Youth Mediations and Affective Relations

236 Pages·2018·2.24 MB·English

by  Susan Driver

Y O U T H
M E D I AT I O N S
A N D A F F E C T I V E
R E L AT I O N S
EDITED BY SUSAN DRIVER
AND NATALIE COULTER
Youth Mediations and Affective Relations
Susan Driver · Natalie Coulter
Editors
Youth Mediations
and Affective
Relations
Editors
Susan Driver Natalie Coulter
York University York University
Toronto, ON, Canada Toronto, ON, Canada
ISBN 978-3-319-98970-9 ISBN 978-3-319-98971-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98971-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951565
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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Cover credit: MirageC
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This book is dedicated to
passions and possibilities of young people everywhere.
C
ontents
1 Introduction: Open-Ended and Curious Explorations
of Youth Mediations and Affective Relations 1
Susan Driver and Natalie Coulter
2 “I Am Crying…This Really Touched My Heart”:
Disabled Intimacy and the Thick Materiality
of the Virtual 15
Anastasia Todd
3 Decolonizing Technology: Presence, Caring, Sharing,
and Orality Within the Indigenous Friends Mobile App 33
Alejandro MayoralBaños
4 Becoming More Than a Self: Affective Relations
and Queer Selfie Lines of Flight 53
Susan Driver
5 Vlogging the Hijab: Subjectivity, Affect and Materiality 73
Shazlin Rahman
6 “#YouTuberAnxiety: Anxiety as Emotional Labour
and Masquerade in Beauty Vlogs” 89
Sophie Bishop
vii
viii CONTENTS
7 My Moshi Monster Is “Desolate”: Digital Games
and Affect in Neoliberal Capitalism 107
Natalie Coulter
8 Queer Girls and Mashups: Archiving Ephemerality 119
Whitney Monaghan
9 The Queer Potential of World of Warcraft: Shame
and Desire in the Performance of Gender in Massively
Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games 137
Johanna Luanne Fraser
10 The Post and the Grab: Instagram Memes
and Affective Labour 155
Eileen Mary Holowka
11 “Filleing” the Cinema Gap: The Precarity of Toronto’s
Necessary Emerging Network of Feminist Film Critics 175
Claudia Sicondolfo
12 Making a Name for Yourself: Neo-identities and Tumblr 197
Christine Feraday
13 This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Tumblr
Publics, John Green, and Sanctionable Girlhood 213
Morgan Bimm
n C
otes on ontributors
Morgan Bimm is a Ph.D. student in the department of Gender,
Feminist, and Women’s Studies at York University in Toronto, Ontario.
Her research interests include integrating fandom studies and femi-
nist affect theory, especially as they relate to performances of girlhood
and queerness in relation to popular culture objects and texts, the affect
infused in girls’ cultural spaces, and instances of community built around
traditionally ‘girly’ objects and aesthetics. Morgan’s work also appears in
the forthcoming collection The Spaces and Places of Canadian Popular
Culture, which includes her co-authored chapter on the affect and
implicit nationalism of Canadian pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen.
Sophie Bishop is an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Arts,
Technology and Innovation at the University of East London. Her
Ph.D. research looks at the political economy of YouTube vlogging,
algorithmic materialities and self-optimisation practices on the plat-
form. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals including
Feminist Media Studies and Convergence.
Natalie Coulter is currently an Assistant Professor at York University
in the department of Communication Studies. She is currently complet-
ing a SSHRC-funded research project entitled, The Embodied Tween:
Living Girlhood in Global and Digital Spaces. She co-edited the special
issue, Locating the Tween Girl, of Girlhood Studies in 2018. Her book
Tweening the Girl: The Crystallization of the Tween Market was published
in 2014. She has published in the Canadian Journal of Communication,
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Journal of Children and Media, Popular Communication and Jeunesse.
She is a founding member of the Association for Research on the
Cultures of Young People (ARCYP).
Susan Driver is an Associate Professor at York University in
Communication Studies. Her books include Queer Girls and Popular
Culture (Peter Lang). She has also edited books including Queer Youth
Cultures (SUNY) and Engaging Affects, Thinking Feelings: Social,
Political and Artistic practices (Cambridge). Her current work focuses
on using affect theories and new materialist feminist and queer schol-
