IDENTITY MODULATION IN NETWORKED PUBLICS: WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION AND REPRESENTATION ON , , AND VINE

Stefanie Duguay BASc. University of Lethbridge, MSc. University of Oxford

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

School of Communication Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology

2017

Keywords

Authenticity Collective identity Digital platforms Gender Identity Instagram LGBTQ Micro-celebrity Mobile apps Networked publics Queer women Representation Sexual identity Technocultures Tinder Vine Visual media Walkthrough

i Abstract

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) people now have access to a range of rights and protections in several countries and frequent visibility across television, film, print, and digital media. Despite this, they still experience stigmatisation that affects their wellbeing, access to support, and participation in society. Queer women, in particular, face sexual stigmatisation and gender inequality. Social media platforms can facilitate social and political participation. However, platforms also bring together audiences with whom individuals may otherwise interact in separate contexts. In this thesis, I examine queer women’s participation and representation on contemporary social media platforms. I analyse how they negotiate these social conditions and, in turn, how platforms shape their activity. I combine traditional and digital research methods to examine queer women’s use of: Tinder, a platform for dating and meeting people; Instagram, a platform for photo sharing; and Vine, a platform for sharing short, looping videos. For each platform, I conduct a close reading of platform features and materials, analysis of queer women’s content, and interviews with queer female users.

Findings across platforms highlight a common set of practices, which I refer to as “identity modulation.” I define identity modulation as individuals’ continuous decision-making about whether and how much to make their sexual identity recognisable in relation to personally identifying information (e.g., names, face photos) for particular social media audiences. This concept is analogous to adjusting device settings, such as volume and brightness: users can modify the noticeability of elements of identity but their adjustments are subject to a platform’s features and constraints. Queer women in this study engage in identity modulation for platform- specific purposes. Individuals increase the visibility of their sexual identity on Tinder to attract other queer women, often while minimising identifying information. Instagram users accentuate their sexual identity as part of their personal brand while frequently maintaining a separation between Facebook and Instagram audiences. On Vine, individuals display sexual identity and shared experiences to form close-knit communities while avoiding discriminatory audiences.

ii Across platforms, identity modulation facilitates these queer women’s connections with other users in the form of networked publics, as gatherings of people that are structured by networked technologies. Queer women’s networked publics often enhance their self-validation, access to social support, and ability to challenge stigmatising discourses. However, individuals also encounter impediments to identity modulation, such as embedded platform biases and discriminatory user practices, which inhibit their participation in networked publics. Such impediments highlight ways that users, platforms, and media producers can better facilitate identity modulation. These findings pave the way for research that further explores the concept of identity modulation, examining the social media practices of other stigmatised populations across a variety of platforms.

iii Table of Contents

KEYWORDS ...... I ABSTRACT ...... II LIST OF FIGURES ...... VI LIST OF TABLES ...... VII STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP ...... VIII ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... IX PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED CONTENT ...... XII CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 1.1 OVERVIEW ...... 1 1.2 RESEARCH DESIGN ...... 7 1.3 THESIS STRUCTURE ...... 18 CHAPTER 2: MODULATING REPRESENTATIONS IN NETWORKED PUBLICS ...... 21 2.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 21 2.2 WAYS TO BE GAY: REPRESENTATIONS OF SEXUAL IDENTITY ...... 23 2.2.3 LGBTQ media representation over time ...... 24 2.2.4 Queer women’s representation ...... 29 2.3 NETWORKED PUBLICS AND IDENTITY MODULATION ...... 36 2.3.1 Identity modulation ...... 39 2.4 CONCLUSION ...... 52 CHAPTER 3: DISPLAYING AUTHENTICITY ON TINDER ...... 55 3.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 55 3.2 TINDER’S AUTHENTICITY PROBLEM ...... 57 3.3 IDENTITY MODULATION AND AUTHENTICITY ...... 65 3.3.1 Superficial Tinder ...... 68 3.3.2 Detecting and displaying sexual identity ...... 76 3.3.3 Identity modulation across platforms ...... 83 3.4 CONCLUSION ...... 91 CHAPTER 4: ASPIRING TOWARD INSTAFAME ...... 95 4.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 95 4.2 A PLATFORM FOR INSTAFAME ...... 97 4.3 COMMERCIAL, FANTASY, AND DISRUPTIVE AESTHETICS ...... 106 4.4 IDENTITY MODULATION THROUGH INSTAFAME ...... 117 4.4.1 Reflective self-representations ...... 118 4.4.2 Reflexive self-promotion ...... 125 4.4.3 Managing refracted self-representations ...... 130 4.5 CONCLUSION ...... 137 CHAPTER 5: VINING AS COLLECTIVE IDENTITY WORK ...... 141 5.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 141 5.2 PROFESSIONALISATION OF THE VINE ...... 143 5.3 IDENTITY MODULATION THROUGH COLLECTIVE SHARING ...... 152 5.4 A TALE OF TWO VINES ...... 163 5.5 CONCLUSION ...... 177 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION ...... 183 6.1 IDENTITY MODULATION IN NETWORKED PUBLICS ...... 185 6.1.1 Impediments to identity modulation ...... 190

iv 6.2 A WAY FORWARD ...... 195 6.2 RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS AND EMERGING QUESTIONS ...... 202 REFERENCES ...... 205 APPENDICES ...... 245 APPENDIX 1. TINDER INTERVIEW ANALYSIS – CODE TREE ...... 245 APPENDIX 2. INSTAGRAM INTERVIEW ANALYSIS – CODE TREE ...... 247 APPENDIX 3. VINE ANALYSIS – CODE TREES ...... 250

v List of Figures

FIGURE 3.1: TINDER LOGIN SCREEN...... 58

FIGURE 3.2: TINDER MATCH SCREEN...... 61 FIGURE 3.3: INSTAGRAM POST FROM THE #SWIPEDRIGHT CAMPAIGN...... 64 FIGURE 3.4: MANDATORY GENDER SELECTION SCREEN...... 71

