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AbstractThis project responds to calls by scholars to interrogate how gender was depicted on the early commercial internet. More broadly, it examines how the idea of “users” was and is constructed in different times and places. Specifically, it examines images—advertisements, photos, and other illustrations—and how they depicted gender norms and user behaviors on the internet—in their “idealized” forms. Our study looks at how magazines, such as Internet World and Yahoo! Internet Life shaped internet culture from the beginning. They differed from webzines in their crossover appeal to women, men, power users, and casual fans. We utilize a close reading of these primary sources and deploy a feminist historical approach to help understand how these images were constructed and received. In this, we are inspired by Megan Sapnar Ankerson and Jesse Lingel, with their research on the early civilian internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the framework of 'digitized narratives' to examine how, in the aftermath of the Gabby Petito case, survivors of narcissistic abuse turned to Twitter to share personal narratives and educate others about violence against women. Drawing on a qualitative content analysis of 204 tweets collected during Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the U.S. in October 2021, we argue that survivors of narcissistic abuse used #NarcissisticAbuse to build community, publicize the characteristics of narcissistic abuse, and encourage survivors to recognize warning signs and seek help. The strong educational focus in the discourse around #NarcissisticAbuse separates it from other social media movements (e.g., #MeToo, #WhyIStayed) in that women strategically drew on their personal narratives to describe the traits of a narcissist, the control mechanisms used to subdue victims, and the types of abuse they experienced. In doing so, they educated the public about the dangers of narcissistic abuse and raised awareness about this often less visible and less talked about form of abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the concept of carceral communication to focus attention on the role of communication in mass incarceration's racialized, criminal justice process. To argue that a communication perspective helps explain how individuals, neighborhoods, and prisons are linked together, the article uses publicly available indictments that charged three New York City youth gangs with violent crimes. It identifies three facets of carceral communication to demonstrate how and why mass incarceration is a communicative phenomenon. First, computer-mediated communication (CMC) has become the most sought-after type of criminal evidence because of its visibility and permanence. Second, law enforcement uses the interpersonal communication and neighborhood networks of incarcerated Black men for crime control and surveillance purposes. Third, carceral communication operates as a communication feedback process, in which marginalized, young, Black men under surveillance know they are being watched and respond to that surveillance with resistance that is also subject to criminalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secondary data collection practices are often opaque to platform users and researchers but known to shape individuals' life chances in significant and unequal ways. In this paper, we articulate a clear relationship between invisible, unwanted data collection and its adverse, downstream consequences for marginalized groups by examining instances in the criminal justice field where social media data function as criminal evidence. We show how social media, as a now common form of courtroom evidence, may structurally work against public defense attorneys and defendants with low socioeconomic status (SES). Drawing on casework interviews with public defenders in New York City, we illustrate the mechanisms by which low-SES criminal defendants are at a disadvantage through overbroad search warrants, asymmetrical cooperation, and prejudicial evidence. We discuss the lessons and implications of our case study for platform privacy and governance research and for the courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of social media evidence in sexual assault trials in Canada, focusing on cases with underage female victims. Teenage girls are among the heaviest social media users and face unique expectations regarding the performance of heteronormative gender norms. Society simultaneously encourages girls to enact gender roles that emphasize their femininity and sexuality and punishes them for acting according to these standards. When girls engage in performativity online, they leave behind a digital footprint that can be used against them at trial. Through a detailed case study of 14 publicly available judgments, we analyze how judges evaluate girls' social media content in sexual assault trials that feature a mistake of age defense. Drawing on social media research, legal studies, and the concept of performativity, we show that judges vary greatly in their understandings of gender norms and that this translates to divergent case outcomes. In the 'guilty' cases, the judges contextualize social media content as insufficient and unreliable, noting that it is common for youth to lie or embellish facts online. In the 'not guilty' cases however, the judges appear to take such evidence at face value and hold girls accountable for having provocative pictures or misrepresenting themselves online. Such practices are problematic because they perpetuate rape myths and misconceptions about victim behavior. We call for greater consideration of the socio-cultural norms that govern girls' social media use to avoid biased interpretations that adversely shape the outcome of sexual assault trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a case study of an intimate partner violence criminal case to examine the relationship among communication privacy management, evidence acquisition and retrieval, and the use of digital evidence in criminal court. We followed the case of Krista and Alex (pseudonyms) for a period of four months from August 2017 to November 2017. Data were collected from observations in two locations: the digital forensics laboratory of the public defender who handled the case and the courtroom in which the trial took place. Findings indicate that the couple engaged in preemptive and after-the-fact privacy management strategies, which complicated the process of acquiring digital evidence and had implications for how the evidence was used at trial. The case study joins communication privacy management and legal research to show why digital evidence falls short as a "model witness" and may expose female complainants to greater privacy turbulence than male defendants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]