Matching Items (2)
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- All Subjects: Internet and women
- Creators: Boyd, Patricia
Description
Attack of the Fake Geek Girls: Challenging Gendered Harassment and Marginalization in Online Spaces applies feminist, gender, and rhetorical theories and methods, along with critical discourse analysis, to case studies of the popular online social media platforms of Jezebel, Pinterest, and Facebook. This project makes visible the structural inequities that underpin the design and development of internet technologies, as well as commonplace assumptions about who is an online user, who is an active maker of internet technologies, and who is a passive consumer of internet technologies. Applying these critical lenses to these inequities and assumptions enables a re-seeing of commonplace understandings of the relationship between gender performativity and digital cultures and practices. Together, these lenses provide a useful set of tools for methodically resisting the mystique of technologies that are, simultaneously, represented as so highly technical as to be opaque to scrutiny, and as ubiquitous to everyday life as to be beneath critical examination.
Through a close reading of the discourses surrounding these popular social media platforms and a rhetorical analysis of their technological affordances, I documented the transference of gender-biased assumptions about women's roles, interests, and competencies, which have historically been found in face-to-face contexts, to these digital spaces. For example, cultural assumptions about the frivolity of women's interests, endeavors, issues, and labors make their way into digital discourse that situates the online practices of women as those of passive consumers who use the internet only to shop and socialize, rather than to go about the serious, masculine business of making original digital content.
This project expands on existing digital identity and performativity research, while applying a sorely needed feminist critique to online discourses and discursive practices that assume maleness and masculinity as the default positionality. These methods are one approach to addressing the pressing problems of online harassment, the gender gap in the technology sector, and the gender gap in digital literacies that have pedagogical, political, and structural implications for the classroom, workplace, economic markets, and civic sphere.
Through a close reading of the discourses surrounding these popular social media platforms and a rhetorical analysis of their technological affordances, I documented the transference of gender-biased assumptions about women's roles, interests, and competencies, which have historically been found in face-to-face contexts, to these digital spaces. For example, cultural assumptions about the frivolity of women's interests, endeavors, issues, and labors make their way into digital discourse that situates the online practices of women as those of passive consumers who use the internet only to shop and socialize, rather than to go about the serious, masculine business of making original digital content.
This project expands on existing digital identity and performativity research, while applying a sorely needed feminist critique to online discourses and discursive practices that assume maleness and masculinity as the default positionality. These methods are one approach to addressing the pressing problems of online harassment, the gender gap in the technology sector, and the gender gap in digital literacies that have pedagogical, political, and structural implications for the classroom, workplace, economic markets, and civic sphere.
ContributorsTekobbe, Cindy (Author) / Miller, Keith D. (Thesis advisor) / Rose, Shirley K. (Committee member) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
For the past few decades, feminist researchers have worked tirelessly to recover the history of American women’s sewing – both the artifacts made and the processes, practices, and identities linked to the objects produced. With the transition to the digital age, women are still sewing, but they are inventing, making, and distributing sewn objects using platforms and pathways online to share knowledge, showcase their handicrafts, and sell their wares. This dissertation examines contemporary sewing and asks how digital practices are extending and transforming the history of women’s sewing in America. I place my findings against the backdrop of women’s history by recounting how and why women sewed in previous eras. This dissertation demonstrates how past sewing practices are being repeated, remixed, and reimagined as women meet to sew, socialize, and collaborate on the web.
The overall approach to this project is ethnographic in nature, in that I collected data by participating alongside my female subjects in the online settings they frequent to read about, write about, and discuss sewing, including blogs, email, and various social media sites. From these interactions, I provide case studies that illuminate my findings on how women share sewing knowledge and products in digital spaces. Specifically, I look at how women are using digital tools to learn and teach sewing, to sew for activist purposes, and to pursue entrepreneurship. My findings show that sewing continues to be a highly social activity for women, although collaboration and socializing often happen from geographically distanced locations and are enabled by online communication. Seamstresses wanting to provide sewing instruction are able to archive their knowledge electronically and disperse it widely, and those learning to sew can access this knowledge by navigating paths through a plethora of digital resources. Activists are able to recruit more widely when seeking participants for their causes and can send handmade goods to people in need around the globe. Although gender biases continue to plague working women, the internet provides new opportunities for female entrepreneurship and allows women to profit from their sewing skills.
The overall approach to this project is ethnographic in nature, in that I collected data by participating alongside my female subjects in the online settings they frequent to read about, write about, and discuss sewing, including blogs, email, and various social media sites. From these interactions, I provide case studies that illuminate my findings on how women share sewing knowledge and products in digital spaces. Specifically, I look at how women are using digital tools to learn and teach sewing, to sew for activist purposes, and to pursue entrepreneurship. My findings show that sewing continues to be a highly social activity for women, although collaboration and socializing often happen from geographically distanced locations and are enabled by online communication. Seamstresses wanting to provide sewing instruction are able to archive their knowledge electronically and disperse it widely, and those learning to sew can access this knowledge by navigating paths through a plethora of digital resources. Activists are able to recruit more widely when seeking participants for their causes and can send handmade goods to people in need around the globe. Although gender biases continue to plague working women, the internet provides new opportunities for female entrepreneurship and allows women to profit from their sewing skills.
ContributorsRussum, Jennifer Ann (Author) / Gee, Elisabeth (Thesis advisor) / Daly Goggin, Maureen (Committee member) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016