outdated and fail to pull its weight.

The second point—that trendy words are now documented—is I think the more interesting logical shift. Trendy words used to be those informally spoken between friends and associates. The publication process was slow and the language of publication largely formal. This is no longer the case. Blogs, news articles, Youtube videos, Tweets, Facebook posts, e-books, text message archives etc., all document what people say and how they say it. These documents have potential staying power, and their language needs to be readable and interpretable by later generations. That the words themselves may be trendy is all the more reason to define them for posterity.

As later generations read the historical documents that we currently produce, it is likely that they will need help interpreting what the speakers and writers meant, where the terms came from, and how they were used. Rather than worry over the longevity of a word, let us hope that if a word does fall out of favor, a future reader can hover over it to find out what it used to mean.

Become one of Jenny’s Tweeps: @Jenny_L_Davis

Headline pic via:  http://modrino.deviantart.com/art/Catfish-338006794

So about Selfies… They were the Oxford Dictionary’s 2013 Word of the Year. #TtW14 had an entire panel on them. And on a personal note, I mentored a student through an independent study of Selfies over the course of two semesters.

Today, I want to talk about one particular Selfie varietal: The Duckface. Specifically, I want to talk about the architecture of the Duckface and how it becomes the symbolic locus of control over feminine bodies within the context of compulsory visibility.[i]

To begin, here are a few definitions of Duckface from Urban Dictionary:

1. A term used to describe the face made if you push your lips together in a combination of a pout and a pucker, giving the impression you have larger cheekbones and bigger lips.

2.  Stupid facial expression put forth by stupid women that don’t know how to smile. The Duckface is made by moving both lips as far up and outward as possible. Commonly seen in photos of slutty women where the lighting is too high up or they’re taking photos of them self in the mirror.

3.    A facial expression utilized by attention-seeking teenage girls in which they push their lips outward and upward to give the appearance of large, pouty lips.

Having established what the Duckface is, let’s take a moment and think about what the Duckface does. Specifically, let’s think about what it does to the face. As is clear from these definitions, one performs the Duckface by sucking in the cheeks and pushing out the lips. This makes the lips appear fuller, the cheekbones more prominent, and the eyes wider. It can also minimize asymmetry when taken from the correct angle. In short, this expressive configuration contorts the face in line with standards of feminine beauty.

Although one might employ the Duckface in any type of photograph, it is most commonly associated with the Selfie, or a self-composed photograph of the self, usually using a mirror and/or front facing camera. This is a photographic product in which the subject becomes hyper-visible and, when shared through social media, open to comment and critique.  This moment of hyper-visibility, importantly, must be contextualized by a larger culture of compulsory visibility.

The ease of self-documentation, the norm of frequent sharing, and the interconnectedness between representations of self and documentary practices of others, work to craft an environment in which the self is unavoidably on display. Within this context, the Selfie becomes a way to claim representational control, to be at once the artist and the subject, to manage inevitable visibility with self-directed hyper-visibility. And yet, this moment of reclaimed representation simultaneously becomes a moment of scrutinization, as the media through which subjects share their hyper-visible images afford comment and explicit evaluation. What women do in this hyper-visible and evaluative moment is deeply telling. And what Duckfacing women do is contort the face into a caricature of femininity.

The propensity to utilize such a facial contortion, one that renders the face acceptably feminine, is rooted in a cultural value system in which physical beauty is deeply connected to self-worth. And yet, displaying this acceptably feminine mask comes at a cost. Indeed, the Duckface is the target of much social derision. For instance, there is an anti-Duckface Tumblr, an anti-Duckface Facebook coalition, and anti-Duckface memes galore.

We see a tension, then, between the felt need for proper feminine bodily performance, and the devaluation of those who engage in this performance.

The Duckface is therefore both a product and a site of feminine control. It is forged through standards of beauty, made all the more relevant in an era of photographic disclosure, and then punished for its inauthenticity, for its effortful display of that which is supposed to be effortless. The Duckfacing woman becomes a conspicuous symbol of how sexism, patriarchy, and misogyny work upon the body. However, instead of confronting sexism, patriarchy, or misogyny, we confront the symbol in its own right. We punish the woman who contorts her face, admonish her for showing us, through her pouty lips and artificially protruding cheekbones, what a controlled body looks like.

Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis

Last week, I posted a short PSA for Theorizing the Web participants regarding the word “seminal” as a metaphor for foundational ideas. I linked seminal with the masculine “semen” (i.e., sperm) and argued that its use in intellectual discourse is sexist. The backlash on the post itself, as well as on Twitter and Facebook, was quite strong. I therefore want to take this opportunity to respond to some thematic critiques and challenge those who continue to so vehemently defend the term.

Critique one:  seminal comes from the Latin word “semen” which means “seed” (not sperm) and therefore does not maintain inherent masculine connotations. 

