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@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@columbia.edu 845-418-4049 http://www.tylerbickford.com
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