The Internet that Lesbians Built: Networked Communication in Feminist Print
Culture (1970–95)
Caitlin McKinney, doctoral candidate, York University
Keywords: feminism, women’s history, media history, networks, print culture
Though pre-dating online communications media such as email listservs, newsletters in latetwentieth century lesbian-feminist social movements used similar methods of networked
communication to circulate information to geographically dispersed, but politically
organized, individuals and groups. Distributed by letter mail, issues of these newsletters
acted as communication infrastructures, publishing requests for information and resources,
updates on the activities of others, surveys, phone and fax trees, mailing lists, and
bibliographies. Though they belong to “print culture,” these newsletters operated as both
centralized and distributed networked communications media, where the publication of an
issue was an initial moment of communication that facilitated a range of subsequent
connections amongst recipients.
This paper establishes a feminist mode of network thinking by examining small-scale print
newsletters that draw on the language and function of networks. I focus on publications
from the early 1970s to the mid 90s, an era that spans the beginning of the Women in Print
Movement on one end, and the emergence of the World Wide Web on the other. This
research is based on a close examination of three publications that circulated information
related to archiving and history-making. Considering networked print culture in relation to
the U.S.-based, lesbian-feminist historical and archives movement, I argue that the idea of
networks has been critical to the construction of feminist histories; archives and newsletters
are interconnected technologies of a social movement that has sought to redress the
invisibility of women’s histories through the sharing of difficult-to-access information,
resources, and primary sources across print-based networks. In this story, the web is not an
event or turning point for feminist social movements; rather, it extends existing media
infrastructures of networked communication. I ask what it would mean to offer an
alternative, speculative history of the idea of networks, traced through lesbian feminist print
culture.
You Are What You Reblog: The Digital Aesthetics of Self-expression
Angel Callander, University of Guelph
Keywords: digital culture, social media, art cultures, aesthetics, alienation, identity
Undeniably, the trajectories of aesthetics, art making and attitudes towards the art object
have been drastically destabilised by digital enclosures for some time. Blogging platforms and
social media have more recently become spaces of dissemination and dispersion for the
cultural objects we use to construct our identities and perform them to the world. Even with
legal binding terms and conditions on sites like Tumblr and Facebook, warning not to
upload copyrighted material lest our accounts be suspended, art reproductions are circulated
to show friends, to aid in composing a personality that is read and understood by other users
scrolling through the flows of the digital sea. Curating real life identities over the Internet
results in fugitive objects that are cycled and recycled in the name of belonging. Vito
Campanelli has provided a necessary overview of how social networks are utilized to mediate
a contemporary culture of ‘cutting and pasting’ and viral circulation through social media.
His work in Web Aesthetics provides an important access point to exploring how this culture
has expanded into the “aesthetics of social exchange.” I propose that this culture has
alienated artists and art objects in favour of egoism and self-presentation. Additionally, the
self is alienated when the identity performance channels the aesthetics of estrangement and
melancholy. As digital images begin to stand in place of a person, culture is neither atavised
nor preserved in digital space, but rather fragmented, exploited and squandered. The most
effective way to track these transmutations, even since the publication of Web Aesthetics in
2010, is by observing the communities that emerge from the inside of digital enclosures that
mediate flows of decontextualized images like Tumblr, Facebook and Pinterest.
“As a customer, I am livid”: consumer culture and feminist blogging
Veronika Novoselova, doctoral candidate, York University
Keywords: blogging, feminism, consumer culture, commodity activism
This work examines how feminist bloggers use the dialogical environments of digital media
to construct narratives of activist involvement in consumer culture. It charts connections
between consumer protest and feminist activism, maintaining that social media platforms –
and blogs in particular - are becoming instrumental in realizing these connections. To
explore how feminist bloggers attempt to participate in civic engagement through
consumption, a thematic content analysis of blog posts on Jezebel.com has been conducted,
and four broadly conceived strategies of commodity activism have been identified: (1) direct
expressions of consumer dissatisfaction with a particular product, (2) critiques of unfair
practices in the retail industry, (3) critiques of consumerism and consumer culture, and (4)
assignment of subversive meanings to commercial products and wider consumption
practices. Drawing on the work of Angela McRobbie (2008) and Minh-Ha T. Pham (2011),
the analysis suggests that Jezebel.com bloggers occupy consumer-citizen subject positions
and utilize larger discursive modes of individual and collective empowerment. The paper
concludes my discussing how Jezebel.com establishes a discursive space where bloggers and
commentators verbalize disagreement over anxieties and pleasures of consumer culture.
