Popularity in the time of social media logic. Gender, visibility and youth digital culture.

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DELLA COMUNICAZIONE
Author/s Manolo Farci, Cosimo Marco Scarcelli
Publishing Year 2022 Issue 2022/63
Language Italian Pages 17 P. 94-110 File size 305 KB
DOI 10.3280/SC2022-063006
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The paper is the result of a research that involved approximately 900 secondary school students who were asked to create a character that they thought might become popular on social media. The authors explore how the participants’ accounts intersect with dominant discourses on gender and sexuality and how these are mediated by digital cultures. Simulating the creation of a profile have meant analyse the ways in which media logics can affect issues such as popularity (connected to platforms’ metrics), aesthetics (what kind of expressions are desirable or not) and morality (what is appropriate or not to show) in relation to gender issues.

Keywords: gender, social media logic, young people, popularity, aspirational labour

  1. Attwood F. (2006), Sexed up: Theorizing the sexualization of culture, in «Sexualities », 9(1), pp. 77-94. DOI: 10.1177/1363460706053336
  2. Banet-Weiser S. (2012), Authentic TM – The politics of ambivalence in a brand culture, New York University Press, New York.
  3. Banet-Weiser S., Arzumanova A. (2013), Creative Authorship: Self-Actualizing Individuals and the Self- Brand, in Chris C., Gerstner D.A., (ed.), Media Authorship, Routledge, New York, pp. 163-69.
  4. Baym N.K. (2015), Connect With Your Audience! The Relational Labor of Connection, in «The Communication Review», 18(1), 14-22. DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2015.996401
  5. Beck U. (1986), Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main; trad.it. (2000), La società del rischio. Verso una seconda modernità, Carocci, Roma.
  6. Berger J. (1972), Ways of seeing, Penguin, London.
  7. Boccia Artieri G., Pasquali F. Gemini L., Carlo S., Farci M., Pedroni M. (2017), Fenomenologia dei social network. Presenza, relazioni e consumi mediali degli italiani online, Guerini e Associati, Roma.
  8. Caldeira S.P. (2020), “Shop it. Wear it. ‘Gram it.”: A qualitative textual analysis of women’s fashion glossy magazines and their intertextual relationship with Instagram, in «Feminist Media Studies», 20, pp. 86-103. DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2018.1548498
  9. Capecchi S. (2018), La comunicazione di genere, Carocci, Roma.
  10. Condis, M. (2018), Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture, University of Iowa Press, Iowa City.
  11. Dardot P., Laval C. (2009), La nouvelle raison du monde: Essai sur la société néolibérale, Editions La Découverte; trad. it. (2013), La nuova ragione del mondo. Critica della razionalità neoliberista, DeriveApprodi, Roma.
  12. De Fina A. (2016), Storytelling and audience reactions in social media, in «Language in Society», 45(4), pp. 473-498. DOI: 10.1017/S0047404516000051
  13. De Ridder S., Van Bauwel S. (2013), Commenting on pictures: Teens negotiating gender and sexualities on social networking sites, in «Sexualities», 16(5-6), pp. 565-86. DOI: 10.1177/1363460713487369
  14. Dobson A.S. (2015), Postfeminist Digital Cultures, Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Duffy B.E. (2017), (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media, and Aspirational Work, Yale University Press, London.
  15. Erstad O., Wertsch J. (2008), Tales of mediation: Narrative and digital media as cultural tools, in Lundby K. (ed.), Digital storytelling, mediatized stories: Selfrepresentations in new media, Peter Lang, Pieterlen, pp. 21-40.
  16. Foucault M. (1975), Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison, Gallimard, Paris.
  17. Gauntlett D., Holzwarth P. (2006), Creative and visual methods for exploring identities, in «Visual Studies», 21(1), pp. 82-91. DOI: 10.1080/14725860600613261
  18. Gill R. (2007), Postfeminist media culture: elements of a sensibility, in «European Journal of Cultural Studies», 10(2), pp. 147-166. DOI: 10.1177/1367549407075898
  19. Gill R. (2008), Culture and Subjectivity in Neoliberal and Postfeminist Times, in «Subjectivity», 25, pp. 432-445.
  20. Gill R. (2017), The affective, cultural and psychic life of postfeminism, in «European Journal of Cultural Studies», 20(6), pp. 606-626. DOI: 10.1177/1367549417733003
