Mediated Interfaces: The Body on Social Media

✍ Scribed by Katie Warfield; Crystal Abidin; Carolina Cambre (editor)

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 289
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Images of faces, bodies, selves and digital subjectivities abound on new media platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and others–these images represent our new way of being online and of becoming socially mediated. Although researchers are examining digital embodiment, digital representations, and visual vernaculars as a mode of identity performance and management online, there exists no cohesive collection that compiles all these contemporary philosophies into one reader for use in graduate level classrooms or for scholars studying the field. The rationale for this book is to produce a scholarly fulcrum that pulls together scholars from disparate fields of inquiry in the humanities doing work on the common theme of the socially mediated body.
The chapters in Mediated Interfaces: The Body on Social Media represent a diverse list of contributors in terms of author representation, inclusivity of theoretical frameworks of analysis, and geographic reach of empirical work. Divided into three sections representing three dominant paradigms on the socially mediated body: representation, presentation, and embodiment, the book provides classic, creative, and contemporary reworkings of these paradigms.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction to Mediated Interfaces: The Body in Social Media Katie Warfield, Carolina Cambre, and Crystal Abidin
An Anecdote (or how not to title a book)
Origin of the book
Focus of book
Contributors and politics of the book
On the becoming of the body
Each part and summaries of chapters
1. The body mediated
2. The body politicized
3. The body felt
Conclusion
References
Part 1 The body mediated
Introduction
1 ‘Find love in Canada’: Distributed selves, abstraction, and the problem of privacy and autonomy Vincent Miller
Abstraction and the separation of information from people
Informaticization
Commodification
Depersonalization, dividuals, and data
Decontextualization: Big data
Dematerialization
The self, data, and autonomy
Extension and distributed selves
Conclusion
Notes
References
2 Embodied verification: Linking identities and bodies on NSFW Reddit Emily van der Nagel
Identity documents: Linking a person with identifying information
Twitter and Weibo: Linking an account with identity documents
Embodied verification on Reddit Gonewild: Linking an account with a body
Reconnecting, and playing with, the virtual and the material
Conclusion
References
3 #ILYSM*: Instagram as fan practice Hattie Liew
Introduction
Method
Fan practices on Instagram
Self-presentation on social media
Communicating status: The anatomy of a fan Instagram account
Drawing borders: Games on Instagram
Documenting my fandom: Instagram as archive
Conclusion
References
4 Ethan’s Golden YouTube Play Button: The evolution of a child influencer Maha Abdul Ghani and Carolina Cambre
Introduction
Children’s engagement with the commercial world
Advocates of children agency and empowerment
The celebrification and commodification of children on social media
Ethan: The child vlogger, gamer, and influencer
Analysis of Ethan Channels as a figuration
Ethan Channels as a figuration
The dimensions of the figuration
Relevance-frames
Actor-constellations
Communicative practices
Datafication and social knowledge
Conclusion
Notes
References
Part 2 The body politicized
Introduction
5 Performing visibility: Representing the Palestinian Freedom Riders through non-violent protest and visual activism Gary Bratchford
The Freedom Riders
The limitations of seeing and the pitfalls of representation
The context
Circulating images: Freedom rides and multiple witnesses
Acts of exposure and concealment
Notes
References
6 #WhoNeedsFeminism? Mapping leaky, networked affective feminist resistance Jessica Ringrose and Kaitlynn Mendes
Introduction
Leaky and creepy social media: Theorizing and researching networked feminist affectivisms
Tumblr as a ‘safe space’ for feminist activism?
#WhoNeedsFeminism?: A discursive, material, and affective analysis
The transferring of a platform vernacular: Mediating an institutional ecosystem
Conclusions
Notes
References
7 ‘Smart is the nü (boshi) sexy’: How China’s PhD women are fighting stereotypes using social media Jing Zeng
Introduction
Smart is the new sexy? Smart was always sexy!
Freedom to not love
Counter-strike of nü boshi
Nü boshi broadcasters
Conclusion
References
8 Online ajumma: Self-presentations of contemporary elderly women via digital media in Korea Jungyoun Moon and Crystal Abidin
Introduction
An economic history of ajumma
‘Digital ppal-let-ter’ as ajumma’s communal spaces
Media portrayals of ajumma
Online ajummas
Momjjang ajumma
Park Mak-rye Hal-meo-nee
Conclusion
References
Part 3 The body felt
Introduction
9 Naked and unafraid: Nudity in reclaiming witchcraft rituals Emma Quilty
Introduction
Background to this study
Methodology
#witchynipples
Ritual nudity in witchcraft
Nudity in mixed-gender spaces
Performing the sacred
Carnivals of cultural madness
Witchy carnivals
Conclusion
References
10 ‘It’s like a rush of “man” feeling’: Analysing sexuality and felt-sense in men’s digital media communications Kathleen A. Hare
Sexual sensations
Collective meaning-making
Sexual sensations and language
Pulling threads
Analysing threads
Describing threads
Thread 1: Bluelight.org
Thread 2: Partyvibe.org
Thread 3: Grasscity.com
Cross-thread 1: Gendered sexuality ideologies and bodies
Cross thread 2: The highest power
Cross thread 3: What is unspeakable …
Wrapping up
Notes
References
11 Agential hysterias: A practice approach to embodiment on social media Katrin Tiidenberg, Ane Kathrine Gammelby, and Lea Muldtofte Olsen
Introduction
Hegemonic articulations of bodies
Slut
Size
Hypochondriac
Be(com)ing body with the internet
The dialectics of socially mediated embodiment
Conclusion
Notes
References
12 Picture me naked: Embodying images on and off screen Tobias Boll
Introduction
Bodies on display(s)
Camming: Visualizing bodies and embodying images in real-time
Getting the body on screen
Losing connection, losing touch
Showing the belly
Sexting: Temporary embodiments of transsituational images
Taking (yet) a(nother) dick pic
This is (was) me, then (and now)
Conclusion: Body images, embodying images,mediated bodies
Notes
References
Index