Papers by Sander De Ridder
This article explores how young people are making sense of sexuality in the context of social med... more This article explores how young people are making sense of sexuality in the context of social media, considering social media's material as well as symbolic operations. Drawing on 14 focus groups (n = 89, conducted in 2012 and 2015) with young people between 14 and 19 years of age in Dutch-speaking Belgium, this article is informed by young people's discussions, meanings, values, and norms on sexuality and social media, situated in everyday life peer group settings. The results argue how young people are making strong value judgments about sexuality in the context of social media and how they use a sharp hierarchical system to distinguish between "good" and "bad" sexual practices in social media. Therefore, young people draw on essentialist sexual ideologies. This article discusses these value judgments not only in relation to how social media functions but also in relation to social media's symbolic operations, namely how they are meaningful for young people's sexualities. The role of social media is discussed in relation to broader cultural dynamics of young people's changing sexual cultures, which are characterized by risk, resistance, individualization, and mediatization. The article concludes how young people's consistent need for making value judgments about sexuality in the context of social media may point to a conservatism that is driven by social media's overwhelming role in culture and society. Social media have become a crucial battleground for sexual politics; they need to be taken seriously as spaces that produce values and norms about sexuality, deciding what kind of sexualities are supported, repressed, or disciplined.
This working paper aims to start a conversation in media and communication studies on the study o... more This working paper aims to start a conversation in media and communication studies on the study of sexuality. Therefore, it argues the crucial role of media in changes of sexualities; it is argued that media are playing a key role in the history of the social construction of sexuality, people's current everyday sexual life-words and sexual politics. The paper explores the concept of mediatization and its potential use for the study of the role of media in changing sexualities in modernity. While there is no focus on bringing evidence for the mediatization of sexuality, the paper argues the field needs to be committed to exploring the mediation of sexuality in various forms, particularly exposing the most recent socio-technological transformations, and the role of media power (technological, symbolical, institutional) in and around sexuality. Three main arguments are developed and explored. First, it is argued that the role of media in the history of changing sexualities remains rather invisible; little is known about how media have come to matter overtime in people's sexual life-worlds and sexual practices. Media and communication studies have been narrowly focusing on the circulation of sexuality in mass media culture, without having much attention to people's social life-worlds and sexualities. Second, it is argued we should see media as infrastructures trough which people live their sexualities, mainly because of technological changes in media and communication infrastructures. Third, it is argued that the study of sexuality, media and communication studies needs to be committed to a project of democratic sexual politics, referred to as supporting communicative sexualities in a global context. This working paper argues for a commitment to explore the role of media as much closer to the life-worlds of people: why do media matter to people's sexualities? How do people value their sexual lives in, with or around media? Media and communications are crucial for preserving human connections across sexual variety and the support for sexual rights.
by Bojana Romic, David Mathieu, Jelena Kleut, Niklas Alexander Chimirri, Ana Jorge, Lucia Vesnic-Alujevic, Sander De Ridder, Ike Picone, Frederik Dhaenens, Gilda Seddighi, Juliane Finger, Maria Francesca Murru, Maria José Brites, Rafal Zaborowski, and Tereza Pavlickova Edited by Ranjana Das and Brita Ytre-Arne, with contribution from the CEDAR network.
This repor... more Edited by Ranjana Das and Brita Ytre-Arne, with contribution from the CEDAR network.
This report brings together the work done by CEDAR - Consortium of Emerging Directions in Audience Research, an Arts & Humanities Research Council funded consortium of early-career European audience researchers. CEDAR came together to map trends, gaps and priorities emerging over the past decade in the field of audience studies.
Drawing on a participatory observation in the popular social networking site (SNS) Netlog among N... more Drawing on a participatory observation in the popular social networking site (SNS) Netlog among Northern Belgium youngsters, this paper offers insights on how SNS institutions can be understood as actors that order storytelling practices in everyday life. Specifically, this paper deals with intimate storytelling practices that give meaning to sexuality, gender and relationships, developing a feminist and queer political critique on SNSs’ focus on the production of intelligible intimate identities and endless performative flows of stories. Theoretically, this paper proposes to put central everyday media-related practices to understand SNSs as actors shaping intimate stories, dialectically brought in relation to the website’s political economies and the cultural powers through which software is designed. Empirical illustrations show how de Certeau’s concept of tactics is useful to expose a complex struggle between digital media institutions power and everyday appropriations.