  21. Gill R., Scharff C.M. (2011) (eds.), New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism, and Subjectivity, Palgrave Macmillan. London.
  22. Hakim C. (2011), Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital, Penguin Books, London.
  23. Harris A. (2004), Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-First Century, Routledge, New York.
  24. Hearn A. (2008), `Meat, Mask, Burden`: Probing the contours of the branded `self`, in «Journal of Consumer Culture», 8(2), 197-217. DOI: 10.1177/1469540508090086
  25. Herring S, Kapidzic S. (2015), Teens, gender, and self-presentation in social media,
  26. in Wright J. D. (ed.), International encyclopedia of social and behavioral sciences, Elsevier, Oxford, pp. 146-152.
  27. Hochschild A.R. (1983), The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, University of California Press, Berkeley.
  28. Hollway W. (1984), Women’s power in heterosexual sex, in «Women’s Studies International Forum», 7(1), pp. 63-68. DOI: 10.1016/0277-5395(84)90085-2
  29. Hsieh H-F., Shannon, S. E. (2005), Three approaches to qualitative content analysis, in «Qualitative Health Research», 15(9), 1277-1288. DOI: 10.1177/1049732305276687
  30. Kohrs K., Gill R. (2021), Revisiting Gender Advertisements, in Angouri J., Baxter J. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language, Gender and Sexuality, Routledge, London, pp. 528-542.
  31. Korkmazer B., De Ridder S., Van Bauwel S. (2021), The visual digital self: A discourse theoretical analysis of young people’s negotiations on gender, reputation and sexual morality online, in «DiGeSt-Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies », 8(1), pp. 22-40.
  32. Litoselli E., Gill R., Favaro L. (2019), Postfeminism as a critical tool for gender and language study, in «Gender and Language», 13(1), pp. 1-22.
  33. Livingstone S. (2002), Young people and new media: Childhood and the changing media environment, Sage, London.
  34. Marwick A.E. (2013), Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age, New Haven, Yale University Press.
  35. McNay L. (2013), Foucault and feminism: Power, gender and the self, John Wiley & Sons, New York.
  36. McRobbie A. (2000), Feminism and youth culture, Macmillan Press, Basingstoke.
  37. McRobbie A. (2009), The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change, Sage Publications, London.
  38. Pascoe C.J. (2007), Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, University of California Press, Berkeley.
  39. Rettberg J.W. (2017), Self-representation in social media, in Burgess J., Marwick
  40. A., Poell T. (eds.), SAGE handbook of social media, Sage, London, pp. 429-443.
  41. Ringrose J. (2011), Are you sexy, flirty, or a slut? Exploring ‘sexualization’ and how teen girls perform/negotiate digital sexual identity on social networking sites, in Gill R., Scharff C. (eds.), New femininities: Postfeminism, neoliberalism and subjectivity, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke pp. 99-117.
  42. Scarcelli C.M., Krijnen T., Nixon P. (2021), Sexuality, gender, media. Identity articulations in the contemporary media landscape, in «Information, Communication & Society», 24(8), pp. 1063-1072, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2020.1804603
  43. Silverstone R. (1994), The power of the ordinary: On cultural studies and the sociology of culture, in «Sociology», 28(4), pp. 991-1001. DOI: 10.1177/0038038594028004012
  44. Snow R., Altheide D. (1979), Media Logic, Sage, Beverly Hills.
  45. Srnicek N. (2016), Platform Capitalism, Polity, Oxford.
  46. Thumin N. (2012), Self-Representation and Digital Culture, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
  47. Van Dijck, J., Poell T. (2013), Understanding social media logic, in «Media and Communication», 1(1), pp. 2-14.
  48. Van Dijk T.A. (2011), Discourse and Ideology, in Van Dijk T. A. (ed.), Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction, Sage, New York, pp. 379-407.
  49. Van Zoonen L. (2002), Gendering the Internet Claims, Controversies and Cultures, in «European Journal of Communication», 17, pp. 5-23. DOI: 10.1177/0267323102017001605

Manolo Farci, Cosimo Marco Scarcelli, La popolarità ai tempi della social media logic. Genere, visibilità e culture digitali giovanili in "SOCIOLOGIA DELLA COMUNICAZIONE " 63/2022, pp 94-110, DOI: 10.3280/SC2022-063006