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The past decades have seen efforts to increase digital inclusion for women worldwide, with the ultimate aim to advance gender equality. However, progress is slow, despite important advances in moving beyond a focus on 'digital access' (as measured by network coverage and hardware) towards a more holistic understanding of inclusion that considers abilities, awareness and agency. Here, we propose a further theoretical shift that draws on social system theories (e.g., Luhmann, 1984) and on the theory of 'intersecting inequalities' (Kabeer, 2010). We propose to understand the gender digital gap, particularly in mobile and internet usage, not merely descriptively but dynamically – since even factors like agency and awareness change over time – by applying concepts of feedback loops, low-equilibrium traps, multi-dimensional exclusion and systems analysis. This paper highlights how women may become locked in a state of low-inclusion unless the feedback loops between digital, social, economic and political exclusion are addressed through policies that tackle multiple dimensions. The paper reviews research on gender digital gaps with particular focus on developing countries, and with direct implications for policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By analyzing Douyin users' mediated interactions with interracial couples in everyday contexts, this paper addresses the convergence of anti-blackness and domestic gender tension on Chinese social media. It introduces the perspective of 'multiple triangulations' to examine discussions of four types of interracial relationships on Douyin: black women and Chinese men, black men and Chinese women, white women and Chinese men, and white men and Chinese women. This approach complicates explanations of why Chinese social media users have been rejecting blackness in a potentially mixed-race China in relation to whiteness and Chineseness. It also illuminates how they have encoded gender tension in marriages in China into anti-black discourses. Additionally, this research highlights the race-blind digital infrastructure and the dynamic connotations of anti-black racism in contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Red Table Talk, a web series exclusively aired on Facebook Watch, represents the narrative of intergenerational Black women who tackle critical conversations. The show, developed by Jada Pinkett-Smith and featuring her daughter and mother, brings in special guests for discussions on race, gender identity, sexual and mental health, co-parenting, and relationships. This paper relies on both qualitative and quantitative data from an audience survey, supplemented by thematic analysis to explore these themes. We show how the alternative media model of Facebook Watch and the series itself act as rebellions against institutionalized narratives that perpetuate stereotypes against people of color. We examine how Black women creators reclaim agency and resist generational forms of silencing by authoring a counter-narrative at the intersection of their lived cultural experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do gender and class work together to shape adolescent girls' unequal access to mobile phones within the family in Mumbai, India? What are the everyday practices and cultural logics upon which these inequalities are built? This paper addresses these questions by using a mixed-methods study of 59 group interviews and 268 surveys with adolescents aged 13–15 in Mumbai. Taking an intersectional analytical framework, the findings show how gender and class together create varying standards of 'respectable femininity' and class distinction that families aspire to and cultivate in adolescent girls. The mobile phone can be seen as both a threat and a necessity to the maintenance of these standards of respectability, resulting in families variously enabling or constraining access to mobile phones by girls. Rather than interpreting the findings through binaries of low-income/high-income or empowered/constrained, I instead consider how classed ideals of 'respectable femininity' create different aspirational conditions for girls belonging to each class group, and form the cultural frames of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the ethics of internet research on community controversies. Specifically, it focuses on controversies concerning gendered, social interaction in hacking communities. It addresses the question how internet researchers should treat and represent content that individuals controversially discussed online. While many internet sources are likewise technically public, they may yet suggest distinct privacy expectations on the part of involved individuals. In internet research, ethical decision-making regarding which online primary sources may be, e.g., referenced and quoted or require anonymisation is still ambiguous and contested. Instead of generalisable rules, the context dependence of internet research ethics has been frequently stressed. Given this ambiguity, the paper elaborates on ethical decisions and their implications by exploring the case of a controversial hackerspaces.org mailing list debate. In tracing data across different platforms, it analyses the emerging ethico-methodological challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early days of the internet it was hoped that going online would bring communities together, help people find each other and that social media would become a powerful advocacy tool as communities could better campaign for the causes they believed in. Instead, gender discrimination, trolling and abusive behavior are rife on the internet. This introduction provides context on women in the digital world. The papers in this special issue include research on gender and politics from political actors' and citizens' perspective, they examine the importance of the online access to information, the role of women within the tech industry, they look at online harassment, at how women are treated online, and how NGOs deal with evidence of mistreatment of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of work is changing, from secure, full-time jobs to a 'risk regime' characterized by alternative work arrangements and a pervasive sense of insecurity [Beck, U. (2000). The brave new world of work. Polity: Malden, MA]. While these conditions resemble those long endured by cultural workers, scholarly exploration of these similarities has stalled: Digital optimists extoll the value of self-enterprise, while critical cultural scholars decry such claims as a smokescreen for deteriorating labor conditions, which inevitably promote insecurity (or 'precarity'). This paper attempts to end the stalemate by proposing three measures of insecurity and applying them to a group of cultural workers—romance authors. Through a survey of 4270 romance authors, I show their median income nearly doubled after the rise of digital self-publishing, while other authors' incomes dropped. Interviews with 78 authors and editors suggest this resilience relates to professional tactics developed in the 1980s amidst pervasive gender bias. Specifically, romance authors developed an 'open-elite' network, an arrangement historically associated with innovation, which was later amplified by interactive communication technologies [Powell, W. W., & Owen-Smith, J. (2012). An open elite: Arbiters, catalysts, or gatekeepers in the dynamics of industry evolution. In The emergence of organizations and markets (pp. 466–495). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press]. This research contributes to debates around self-employment, cultural work and precarity. It shows increased insecurity is not inevitable in the risk regime, but rather that specific professional practices, enhanced by ICTs, can increase workers' resilience.]