FIGURE 3.5: BEC'S MAIN PROFILE PHOTO...... 80 FIGURE 4.1: INSTAGRAM FILTER MENU...... 101 FIGURE 4.2: REGISTRATION SCREEN & FIGURE 4.3: "SUGGESTED" SCREEN FOR NEW USERS...... 104 FIGURE 4.4: IMAGE POSTED TO DRAW ATTENTION TO SEXUAL SERVICES...... 109

FIGURE 4.5: POST WITH STILLS FROM AMERICAN HORROR STORY...... 113 FIGURE 4.6: IDENTITY STATEMENT POST...... 114 FIGURE 4.7: QUEENIE'S #MOONDAY WITH EMI...... 121 FIGURE 4.8: THEA'S STAGED SELFIE...... 123

FIGURE 4.9: MÏTA'S PHOTO INVITING USERS TO VIEW FAMILY CAMPING TRIP ON YOUTUBE...... 125 FIGURE 4.10: KELZZ' DANCE VIDEO, FILMED IN A PARKING LOT WITH BLACK BORDERS ADDED...... 126 FIGURE 4.11: RUBY ROSE'S PHOTO AS THE @DAPPERDYKES PROFILE PICTURE...... 128

FIGURE 4.12: ALEX'S PROMOTIONAL @DAPPERDYKES PHOTO...... 135 FIGURE 5.1: VINE’S CROSS-POSTING FUNCTIONALITY...... 146 FIGURE 5.2: “DO IT FOR THE VINE” BY @DOM ...... 147 FIGURE 5.3: CHANNELS IN VINE’S EXPLORE SCREEN...... 149

FIGURE 5.4: TV MODE (FROM THE BLOG POST “VINE ON THE WEB”)...... 150 FIGURE 5.5: A VINER DISPLAYING A NEW TATTOO...... 155 FIGURE 5.6: “WE GOOD” POST DIRECTED TO AN UNNAMED USER...... 156 FIGURE 5.7: THIRST TRAP LIP SYNC VIDEO...... 157

FIGURE 5.8: OPENING SCENE FROM A PRIDE 2015 RESPONSE VINE...... 160 FIGURE 5.9: SHANNON & CAMMIE FAN REMIX...... 162 FIGURE 5.10: CHRISSY AS AN ADULT & FIGURE 5.11: CHRISSY AS A CHILD ...... 166

FIGURE 5.12: JAXX AS A CRITICAL CHARACTER & FIGURE 5.13: JAXX AS HERSELF...... 168

vi List of Tables

TABLE 1.1: PLATFORMS FOR ANALYSIS ...... 13

TABLE 1.2: RESEARCH QUESTIONS, METHODS, AND TYPES OF FINDINGS ...... 16 TABLE 3.1: TINDER INTERVIEW PARTICIPANTS ...... 67 TABLE 4.1: POPULAR INSTAGRAM HASHTAGS RELATED TO QUEER WOMEN ...... 107

TABLE 4.2: NUMBER OF IMAGES ACCORDING TO SUBJECT CATEGORY ...... 108 TABLE 4.3: INSTAGRAM INTERVIEW PARTICIPANTS ...... 118 TABLE 5.1: POPULAR LGBTQ HASHTAGS ON VINE ...... 152

vii Statement of Original Authorship

The work contained in this thesis has not previously been submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

Signature QUT Verified Signature

Date__14 September 2017____

viii Acknowledgements

I have adopted several metaphors for this thesis that reflect the numerous people involved in its creation. First, the thesis has been a journey, guided by many wise academic sages, especially my supervisors: Professor Jean Burgess and Dr. Elija Cassidy, and earlier in the journey, Professor Ben Light. Jean, thank you for your persistent and tireless support in channelling my ambition into fruitful endeavours and encouraging me to develop critical, rigorous, and nuanced arguments. Thank you for the instances when you challenged me to develop my judgment and move past self-doubt so that I could pursue life- changing opportunities. Ben, our afternoon chats, laughs, and your unfailing kindness will always remain with me. Thank you for guiding me to develop the knowledge foundation that has been essential to this thesis, sharing your expertise in several areas. Elija, thank you for your encouragement and insights, which have been pivotal to refining the thesis’ key themes. In addition to this dream team, I have been fortunate to learn from, collaborate with, and spend day-to-day life with the upstanding researchers, staff, and fellow graduate students at QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC). I have been able to call the DMRC home and conduct this research because of the university’s financial support, including a QUT Postgraduate Research Award, Higher Degree Research Tuition Sponsorship, Creative Industries Faculty Top-Up Scholarship, and a Grant-in-Aid Travel Support Grant. I am appreciative of the feedback I received from my confirmation and final seminar panels and the support provided by the School of Communication and Creative Industries Faculty.

This thesis’ participants have also been essential to this journey. Thank you to all the women who took the time to speak with me in person, over Skype, or on the telephone. Your experiences, reflections, opinions, and stories have been pivotal to the concepts developed throughout these pages. It is my hope that they will go on to impact researchers, policy-makers, social media developers, and everyday people into the future.

ix Secondly, the thesis has been a process of discovery, supported by an expansive academic community. My time as a PhD Intern at Microsoft Research’s Social Media Collective (SMC) was pivotal to this project as well as my professional and personal development. Thank you Nancy Baym, Mary Gray, and Tarleton Gillespie for sharing your knowledge, insights, and career experiences. Thanks to the SMC postdoctoral researchers, my fellow interns, and visiting scholars for our coffee chats and feedback sessions. I would also like to acknowledge Microsoft Research New England for this opportunity and for funding the research I conducted with the SMC. I owe many of the skills and approaches developed in this thesis to those who have provided lessons, workshops, and mentoring discussions at the DMRC, the University of Amsterdam’s Digital Methods Initiative, and the Oxford Internet Institute. Thanks to everyone who invited me to collaborate or contribute to projects and publications, including Katie Warfield, Tim Highfield, Lee Humphreys, José van Dijck, Thomas Poell, Zizi Papacharissi, Lukasz Szulc, and many others. Thank you to my extended academic family, with whom I have connected at conferences, collaborated with for special journal issues, and turned to for advice. I have learned so much from the knowledge exchanges in our networks, such as the Association of Internet Researchers, the Hookup Apps Studies group, and the Research Network. Our conference coffee breaks, social media exchanges, gyoza, beers, and late- night pho contributed to “aha” moments while making this process feel less lonely.