The logic of this argument works only if we accept the premise that language is static and culturally indifferent. This is, of course, a false premise. Language changes over time and amid varied contexts. Put simply, words take on different meaning when said at different times, in different places, by different people, and to different audiences. “Semen” in the contemporary Western lexicon, does not simply mean seed, but the masculine form of such—sperm. Seminal within this context therefore evokes the masculine, associates it with the powerful foundation of growing bodies of knowledge, and reinforces the patriarchal logic from which its use stems.

Critique two: sperm and eggs are both human seeds. Sperm are active and eggs are passive, so it is logical, not sexist, to equate foundational ideas with the active variant.

The logic of this argument works only if we accept the premise that science is unbiased and gender neutral. This too, is a false premise. As deftly illustrated by David Banks and Robin James in the comments (complete with references), both sperm and egg are active participants in the fertilization process, despite deeply gendered renderings of this relationship in most reproductive science texts. This is a key point. Just as gendered relations are built into language, so too are they built into science and “common” knowledge.

Critique three: “ovulary” as an alternate term is equally sexist.

The logic of this argument works only if we accept the premise that bias is symmetrical. Once again, this is a false premise. Oppression occurs against those with relatively less power.  It cannot, by definition, occur in the reverse. While both ovulary and seminal are gender-laden terms, the former signifies femininity while the latter signifies masculinity. Feminine bias works towards leveling the playing field, while masculine bias perpetuates and extends existing power hierarchies. This is why “reverse isms” (i.e., reverse racism, reverse classism, reverse sexism, reverse ableism) are inherently flawed concepts.

With that said, I also suggested several gender neutral alternatives, and a friend recently recommended “geneal” to connote the communal and collaborative nature of knowledge growth.

Critique four: I don’t think of sperm when I use the word seminal, therefore my use of the term is not sexist. The author’s interpretation is idiosyncratic and therefore invalid.

The logic of this argument works only if we accept the premise that humans are always conscious and conscientious of their language choices. On the contrary, what makes language so powerful is its embedded nature–the ways that language shape and reflect social, cultural, and personal values under the guise of neutrality. For example, many people use “lame” to describe something undesirable without considering the bodies that this language implicitly codes as undesirable (i.e., disabled bodies).  The fact that many people—including myself until someone pointed it out—do not intentionally code seminal as masculine does not refute my original argument, but rather, acts as strong support for the problematic implications of the word.

Having addressed the specific critiques, I want to close with a challenging question to those who expressed and continue to express backlash against the original post: what are you defending, and why so vehemently?

Feel free to answer for yourself, but I have some guesses.  Ostensibly, you are invested in the status quo, and that which points to its hierarchical nature is a threat to your power position. Knowing the readers of this blog, however, I imagine you are defending yourself, rather than the status quo. I imagine your identity as progressive, a feminist, an activist, a thoughtful person, is threatened when I point to language that you may have used, or uncritically read in the works of others. I presume you are not, nor were you ever, particularly attached to the word in question, but are quite attached to the identities threatened by a critique of the word.

I often tell my students to investigate that which makes them uncomfortable, and if they can figure out why, they’ll gain an important sociological insight. I implore the critics—those made uncomfortable to the point that they felt a response was in order—to engage in this kind of reflexive investigation.

Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis

(Edit: 04/30/2014 Due to the strong response to this piece, I’ve written a formal response)

Consider this a PSA for the #TtW14 participants, for whom I have so much respect and admiration. Please, you smart and wonderful people, refrain from using “seminal” as a metaphor for foundational ideas.

Yes, “seminal” refers simultaneously to groundbreaking intellectual work and male bodily fluids expelled at the peak of sexual excitement.  First, the metaphor doesn’t even entirely make sense. Although the work, like the fluid, is a seed, to earn the seminal descriptor, a work has to have grown into something rich and complex.  It cannot, as semen is wont to do, shoot into an unreceptive environment where it is wiped away, left to quickly die, and ultimately forgotten. Moreover, the metaphor is downright vulgar.  It evokes (at least for me) the image of some dude splooging his ideas all over everything. Finally, and most importantly, the metaphor is blatantly sexist.

To refer to something as “seminal” is equivalent to the compulsory use of the masculine pronoun “he” when one really means “person.” The compulsory “he” has long fallen out of favor (though what “he” should be replaced with is a debate in itself, but I digress), and yet “seminal” persists as an integral part of speech and writing.  I’ve heard some very strident feminists refer to Judith Butler’s work as “seminal.” I mean, really!? Judith Butler!?

If we take seriously the idea that scholarship and social justice are interwoven projects, it is important that we always reflect—self critically—upon how we communicate scholarly ideas. If and when we do so in ways that perpetuate inequalities or marginalization, we should recognize and alter our linguistic choices.  In this spirit, I searched my own dropbox (which goes back several years, and contains most of the things I’ve written as a professional sociologist) for the word “seminal.” The search came back with a count of 99. That’s right, I have 99 seminals and most of them are mine[i].   Luckily, a few years ago a respected colleague pointed me in the right direction regarding my (apparent over) use of the term.

