Digital cultures of resistance

The digital cultures of resistance project investigates the nature of LGBT political discourse and activism on social media. It aims to understand the political applications of social media from the point of view of LGBTQ young communities. In addition, the research aims to understand the congruence between the aesthetics of digital and social media forms of LGBTQ activism and the resonance of these ideas among the public as well as the opportunities and limitations of the digital media platforms’ affordances.

Traditionally, activism has deployed banners, placards, flyers, stickers, badges, clothes, visual and performance art, but how does this aesthetic language translate into the digital realm? In contrast to the technological deterministic view that access to computers in itself will increase democracy and equality, this project argues that we need to look at how users negotiate – and sometimes subvert – the values and norms that technologies incorporate in order to make pragmatic use of mainstream platforms and technologies in working towards agendas of increased sexual democracy and gender equality.

Project timeframe

This project commenced in 2015 and will continue until 2016.

Project aims

The project aims to:

  • gain an up-to-date insight into the exploitation of digital and social media for political advocacy by younger generations of LGBTQ identified people
  • conceptualise the digital cultural strategies that non-heteronormative people adopt in order to cope and thrive
  • situate these digital cultures in relation to a particular social change ‘legacy’, that of the late twentieth century sexual rights movement, by considering their textual and visual precursors through different eras and activist events, in terms of form, address and framing   
  • understand the congruence between the aesthetics of digital and social media forms of LGBTQ activism and the resonance of these ideas among the public as well as the opportunities and limitations of the digital media platforms’ affordances
  • redress previous research’s prioritising of media representations of transgenderism over research on trans identifying audiences and their consumption and production of social media content, through ethnographic participatory research with trans youth
  • explore participatory creative methods for digital media research.

Project findings and impact

LGBTQ youth demonstrate the capacity to respond both critically and creatively to social rejection and discrimination through activism. LGBTQ social media counterpublics as well as mainstream commercial social media platforms are important places for LGBTQ youth activism and enculturation.

The project notes how LGBTQ youth often resist prescribed user protocols of mainstream social networking sites as well as employ pragmatic strategies for navigating a binary gendered online world, staking out their own methods and aesthetics for self expression and community formation.

Having examined the content and style of social media examples highlighted by the project’s participants, the research contends that LGBTQ youth’s consumption and production of types of online and social media is significantly more diverse than research to date has recognised.

While longstanding structures for LGBTQ cultural and identity formation still dominate, this research gives an indication of new languages, aesthetic forms and publics forming in online digital culture.

Research team

Dr Olu Jenzen

Output

Jenzen, O. (2017) Trans youth and social media: moving between counterpublics and the wider web, Gender, Place & Culture, 24(11), 1626-1641.

Jenzen, O. (2017) ‘Unicorns Farting Rainbows - changing aesthetics and mobilizing discourses in LGBTQ youth digital activism today’ at the DCC ECREA Conference Digital Culture meets Data, University of Brighton, 6-7 November.

Jenzen, O. (2016) ‘Trans* and (Gender) Queer Youth and Online Digital Culture’, at the Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, San Francisco, 29 March- 2 April.

Jenzen, O. (2016) ‘LGBTQ youth communities and social media’ at the MECCSA conference, Canterbury Christ Church University, 6-7 January.

Jenzen, O. (2015) 'LGBTQ digital activism, subjectivity and neoliberalism' at the Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories Research seminar series, University of Brighton, 18 February.

Jenzen, O., Choudrey, S., Devine, M. and Karl, I. (2015) ‘Mediating Trans* Youth: Sexual cultures, youth engagement work and education in/through social media making’, Plenary roundtable at the conference Sexual Cultures: Academia meets Activism, University of Sunderland, 8-10 April. Plenary presentation delivered together with Allsorts youth workers.

Partners

Allsorts Youth Project Brighton