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines gender-biases on Stack Overflow, the world's largest question-and-answer forum of programming knowledge. Employing a non-binary gender identification built on usernames, I investigate the role of gender in shaping users' experience in technical forums. The analysis encompasses 11-years of activity, across levels of expertise, language, and specialism, to assess if Stack Overflow is really a paradise for programmers. I first examine individual users, asking if there are gender differences in key user metrics of success, focusing on reputation points, user tenure, and level of activity. Second, I test if there are gender-biases in how technical knowledge is recognised in the question-answer format of the platform. Third, using social network analysis I investigate if interaction on Stack Overflow is organised by gender. Results show that sharing and recognising technical knowledge is dictated by users' gender, even when it is operationalised beyond a binary. I find that feminine users receive lower scores for their answers, despite exhibiting higher effort in their contributions. I also show that interaction on Stack Overflow is organised by gender. Specifically, that feminine users preferentially interact with other feminine users. The findings emphasise the central role of gender in shaping interaction in technical spaces, a necessity for participation in the masculine-dominated forum. I conclude the study with recommendations for inclusivity in online forums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Australian Chinese diaspora's digital dating experiences afforded by both Chinese-language and global English digital dating/hook-up services. Digital dating offers an interesting context for an analysis of the Australian Chinese diaspora's interracial romantic and sexual engagements, through which we can examine how race, and its intersections with ethnicity, gender and sexuality is represented, consumed, and practised. We were able to reach three conclusions from the participant experiences presented in this article. First, digital dating and its constitutive norms play a role in maintaining certain tropes of cultural representation of racial subjects and securing cultural power within an overarching system of white racial entitlement. Second, we found that agency is key to understanding the female participants' dating experiences. Third, the male participants tended to form negative and sometimes distorted social perceptions of white Australian women as a result of being neglected on English-language dating sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital media have significantly contributed to the articulating and shaping of the contemporary debate about gender and sexuality, often disrupting numerous stereotypes promoted insistently by the media. This contribution aims to deepen the relationships among gender, sexuality, and media, through the analysis of a specific case study based on the Fertility Day campaign, an initiative launched by the Italian Ministry of Health to draw attention to the country's fertility and counteract the falling birth rates. The campaign intended to encourage couples to have more sex and conceive more babies, focusing on 'the beauty of maternity and paternity'. But the campaign was denounced as being offensive, sexist, and ageist, triggering numerous online reactions. In this paper we present the findings of a content analysis of 5,300 public tweets characterized by the hashtag #fertilityday. These data show how hundreds of citizens used the campaign's hashtag to construct a counter-narrative around the right and the choice to have a baby (Vicari et al., 2018. Political hashtag publics and counter-visibility: A case study of #fertilityday in Italy. Information, Communication & Society, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1555271). We focused our attention on how female users narratively reframed the institutional discourse, shifting the topic from the problem of 'fertility', in a strict sense, to the importance of welfare policies capable of supporting maternity and facilitating gender equality. We consider this case study as emblematic for its power of being an indicator of progress in public discourse on the sociocultural construction of the role of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines how gendered hierarchies and relations, particularly those between hegemonic masculinities and non-hegemonic gendered identities, manifest between students at a university in North West England in and through forms of online harassment, using data collected from a large-scale study (N= 810) conducted in this institutional context. Key findings indicate that some young masculinities subordinate non-hegemonic gendered identities, namely those who identify as female and transgender, in and through gendered and sexualised forms of online harassment or are complicit in these practices. Male research participants are more likely than any other gendered group to use 'free speech' discourses to legitimate online harassment directed at transgendered and cis-female subjects. Some white, heterosexual males, who occupy a dominant position in Britain's gendered and racial social order, appropriate discursive practices associated with identity politics, which have historically been used by non-hegemonic gendered identities to challenge social inequities, to claim they are 'victims' of this society. We argue that these new emerging forms of hybridised hegemonic masculinity, which appropriate and reconfigure the discursive practices of non-hegemonic gendered identities, reproduce and conceal patriarchal systems of power in digitised spaces. We suggest more research is needed to better understand these practices, their relationship to alt-right influencers and men's rights activists, and their implications for digital hegemonic masculinities at the local level of UK university campuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the perception and negotiation of gender representations and scripts among Italian dating app users. Adopting a gender perspective and a socio-technical framework, it describes how dating app affordances support the performance of gender scripts and explores how users negotiate gender scripts. We conducted 8 focus groups involving 39 dating app users from a variety of gender and sexual orientations. The results show how shared usage norms and practices disclose dominant gender scripts at play, and illustrate how some users try to subvert them. Participants are aware of a number of traditional and stereotypical gender scripts and broadly adhere to them; nevertheless, such scripts are partially reframed in the context of dating apps. Dating apps are mainly understood in terms of affordances, when participants highlight the ways in which they or their mates reduce the incidence of traditional scripts. On the other hand, dating apps' constraints emerge when some users try to detach themselves from common scripts, or when they struggle to perform traditional scripts in a context they perceive as inadequate. Results highlight how dating app users negotiate gender scripts: affordances and constraints of dating apps shape user practices and influence the performance and 'de-inscription' of gender scripts, without directly fostering the adoption of alternative scripts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The socio-technological context of health care wherein patient-consumer involvement is central increases the importance of examining the impact of Internet information on health-related attitudes and behavior. This paper examined the extent to which deployment of e-health information is associated with patient distrust and non-adherence. We examined the hypothesized associations in gender-stratified subsamples to uncover whether any differential patterns of associations exist among women and men. Our analyses allowed for estimation of significant covariate effects at the composite index and item level for both men and women while controlling for the moderation effect of race/ethnicity. Results indicate differential outcomes for patient distrust and non-adherence depending on socio-demographic characteristics. Findings suggest that it is not just health-related information that influences health-related behavior, but also mechanisms through which socio-demographic characteristics shape whether Internet use is associated with distrust and patient non-adherence. e-Health information consumers are overall less trustful and more likely to deviate from health care provider treatment. Non-adherence among those who consume e-health information is more pronounced for non-white women. Highly educated non-white men were more likely to diverge from their medical care provider's treatment recommendations than White men. Given the increasing diversification of