I bring this up not to call anyone out or make them feel bad. I bring it up to help us, as a conscientious community, speak and write more conscientiously. I am posting it before the #TtW14 conference in hopes of minimizing uncritical semen references as we move through the weekend. Of course, I realize that not everyone reads the blog regularly, and even those who do may miss this particular post. So if someone leaks some semen into their talk[ii] please be gracious.  Presenting in front of a group of people is generally terrifying, and I certainly don’t want to be responsible for detracting from the exchange of ideas. But, if you do read this, please don’t say seminal. If you hear someone else say it, ask them more about their project, compliment their work, and, if it feels right, gently question their use of the term.

For those of you who now have to rewrite a portion of your paper, here are some alternatives:

Formative

Foundational

Groundbreaking

Path blazing

Influential

Canonical

Ovulary (?)

Presider: Alice Marwick (@alicetiara)

Hashmod: Allison Bennett (@bennett_alison)

This is the first in a series of Panel Previews for the upcoming Theorizing the Web conference (#TtW14) in NYC. The panel under review is titled a/s/l.

Though presenting empirically and theoretically distinct works, the panelists of a/s/l are connected by their keen interests in identity. In particular, each work addresses—in its own way—the mutually constitutive relationship between identities and technologies. Furthermore, each paper is structurally situated, couching discussions of identity within frameworks of power in which certain voices, bodies, and desires take precedence over others, and in which technologies are both a means of struggle against, and reinforcement of, these power relations.

Check out the abstracts below:

Michelle Johnson (@MJohnson_Ling)  Language is Power: Vernacular Literacy Practices Becoming Mainstream with Twitter

Writing and literacy are relatively new technological advances in the human species, but have traditionally been held as a source of power, there is a “right” and a “wrong” way to write, read, and interact with written language. That is, until the advent of social digital technologies. For the first time in history, vernacular literacy practices are being made public, people are writing as they speak and able to play with language publically more than ever before. This shift has major consequences for what it means to be literate, who controls the written word and how students are educated. In this talk, I illustrate how this can be seen in the mixing of Spanish and English by four different groups on twitter. Mixing languages is referred to as code-switching, and is generally seen as an unwanted practice – it is considered bad English or bad Spanish in many respects and is not taught in a mainstream classroom. However, it is a common practice on twitter and illustrates how the users of language on digital mediums are the owners of it as well.
I followed 50 bilingual twitter users over 3 months to investigate how they code-switch. There are users who never mix languages in the same tweet and users who mix them freely as if they were speaking, using every type of code switching known to linguists. In the middle, though, are users who code-switch very selectively, sometimes targeting a specific group and other times targeting an individual, but always mixing languages for a specific communicative purpose. It is these users that are most interesting in that they are uniformly professional on some level, but utilizing what is often seen as an unprofessional form of writing. I hypothesize that the motivation for this careful writing comes from a merging of the audience and addressee, parallel to the merging of public and private. These twitter users are caught in a balancing act where they simultaneously present a public image that adheres to traditional literacy expectations and power structures that come with that, but also one that acknowledges their bilingual identity and voice. Social digital technologies have allowed non-traditional literacy practices to develop because of the voice and power average citizens are able to find through them. From this talk, participants will come away with an increased understanding of the role of social digital technologies in literacy and an awareness of the power individuals have in the shaping of literacy practices.

Nora Madison (@gendergeek) New Mediations of Bisexuality: Technologies of Visibility Online

This paper focuses on users’ engagement across multiple forms of online social media to create and sustain bisexuality as a culturally intelligible subject position. Digital mediation, a process of enacting forms of identity- like race, gender, and sexual orientation- underscores both the non-essentialism of identity as well as its hybridity and fluidity. The online spaces I study are marked as for and/or pertaining to bisexuals, which often includes transgender, omnisexual, pansexual, polysexual and ‘fluid’ identified users. I do not attempt to study individual identity or a single “community” but rather examine a series of spaces in which bisexuality is produced through digital mediation.

One of the most salient themes to emerge from this research to date is participants’ affective struggles with feeling “invisible.” The issue of (in)visibility is complex as participants discuss the challenges of an identity that ‘appears’ more visible in online environments than it does elsewhere. As one participant posted: I feel I’m more out online that offline. That’s because, in the offline world there’s the whole ”social assumptions” issue. My co-workers, friends, etc, know I have a boyfriend, wich [sic] equals ”straight” for most ppl out there. So, I’ll out myself when the occasion comes (talking abt smn I used to date, the LGBT youth group I used to belong to, or usually just abt some girl I find atractive) and usually ppl are not surprised. Whereas online, my pic at Facebook (and Orkut) is a Bisexual Pride icon. I follow Bi groups on Twitter. I’m a member of bi groups. So, online it’s spelled out, while offline ppl usually think me having a bf means I’m straight.