Finally, the thesis has been like a living creature, which I have only been able to care for because of the patience, encouragement, and love provided by my friends and family. Although I cannot name everyone, I want to acknowledge you all, from Lethbridge to Oxford, across Canada, America, and Australia. Thanks Nick Ford for helping me test my concepts with your keen intellect and always providing a shoulder to lean on. Thanks Marinus for undergoing the earlier parts of the journey with me and for all we learned from it. Thanks Sivahn for the self-reflection you inspired, without which I could not have even approached this topic. Thanks to friends at QUT; to those who helped me to let off steam at The Menagerie, The Beat, and other seedy venues; to former

x flatmates and anyone else who has endured thesis-related rants and laments. Thanks Bruce Duguay for reminding me that graduating is important, so I can get a “real” job and a nice car one day.

When I started drafting chapters, Jo and I likened the thesis to a baby giraffe (“giraffe” rhymes with “draft” – a bit – in Australian) that I would foster into adulthood. Thank you, Jo, for celebrating milestones, dealing with tears, not letting me run away, and cheerleading as I fed and groomed the giraffe. Thanks for the endless hugs, pasta bakes, post-work runs, sleep-ins, conceptual discussions, jokes, weekly logistical planning, and patience with my “thesis brain” moments. Through your love, I have found the courage to embark on adventures I never thought possible.

My sincerest thanks goes to my mom and dad, whose strength, wisdom, and love have sustained me throughout this process. Mom and dad have modelled the persistence and resilience essential for not being overcome by life’s obstacles or unexpected turns. Thank you, dad, for your love, caring, and sense of humour, always helping me to “lighten up” when the thesis was getting a little too heavy. Thank you, mom, for the innumerable emails, phone calls, and hugs, making it clear that you believed in me even when I had trouble doing so. Thanks for our lively discussions, your quotable quotes, and the ways you always brighten a hard day. Thanks to both of you for encouraging me to pursue my ambitions and my heart, no matter where in the world that’s taken me and regardless of who I love. Thank you for encouraging me to take a path of self- discovery, of which this thesis has played a large part.

xi Previously Published Content

Portions of this thesis have been published or accepted for publication as:

Duguay, S. (forthcoming). “The more I look like Justin Bieber in the pictures, the better”: Queer women’s self-representation on Instagram. In: Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A networked self: Platforms, stories, connections. Routledge. Duguay, S. (forthcoming). Tinder. In: J. Morris & S. Murray (eds.), Appified: The culture of mundane software. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Duguay, S. (2017). Dressing up Tinderella: Interrogating authenticity claims on the mobile dating app Tinder. Information, Communication & Society, 20(3), 351-367. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2016.1168471 Duguay, S. (2016). LGBTQ visibility through selfies: Comparing platform mediators across Ruby Rose’s Instagram and Vine presence. Social Media + Society, 2(2), 1-12.

xii

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Overview

Phyllis placed her iced tea on the table and sighed when I asked about her sexual identity, “I’m probably a . That seems best. I’m pretty boring; that’s all I am.” Although she appeared to view this information as unremarkable in the context of my question, it was essential to her interactions on Tinder. She read her dating profile aloud, “‘I excel at dank memes, lesbianing and getting my law assessments done six weeks in advance.’ That’s me.” She explained, “The lesbianing thing – it’s from [Netflix’s prison comedy-drama] Orange Is the New Black and, just in case they didn’t get that I was gay from the rainbows, they’re like, ‘No, she’s definitely gay. She’s a lesbian. She said she’s good at lesbianing.’” She communicated her sexual identity in photos and by referencing a show with lesbian and bisexual characters.

“My gender? Tomboy,” Mïta joked, “Transfemale. I’ve been out for about four years roughly and I’ve just been trying to make myself very out there.” Mïta’s dog dozed beside her as we Skyped between Canada and Australia. She spoke less adamantly about her sexual identity, “I don’t have that physical attraction to men, so I would probably say lesbian.” Hoping to inspire trans1 people and their families, she uses more trans-related hashtags on Instagram than lesbian-related ones. However, her profile asserts in caps that she is a “LESBIAN,” attempting to deter the men who regularly send unsolicited sexual messages.

“I guess I’m a lesbian. I’ve been a lesbian forever, so yeah.” Chrissy spoke comfortably about her sexual identity with her mother, visiting from New York, just in view of her webcam’s background. She explained that women on Vine frequently used hashtags like #RainbowGang because “gay men attract people regardless” and “straight people will blow up really quick” but “some lesbians are not getting no attention at all... It makes the LGBT2 community be in competition for attention.” Although this competitiveness caused conflict among gay and lesbian users, she still

1 “Trans” is often used as an umbrella term for a variety of identities, including 2 Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.

1 connected with fellow Black Viners, “Being pro-Black will always be something that’s positive on Vine.”

At the time when I was trying to put enough words and images to my own sexual identity to come out to the people in my life, I had never met anyone who was visibly out like Phyllis, Mïta, or Chrissy were. Growing up in the early 1990s, television shows for young people that included gay or lesbian characters were often solemnly followed by “Kids Help Phone” crisis numbers. The characters only appeared in one episode and were frequently rejected by romantic interests, isolated from friends, disowned by parents, and at risk of suicide. I did not know much about what it was like to live as a gay person but I got the sense that it was lonely and filled with struggle. This perception contributed to my coming out later in life. Like others, I turned to the internet to acquire more information about sexuality and find online and offline social groups. I stumbled across Autostraddle3 – a blog self-described as covering “girl-on-girl culture,” which taught me about the jargon, clothing, media, and concerns associated with taking on and communicating about a particular sexual identity. On 23 July 2012, I made a Facebook post that catalysed my coming out process. With little mainstream media content relating to , I jumped at the chance to share a link encouraging bisexual people to complete a mental health survey, urging friends to “help improve mental health services for us” (emphasis added). This subtle wording, deployed through Facebook’s technological features and among my overlapping friend networks, transformed this act of disclosure. My mother was on the phone to me immediately, asking what it meant and how she could support me. My generally quiet brother sent a message. Hometown acquaintances acted like they knew all along when I visited the following year. While many more coming out conversations ensued, especially as I met new people and my post became buried under new content, this was a key action in knowing myself and becoming known as bisexual. Drawing from this experience, this thesis is concerned with how queer women, as those who do not identify as heterosexual, participate in and self- represent across contemporary social media. When this research commenced in