the demographic profile of the U.S. population, understanding the dynamics though which health-related Internet use becomes racialized and gendered represents a critical contribution to the literature on Internet and health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary selected 'selfie' as the word of the year. Since that time, selfies have been much discussed in the media and increasingly in academia. Selfie culture is gendered not only because women take more selfies than men but also because women's selfie-taking is both criticized (as narcissistic) and defended (as empowering) on feminist grounds. In this paper, we draw upon the existing literature on selfies as well as 260, short 'person-on-the-street' interviews with young people (mostly Latinas, mostly in California) about their selfie-taking practices to demonstrate that selfies are indeed a gendered genre and an important if the overlooked form of gendered media production in a postfeminist context. The data reveal the disciplinary function of the narcissism narrative for young women, their navigation of gendered and sexual double-standards as well their understandings of 'publicness' when posting selfies, their ambivalence about feedback, and their commitment to individualized notions of empowerment realized through 'control' of the gaze. We argue that self-production is never simply about the self because cultural filters are at work that shape in systematic ways how women envision and enact female subjectivity and visibility. Our goal is not to determine whether selfies are good or bad; rather, we explore what they suggest about the gendered politics of self-production for young women of color in the new 'gaze economy' of social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces key findings from a large-scale, online survey of women in the ICT industry across England undertaken between October 2004 and October 2005. Placed in a theoretical framework which draws on critical perspectives from within information systems (IS), and the sociology of gender and of technology, the authors examine some of the issues faced by female ICT professionals. The context for this paper is the ongoing under-representation of women in the ICT industry in England, and the difficulties that the industry is having retaining women, particularly at senior levels. Data are presented on the demographic composition of women in the ICT industry in England. In addition the authors focus on their management of domestic and caring responsibilities, including changes in working practices they have experienced as a result of these responsibilities. These data are particularly pertinent given current government and industry debates regarding the 'work-life balance' and 'flexible working' in the ICT industry, partially as a response to the need for a more diverse ICT workforce. Alongside information on the career histories of female ICT professionals, the authors review their perceptions of pay and reward packages, working environments, the skills they hold, and the recognition they may or may not receive in their current posts. They present reports of a 'long-hours' and 'presenteeism' culture in the ICT industry, and the existence of gendered informal networks in ICT. They also examine female ICT professionals' perceptions of the current and future-possible image of the industry. The findings highlight the continued masculinization of ICT work, and some of the difficulties faced by women working in what remain statistically and symbolically male-dominated environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new media industries are popularly regarded as cool, creative and egalitarian. This view is held by academics, policy-makers and also by new media workers themselves, who cite the youth, dynamism and informality of new media as some of its main attractions. This paper is concerned with what this mythologized version of new media work leaves out, glosses over and, indeed, makes difficult to articulate at all. Themes include pervasive insecurity, low pay, and long hours but the particular focus of the paper is on gender inequalities in new media work. Despite its image as 'cool', non-hierarchical and egalitarian, the new media sector, this paper will argue, is characterized by a number of entrenched and all too old-fashioned patterns of gender inequality relating to education, access to work and pay. Moreover, a number of new forms of gender inequality are emerging, connected – paradoxically – to many of the features of the work that are valued – informality,autonomy,flexibility and so on. Drawing on a study of 125 freelance new media workers in six European countries, this paper explores these issues and argues that the new forms of sexism in new media represent a serious challenge to its image of itself as cool, diverse and egalitarian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the role of instant messaging chat groups to support teacher training and gender equity initiatives in Kenyan refugee camps. Our findings are based on survey data with refugee teachers in Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps (n = 203), group interviews with refugee teachers in Kakuma (n = 21), and interviews with international instructors of teacher training programs in Nairobi, Toronto, and Vancouver (n = 14). In our analysis, we apply amplification theory, feminist science and technology studies paradigms, and considerations of transnational approaches to understand the use of instant messaging among refugee teacher communities. Our framework explores how social and cultural norms are amplified through transnational text and instant messaging related to teacher training and in support of gender equity. Peer-to-peer group chats draw on transnational learning opportunities and expand these engagements through group chats between men and women refugee teachers across camps as well as through community engagement about gender equity initiatives in education. International instructors identify both value and hesitation in navigating the quantity and content of these communications, such as learning more about refugee teachers' daily lives in the camps and concern about following and managing the amount of communication that can ensue over chat groups. Our work has practical implications for transnational teacher training programs in refugee camps, illuminates how mobile technology and chat groups allow women and men in the community to engage and support girls' education, and questions how text messaging affects the lived and day-to-day experiences of women refugee teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital inequality is a burgeoning field of study across disciplines, yet few papers address categorical digital inequality in cross-national samples. Using the only available cross-national data on access to Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) disaggregated by gender from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), I add to existing literature by examining factors associated with women's unequal access to mobile phones across 51 countries. The largest of such samples, the ITU data demonstrates that the type and levels of gender inequality in mobile phone use are not consistent throughout countries. In fact, the distribution is quite variable, from incorporating a small-sample of nations where women have marginally higher access, to sub-samples close to parity, to a larger sub-sample where women are at a substantial disadvantage. Using Quantile Regression Methods to assess these variations, I test how major gender and international development theories inform inequality patterns. My findings suggest that women's wellbeing, as measured by their access to modern contraception (i.e., reproductive autonomy), overwhelmingly promotes women's relative access to mobile phones, regardless of preexisting levels of access. Other perspectives like the growth imperative and world polity theory show some staggered associations along the distribution that remain substantively inconclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 2016, racist, misogynistic harassers attacked comedienne Leslie Jones on Twitter and on her personal website, which they hacked and flooded with sexist and racist imagery stolen largely from her personal accounts. Through a multiplatform discourse analysis of the Leslie Jones