The Internet, which was touted early on as a space of great potential for anonymity and exploration where visibility could be masked, here becomes the place where users try to make the perceived invisible ‘visible’ through semiotic performance. However, online participants struggle to imagine what bisexual visibility ‘looks like’ and what would successfully signify ‘bisexual’ to others. As one participant posted, ‘I wish there was a look. I wish I could get up every day and put on the clothes and jewelry that identified me to the world when I stepped out of my apartment. I wish I was as visible on the street as I am on facebook.’

In the frequent example of intimate partners in the physical world rendering a bisexual’s identity invisible, participants of these online communities grapple with the seeming paradox of one’s offline self as the avatar and one’s online self as more fully integrated, represented, and recognized. New mediascapes provide particularly useful environments for participants of online bisexual spaces to negotiate issues of (in)visibility. Although this creative work is not confined to the Internet, new media technologies provide exceptional opportunities for examining these tensions as participants construct visibility using Jenny Sunden’s notion of ‘typing oneself into being’ through daily posts, threads, videos, and discourse in which bisexuality as a subject position is discursively imagined, produced, articulated, defended, and desired.

Helen Stuhr-Rommereim (@helencopter)  WHEN I WRITE TO YOU: Lennay Kekua, @horse_ebooks, and the precarious promise of inventing subjectivities online

Last year, football hero Manti Te’o suffered public humiliation when his “girlfriend,” “Lennay Kekua,” dissolved into an amalgamation of words, voice, and image. She did not exist, but he loved her. Some months later, it was revealed that @horse_ebooks, thought to be a charming Twitter bot producing random genius, was actually a performance art project. As disillusioned Twitter user @leoncrawl lamented, “the one thing people thought wasn’t — couldn’t be — pandering to them, actually was.”

Girlfriend and robot took shape as new, necessary subjectivities animated through text. Manti wanted a love that couldn’t tempt or disappoint. Clamoring self-representation on social media created an atmosphere where only automated thought was authentic. Hopeful belief on the part of the virtual milieu gave these avatars form and narrative, and interactions with others gave them concrete, accepted identities.

This is not so different from how human subjectivity takes shape. In GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF ONESELF, Judith Butler writes, “…the ‘I’ that I am is nothing without this ‘you’ and cannot even begin to refer to itself outside the relation to the other” (82). With each sentence I construct, I conjure a “me” that can say something to “you.” Without this interaction, “I” would not exist.

In THE HERMENEUTICS OF THE SUBJECT, Michel Foucault discusses the Stoic philosophers’ engagement with a subjectivization process that can be practiced and ultimately mastered, crafting a particular relationship between the self and the world (51). This practice included writing letters and using the imagined gaze of another as a guiding force in the process of self-formation.

Taken more experimentally, this “Care of the Self,” can be considered as a means of generating fiction in the space between individuals that then functions as part of self-formation in potentially transformative ways. In Chris Kraus’ epistolary novel I LOVE DICK, for example, “Chris,” engages in an aggressive campaign of self-creation through her correspondence with “Dick.” Fictionalized correspondence then becomes a radicalized “technology of the self” (Foucault’s terminology) as agency is asserted in subjectivization.

@horse_ebooks and Lennay Kekua are, like “Dick,” subjectivities instrumentalized via fiction. However, they exist outside the self-contained universe of literature. The people behind the avatars, those they interact with, and the avatars themselves operate with divergent understandings of the situation at hand. Although Lennay and @horse_ebooks present emotional and psychological risk to those they encounter, as I LOVE DICK demonstrates, the potential to create novel subjectivities also presents radical possibilities.

Using these case studies, my paper builds an understanding of the invented e-subject, examining the platforms that birth them and the social spaces in which they operate in the context of subjectivization as discussed by Foucault, Butler, and Lauren Berlant. I construct a theory of what Berlant has termed “fantasmatic intersubjectivity” (CRUEL OPTIMISM, 25) as it exists outside of the space of literature, taking on a life and reality all its own. I seek to shed light on the pain and potential of the fiction-permeated encounter to better understand the desires and disappointments of living and loving on social media.

Elizabeth Wissinger (@betsywiss) Fashion Modeling and the Entanglements of Glamour

How do media and information technologies shape the evolution of culturally idealized bodies? What forces influence fashion models, for instance, in shaping the current bodily ideal? Considering recent changes in fashion modeling work within the rise of digital technologies that facilitate the globalization of imaging and the intensification of bodily manipulation, my work explores how models idealize a body made porous to technology, and in so doing, perform affective labor that habituates publics to interacting with fashion while raising questions about the nature of the body itself. Glamorizing engagement with technologies of bodily intervention, modeling work regulates publics according to a biopolitics of beauty, pulling them into a continuous bodily modulation that troubles bodily boundaries, while making profits for capital.