Dispersion, Alienation and Support: Investigating the Culture and Discourse of the
Food Allergy Mom
Janis L. Goldie, Huntington University/Laurentian University
Keywords: food allergy, dispersion, culture, content analysis, discourse analysis, blogs, online
support
The prevalence of food allergies in children is on the rise, affecting anywhere from 5-8% of
children in Canada and the United States. Despite the rising occurrence of food allergies in
children, when diagnosed by medical professionals, parents are often told that the only
treatment option is strict avoidance of the allergic food, provided with a prescription for an
epinephrine auto-injector, and given few further instructions. For the parent of a child who
is newly diagnosed with food allergies, they are thrust into a world where eating – something
that was often considered to be a culturally pleasant and social experience – is suddenly
contaminated by risk, fear and isolation. Furthermore, when social supports frequently
available to those facing medical challenges, such as community support groups, public
education resources, or local experts to call on, are rare or often only available in large, urban
centers, those without close access to these resources may feel alienated, uneducated and
overwhelmed by the lifestyle overhaul that faces them. Perhaps not surprisingly, food allergy
parents often turn to the Internet for the social supports they are seeking. This paper, then,
is an investigation into the dispersed culture of the food allergic mom via the five most read
food allergy blogs in North America.i Within these blogs, I employ content analysis to
examine what kind of topic and content is most frequently discussed, as well as investigate
the interaction and community discourse that may or may not be prevalent in these blogs.
Furthermore, I rely on constructivist grounded theory to examine ‘what is going on’ in these
discursive sites and as such, begin to inductively investigate whether these blogs may be
understood as places of transformation, sedimentation, or perhaps present a new form of
cultural belonging amidst broader movements towards cultural dispersion.
From #RaceFail to Reconciliation: Digital Intimacy, Hashtags and the 2009
“Writing the Other” Debate in the Science Fiction Blogosphere
Nathan Rambukkana, assistant professor, Wilfrid Laurier University
Keywords: hashtags, race, RaceFail, Science Fiction and Fantasy, publics, social media, digital
politics, digital intimacy
In line with the theme of “Dispersions” and the call for the examination of “unruly”
cultures, this paper explores the rough, emergent and partial public culture of the Hashtag.
Debates about the potential of the Internet and social media for fostering political discussion
often default to discussions of governmental politics. But we must also bear in mind Nancy
Fraser’s rejoinder to Habermas’s strict circumscription of “the political” in these discussions.
Identity work; subcultural maintenance and conflict; the specific concerns of women, of
queers, of People of Colour, are also political, and their discussion and debate in these new
digital spheres are crucial locations for exploring how digital politics and intimacies actually
play out.
Take the hashtag. The non-descript number symbol, long-resident of qwerty keyboards and
neighbour to the once-innocent @, has been thrust into service by innovative Twitter users
to signal unified discussions over time and space. When used politically, the hashtag can tag
and link continuous discussions over non-continuous media. Searching a hashtag can link
mobilizations of a singular discussion over Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, reblogging sites,
mainstream and alternative news sites, webpages, photos/video sites and beyond. They are
promoted and censored, used by activists and politicians alike: a powerful transmedia code.
I explore the potential of the hashtag as political and intimate discourse through its
mobilization in the discourse of #RaceFail, a political debate that started in 2009 in the
science fiction blogosphere and expanded from there into a broader, sustained critical race
discussion over social media. In 2009, a blog post about cultural appropriation in science
fiction and fantasy texts kicked off what some call the “Writing the Other” debates and
some simply refer to as #RaceFail, one significant for how it transformed SFF subculture,
but also for how a hashtag was able to unite and sustain this dispersed cultural debate.
i
http://www.circleofmoms.com/top25/Top-25-Food-Allergy-Moms-2012