3 See https://www.autostraddle.com/

2 2014, there had already been widespread uptake of mobile apps, expanding individuals’ social media use beyond Facebook to multiple platforms. I noticed women on Tinder “seeking women” in their searches and women on Instagram and Vine adopting hashtags that reflected their sexual identity, such as #lesbehonest. I aimed to investigate how these apps influenced queer women’s ability to connect with others and represent their sexual identity while also paying attention to individuals’ agency in using social media. I embarked on a journey, which involved sifting through social media policies, sorting queer women’s visual representations – from selfies to sensual dance videos – and engaging in lively discussions with queer women who were using Tinder, Instagram, and Vine. Although each platform presented contrasting features, forms of content, and experiences, this thesis’ overarching findings provide a new way of understanding how individuals manage their displays of identity, especially sexual identity, as part of their social media participation and self-representation. The opening vignettes described above provide indications of how individuals approached these displays of sexual identity. Phyllis mentioned a television show known for its storylines featuring bisexual and lesbian characters. Mïta dealt with users’ unsolicited sexual messages in response to her post-transition selfies by continuously re-asserting her lesbian identity. Chrissy competed with other Viners for attention to her videos, drawing viewers through #RainbowGang. In each circumstance, these women represented sexual identity in ways that were instrumental to attaining their aims of, respectively, dating other queer women, building a reputation as a transadvocate, and forming a close-knit queer community. Throughout the following chapters, I argue that the queer women studied in this thesis achieve these outcomes through the practice of what I have called “identity modulation.” By drawing on social media features and functions, individuals are able to modulate, or adjust, the salience of their sexual identity in relation to their personal identifiability (the noticeability of their legal name, face, etc.) in order to target particular audiences. Identity modulation involves displaying sexual identity for certain audiences while reducing or removing personal identifiers, which may otherwise draw the attention of unintended audiences. It can also involve displaying sexual identity in one context while maintaining this aspect of identity separate from other contexts, such as by sharing certain images only to Instagram and not Facebook. By developing this concept, this thesis offers a way of understanding

3 social media participation and representation beyond binary notions of privacy and publicness. Individuals’ identity modulation practices bring to light ways that social media can be better configured to facilitate a diverse range of users in maintaining a degree of privacy while still conveying identity-related details in order to connect with others. This thesis also identifies, specifically, how the queer women featured in each chapter engaged in identity modulation. They often used these practices to connect with networks of other queer women for self-validation, social support, and to challenge homophobic attitudes.

Scope and context This research takes place within the context of shifting representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) people as well as rapidly developing digital media technologies. Over recent decades, LGBTQ people have fought for human rights, from the right to not be murdered or arrested for their sexual activity to the protections granted to legally married couples. As these battles have raged on the political frontlines, they have coincided with LGBTQ people’s production of alternative media and increased representation across television, film, and print media (Gross, 2001; Walters, 2001). Today, there is a changing policy landscape, reflected in the legal recognition of same-sex partnerships across several countries, with Taiwan most recently ruling in favour of legally recognising same- sex unions (Wu, 2017). Another timely example comes from my current home state of Queensland, Australia, where same-sex couples can now legally adopt children (Burke, 2016). These changes have gone hand-in-hand with increased LGBTQ representation in broadcast media, which both influences attitudes (e.g. Schiappa, Gregg, & Hewes, 2006) and reflects present-day conditions. Queer women can now find films and television shows, such as Orange Is the New Black, which showcase an array of female characters who are also queer and embody a range of gender, class, and racial identities. As I write this, it is once again “Pride Month,” marked by a concentration of (mostly North American) LGBTQ Pride festivals and events in June to commemorate past political struggles and celebrate queer culture (see Obama, 2012). My Google results appear with decorative rainbows; my Facebook ‘like’ button has temporarily become a rainbow; and my hometown has just painted the rainbow and trans flags on crosswalks in preparation for a now annual Pride

4 festival that was non-existent during my youth. Clearly, LGBTQ people’s political activity and media representation have contributed to their widespread visibility. At the same time, LGBTQ people continue to experience stigmatisation of their sexual identity that affects their wellbeing, relationships, and societal participation. Discrimination and threats to LGBTQ people’s personal safety continue throughout western democracies (Browne & Nash, 2014), regardless of whether or not same-sex marriage has been legalised. News reports cover hate crimes and atrocities, from the homophobia-fuelled massacre at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando (Shapiro & Chan, 2016) to the torture of gay men in Chechnya (Walker, 2017). These tragedies spur journalists to produce maps illustrating how LGBTQ people lack protections throughout numerous countries across the world (Nunez, 2016). While LGBTQ people are represented in prime time television and blockbuster films, homophobic jokes continue to be a cornerstone of popular comedy films (Lang, 2017). The impact of such conditions is reflected in multiple studies that continue to find higher rates of depression, self-harm, and suicide in LGBTQ populations than heterosexual populations (Almeida, Johnson, Corliss, Molnar, & Azrael, 2009; Goldblum et al., 2012; Haas et al., 2010; Lytle, De Luca, & Blosnich, 2014). Further studies show that lesbian and bisexual women experience more mental health problems than heterosexual women (Colledge, Hickson, Reid, & Weatherburn, 2015; Kerr, Santurri, & Peters, 2013). Queer women are doubly disadvantaged, as they deal with the stigmatisation of their sexual identity alongside ongoing gender inequality. Among these contrasting conditions, digital media technologies shape LGBTQ people’s experiences of representation and belonging as well as others’ practices of discrimination. Chat rooms, websites, and social media have provided outlets for LGBTQ people’s self-discovery, self-representation, and connection with other LGBTQ people (Cooper & Dzara, 2010; Craig & McInroy, 2014). These technologies provide information and social opportunities that have otherwise been difficult for LGBTQ people to access, especially in rural areas (Gray, 2009). However, studies show that LGBTQ young people also experience higher rates of online bullying than heterosexual youth (Schneider, O’Donnell, Stueve, & Coulter, 2012) and targeted bullying occurs through social media, such as Facebook (Varjas, Meyers, Kiperman, & Howard, 2013). Women are also often the target of online sexual harassment and gender-based violence (Citron, 2009; Jane, 2014). Over recent