Biopolitical regimes seek to maximize life, and modeling has popularized certain branding practices as a means to achieving the good life for some, while hiding these practices’ detrimental effects on others. The fashion system where some have access to the cycle of ‘cheap and chic’ at the cost of others who work under inhuman conditions to produce those fashions, is just one example of this type of biopolitical divide. The model-brand-assemblage seduces some populations into endless cycles of self- branding, while also legitimating the denial of the ‘benefits’ of living in a branded world to those who have been marked as less willing or able to brand themselves.

My ethnographic inquiry into modeling reveals how the work entails being fashionable, embodying the dream of a fully optimized life, and therefore popularizes the trend toward making bodily potential and connectivity continuously available to metering and regulation, an availability which facilitates capital’s constant expansion. Models ‘model’ an embodied entanglement with technology, using every means possible to polish their image, promote their brand, and stay in the public eye. The entanglements they glamorize bank on possibilities inherent in both bodily vitality and the capacity for connection. Models are on the frontlines of selling a way of being in the world that pulls bodies into productive matrixes in novel ways.
The trend toward the digital facilitated the rise of ‘fast’ fashion and popularized amateur fashion in the blogosphere. Consequently, the street has become a runway, where everyone can ‘model’ their look. In this process, the notion that we must all become the ‘CEO of Me, Inc.,’ is no longer a shocking revelation, and the formerly specialized modeling work of self styling and crafting a ‘look’ has become a fact of many people’s lives. Models glamorize the work of building one’s brand, work that increases the workload of many, while the profits go to a few corporations such as Facebook, WordPress, Klout, Instagram, Twitter, and the like. By interrogating the influence of changing media and information technologies on fashions in, and conceptualizations of, bodies over time, I seek to advance thought in the fields of sociology, feminism, science studies, fashion, and media studies.

The Internet seems both excited and generally confused by the U.S. government’s failed entre into Cuban Social media via its version of a bare-bones Twitter, called ZunZuneo. The confusion is not unwarranted, as the operation includes the United States government, two separate for-profit contractors, (and eventually, a management team who didn’t know they were part of an International government sponsored ruse), key players and various bases of operation which span the globe, from Spain to the UK to the Cayman Islands and Nicaragua, and, of course, tens of thousands of Cuban citizens who gratefully began using a new mysterious messaging service that made instantaneous text-based mobile communications financially accessible in 2010, and then inexplicably disappeared in September 2012.

This long form article from the Washington Post does a nice job disentangling the ins and outs of the story, based on documents leaked to the Associated Press. I highly suggest you take the time to read the piece, but in very short summation, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) collaborated with Creative Associates and eventually, Mobile Accord, to distribute a Twitter-like service (ZunZeneo) to Cuban citizens, with the hope of eventually utilizing the service to incite political mobilization against communist regimes. Mostly, though, the operation never went beyond gaining users through shared news stories and sports commentary. They ran out of money in 2012, Cuban users lost the service, and no revolutions were incited. It’s all general buffoon-like and harmless (except, of course, for all of the money), begging for cynical commentary and smart jokes about a deeply ineffective U.S. government. Except, something very serious happened in the process, something that should make us all—both Cubans and Americans—pretty ticked off.

In the process of providing the “free” messaging service, USAID collected users’ data, entirely without their knowledge. We’re not talking about small print and so-long-no one-will-read-it Terms of Service, or quietly changing privacy policies—both of which are unarguably shady—we’re talking about no disclosure whatsoever. In fact, lack of disclosure was built into the design, as USAID et al. went to great lengths to prevent users from knowing their true service provider (i.e., the U.S. government). They went so far as to hire a naïve third party to manage the operation under the guise of a non-governmental commercial venture.

They collected data about age, gender, and political propensities. In the “testing” phase of political viability, the team hired a Havana-born artist, based in Chile, to send mass political messages, and conduct a politically contentious pole (the artist did not know why he was commissioned for this work). The pole elicited 100,000 responses, from which the team gleaned key political information about users.

The U.S. government, by burying their own involvement and simultaneously collecting user data, protected their own privacy while exploiting those they purportedly set out to “help.” In other words, they failed, yet again, at transparency, while instituting extensive surveillance. The consequences for the U.S. government are yet to be seen, but the potential consequences for Cuban citizens, who spoke without knowing who was listening, who expressed themselves under conditions of explicit deception, the consequences could have been dire. If the data still exist—which I’m sure they do—and end up in the wrong hands (i.e., in the hands of the Cuban government) the consequences may, still, remain.

Follow Jenny Davis on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been interviewed twice about location-based dating apps. These are mobile applications that connect people with others in their geographic proximity, often in real-time. Popular examples include Tinder, Grindr (and its counterpart, Blendr), and SinglesAroundMe.  The apps are largely photo based, and offer an opportunity for serendipitous meet-ups, in which users can potentially find love, sex, or general companionship.

