Search

This article introduces the idea of 'affective coding' as a form of affectively loaded, digital social steganography – a form of hiding messages – as it presents findings from interviews with new fathers struggling to cope with and disclose mental illnesses, against the context of cultures of silencing. While previous expositions of online social steganography have considered its role in privacy management or its employment in concealing identities, we conceptualise affective coding as an agentic and discursive-material digital practice of attempted revelation, occupying a liminal space between silence and more explicit attempts to reach out, disclose and seek support. Our findings show men undertaking a range of seemingly minor online acts, each demonstrating subtle strategies of managing self-disclosure and social media architecture, and each encoded with a substantial amount of affective investment. We discuss motivations, strategies and outcomes of affective coding, before discussing its significance for self-disclosure in platform societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers young people's identities and privacy on social network sites through reflection on the analogy of the teenage bedroom as a means to understand such spaces. The notion therein of intimate personal space may jar with the scope and complexity of social media and, particularly, with recent emphasis on the challenges to privacy posed by such environments. I suggest, however, that, through increased use of access controls and a range of informal strategies, young people's everyday digital communication may not be as out of control as is sometimes inferred. Recent adaptations of the bedroom analogy indicate that social network sites retain intimacy and that their individual-centred format continues to facilitate the exhibition and mapping of identities. Although an awkward fit, I suggest the bedroom may still help us think through how social network sites can function as vital personal home territories in the midst of multi-spatial patterns of sociability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suggestions that the internet has facilitated existing trends towards the increasing disconnection of individuals from substantive communities have been balanced by a variety of empirical case studies demonstrating significant communal features on some online discussion forums. While recognizing the role of discussion forums in facilitating community, this article seeks to shift the focus of debate towards the rapidly increasing use of online journal style web logs (‘blogs’) as a form of social interaction. Ostensibly centred upon the individual rather than the group, yet increasingly interactive and socially oriented, interactive online journals appear particularly consistent with the notion of individualistic rather than group-centred patterns of sociability. The article explores this possibility in relation to case study research focused on the recent take-up of online journals by a group of individuals who previously participated in discussion forums associated with a music and fashion subculture known as the ‘goth’ scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various articles published within the issue on such topics as youth culture in late modernity, the transition from girlhood to sexual womanhood, and the goal of youth studies in general.