attack, this paper examines the connections between platform vulnerabilities and the vulnerabilities of women of color, as well as the links between the rise of the alt-right and an increase in explicitly racist, misogynistic behaviors. Three key themes emerged from the analysis: messages of support and affirmation; the need for intervention; and the connection between this incident, systemic racism and sexism, and the rise of the alt-right. These themes serve as a bridge between the vulnerabilities of platforms and of women of color in those digital spaces and beyond. The supportive awareness campaigns and calls to action that issue publics launched online attempted to discursively ‘patch’ two perceived vulnerabilities - of Twitter as a platform and of Jones herself. However, in response to these ‘patches,’ members of the alt-right condemned Twitter and mainstream media for marginalizing their conservative voices, using this discourse to bolster their performance of victimization and oppression. Overall, this case study provides insight into the dynamics at work in the rise of the alt-right and online harassment, with particular attention to the significance of digital media, celebrity, and popular feminism in the ongoing political shifts in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potential affordances of applying a feminist ethics of care approach to community informatics practices in public internet access facilities. As feminist technology scholars have long observed, technology and technoculture are strongly encoded as masculine, privileging traits such as scientific knowledge, rationality, objectivity, and distance. These characteristics are expressed in traditional infomediary practices in a variety of ways, including notions of expertise, ways of conceptualizing technology, emphasis on skills attainment, and deficit-based models of user behavior. In contrast, ethics of care emphasizes the importance of relational and situated knowledge, pluralistic voices and experiences, and relationships bound by mutual interdependence. Traditionally, caring has been feminized and thus necessarily excluded from technoculture and relegated to invisible and unpaid labor. Caring and associated affective labor practices remain an under-examined subject in infomediary practices. Public libraries and community technology centers are logical places to explore for care work, given that they share many characteristics of the spaces where care work has historically been performed. We argue that an ethics of care framework has several possible affordances for infomediary practices in these institutions, including highlighting the gendered power dynamics that define and shape existing practices; distributing care work and making existing care work visible; and envisioning a more holistic and ethical approach to engaging diverse publics. We translate Tronto’s seven warning signs for ‘bad care’ in institutions into seven positive guidelines for providing ‘good care’ in public internet access facilities, then contextualize these for community informatics institutions and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that at least some portion of the digital ‘gender gap’ is a rhetorical construction that measures digital literacy by possession of legacy knowledge–knowledge co-constructed within the technology field where women are largely absent. This paper describes some culturally situated discourses and practices that shape the development of online spaces in subtly gendered ways. It describes Pinterest, a popular social bookmarking site overwhelmingly populated by women, and its design features that largely do not rely on legacy knowledge for engaged member participation. This paper finds that, first, the culturally situated practices of technologists introduce hegemonic narratives through design features that marginalize some female users. Second, some descriptions of the gender gap are rhetorically constructed, relying on evidence of legacy knowledge rather than examining the outcomes of women's online practices. Third, narrowing the gender gap will require a re-seeing and re-thinking about how ‘digital literacy’ is defined and measured. This paper offers insights into some of the barriers between women and digital fluency that are inadvertently constructed by the tacit knowledge of those who develop technologies – knowledge that is often inaccessible to women. Digital literacy theorists, instructors, and technology professionals may engage this research to either alter their end products so that the operation of those products does not assume tacit, legacy knowledge, or, alternatively, they may find ways to make this tacit knowledge more visible so that end users may actively engage the hegemonic narratives encoded in the products rather than passively consume them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tensions between empowerment and exploitation are especially heightened when discussing the activities of children and youth online. Discourse in the mainstream press around youth participation in online spaces wavers between anxiety and hope, and corporate frameworks and dataveillance practices structure many of these sites. Yet little attention has been paid to the underlying architecture of social norms that work with stereotyped visions of gendered play to provide the foundation for the interactions of young technology users. This paper investigates how domestic practices constrain and enable particular forms of user participation, focusing in particular on gendered access to digital play and notions of technology use. Using data from interviews with 25 young people aged 8-15 and their parents, this paper examines how social norms work in tandem with essentializing design to mutually constitute gendered expectations around technology use. It then considers how these young users and their parents in turn challenge and reaffirm these constraining and enabling norms through their practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to use cultural and technical capital as a sensitizing framework for exploring novel ways of thinking about information and communication technology and social inequalities. This paper takes a particular focus on three weblogs in which women of different ages, social classes, and races constructed discourses on Black womanhood. The participants employed their personal experiences, structural analyses of racism and sexism, media criticism, and aesthetic arguments about Black women's worth, beauty, and value to articulate their vision of Black womanhood. In earlier times, these conversations would have taken place in beauty salons, or other gendered spaces where these conversations could proceed unknown to broader society. In today's information society, these conversations have spilled over to the Internet. It is our contention that this phenomenon - the articulation of cultural capital mediated through technical prowess - is a strong argument against the deficit models of minority information and communication technology use promoted by digital divide research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking the computer game as an example of digital technology the paper argues that the embodied aesthetics of technology use are an important dimension of its implication in gender. Drawing on ideas from Pierre Bourdieu and Nigel Thrift the discussion rejects analyses that focus on video game content and asserts the importance of looking at what players do with their hands in the course of game play. The experience of form and space in games are best understood as part of a popular cultural employment of dance as a method for the navigation of socio-technical complexes. This situates computer games as a variety of gendered performance that is conflicted and not straightforward, combining agonistic and aesthetic strains. The paper reflects on the importance of using dance terminology to comprehend this, in terms of our reflexive understanding of computer games, gamers and gaming as a cultural practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an analysis of mobile phone practices among Palestinian Israeli teenage girls, framed within a discussion about the domestication of communication technologies, women and the telephone, and Palestinian teenage girls in Israel. The paper constructs a detailed account of mobile phone