The fact that I was invited to take part in these interviews is a bit odd, since none of my own empirical research pertains specifically to dating or dating technologies. I did, however, write a post for Cyborgology about race and online dating sites, which got some attention, and I do (obviously) maintain research interests and projects in new technologies more generally. So anyhow, I agreed to fumble my way through these two interviews, offering the interviewers caveats about my knowledge gaps. In the end, I’m glad that I did, as their questions—much of which overlapped—pushed me to think about what these applications afford, and how they intersect with the realities and politics of love, sex, and gender relations.

In both interviews, I was asked about the effects of these technologies, in a broad sense. I played my part as the Good Sociologist, and asked the interviewers to be more specific.  As it turns out, both of the interviewers were interested in how the apps affect women’s agency vs. objectification, “hookup culture,” and marriage trajectories.

I was most surprised by my thoughts on “hookup culture.” Of course, my surprise dissipated by the second interview. But during the first, having thoughtfully and carefully worked my way through the agency/objectification and marriage questions, I blurted out confidently, and with a concerned face “on-the-fly hookups seem really dangerous. For that matter, on-the-fly location based applications seem really dangerous. Especially for women and girls.” Wait, what?  When did I become my mother!?

To be clear, I’m all about a broad spectrum of sexual agency, and see no inherent moral failing through casual consensual sex. Many others see nothing wrong with it either, there is more than one hookup site that works and they have millions of suscribers. Moreover, I don’t think location-based technologies that afford said encounters are, by nature, dangerous technologies.

I do, however, think that the intersection of hook-up culture and location-based technologies set the stage for some tangibly unsafe interactions, in light of deeply problematic cultural meanings and assumptions surrounding sexual availability. The more I thought about this, the more I realized that hook-up culture is fine, but it ceases to be so in the context of rape culture.

Rape culture refers to a culture in which expressions of sexual desire are misread as sexual availability. It is a culture in which the desiring body is there for the taking. A culture which facilitates victim blaming and can make people, especially women, feel as though “no” is an illogical or unreasonable response to sexual advances, given the degree of sexual openness they expressed. Rape culture reflects blurred lines between patriarchal domination and a burgeoning sexual freedom.

The danger with location-based apps, then, is that by design, users express a willingness and desire to engage in sexual or romantic contact. This desire is documented, shared, and sent to those in the surrounding area as an invitation to engage.  The would-be rapist can all too easily read this as open availability—a body ripe and ready for the taking. A body in close proximity. The would-be rapist likely does not know s/he is/would be a rapist, as the language and logic of rape culture shields this reality. And that, the subtlety of it all, is perhaps the most insidious part.

I’d like now to conclude with a story one of the interviewers shared with me in response to my “this is dangerous because of rape culture” diatribe.  One of the other interviewees, a young woman, interacted with a young man on Tinder over the course of several months. When they met for the first time, he immediately kissed her. The woman pulled away. This was not okay, and she expressed her discomfort with his physical advances. The discomfort of the kiss stuck with her. And yet, that night, the newly joined couple had sex, during which, the man “roared like a lion.” The interviewee, apparently, laughed while recounting the event.

Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis

#review features links to, summaries of, and discussions around academic journal articles and books. Today I review Christian Fuchs’ book–Social Media: A Critical Introduction.

Generally, I’m not a big fan of textbooks. The bold words and broadly glossed-over content beg for flash-card style teaching. Because of this, I always opt for edited volumes and peer-reviewed journal articles, sprinkled with blog posts and popular media clips. Fuchs Social Media: A Critical Introduction, however, is not your typical text book. Rather than a corpus of definitions, the book is at once a review of the field, an argument about how scholars should approach the field, and a biting critique of the social media landscape.

As indicated by the title, Fuchs’ work examines social media from a critical perspective. Critical, for Fuchs, refers explicitly to Marxism and neo-Marxism, with power and resource distribution the key focal points. A Marxist take on social media examines exploitation and domination by studying both political economy and political communication of social media. That is, a critical perspective looks at who owns the means of production in both the financial and attention economies, and how various media perpetuate, reflect, or potentially upend, an inherently exploitative capitalism.

Early in the book, Fuchs makes an effort to differentiate this perspective from other uses of the term “critical,” and to distance this work from non-Marxist scholarship. Reminiscent of a debate summarized by PJ Rey, Fuchs explicates this distinction:

When discussing the question “What does it mean to be critical?” with academic colleagues, many have the immediate reaction: we are all critical because we ask critical questions and criticize the work of our academic colleagues. Scholars who characterize themselves as critical thinkers or critical theorists often question these claims. They emphasize “critical” and the need for being critical in order to stress that in their view not everyone is critical and that a lot of thought (academic or not) is uncritical. Their basic argument is that not all questions really matter to the same extent for society and those whom they call uncritical or administrative researchers often focus on questions and research that is irrelevant, or even harmful, for improving society in such a way that all can benefit. They are concerned with questions of power…It makes a difference whether one asks questions about society with a concern for power or not…such questions are not uncommon, but rather quite typical.