This inquiry shows how youths negotiate sexualities and gender when commenting on profile picture... more This inquiry shows how youths negotiate sexualities and gender when commenting on profile pictures on a social networking site. Attention is given to (1) how discourses are constituted within heteronormativity, and (2) how the mediated nature of the SNS contributes to resistance. Using insights from cultural media studies, social theory and queer criticism, self-representations in SNSs are viewed as sites of struggle. A textual analysis is used to show how commenting on a picture is a gendered practice, continuously cohering between the biological sex, performative gender and demanded desire. Although significant resignifications are found, they are often accompanied by a recuperation of heteronormativity. Therefore, this inquiry argues for continued attention to current contradictions in self-representations.
Based on an extensive literature review, this contribution explores current and future challenges... more Based on an extensive literature review, this contribution explores current and future challenges for media and communication scholars when enquiring people's engagements with digital media. Structuring the existing literature around four themes (affordances, the political economy of digital audiences, self-representation and identity, domestication and (problematic) uses of ICT), an overview of the current state of the field is provided. As such, three challenges are defined: exploring the diversity of digital audiences that now engage with digital media, allowing more room for the semiotics and contexts in which people experience digital media, and moving beyond the functionalistic uses of the concept 'affordances'.
With the emergence of alternative R&B, contemporary R&B and hip hop culture are being confronted ... more With the emergence of alternative R&B, contemporary R&B and hip hop culture are being confronted with a subgenre that challenges its key characteristics. One of the aspects that typify alternative R&B is the emergence of an alternative masculinity. The aim of this study is to research whether the alternative masculinities represented in alternative R&B resist the hegemonic masculine ideal established within R&B and hip hop culture. To this end, this study conducts a textual analysis of the representations of gender in the work of Frank Ocean and The Weeknd, artists considered representative for alternative R&B. The analysis reveals that Ocean’s work features successful nonnormative masculine identities, whereas The Weeknd refrains to representing postmodern exaggerations of the hegemonic male. Despite divergent representational strategies, both artists do engage in questioning what it means to be a man in R&B and hip hop culture and thereby at least attempt to challenge the supremacy of hegemonic masculinity.
New media applications such as social networking sites are understood as important evolutions for... more New media applications such as social networking sites are understood as important evolutions for queer youth. These media and communication technologies allow teenagers to transgress their everyday life places and connect with other queer teens. Moreover, social media websites could also be used for real political activism such as publicly sharing coming out videos on YouTube. Despite these increased opportunities for self-reflexive storytelling on digital media platforms, their everyday use and popularity also bring particular complexities in the everyday lives of young people. Talking to 51 youngsters between 13 and 19 years old in focus groups, this paper inquires how young audiences discursively constructed meanings on intimate storytelling practices such as interpreting intimate stories, reflecting on their own and other peers' intimate storytelling practices. Specifically focusing on how they relate to intimate storytelling practices of gay peers, this paper identified particular challenges for queer youth who transgress the heteronormative when being active on popular social media. The increasing mediatization of intimate youth cultures brings challenges for queer teenagers, which relate to authenticity, (self-) surveillance and fear of imagined audiences.
European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2015
With the emergence of alternative R&B, contemporary R&B and hip hop culture are being con... more With the emergence of alternative R&B, contemporary R&B and hip hop culture are being confronted with a subgenre that challenges its key characteristics. One of the aspects that typify alternative R&B is the emergence of an alternative masculinity. The aim of this study is to research whether the alternative masculinities represented in alternative R&B resist the hegemonic masculine ideal established within R&B and hip hop culture. To this end, this study conducts a textual analysis of the representations of gender in the work of Frank Ocean and The Weeknd, artists considered representative for alternative R&B. The analysis reveals that Ocean’s work features successful nonnormative masculine identities, whereas The Weeknd refrains to representing postmodern exaggerations of the hegemonic male. Despite divergent representational strategies, both artists do engage in questioning what it means to be a man in R&B and hip hop culture and thereby at least attempt to challenge the supremacy of hegemonic masculinity.
Social networking sites (SNSs) confront communication and media studies scholars with significant... more Social networking sites (SNSs) confront communication and media studies scholars with significant challenges. Characterised by continuous 'audience activity' of producing 'user-generated-content', the analytical distinction between text, producer and audience is no longer tenable, but thoroughly disrupted.This contribution will focus on what 'people do', offering insights into the social and cultural complexities behind the actual media practices. 'Self-representational digital stories' will be the focal point of this contribution, as this is what 'audiences do' in SNSs.
