ECREA16-Abstract

275

Thursday, November 10

1 4 : 3 0 – 1 6 : 0 0

GEC01

Sex, Gender, Digital Culture and Everyday Life

PP 186

Sexting and Media Culture: Exploring Young People’s Moral Imaginations on Gender and Sexuality

S. De Ridder

Ghent University, Communication Sciences, Ghent, Belgium

This contribution explores ‘sexting’, the act of producing and distributing sexually explicit images or texts via mobile or social media (Hasinoff 2015), as

a ‘popular media practice’. As such, sexting is understood as ‘popular’ in a quantitative sense (it has become a commonly adopted practice of teens to ex‑

periment with sexuality (see Vanden Abeele et al. 2014)), but also in a qualitative sense; sexting has become a meaningful practice among young people,

but also in broader culture and society where it is intensively debated (Hasinoff 2015). Focusing on such meanings related to the practice of sexting, this

presentation is arguing for an urgent need to contextualize sexting within media culture, morality and ethics when exploring teens’sexting practices; for‑

mer academic research has not yet been exploring the moral and ethical challenges of sexting from a perspective of teens’everyday lives. To analyse media

culture, this presentation is not referring to representations in the media (e.g. news reports on sexting), but rather to a broad collection of sense making

practices of media (Couldry 2012, 56); meanings on the practice of sexting then, are related to how teenagers themselves make sense of using digital media

for sexual experimentation, love, gender and desire. While exploring young people’s moral imaginations related to sexting, the goal of this presentation

is understanding how media culture accounts as a moral battleground in which young people’s mediated gendered and sexual relationships to others can

be explored (Silverstone 2002, 2007). To this end, this contribution relies on an audience study with teenagers (16–19 years old) from the Dutch speaking

region of Belgium. Focus groups (conducted in April 2015, N=7), with a total of 54 participants exposed particular themes that relate to such moral battle‑

grounds. For the analysis, a grounded theory approach is used (Charmaz 2006). This presentation is drawing conclusions on how examining young people’s

moral imaginations is essential to contextualize societies’ethical concerns in times where teenagers are increasingly exploring their genders and sexualities

by using digital media.

PP 187

Adolescents and Sexting: “New” Form of Definition of Gender Roles and Intimacy

M. Scarcelli

University of Padova, Philosophy- Sociology- Education and Applied Psychology, Padova, Italy

Digital and portable media are important part of adolescent everyday life and youth use these platforms also to enlarge they social networks that they

construct outside digital spaces. Digital media becomes the place where to speak about emotions, to play with them, to flirt, to define and redefine the se‑

duction practices and gender roles and the expectative about the others. Into the dance of seduction and of love sometimes adolescents decide to interact

sending sexually explicit messages and photo, what nowadays is called sexting. This paper presents and discusses the results of a sociological research that

is explored the role of the sexting into the everyday life of adolescents. The work involved twenty Italian boys and girls from the age of thirteen to the age

of eighteen, using face-to-face interviews.The theoretical frame has its basis in media studies and sociology and find important references in works such as.

Attwood (2006), Lippman and Campbell (2014), Ringrose, Harvey, Gil and Livingstone (2013) Using the lens of media studies and sociology and focalizing

the attention on gender issues the research seeks (1) to understand what adolescents think about this practice; (2) to understand why they use (or don't

use) to share photo or sexually explicit massages and what kind of risk/opportunity they find in these practices; (3) to understand the sense they give to

their choice; (4) to define the extent of Internet on the youth's experience on love, sex and its social construction. First of all, the paper will discuss about

the definition of sexting that in the literature frequently assumes different significances. Then the discussion will be focus of the main topic of the paper,

and so, the practice and the meanings that adolescents connect to sexting. The main questions that could be topics for the discussion are: (a) Is there

a new definition of intimacy among adolescents? (b) Are there gender differences related to the sexting and the meaning the adolescents give to it? (c)

How adolescents define and re-define gender role also trough sexting? (d) can we speak about a right to sext for adolescents? In conclusion, starting from

considering online and offline as part of a continuum, the paper wants to analyse the importance of the return of the body in the mediatized interaction and

the connection about this change and the cultural construction of gender by adolescents. References Attwood, F. (2006). Sexed up:Theorizing the sexualiza‑

tion of culture. Sexualities, 9(1), 77–94. Lippman, J. R., & Campbell, S. W. (2014). Damned if you do, damned if you don't… if you're a girl: Relational and

normative contexts of adolescent sexting in the united states. Journal of Children and Media, 8(4), 371–386. Ringrose, J., Harvey, L., Gill, R., & Livingstone,

S. (2013). Teen girls, sexual double standards and ‘sexting’: Gendered value in digital image exchange. Feminist Theory, 14(3), 305–323

PP 188

Exploring Girls’ Agency in Italian SNSs Context: Girls Negotiating Parents’ Discourses in Performing Gender Identity Online

A. Mainardi

, T. Krijnen

University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Sociology and Social Research, Milan, Italy

Erasmus University Rotterdam, Department of Media & Communication, Rotterdam, Netherlands

In January 2014, Beyoncé writes an essay in which she argues that gender equality is a myth. With this statement, feminism seems to have made a come‑

back as celebs like Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson and Cate Blanchett each have more or less outed themselves as feminists. Some even celebrate the 4

feminist wave.Women are thought to be able to cope with or resist gender equalities, emphasising equal rights on a legal level for example.While the pub‑

lic debates seem relatively celebratory with regard to feminism, within academia debates are ultimately more nuanced. Angela McRobbie, for examples,

shows how the emerging postfeminist scenario directs girls to a model of femininity that pacifies. Their individual experiences of identity and subjectivity,

notions inherited from feminism, are imbued with neo-liberal values, pushing them towards individualism and the reproduction of unequal relationships

of power between genders. Others, like Van Zoonen and Duits would argue for girls’ agency and their competencies in media consumption. Within this

debate we can recognize two paradigmatic figures that are used to interpret the experience of girls: the 'empowered girl" and the "girl at risk”. However,

Gender and Communication

(GEC01–GEC09)