With a critical framework, Fuchs tackles many of the Big Questions within social media studies, including the reality of participatory democracy, exploitation and surveillance on social network sites, the costs and benefits of “free” services, and potentials for alternative (read: non-capitalist) media.

I highlight some key themes below, discuss how to best implement this book as a scholar and/or teacher, and finish with a full index of chapter titles.

Social Media as Participatory Democracy?

Chapter three examines social media as a potential participatory democracy, granting expressive voice to previously silenced masses. Much of this chapter is an argument against the work of Henry Jenkins, a proponent of web-based participatory democracy. Fuchs criticizes Jenkins for reducing participation to its cultural meanings, divorcing it from participatory democracy theory—and in doing so, ignoring the centrality of ownership in determining whose participation counts and how. As Fuchs points out, a true participatory democracy must also be an ownership democracy. So too, true participatory culture must have equality of ownership, such that visibility and the means of cultural production and distribution are equally available to all. The Internet, in this light, is not participatory, since it is largely governed by massive corporations, with much smaller and less significant roles played by citizen prosumers.

Fuchs devotes the better part of chapter 8 to a discussion of Twitter as a public sphere. Evoking Habermas, Fuchs notes the two necessary components of a public sphere: political communication (equality of voice) and political economy (equal access to resources). He summarizes the key debates through the work of Clay Shirky, Evgeny Morozov, Malcom Gladwell, Jodi Dean, and Zizi Papacharissi. In short, he contends that Shirky and Papacharissi advance social media as tools of a public sphere, while Morozov, Gladwell, and Dean, argue that “slacktivism” displaces “real” political action, reinforcing the status quo while quelling personal feelings of guilt.

Fuchs sympathizes with the latter view, rather than the former. He engages in an empirical analysis of political communication and political economy on Twitter, collected during the 2011 political revolutions. He shows that while social media can be a tool of the masses, asymmetrical visibility persists, and favors corporations and powerful political figures. Twitter is, therefore not, Fuchs concludes, a public sphere.

Exploitation and Social Media

Fuchs touches on exploitation in several places throughout the work. Exploitation is the use of others’ labor, for which the laborer is not paid, to produce profit for the capitalist (i.e., the owner of the means of production).

In addition to critiquing Jenkins’ participatory democracy stance, Fuchs takes issue with Jenkins’ ideas on social media exploitation. Jenkins argues that although users provide free labor, they too benefit socially and emotionally, and are therefore not exploited for this labor. Fuchs reminds us that the definition of exploitation is the creation of surplus value based on someone else’s labor. The creation of this value—whether enjoyable or not—is nonetheless exploitative. Importantly, Jenkins’ logic decenters money as the key token of exchange, and Fuchs argues that this decentering misrepresents the logic and reality of capitalism.

Building on Dallas Smythe (1981), Fuchs argues instead that prosumers are sold as commodities to targeted advertisers. In addition, these prosumers generate free labor by providing content that draw other users. Each of these activities increase the relative surplus value (as opposed to absolute surplus value, created by extending unpaid working hours) (Marx 1867), in that the tools of exploitation become more efficient, with laborers creating more profit in the same amount of time. Targeted advertising, for instance, allows multiple advertisements to appear at once, optimizing the chance of converting ads into sales. Similarly, prosumers at once consume the site, increasing the amount of money platforms can charge for advertisements, while simultaneously producing the goods that keep the site running.

It is in this vein that Fuchs makes one of my favorite observations in the book: The lack of a “dislike” button on Facebook has less to do with creating a positive culture, and more to do with preventing users from “disliking” a good or service paying for advertising space on the site.

In addition to user exploitation, Fuchs notes the slave-like labor necessary for the production of technological goods. In this vein, he lays out the key players in the exploitation game: The knowledge worker elite (software engineers), the regular workers, the slave-labor, and the prosumers.

Privacy and Surveillance

Fuchs says that to analyze privacy, we have to look at “privacy for whom?” (Didn’t Nathan Jurgenson just write something about that?). Fuchs argues that current implementations of privacy rights disproportionately favor financial privacy of the elite, while exploiting (literally) individual privacy. He argues that privacy analyses that focus on individual user practices, and which promote more careful privacy decisions at the individual level are misguided.

Sharing information is an important way of asserting the self, he argues, and as we’ve argued on Cyborgology, there are tangible costs of opting out.  As such, Fuchs argues that the onus of privacy maintenance should be placed upon those who own the means of communicative production (e.g., Facebook Inc.).

Fuchs usefully differentiates between surveillance and transparency, discussing WikiLeaks as an example. Surveillance refers to control of the powerful, over those with less power, through the practice of watching from an obscured position. Transparency, on the other hand, is the forced openness of powerful agents—usually politicians, political bodies, and corporate actors. Surveilled data is holed away, while data gleaned through transparency efforts are projected publicly.