5 years, there has been a rise in activity among loosely connected networks promoting masculinity and men’s rights, which often target female social media users and espouse anti-feminist, sexually objectifying, and misogynistic views (Marwick & Lewis, 2017; Phillips, 2015). Mïta’s identification as LESBIAN in her profile is at once evidence that queer women experience harassment on social media and an example of their tactics for dealing with it. Since such a range of audiences, from supportive peers to homophobic trolls,4 can be privy to LGBTQ people’s social media activity, individuals often need to develop multiple modes of communication and representation to suit different audiences. While researching young people’s use of MySpace and early versions of Facebook, danah boyd (2011; 2014) developed the concept of “networked publics” as “publics that are restructured through networked technologies” (boyd, 2011, p. 39). She explains that social media’s networked technologies shape how people communicate in networked publics and introduce new dynamics for social interaction. boyd and Alice Marwick (2011) studied how social media users connect with networked publics and build personal followings by managing the impressions they make across multiple, overlapping audiences. Subsequent to their research, social media technologies have developed in ways that redirect social activity toward corporate interests (Gehl, 2014; Gillespie, 2015; van Dijck, 2013). The web has become subject to “platformization” (Helmond, 2015), as social media platforms now constitute the web’s dominant infrastructure. Social media have also become largely appified (Burgess, 2012), rendered into mobile apps accessible through smartphones as standalone services rather than interlinking websites.5 These developments reflect a broad shift toward what Jean Burgess and John Banks (2014) describe as the “platform paradigm,” whereby social media have become major commercial service providers that play a key role in society and the economy as they bring together interpersonal communication, creative content, and mainstream media (p. 286). While some of the studies mentioned earlier demonstrate positive outcomes from LGBTQ people’s social media use, it is challenging to know how exactly they negotiate these platform influences and overlapping audiences and how this might be different for subsets of this population, such as queer women.

4 Phillips (2015) defines “trolls” as digital media users who “refuse to treat others as they insist on being treated” (p. 26). 5 Due to the intertwining of these digital media technologies, I refer to platforms and apps interchangeably.

6 Taking into account contrasting conditions of LGBTQ people’s participation in public life and media representation alongside recent developments in digital technology, this thesis was driven by the focal research question: What is distinctive about queer women’s participation and representation with their use of contemporary social media? To guide my analysis, I divided this larger question into the following sub-questions: • How do queer women use, reappropriate, and circumvent social media technologies for their participation and representation? • How do social media shape queer women’s participation and representation? • What kinds of networked publics are queer women forming and interacting with through their social media participation and representation? The main response to these questions, derived from the research methods and analysis described in the next section, was that queer women had distinctive ways of engaging in identity modulation in order to achieve their desired purposes and connect with networked publics of other queer women. They adjusted the salience of their sexual identity in relation to their personal identifiability using social media features, symbols, self-produced images, and references to popular culture. Social media platforms influenced their practices of identity modulation through their functionality, policies, and framing of user activity, facilitating and constraining certain displays of identity. Through identity modulation, these queer women connected with networked publics that often facilitated their self-validation, community building, and resistance to gender, racial, and sexual discrimination.

1.2 Research Design

I began this research by first developing a conceptual framework for understanding social media and sexual identity. I view social media platforms as subject to processes of mutual shaping, which occur between the development of new technologies and new user practices. I also understand sexual identity as fluid and constructed through everyday activity, including the posting of photos and videos to social media. Based on this framework, I identified populations of queer women who were using social media platforms – particularly, Tinder, Instagram, and Vine – to construct and communicate their sexual identity. The methods I chose

7 resonated with Richard Rogers’ (2013) discussion of “medium specificity” in digital research, as a means of studying a particular medium and using the “methods of the medium” (p. 5) – a platform’s tools, features, and practices – to understand its associated cultures. My first step involved examining the platforms, using a method that I developed with my supervisors: the walkthrough (Light, Burgess, Duguay, 2016). This method enabled close analysis of platform features and functions, considering their potential to shape user activity. Then I applied textual analysis to examine content produced by queer women, such as their profiles, photos, and videos, and content about queer women, such as advertisements, to get a sense of a platform’s dominant sexual and gender discourses. I combined these approaches with interviews with queer, female users of each platform to inform my analysis with their insights, experiences, decisions, and interactions. By analysing platform features, using digital tools to gather content (when possible), and considering how queer women incorporated platform practices into their representations, I followed the “methods of the medium” (Rogers, 2013, p. 5). This provided an understanding of how platforms shaped the activity of the women featured in this study and how they, in turn, exercised agency in their use of these platforms.

Conceptual framework This thesis is situated in the multi-disciplinary fields of internet studies and digital media studies. In practice, this means that I draw from the areas of communications, sociology, and science and technology studies to understand individuals, publics, and technologies. I also apply concepts from media, cultural, feminist, and sexuality studies to examine representations, gender, sexual identity, and digital media in everyday life. The understandings I take from these disciplines reflect my ontology of constructionism, through which I view identity and the purpose of objects, such as technologies, as continuously constructed by our actions and words (Bryman, 2012). With this perspective, I acknowledge my role in co- constructing the knowledge in this thesis with my interview participants and the reams of literature upon which my analysis relies. These multiple disciplines enable the use of a range of concepts, forming an analytical toolkit for making sense of the research findings. This toolkit involves concepts for understanding the relationship between people and technology as well as conceptualising sexual identity.