use among Palestinian Israeli girls who, at the time of the fieldwork (2003-2006), used mobile phones given to them by their illicit boyfriends, unbeknownst to their parents. The analysis explores the ways in which the phone use dialectically reaffirmed and challenged intergenerational and cross-gender relationships; and reflects on the notion of 'domestication' as a framework for analysing mobile communication media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on mobile phone use by a young minority ethnic group as a medium through which to explore diversity and technology use in everyday life. Recent research with young people has shown that mobile phones are instrumentally, socially and emotionally important but few have problematized the homogeneous concept of 'youth'. This paper argues for increased recognition of the intersections of social categories such as youth, gender and ethnicity with technologies, specifically mobile phones, in order to understand complexity of use. Drawing on new empirical, qualitative data from an urban area in the North East of England we explore the focus group narratives of young Pakistani-British Muslim women and men focusing on the notion of 'shifting' gendered and cultural identities and social practices, developed and reworked in relation to the use of mobile phones. We look at the gendered dynamics of mobile use, including gender talk and text, and ask whether the young women and men experience mobiles differently in everyday life. We also explore the ways in which mobiles are used to create 'space of one's own' and the gendered dynamics of remaining connected, especially to key peer groups. The paper concludes with the assertion that in order to fully explore the mutability of youth cultures across space and time, we need to develop a more dynamic concept of 'mobile selves' by exploring the place and meaning of technologies such as mobile phones in the rich tapestries of young people's lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines gender equality activities in the context of information and communication technology (ICT), traces the social and cultural relations that intertwine with them and discusses the understandings of gender, equality and ICT maintained in them. The aim of the paper is to analyse how liberal equal treatment actions prevail in ICT, although it is well known that liberal politics alone do not succeed in promoting gender equality, and not even in fulfilling its own goal of raising the proportions of women in technology. The study is based on oral history interviews with 30 women who have committed important parts of their lives to gender equality activities through several decades, as well as follow-up studies of women's ICT groups that aimed to promote equality in ICT expertise, both of these studies being conducted in Finland. The interviewed gender equality workers are competent promoters of gender and equality. However, they need to negotiate their aims, for example, in order to get funding, within national and transnational institutional practices, with actors who have little knowledge regarding the social construction of gender, equality or ICT. The managerial terms 'efficiency' and 'good practice' then take over the understandings of the gender equality activities in ICT, mainly organized as projects, and further emphasize the measurable goals often linked to liberal gender equality actions. These terms have material consequences and while gender equality projects continue to provide possibilities for unexpected changes, they are locked within liberal politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Console based video games are an increasingly familiar and engaging technology in the living room and as such, warrant critical attention. Considerations of their impact on the home have been widely regarded by new media academics as technological innovation and by social scientists as symptomatic of a decline in social and familial connectedness. In an attempt to move the debate beyond discussions of machine functionality and social crisis, this paper argues for a reframing of some of the ways we think about the impact of entertainment technologies on the home. It presents the notion of the digital hearth as a concept that shows how cultural meanings associated with the home can be transformed through gaming and changing patterns of consumption. The research examines the domestication of the console through cultural histories of the living room, the social context of electronic media, and ethnographic studies. It argues that the concept of the digital hearth represents a re-organization of the spaces in which collective engagement occurs and a shifting of the cultural norms associated with that collective engagement. In these spaces not only does the living room become the site of collective engagement but also the form of that engagement changes with the digital hearth acting as the focal point around social interaction. The paper traces parallels between the appropriation of television and of radio into the home and the domestication of the console while arguing that the console represents a shifting of spatial and social norms of domestication from previous electronic media. In addition it represents gaming in the home as symptomatic of changes from public to private forms of entertainment which constitutes a changing geographic base for social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can community informatics initiatives be sustained? This paper argues that, in the fast moving area of ICT and on the constantly shifting ground of community-sector practice, sustainability depends upon adaptability. We develop the concept of 'learning communities' – as developed by a women's ICT project – to meet the need for democratic, inclusive and on-going innovation in women's organizations and the wider community/voluntary sector. Reflecting on the Women Connect project, we conceptualize 'learning communities' as dialogic and 'playful' spaces within which members can draw creatively on their differences while constructing shared knowledge. This approach, it is argued, can lead towards a new way of conceptualizing knowledge, new approaches to learning, and new practice for community-based and women's organizations in relation to the use of ICT. The paper starts by describing the Women Connect project, and then introduces the idea of learning 'in community'. We analyse issues relating to the use of the term 'community' in relevant discourses, arguing for an approach which emphasizes agency in our use of this term – the 'doing' of community within a context of shared projects, obligations and goals. Weaddress some difficulties involved in working across social differences, while arguing that these differences – which may make the practice of community uncomfortable – can also facilitate their emergence in the new form of 'learning communities'. Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of 'the Borderlands', Nira Yuval-Davis's concept of 'transversal politics' and Maria Lugone'sconcept of 'world-travelling', we analyse community-sector processes of innovation and change agency, as they have found expression within Women Connect. We conclude by arguing that the current, outcome-driven, model for funding voluntary sector organizations acts to actively inhibit the development of learning communities – and the sustainable innovatory practice they can produce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the Trump administration's attempts to narrow down the definition of gender to biologically determined sex at birth to the everyday life gendered performances in digital platforms, from increasing representations of LGBTQI+ in TV programmes to the popularity of PornHub, the relations between gender, sexuality and media are ubiquitous and deeply embedded in everyday life. This Special Issue of Information, Communication and Society draws together cutting-edge contributions on the themes of Gender and Sexuality and Media. Showcasing the work of experienced and internationally renowned scholars and some less experienced but no less relevant voices of emerging scholars. The research upon which the contributions are based analyse media both in terms of representation and agency exploring media texts and the practices of media production and consumption. The special issue provides an