scholarly journals ‘The pictures I really dislike are those where the girls are naked!’ Postfeminist norms of female sexual embodiment in contemporary Italian digital culture

Modern Italy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianna Mainardi

This article engages with the postfeminist debate on girls’ sexuality in contemporary Italy. The huge popularity among adolescents of social network sites (SNSs), which involve a vast mobilisation of personal images, has given rise to new concerns and a moralising gender panic about girls’ sexuality. Drawing on critical girls’ studies, and based on the outputs of a qualitative research project, the article discusses the gender discourses that emerge from Italian girls’ digital practices on SNSs, with specific reference to girls’ online self-representation through posting and sharing photos on Facebook and other SNSs. The article explores how sexual regulation works among girls in the digital context by analysing the postfeminist norms of female sexual embodiment in contemporary Italian digital culture. In doing so, the article hopes to contribute to the transnational academic debate in media and cultural studies by showing the discursive and visual conditions of possibility which shape girls’ digital sexual subjectivity on social network sites.

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seyedeh Behnaz Hosseini

This article presents a nuanced approach for qualitative research on the Internet, based on the synthesis of qualitative data-gathering methodologies both online and offline, and contributes to recent knowledge of changing practices within Yārsāni communities around the world. Yārsān is a religious belief of Indo-Iranian origin that traces back to Hooraman, a region in Iranian Kurdistan. Yārsān thought, which Islamic Shiite authorities treat as heretical, has extensively used processes of adaptation and strategies of survival throughout the course of its history. The research presented here makes a case for the significance of the Internet and, more specifically, social network sites in connecting Yārsānis in their homelands and in the diaspora. How does Facebook provide a new space for this minority group to disclose their beliefs to the world, thereby reassessing the clandestine nature of their religion, which is a tenet required by traditional belief and defined by their adage, “don’t tell the secret”?


Obiter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frans Marx

The article investigates the phenomenon of hate speech on social network sites and gives an overview of the national and international legal instruments which are available to combat hate speech. After an overview of the nature of hate speech andthe early international attempts to curb it, hate speech in South Africa is investigated. The question is posed whether statements of hatred made on the Internet, especially if published from sites such as Facebook which is external to South Africa, can leadto liability for perpetrators in South Africa. International responses to hate speech in cyberspace are then investigated with specific reference to the possible liability of Internet service providers for hate speech posted by third parties on their websites. Itis shown that, although service providers in the United States enjoy more protection than those in European Union, Canada and South Africa, hate speech on social network sites can be legally curbed. It is concluded that the myth that the Internet as a godless, lawless zone can and must be dismissed.


Author(s):  
Ana Luisa Sánchez Laws

This chapter aims at building an analytical framework that expands the current scholarship on Social Network Sites (SNS) to the domain of museums. SNS are web-based services that allow their users to create public or semi-public profiles and use these to create lists of other users with whom they share a connection, with the possibility to make their networks visible to themselves and also to make these networks visible at various degrees of public access (boyd & Ellison 2008, 211). These technologies also allow for communication between members of a network within various degrees of control and privacy. The emergence and growing popularity of SNS, with examples of general public services such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, niche versions such as those allowed by the Ning platform, and the current trend of including SNS capabilities in media sharing services such as YouTube and Flickr, has brought to museums new opportunities and challenges to engage in dialogue and connect with a variety of publics. The chapter discusses ongoing research into the role online activities play in the communications and branding strategies of museums, and how theory and technology might be applied to develop an analytical framework for a specific case, the Panama Viejo Museum. The main question that the chapter addresses is how to measure the degree the use of Social Network Sites and their impact in the online practices of museums, and proposes as response a framework for museum SNS analytics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1S) ◽  
pp. 100S-115S
Author(s):  
Arianna Mainardi ◽  

This article engages with the current debate on feminisms and digital media by looking at the tension between individualism and collective action. Drawing on an empirical research project involving girls, carried out in Italy and focusing on female processes of subjectivation in a postfeminist new media context, it will discuss constraints and opportunities shaped by the everyday use of social media. The article places itself in the latest trend of cyberfeminist studies, by analysing friendship relationships developed among girls in and through digital media. It also looks at how the mediated nature of social network sites offers room for the building of alliances among girls, and how this challenges online and offline gender norms. In doing so, the article reflects on the way female relationships change and are reworked in digital culture, thus giving a new meaning to the feminist concept of sisterhood.


2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 181-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Weibler ◽  
Sigrid Rohn-Endres

This paper develops an understanding of how shared leadership emerges in social network interactions. On the basis of a qualitative research design (grounded theory methodology – GTM) our study in two interorganizational networks offers insights into the interplay between structures, individuals, and the collective for the emergence of shared network leadership (SNL). The network-specific Gestalt of SNL appears as a pattern of collective and individual leadership activities unified under the roof of a highly developed learning conversation. More importantly, our findings support the idea that individual network leadership would not emerge without embeddedness in certain high-quality collective processes of relating and dialogue. Both theoretical and practical implications of this original network leadership perspective are discussed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Young-joo Lee

The younger generation’s widespread use of online social network sites has raised concerns and debates about social network sites’ influence on this generation’s civic engagement, whether these sites undermine or promote prosocial behaviors. This study empirically examines how millennials’ social network site usage relates to volunteering, using the 2013 data of the Minnesota Adolescent Community Cohort Study. The findings reveal a positive association between a moderate level of Facebook use and volunteering, although heavy users are not more likely to volunteer than nonusers. This bell-shaped relationship between Facebook use and volunteering contrasts with the direct correlation between participation in off-line associational activities and volunteering. Overall, the findings suggest that it is natural to get mixed messages about social network sites’ impacts on civic engagement, and these platforms can be useful tools for getting the word out and recruiting episodic volunteers.


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