8 Across internet studies and digital media studies, scholars have argued that digital materiality – the code, features, and formats of digital media technologies – matters in the way it shapes users and interactions (Cox & McLean, 2013; Dourish, 2016; Lessig, 2006; Manovich, 2001). Certain concepts can facilitate analysis of digital materials, such as those from Actor Network Theory that identify non-human actors as influential among complex networks of people and things (Callon, 1986; Latour, 2005; Law, 1992). Bruno Latour (2005) notes that human and non-human actors can be intermediaries, transporting meaning without changing it, or mediators that “transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry” (p. 39). As the following chapters demonstrate, platform mediators include Tinder’s swipe, Instagram’s filters, and Vine’s looping videos. Affordance theories also provide a way of understanding the influence of objects in relation to people. J.J. Gibson (2015) originally defined affordances from an ecological perspective, as actions that the physical environment affords or constrains. Scholars have adapted this theory for the analysis of social media, identifying affordances as stemming from a combination of user perceptions, developer intentions, platform functionality, and the interconnection of platforms with other software, hardware, and devices (Bucher & Helmond, forthcoming; McVeigh- Schultz & Baym, 2015; Nagy & Neff, 2015). These concepts of materiality, non- human actors, and emergent affordances are relevant to the thesis’ focus on social media’s shaping of queer women’s activity. While technological features can be influential, technology and user practices are mutually shaping in their development. Raymond Williams (1974) found that people shaped the development of televisual technologies and formats while also responding to television’s unanticipated effects. Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker (1984) made sense of this mutual shaping through the concept of “interpretive flexibility,” as the iterative process through which social groups and developers co- construct technologies. José van Dijck (2011) traces this process from ’s release as an ambiguous platform to users’ and designers’ eventual understanding of it as a “global, ad-supported followers tool” (p. 343) for accessing news and entertainment. Throughout decades of technological development, researchers have highlighted how individuals repurpose technology to gratify needs (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973), reappropriate it for unanticipated functions (Eglash, 2004), and domesticate it into daily routines (Haddon, 2004). These understandings of user

9 agency in technological development guide my analysis of how queer women harness, circumvent, and impact platform technologies. This thesis has challenged me to think about what I really mean when referring to sexual identity. Many scholars (e.g., McIntosh, 1968; Weeks, 1996) draw on Michel Foucault’s (1979) genealogy of sexuality to examine the construction and subsequent stigmatisation of sexual identity in western societies. Foucault traced how institutions of religion, medicine, and psychology constructed same-sex sexual activity as a homosexual identity that, at different times in history, was designated as immoral, unlawful, and a mental disorder. These designations construct heterosexuality as the norm and homosexual people as deviants. Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner (1995; 1998) describe these power relations as the dominance of heterosexual culture, whereby heterosexuality is embedded across cultural symbols, spaces, and institutions. Cathy Cohen (2005) refers to this default assumption, or naturalisation, of heterosexuality as “heteronormativity” (p. 24), and I use this term frequently throughout the following chapters. LGBTQ people are faced with determining whether to disclose their non-normative sexual identity (Orne, 2011), an ongoing process popularly referred to as coming out of the closet (Sedgwick, 1990). This thesis is attuned to how queer women deal with the disclosure of sexual identity among platforms’ and users’ heteronormative assumptions. By critiquing this dominance of heterosexuality, scholars have provided alternative understandings of sexual identity. Judith Butler (1990) identifies how discourses6 of sexuality are reinforced through everyday performances conforming to the “heterosexual matrix,” as the assumption that bodies have “a stable sex expressed through a stable gender (masculine expresses male, feminine expresses female) that is oppositionally and hierarchically defined through the compulsory practice of heterosexuality” (p. 208). She explains how gender becomes interlocked with heterosexuality, touching upon what scholars and organisations (see Worthen, 2016) refer to today as cisnormativity: the assumption that gender performances match assumptions about biological sex (e.g., assuming a masculine gender performance indicates that an individual has a penis).7 Recognising this fluidity of

6 I employ Foucault’s (1969) notion of “discourse” as “the group of statements that belong to a single system of formation” (p. 107), constituting ideas, values, and attitudes that are used to construct knowledge about people. 7 The term refers to someone for whom this assumption is true while transgender people transgress these assumptions.

10 gender and sexual identity, I refer to this study’s subjects as queer women, applying Mary Gray’s (2009) understanding of queer as an action rather than an adjective. She refers to queer as “the action of identity work” (p. 26), constituted by “the collective labor of crafting, articulating, and pushing the boundaries of identities” (p. 21). The women in this study crafted their sexual identity on an everyday basis. They engaged in what Son Vivienne and Jean Burgess (2012) refer to as “networked identity work” (p. 373), representing, curating, and constructing their sexual and gender identity through networked technologies. Since all interview participants, including transgender and masculine presenting individuals self-identified as female, I refer to them as “women” to reflect their personal identification rather than as an indicator of biology. The term “queer women,” therefore, is my best attempt to recognise gender and sexual identity as fluid and constructed while recognising, in specific chapters, how participants referred to their identities. Since there no neutral umbrella terms for people of diverse sexual and gender identities (Barker, Richards, & Bowes-Catton, 2009), I use LGBTQ when referring to these identities in aggregate. Of course, sexual identity is not the only facet of identity that features throughout these chapters. I refer to normativity and normative ideals in ways that reflect Audre Lorde’s (1984) concept of a “mythical norm.” She identifies that the mythical norm is often defined in America as “white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure” (p. 116). Individuals who align with this norm hold power over those whom they define as outsiders – those outside of normative expectations – because of their race, gender, class, age, sexuality, religion, and socioeconomic status. Since the queer women who I interviewed negotiated the intersection of sexual identity with these other aspects of identity, I have drawn on feminist and race scholars from digital media studies (e.g., Brock, 2012; Florini, 2014; Jane, 2016) to contextualise their experiences. Altogether, these concepts and perspectives provided a foundation for analysing queer women’s participation and representation on Tinder, Instagram, and Vine.