WikiLeaks, argues Fuchs, is a tool of transparency, while Facebook’s collection of user data, distributed in unclear ways to advertisers, is surveillance.

The Future

Fuchs final few chapters analyze existing tools of potential socialist and communist expression. First, he questions if WikiLeaks is an “alternative” media, which he defines as necessarily critical. He argues that WikiLeaks is alternative only in a limited sense, but has the potential to become truly critical. It is limited first by its reliance on liberal ideologies (i.e., general mistrust of governing forces) that undergird many of the problems against which it fights. It is further limited by its reliance on mainstream news outlets. Additionally, it is limited by an overemphasis on government corruption, failing to fully address the connection between corporations and government forces. Finally, Fuchs contends that WikiLeaks’ critique of corporations does not go far enough. Julian Assange works to “civilize” unruly corporations, rather than attacking a capitalist system in which exploitation is built-in.

Wikipedia, however, has a truly socialist potential, argues Fuchs. Unlike Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc. Wikipedia is open source, commons based, advertisement free, communally constructed and communally available.

Fuchs ends on a hopeful note, delineating techniques for a commons-based, communist, Internet. He notes, however, that a communist Internet is impossible within a capitalist society. Rather, he argues, we should focus obtaining a communist society, in which information can be created and distributed communally. Creating communist technologies, he argues, is an important tool in this process.

How to Use This Book

Fuchs work in this text is useful in several regards. First, he gives a clear and accessible account of Marxist and neo-Marxist theory. Regardless of the social media focus, his first chapter could well be used in an upper level undergraduate theory course as an introduction to Marxism. As a take on social media, this is great to include as one reading, among others, in an undergraduate course.

The reason I emphasize one, among others, is that Fuchs’ critical standpoint is so definitive, and his critiques of other scholars/scholarship so biting, that students deserve and indeed, should, read those with whom Fuchs disagrees to obtain a more nuanced understanding of their varied arguments. Although I think this work is overall fantastic and very useful, my main critique is Fuchs’ unforgiving, and at times oversimplified dismissal of scholars and scholarship that does not align with his perspective. Of course the political economy of any phenomena—social media included—is deeply important. However, there are other questions of interest, and these questions are valuable in their own right, and in conjunction with power analyses. A reader well versed in the field can make sense of Fuchs’ critiques with their own arsenal of knowledge, adding grains of salt when necessary. Similarly, the well versed scholar can incorporate Fuchs’ critical arguments into their own work, supplementing other kinds of research questions.  Novices, however, will need help in both regards.

Within a graduate class, this would be a great text, to be assigned one week, to introduce the role of critical theory in new media studies. Finally, for social media scholars, some of whom may be less familiar with the critical theory paradigm, this is a great weekend read, one that condenses several debates into a single textual space and acts as a useful primer for reading both critical and “non-critical” works.

Chapter Titles:

1: What is a Critical Introduction to Social Media?

2: What is Social Media?

3: Social Media as Participatory Culture

4: Social Media and Communication Power

5: The Power and Political Economy of Social Media

6: Google: Good or Evil Search Engine?

7: Facebook: A Surveillance Threat to Privacy?

8: Twitter and Democracy: A New Public Sphere?

9: WikiLeaks: Can We Make Power Transparent?

10: Wikipedia: A New Democratic Form of Collaborative Work and Production?

11: Conclusion: Social Media and its Alternatives—Towards a Truly Social Media

Follow Jenny Davis on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis

The 2014 Theorizing the Web (#TtW14) committee is excited to announce that we will  partner with Interface,  an open access  journal, to publish a special issue based on papers form the TtW14 conference program. The special issue will include peer-reviewed articles and non-peer-reviewed essays, as well as invited panel reviews. All TtW14 presenters are welcome to submit. Look below the jump to learn why we selected Interface as our platform. 

Theorizing the Web, as a conference, stands by a set of key principles. First, TtW is committed to social justice. Second, TtW is committed to public scholarship. Finally, TtW  insists on blurring intellectual lines between academic scholarship, creative story telling, journalism, and art. We looked for a journal venue that stood in line with these principles. As it turns out, that journal venue is Interface, and we didn’t have to find them, they found us.

Upon receiving an invitation from Interface to host a special issue based on conference papers, we found that their philosophy and practices aligned closely with our own. They publish both peer-reviewed articles and non-peer-reviewed essays. They give monetary compensation for the latter. All of their content is open access, and authors maintain all rights. This is a venue which respects authors’ labor, recognizes scholarship as a public good, and acknowledges that intellectual contributions can come in a multitude of forms, all while maintaining rigorous standards.

We very much look forward to this partnership, and to developing a fantastic and theoretically rich special issue. We will pass on details about timelines and submission procedures as they become available.