This paper wants to challenge the tendency in media studies on gay and lesbian identities to rema... more This paper wants to challenge the tendency in media studies on gay and lesbian identities to remain within two dominant paradigms: the essentialist or the post-structuralist traditions. Consequently, we will elaborate on the question: if media research emphasizes social change, should it mainly adopt a political and strategic identity claim which refers to essentialism, or, should it acknowledge discourses as more important, and therefore use post-structural and queer theoretical insights? Since we discuss the case of gay and lesbian identities, we will focus on possible resistance in popular culture, which mainly involves offering alternatives to the continuous representation of heteronormativity.
We will argue that for social change to occur, there needs to be a symbiosis between agency and structure. To this end, a dialectic approach is needed that bridges the gaps between, on the one hand, a post-structuralist project that creates awareness of norms, discourse and hegemony, and on the other, identity politics that have the potential to change laws and institutions.
This paper will offer a mainly theoretical exploration and will use illustrations from popular media culture with a focus on television. To this end, this paper will illustrate how LGBT-targeted television channels employ the discussed strategies of resistance.
Publications by Sander De Ridder
This article focuses on a critical analysis of alternative representations of femininities on Ins... more This article focuses on a critical analysis of alternative representations of femininities on Instagram through a case study of the @effyourbeautystandards account. This body-positive account aims to promote self-love and questions beauty ideals by sharing self-representations of ‘ordinary’ women (i.e. non-models or celebrities) who feel that they do not live up to the current beauty standards. We focus on the political potential of these diverse self-representations in terms of ‘everyday activism’. @effyourbeautystandards is recognized as having an overtly political stance, adopting an intersectional approach and employing strategies of ‘empowering exhibitionism’. Yet, the article questions this more optimistic view by critically addressing the postfeminist sensibilities underlying the account, namely, its emphasis on fashion and beauty. Moreover, Instagram’s role in reproducing traditional gender norms is explored. The article analyses Instagram’s technological and sociocultural affordances, such as its Terms of Use, and the ‘editorial power’ of the users’ likes, comments and reports.
Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies, 9 (2)
This article presents an analysis of the politics of gender representation on Instagram. It adopt... more This article presents an analysis of the politics of gender representation on Instagram. It adopts a broad understanding of the political in terms of “everyday politics” and “everyday activism”. This allows for exploring the political potential of self-representation on Instagram and Instagram’s ability to enable more diverse forms of gender representation. It starts from the assumption that Instagram can play a role in reproducing and reinforcing traditional gender norms, and then explores the technological affordances and limitations that shape representations, such as Instagram’s Terms of Use and the diffuse power exerted by Instagram users’ feedback. These theoretical arguments are illustrated by discussing the recent ban of Marisa Papen, a popular Instagram model.
Sofia P. Caldeira
DiGeSt Volume 5 Issue 1, 2018
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Papers by Sander De Ridder
This report brings together the work done by CEDAR - Consortium of Emerging Directions in Audience Research, an Arts & Humanities Research Council funded consortium of early-career European audience researchers. CEDAR came together to map trends, gaps and priorities emerging over the past decade in the field of audience studies.
We will argue that for social change to occur, there needs to be a symbiosis between agency and structure. To this end, a dialectic approach is needed that bridges the gaps between, on the one hand, a post-structuralist project that creates awareness of norms, discourse and hegemony, and on the other, identity politics that have the potential to change laws and institutions.
This paper will offer a mainly theoretical exploration and will use illustrations from popular media culture with a focus on television. To this end, this paper will illustrate how LGBT-targeted television channels employ the discussed strategies of resistance.
Publications by Sander De Ridder
Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies, 9 (2)
Sofia P. Caldeira
DiGeSt Volume 5 Issue 1, 2018
This report brings together the work done by CEDAR - Consortium of Emerging Directions in Audience Research, an Arts & Humanities Research Council funded consortium of early-career European audience researchers. CEDAR came together to map trends, gaps and priorities emerging over the past decade in the field of audience studies.
We will argue that for social change to occur, there needs to be a symbiosis between agency and structure. To this end, a dialectic approach is needed that bridges the gaps between, on the one hand, a post-structuralist project that creates awareness of norms, discourse and hegemony, and on the other, identity politics that have the potential to change laws and institutions.
This paper will offer a mainly theoretical exploration and will use illustrations from popular media culture with a focus on television. To this end, this paper will illustrate how LGBT-targeted television channels employ the discussed strategies of resistance.
Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies, 9 (2)
Sofia P. Caldeira
DiGeSt Volume 5 Issue 1, 2018