Platforms I chose not to examine platforms that cater to LGBTQ people as a niche market or that have received a great deal of attention from researchers. While studies have often focused on gay or lesbian-specific online spaces (Campbell, 2004; Cooper, 2010; Correll, 1995), I was interested in platforms used by ‘mainstream’ or

11 predominantly heterosexual populations. This allowed me to examine how queer women navigated technological architectures that were not necessarily built with them in mind. I focused on apps for everyday social media use, since much identity work is about participation in ordinary and routine aspects of everyday life (Cavalcante, 2013). While Facebook is the most dominant platform in many countries (Duggan, 2015; Sensis, 2016), several studies have already explored its implications for identity presentation (Lingel & Golub, 2015; Rains & Brunner, 2015; Zhao et al., 2013). Findings from my previous research (Duguay, 2016a) align with Bernie Hogan’s (2010) analysis that Facebook’s features for connecting multiple audiences can lead users to self-censor aspects of their identity. Conducting a pilot study with Twitter, I tracked activity relating to an LGBTQ festival but found that users tended to retweet celebrities and politicians without sharing much about their own sexual identity (Duguay, 2016b). These popular platforms still came up in my conversations with queer women and were relevant as points of comparison regarding their participation and representation across platforms. I selected this thesis’ platforms of interest (Table 1.1) for their contrasting purposes, features, and identifiable populations of queer female users. All three platforms function as mobile apps (though Instagram and Vine have limited desktop versions), reflecting the mobile shift in digital technology and the prominence of apps as discrete software programs on smartphones. Burgess (2012) identifies “the iPhone moment” as key to this shift, noting that Apple’s release of the iPhone in 2007 gave rise to the popularity of apps that are not very hackable – that is, not easy for users to alter – but provide user-friendly interfaces and pre-defined operations. These platforms are also structured around visual media formats, such as photos and videos, reflecting an overall increase in users sharing visual content through digital technologies (Duggan, 2013). Beyond these similarities, each platform presents contrasting architectural features and contexts.

12 Table 1.1: Platforms for analysis

Platform Primary purpose Launch Date Owner Reported active accounts Tinder Dating and 2012 InterActive Estimated 40 meeting people Corp million in 2014

Instagram Photo sharing 2010 Facebook 500 million as of June 2016

Vine Video sharing 2013 Twitter 40 million in 2013

InterActiveCorp (IAC), a large media conglomerate that owns dating websites like Match.com and OkCupid (IAC, 2014), developed Tinder in its ‘start-up incubator’ and launched the app in 2012. Tinder populates users’ profiles through a connection with Facebook. Profile browsing functions through a double opt-in system, which requires two users to swipe right on each other’s profiles and achieve a ‘match’ before they can chat. At Tinder’s launch, the company framed it as a dating app but has since maintained that it is for “social discovery” (Craw, 2014) or meeting new people generally. Tinder refuses to release user demographics but reportedly approached 40 million accounts in 2014 (Bilton, 2014). CEO Sean Rad also stated in 2014 that users were swiping through 1.2 billion profiles per day and generating more than 15 million matches per day (Bertoni, 2014). In 2015, Tinder launched a premium service, offering additional features to paying users, including the ability to “rewind” swipes, swipe in any location, and swipe limitlessly (Tinder, 2015c). Although Tinder’s marketing targets heterosexual users, queer women can change the default setting of “female seeking men” to “female seeking women” to make their profiles visible to other women. Two Stanford graduates, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, launched Instagram in 2010 (Marston, 2012). The app’s FAQs (Instagram, 2015b) discuss three ‘problems’ that motivated its development: 1. Mobile photos always come out looking mediocre. Our awesome filters transform your photos into professional-looking snapshots. 2. Sharing on multiple platforms is a pain – we help you take a picture once, then share it (instantly) on multiple services. 3. Most uploading experiences are clumsy and take forever – we’ve optimized the experience to be fast and efficient.

13 Instagram enables users to take, modify, and share photos on its platform and across other social media. Users can follow each other and view photos in a personalised feed. In 2012, Facebook purchased Instagram for $1 billion (Stern, 2012) and the platform reached 500 million accounts in 2016 (Instagram, 2016c). Instagram later added video sharing, first limiting videos to 15 seconds and later extending them to 60 seconds (Chaykowski, 2016). Instagram allows users to organise and search for photos using hashtags, permitting up to 30 hashtags in the photo’s caption. Many hashtags relate to queer women’s identities, such as #lesbehonest and #lesbiansofinstagram. Technology developers Dom Hofmann, Colin Kroll, and Rus Yusupov, created Vine in 2012 and sold it to Twitter later that year for $30 million (Constine, 2016). The app launched as a Twitter product, prompting users to combine their Twitter and Vine accounts. It enabled users to record, edit, and share 6.5-second looping videos. Its design pioneered features that have become common across mobile video apps, such as auto-play with user scrolling (Zhang, Wang, & Liu, 2014). Vine accumulated more than 40 million accounts shortly after its launch, with users reportedly cross-posting five new videos to Twitter every second (Bennett, 2013b). This placed Vine in competition with Facebook and Instagram, as Facebook responded by blocking cross-posting to its platform (Chang, 2013) and Instagram introduced video functionality only months later. At the time of analysis, Vine had an active population of queer women posting to hashtags like #LGBTcrew and #RainbowGang. On 28 October 2016, Twitter announced its decision to discontinue Vine, which coincided with the company’s financial difficulties, plans to more thoroughly integrate video into Twitter, and Vine’s dwindling number of active users (Gibbs, 2016). Analysis of this platform identified affordances that facilitated and later inhibited queer women’s participation and representation. I examined these platforms at a specific point in time, engaging with features and investigating the content and users who were present. Platforms continuously change as technology and market demands shift, requiring platform owners to negotiate user expectations while introducing new features (Acker & Beaton, 2016). This reflects what Gina Neff and David Stark (2004) term the “permanently beta” state of contemporary organisations, especially those within the technology industry. Technological features change alongside acquisitions, mergers, and alterations in a company’s vision. Users also gather and disband, adopting technology and then

14 disengaging when it ceases to serve a purpose in their lives. Throughout the thesis, I have situated this snapshot of queer women’s platform activity within discussion of previous and ongoing forms of digital media participation and representation to provide a sense of historical continuity.