accessible and enjoyable, discussion of many of the major themes pertinent to differing uses of digital and other media related to the field of Gender and Sexuality. Investigating nuances of contemporary sex and gender scripts as they are played out in popular media and challenging the heteronormative and sexist performances often encountered. It offers insights upon both 'traditional' and digital media and in some cases illustrates how those two have morphed making it sometimes difficult to clearly define boundaries between the traditional and the digital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decolonial-focused journalisms allows Ecuadorian indigenous women to exercise their right to revolution by deconstructing ideological paradigms through their freedom of the press. Previous research has predominantly concentrated on examining the aspects of poverty, inequality, and marginalized experiences within the realm of political communication. In contrast, this research takes a qualitative methodology, employing biographical narratives infused with insights from disciplines such as legal anthropology, feminist epistemology, decolonial studies and situated knowledge. The study delves into the exploration of three crucial variables through open interviews: (a) Precondition of journalistic practice, including the right to education, language, and access to technologies; (b) Perceived violence and inequalities based on gender, ethnicity, and journalism; (c) The relationship between the resistance exhibited by the interviewees and the configuration of the journalistic work. Consequently, this legitimate act of civil disobedience empowers indigenous women to establish their brand of justice, while their unique forms of journalisms contribute to the construction of their historical truth. This truth serves as a contrasting, denying, or even complementary narrative to the traditional truth. The use of the term 'journalisms' in the plural form highlights the fact that different indigenous groups employ diverse grammatical structures and methodologies that diverge from the conventions of the singular hegemonic press. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media offer new opportunities for women in politics, but also new ground for the expression of bias and stereotypes. Drawing upon literature about mediated representations of women in politics, gendered digital violence, and intersectionality, this study explores how Twitter users portray indigenous women leaders who were elected as representatives for Chile's Constitutional Convention. We use a mixed-methods approach based on a manual content analysis of tweets (N = 6,000), aimed at comparing the main attributes associated to indigenous and non-indigenous women Convention representatives in users' tweets, as well as the valence of these tweets and the engagement of Twitter users, in two time points – the inaugural and the closing days of the Convention. This is complemented with a qualitative thematic analysis focused on tweets directed toward Mapuche women (N = 3,352). Our findings show that indigenous and non-indigenous women's capacities were discussed by Twitter users, and although both groups experienced online hostility while serving for the Convention, indigenous leaders received negative messages notoriously based on their ethnic background: tweets were mostly positive at the beginning of the process, but became more negative by the end, suggesting a narrative arc that went from an ephemeral moment of symbolic reparation to the restoration of prejudices and stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue brings together contributions and theoretical insights that probe ways through which gender interacts with context to shape non-Western-based political communication trends. It seeks to address the need to diversify theory and research in political communication. Our key contribution is to provide empirically-guided, contextually-shaped and methodologically-rich research on digital political communication strategies that facilitate women's political participation in geographical areas underrepresented in the scholarship. We do this in five ways. First, feminist approaches to digital political communication have rarely been studied this way, focusing exclusively on previously unaddressed developments in non-Western settings while also theorizing their contributions to communication scholarship through a special issue format in a credible journal that retains a wider audience. Second, it is of scholarly interest to know whether women politicians in richer and poor countries grapple with the same issues when it comes to political communication. Third, we provide novel ways to expand scholarship on women's digital political participation through incorporation of indigenous knowledge and practices. Fourth, the diversity of fresh voices coupled with pioneering findings assembled in this special issue is encouraging in a field dominated by a few. Finally, the number of women vying for political office in the Global South is increasing. Therefore, studying how they are faring on the political frontline has a significant bearing on how current and future studies within the remit of understudied non-Western digital political communication can and should be framed, paving way for new and better understandings on the region and its multifaceted political perturbations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the constraints on women's political participation in Sudan and the lack of a unified feminist agenda due to the performative involvement of elite female politicians. It focuses on the No to Women's Oppression Initiative (NtoWRI), a civil society group that utilized both digital and traditional communication methods to advance a more inclusive women's rights agenda. NtoWRI's successful campaign for the ratification of CEDAW and the Maputo Protocol was attributed, in part, to the group's radical inclusivity towards marginalized women. The involvement of grassroots women's groups with the margins provides an opportunity for social justice, amplifying the voices of marginalized communities and linking their struggles to broader social movements. The article emphasizes the need to confront the male-dominated power structures in Sudan with a feminist perspective to establish a genuine feminist collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, nonwhites, globalists and elites are plotting to eliminate the white race and its dominance through anti-white policies and increased immigration. In that context, abortion among white women is perceived by white nationalists (WN) as a betrayal of their 'biological' and 'traditional' gender role – procreation of white babies. While WN condemn abortion among white women as a murderous sin, at times they encourage the practice among nonwhites to solve demographic threats to white dominance. In this study, we use mixed methods, combining unsupervised machine learning with close textual analysis of 30,725 posts including the term 'abortion' published on the WN website Stormfront between 2001 and 2017. We identify three broad themes: White genocide, focused on the conspiracy theory and detailing the active actors in its alleged execution; political, focused on political agendas and laws; and WN reproductive reasoning, articulating and justifying the contradiction between supporting abortion for nonwhites but not for whites via politics of difference that emphasize nonwhites' supposed inferior morality. We discuss WN's unique and explicitly racist discourse around a medical topic like abortion, a staple of the conservative and religious right for decades, and how it is used to alleviate their cognitive dissonance resulting from their dual-stance on abortion. Such discourse could be harnessed to recruit members into the movement and normalize extreme, racist ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on secularization theory, this paper analyzes religiosity's relationship with youths' Internet addiction tendencies via possible mediating Internet usage motivations (erotic, social, communication, entertainment and psychological escape). Using self-report questionnaire scales in a study of 1,596 Malaysian adolescent school students, a negative relationship between religiosity and Internet addiction tendency was found to be replicable for females across all four