Producing Queer Youth: The Paradox of Digital Media Empowerment

ISBN-13: 9780415790840 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 160 str.

Lauren S. Berliner

Opis

This book examines the rise and impact of digital media projects, such as the widely-celebrated It Gets Better Project viral video campaign, designed to support LGBTQ youth at risk. Such media has been commended for enabling everyday makers the opportunity to circumnavigate the formal barriers of institutional spaces and the constraints of mass communication, giving way to a mode of expression, empowerment and voice not available through other means. Based on over three years of participant action research with LGBTQ teen media makers and textual analysis of hundreds of youth-produced videos, Berliner challenges the assumption that having a voice, visibility and recognition is necessarily equivalent to gaining rights and resources. She looks directly at youth media practice within broader communication history to complicate the idea that youth are digital natives who are naturally driven to use media to -pull themselves up by their bootstraps- to overcome experiences of risk and vulnerability.

Spis treści

Introduction  1. The Problem with Youth Voices  2. "Look at Me, I’m Doing Fine!": The Conundrum of Legibility, Visibility, and Identity Management in Queer Viral Videos  3. Vernacular Voices: Business Gets Personal in Public Service Announcements  4. "I Can’t Talk When I’m Supposed to Say Something": Negotiating Expression in a Queer-Youth-Produced Anti-Bullying Video  Conclusion: Out of the Closet and into the Tweets