Gender and Relatability in Digital Culture

Managing Affect, Intimacy and Value
Softcover Nachdruck of the original 1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-3-030-08264-2
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 195 Seiten, Previously published in hardcover, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 276 g

This book explores the practices and the politics of relatable femininity in intimate digital social spaces. Examining a GIF-based digital culture on Tumblr, the author considers how young women produce relatability through humorous, generalisable representations of embarrassment, frustration, and resilience in everyday situations. Relatability is examined as an affective relation that offers the feeling of sameness and female friendship amongst young women. However, this relation is based on young women’s ability to competently negotiate the ‘feeling rules’ that govern youthful femininity. Such classed and racialised feeling rules require young women to perfect the performance of normalcy: they must mix self-deprecation with positivity; they must be relatably flawed but not actual ‘failures’. Situated in debates about postfeminism, self-representation and digital identity, this book connects understandings of digital visual culture to gender, race, and class, and neoliberal imperatives to perform the ‘right feelings’.

Gender and Relatability in Digital Culture will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including gender studies, cultural studies, sociology, and media studies.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kanai, Akane

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Kommunikationswissenschaften Digitale Medien, Internet, Telekommunikation
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Do you relate to this? Femininity, affective intimate cultures and neoliberalism.- 2. Managing relatability: feeling rules and the practice of moderation.- 3. The classificatory reader: relating to others through digital texts.- 4. Intimacy and value: telling the self through figures.- 5. The practices and politics of a relatable brand.- 6. Relatability, feminism, and the shifting sexual contract.- 7. Ambivalence and attachment: some final reflections.

Über Autor(innen)

Akane Kanai is a lecturer in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University, Australia.