religions studied (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity). However, no such relationship was found for any of the corresponding male groups. This finding is discussed in terms of females being more likely than males to experience the spiritual element of religion and to adhere more to religious norms. The female religiosity – addiction relationship was found to be mediated by psychological escape motives for three of the four religious groups, and erotic motives for two of the groups. The former finding supports a previous claim that escape motives are a prime driver of Internet addictions. It is concluded that, via its prediction of religiosity's negative relationships with Internet usage, secularization theory plays a role in explaining lower likelihood of Internet addiction among more highly religious females, the finding being limited to females because of differing cross-gender socialization pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist standpoints are forms of knowledge that serve as critical insight about how a dominant society thinks and structures itself in relation to the oppression of marginalized groups. This research discusses the use of Third World feminist epistemology as theory and method in gender digital divide research to establish the consciousness of Appalachian women left behind in the information society and to enable them to define how information and communication technologies can be used effectively and meaningfully in their struggles to improve their situations. This paper draws from findings of an ethnographic study that examines how women in West Virginia negotiate the complexity of their identities as mothers, wives and workers, alongside the structural factors that create the conditions for them to engage in computer learning and use. It also discusses how non-economic concerns become central in discussions about their experiences and lives and identifies opportunities that will help them transcend their marginalized positions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reviews debates, approaches, and discourses on gender, technology and development. The aim is to contribute towards the understanding of the nature, concerns and contributions of ongoing research in the gender, information communication and technology for development field. It outlines the major themes and methodological approaches to the field by reviewing and calling for changes in the theoretical and empirical directions of this area of study. It concludes with analysis of major themes emanating from the field. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Employing qualitative methods and drawing from an intersectional framework which focusses on the multiple identities we all embody, this paper focusses on oppressions experienced by women of color in Xbox Live, an online gaming community. Ethnographic observations and narrative interviewing reveal that women of color, as outsiders failing to conform to the white male norm, face intersecting oppressions in main stream gaming. They are linguistically profiled within the space based on how they sound. Specifically, Latina women within the space experience nativism, racism, sexism, and even heterosexism as many identify as sexual minorities. African-American women experience racialized sexism stemming from the duality of their ascribed identities. The women within the study have responded by segregating from the larger gaming community and have created their own clans (similar to guilds) and game with other women. The purpose of the clans depends on the type of oppressions experienced by the women within the space. This article analyzes this behavior in the context of linguistic profiling showcasing that this type of behavior can only occur within the setting of anonymity and disinhibition. With the diffusion of advanced technologies in video gaming, there has been a displacement of real world inequalities into virtuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital inequality is a burgeoning field of study across disciplines, yet few papers address categorical digital inequality in cross-national samples. Using the only available cross-national data on access to Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) disaggregated by gender from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), I add to existing literature by examining factors associated with women's unequal access to mobile phones across 51 countries. The largest of such samples, the ITU data demonstrates that the type and levels of gender inequality in mobile phone use are not consistent throughout countries. In fact, the distribution is quite variable, from incorporating a small-sample of nations where women have marginally higher access, to sub-samples close to parity, to a larger sub-sample where women are at a substantial disadvantage. Using Quantile Regression Methods to assess these variations, I test how major gender and international development theories inform inequality patterns. My findings suggest that women's wellbeing, as measured by their access to modern contraception (i.e., reproductive autonomy), overwhelmingly promotes women's relative access to mobile phones, regardless of preexisting levels of access. Other perspectives like the growth imperative and world polity theory show some staggered associations along the distribution that remain substantively inconclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the prevalence of creative activity and sharing in an age when the barriers to disseminating material have been considerably lowered compared with earlier times. The authors use unique data to explore the extent to which young adults create video, music, writing and artistic photography, as well as the prevalence of sharing such material online. Findings suggest that despite new opportunities to engage in such distribution of content, relatively few people are taking advantage of these recent developments. Moreover, neither creation nor sharing is randomly distributed among a diverse group of young adults. Consistent with existing literature, creative activity is related to a person's socioeconomic status as measured by parental schooling. The novel act of sharing online, however, is considerably different by gender with men much more likely to engage in it. However, once internet user skill is controlled for, men and women are equally likely to post their materials on the Web. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper situates current discussions of women's position in ICTs in the wider context of feminist debates on gender and technology. While a common trend among early feminist theorists was a profound pessimism about the inherent masculinity of technology, this was replaced during the 1990s by an unwarranted optimism about the liberating potential of technoscience for women. This article gives an account of both technophobia and technophilia, arguing that recent approaches drawing on the social studies of technology provide a more subtle analysis. Avoiding both technological determinism and gender essentialism, technofeminist approaches emphasize that the gender-technology relationship is fluid and flexible, and that feminist politics and not technology per se is the key to gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional computing employment in Australia, as in most advanced economies, is highly sex segregated, reflecting well-rehearsed ideas regarding the masculinity of technology and computing culture. In this paper we are concerned with the processes of work organization that sustain and reproduce this gendered occupational distribution, focusing in particular on differences and similarities in working-time arrangements between public and private sectors in the Australian context. While information technology companies are often highly competitive workplaces with individualized working arrangements, computing professionals work in a wide range of organizations with different regulatory histories and practices. Our goal is to investigate the implications of these variations for gender equity outcomes, using the public/private divide as indicative of different regulatory frameworks. We draw on Australian census data and a series of organizational case studies to compare working-time arrangements in professional computing employment across sectors, and