arship to rethink youth and media through relational ontologies and
epistemologies. She is writing a book that rethinks young people’s
engagements with social media in terms of complex dynamics of atten-
tion, connecting, caring and sharing.
Christine Feraday obtained her Master’s in Communication and
Culture at Ryerson University, where she researched queer identity lan-
guage used on Tumblr. She currently lives in Washington with her wife
and their dog.
Johanna Luanne Fraser is a Ph.D. student in Communication and
Culture at York University. Her research interests tend to relate to media,
gender identity, and youth studies, with particular emphasis on youth mas-
culinity and boyhood. She holds an M.A. in Political Science with a focus
on Political Theory from McMaster University, where her research the-
orized the public washroom as Third Space and investigated the policies
on gender-accessible washrooms (and their lack) at Canadian Universities.
Her current research refocuses her attention on the problem of gen-
der itself in the context of youth’s experience with contemporary media.
Grounding her work in Feminist and Queer theory, she is passionate
about crossing the boundaries of disciplinarity in her research and writing.
Eileen Mary Holowka is a writer, editor, and Ph.D. student who also
makes games and music. Her current research focuses on feminist social
media practices, “sick women,” and vulnerable acts of resistance. She has
published on self-imaging, Instagram, online affective labour, and the
intersections of media and trauma. For her master’s thesis, she created
a digital narrative called circuits about the act of narrating sexual trauma
within institutional spaces. circuits can be played for free online. In 2017,
she worked in a team to create a playable art project (Place des ALTs) for
Montreal’s largest ever public art event, KM3.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi
Alejandro MayoralBaños is an Indigenous activist and Ph.D. Candidate,
who is currently working with organizations in Canada and Mexico
deploying participatory and community-driven ICT projects by/with/
for Indigenous peoples. He is the creator and founder of the Indigenous
Friends Initiative (Canada) and Magtayaní (Mexico). His participatory
action research explores the cultural, economic, social and political impli-
cations of ICTs within Indigenous contexts. His examination includes
inquiries about Indigenous Software Protocols, STEM Pedagogies for
Indigenous peoples, Indigenous Social Media, Intellectual Property and
Traditional Knowledge, Indigenous identities and embodiment in digital
spaces and ICT4D by Indigenous peoples. Alejandro has plenty of expe-
rience volunteering, leading, collaborating and participating in different
projects around Indigeneity and social action in Canada, Mexico, Peru,
Chile, and Bolivia.
Whitney Monaghan is an Assistant Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies
at Monash University, Australia. Her background is in screen, media
and cultural studies and her research examines the representation of
LGBTIQ youth on screen. She is the author of Queer Girls, Temporality
and Screen Media: Not ‘Just a Phase’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
Shazlin Rahman is an established engagement specialist and nonprofit
marketing and communications professional; credited with developing,
marketing and implementing stakeholder engagement initiatives, online
community engagement, and fostering deeper online and in-person con-
versations on identity-based discrimination and marginalization. She
earned her M.A. in Communication and Culture from York University.
Her thesis looked at how Muslim women vloggers used social media
platforms and personal networks to bypass mainstream media and speak
in their own voices. Shazlin has contributed to a number of commu-
nity engagement projects including: building solidarity with Muslim
communities; the 4Rs. Youth Movement; and Toronto’s first Open
Iftar, where she brought over 400 community members to break fast
at Dufferin Grove Park. In her own practice, Shazlin marries her pas-
sion for city-building and journalism by marketing and hosting neigh-
bourhood walks that build solidarity between Muslim and non-Muslim
communities. Shazlin utilizes social media to share microstories aimed at
broadening the narrative around resilience and labour among women of
colour through her project, hersarong. In her free time, Shazlin sits on
the Toronto Ward Museum’s programming committee, the 4Rs Youth