to examine the various ways employees adapt and respond. Our analysis identifies a stronger 'long hours culture' in the private sector, but also underlines the rarity of part-time work in both sectors, and suggests that men and women tend to respond in different ways to these constraints. Although the findings highlight the importance of regulatory frameworks, the organization of working time across sectors appears to be sustaining rather than challenging gender inequalities in computing employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the latest management assumptions and theories of playing at work, by examining how management strategies, especially relating to new media, invoke elements of play to create distinct and competing genres of discourse. After a brief overview of the latest management crisis of innovation, we will provide a few definitions of play, followed by a short summary of where play and other competing dialogues converge and overlap at worksites historically. This context will then enable us to present an ethnographic account of play at work at a non-profit forecast research firm known as the Institute for the Future, a site where notions of play are linked to a number of business and cultural discourses about the future of new media and presented in full relief. What we find is that while elements of play exist, the discourses that arise from it do not necessarily belong in the realm of play at all. Instead, notions of play at work are tied to wider historical frameworks acknowledging earlier 1960s American counter-cultural appeals for new values in management and worker self-actualization, and linked to a process for transforming that renewed impulse into the service of a networked economy in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In April 2021, The Walt Disney Company (Disney) announced the Ultimate Princess Celebration, 'a year-long event spotlighting the courage and kindness these Disney heroines inspire in fans all around the world' (Deitchman, 2021). Princesses have remained an important element of Disney's identity and the movies they create. Broadening research beyond these characters and examining a larger sample demonstrated distinctions in the characteristics present in Official Disney Princess (ODP) movies, Actual Princess (AP) movies, and the 45 in the full catalog (All-Movies) that are or share characteristics with Disney Princess Movies. This article compares the race, class, and gender of the protagonist and antagonist as well as other story elements of 45 animated or partially animated movies that typify Disney's 'Classics Period' between 1937 and 2017 across those three groups. This work examines the ways in which the ODP and AP are different from the overall catalog and violate some of the Disney norms to which we are accustomed while fully embracing others. The research found that while the Official Princess movies had more racial diversity in the main characters than the overall catalog, for example, they also had more stereotypical female villains, more magic, and more romance. Acknowledging these divisions can lead to more robust research where a research sample can be critically collected based on the topic of interest. This article provides a foundation for those examinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, mainstream digital gaming has long been marked by compulsory (hetero)sexuality and hypermasculine gender norms, making it an ideal arena for exploring gendered power relations. This article critically examines how the participation of Chinese women digital gamers has taken on a distinctive shape in the context of newly emerging local online games that serve as an extension of the market mechanism. We examine the players' experience of two games: namely, a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game, King of Glory (wangzhe rongyao), and an otome love simulation game, Evol LoveR (lian yu zhizuoren). Results of 31 in-depth qualitative interviews with Chinese women gamers show that Chinese women's gaming experience has been profoundly shaped by both changes and continuities in the norms governing Chinese women's participation in play, romance and sex. We conclude that Chinese MOBA and otome games are not isolated new media products, but actually part and parcel of a broader digital media economy which provides audiences and players with information and cues that reinforce the dominant view that women and men have fundamentally different characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research about online comment fields on news websites tends to foreground their potential for deliberative discussions whilst little attention is given to the ways these spaces reinforce existing gender inequalities. This study analyses online newspaper comments on articles about gender based violence to establish whether the historic marginalisation of women within public discussions is being reasserted online. Using thematic analysis, this study found that responses were characterised by disbelief. Posters questioned the type and nature of evidence that had been provided, they questioned whether these problems resulted from sexism and they questioned the feminist agenda behind the blogs. While voices expressing disbelief were dominant, there were counter-voices attempting to critique the scepticism by advocating for the importance of the lived experience women and girls. The study demonstrates that online comments on news websites operate as gendered spaces that can marginalise women from the public discussion of social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online, anyone's words can easily be amplified – and on Twitter, the platform's algorithm highlights tweets that gain attention from other users, which can exponentially reinforce a tweet's popularity. Moreover, retweets can help spread a message well beyond the reach of its original poster. Thus, users' interactions with posts containing or making reference to racism or sexism both illuminate the ways individuals accept, challenge, or engage with racism and sexism online, and shape how those messages spread. Using an original dataset of 59.5 million tweets, I test how particular features of messages referencing Black and Asian women predict user engagement (retweets, likes, and replies). This analysis further focuses on messages including terms that express racist or sexist content. Generally, messages including covert racist or sexist insults have a modest positive effect on all measures of user engagement (retweets, likes, and replies), which may suggest that social media environments allow individuals the time and opportunity to contend with topics that can be more difficult in-person. Additionally, variations in engagement with tweets that include references to women, Black or Asian individuals implies that users respond differently to messages involving references to and normative images of different racial, ethnic, and gendered identities. This research illuminates how specific manifestations of racialized and gendered language referencing women, Black and Asian people can not only encourage more engagement, but also share, accept, or challenge messages about marginalized identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the communication styles of male and female candidates on Facebook during the 2017 parliamentary election campaign in the Czech Republic. It tests the assumption that female candidates engage in a more personal and interactive style of communication than male candidates. The Czech Republic provides a hard test of this hypothesis given that the electoral system poses weak incentives for candidates to run personal campaigns and the political culture exhibits strong gender stereotypes. We analyze the use of personalized content, technological disclosure, and interactivity in 1637 Facebook posts created by 227 candidates. The findings are in line with previous research and show that female candidates did not significantly differ from male candidates in the way they communicated on social networking sites (SNSs). The study extends our understanding of how communication styles are used in a political context. It suggests that politics presents a specific context which motivates politicians to pursue communication styles that overturn traditional stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]