Methods I combined traditional and digital methods to address the thesis’ concern with both queer women’s social media use and the influence of specific platforms. Table 1.2 demonstrates how each method relates to the study’s sub-questions, contributing to an overarching understanding of what is distinctive about queer women’s contemporary social media participation and representation. This section provides an overview of the walkthrough method, textual analysis, and interviews that I conducted. Subsequent chapters describe how I tailored these methods to each platform.

15 Table 1.2: Research Questions, Methods, and Types of Findings

Research Question Method What it allows us to know (examples) How do queer women use, Walkthrough Features, functions, policies, and reappropriate, and regulations that queer women circumvent social media encounter technologies for their participation and Textual analysis Themes of self-representations; representation? signifiers of identity (e.g., styles, emoji)

Interviews Participants’ interpretations of their own and others’ social media use; workarounds for platform constraints

How do social media Walkthrough Platform affordances and shape queer women’s constraints participation and representation? Textual analysis Tools for producing self- representations (e.g., filters)

Interviews Aspects of platforms that participants find useful or frustrating

What kinds of networked Walkthrough Platform features for connecting publics are queer women with others forming and interacting with through their social Textual analysis Shared symbols and references media participation and representation? Interviews Participants’ interactions with other users and sense of community

Ben Light, Jean Burgess and I (2016) developed the walkthrough method as a way to critically analyse apps. It builds on vernacular walkthroughs, such as videogame reviews, and concepts from cultural studies and science and technology studies. The method, which identifies the technical features and discursive framing that guide user activity, involves two main components: establishing the “environment of expected use” (p. 9–11) and conducting the “technical walkthrough” (p. 11–15). First, I established each platform’s environment of expected use, drawing on corporate and popular media to examine the platform’s vision, operating model, and governance. This component provides a sense of an

16 app’s anticipated users and uses. Secondly, I conducted a technical walkthrough of each app’s architecture, taking screenshots and field notes as I stepped through the registration process, features involved in everyday use, and functions for discontinuing use. The technical walkthrough uncovers an app’s “mediator characteristics” (p. 11), such as features and symbols, which shape users’ experiences. Each findings chapter begins with insights from the walkthrough, identifying key features and functionality that queer women encounter in their everyday use. I used textual analysis to examine content produced by and relating to queer women. This provided a sense of what queer women’s representations referenced in constructing sexual identity and how individuals drew on digital features to produce self-representations. When possible, I used the “methods of the medium” (Rogers, 2013), employing digital tools in data collection and analysis. For example, I used a software program to query Instagram’s Application Programming Interface (API) and collect images by hashtag. Since the study’s platforms are built around visual sharing, much of the content involved photos and videos. I viewed each item as a text, something from which people make meaning (McKee, 2003), and applied textual analysis as a process of “looking for evidence that people produce in the course of their everyday lives about how they make sense of the world” (McKee, 2014, p. 32). As textual analysis is similar to some forms of discourse analysis (Rose, 2012), I looked for underlying sexual and gender discourses as well as cultural references featuring in individuals’ construction of sexual identity. This involved assessing intertextuality, when texts reference other texts (Gray, 2006), which often required tracing interlinking references to popular culture, LGBTQ- specific symbols, and lesbian tropes. I paid attention to the texts’ format, features (e.g., photo filters), hashtags, and comments. This analysis of user-generated content provided an understanding of queer women’s self-representations and content produced by others, such as advertisers, as juxtaposing representations that users regularly encounter. Since interviews provide an in-depth understanding of individual experiences (Kvale, 1996), speaking with queer women provided insights into how they perceived their participation and representation on platforms. They shared personal views and stories, which would not have been accessible by solely observing content. Gathering interview participants was specific to each platform and heeded

17 ethical and technological limitations. Most interviews lasted between 50 – 80 minutes and captured thick descriptions (Geertz, 1973) of user experiences as I asked queer women about their self-representational decisions, use of technological features, constraints they encountered, and interactions with others. Building on visually focused interview techniques, such as photo elicitation (Harper, 2002) and the social media “scroll back” (Robards & Lincoln, 2016), I looked at apps jointly with participants, discussing their profiles, photos, and videos. This approach drew their attention to activities that they often viewed as mundane and automatic. Some participants in relationships preferred to be interviewed together. In these cases, I provided each partner with a consent form and gathered their responses in tandem, recording their personal narratives and shared perspectives. I used qualitative research software, MAXQDA, to iteratively code interviews, identifying descriptive, topical, and analytic codes (Morse & Richards, 2002). I developed thematic code trees (Richards, 2009), displayed in the appendices, which provided the basis for further analysis through writing (Pelias, 2011) as I drafted chapters. Through these interviews, I gained greater understanding of these individuals’ sense making around their self-representation, connections with others, reappropriation of technological features, and alignment of these platforms with their broader social media use.

1.3 Thesis Structure In its examination of queer women’s social media participation and representation, this thesis builds a case for the concept of identity modulation. The following chapters show how identity modulation comprises a range of platform practices that enable individuals to adjust their display of identity in order to connect with networked publics. Chapter Two provides the foundation for investigating queer women’s social media use and developing this concept. It traces the increasing visibility of queer women’s representation across television, film, and print media. Such representations, including their complex entanglement with gender discourses, have the potential for incorporation into queer women’s self-representation on social media. Through platform affordances, self-representations are subject to multiple and overlapping audiences. Drawing on literature from LGBTQ digital media studies, I identify instances when individuals have used features of digital technologies to adjust the salience of their sexual identity in relation to their personal identifiability

18 to negotiate multiple audiences. I argue that these instances constitute practices of identity modulation, which are subject to conditions of embodiment (bound up with bodily representation), normative pressures, and platform-specific influences. Identity modulation enables sustained interaction with networked publics, whereby individuals can present themselves as authentic, self-promote, and engage in collective critique. Chapter Three puts these concepts into action in the analysis of queer women’s use of Tinder. Anthony Giddens’ (1991) understanding of authenticity, as the ability to tell a cohesive self-narrative, provides a lens for understanding Tinder’s incorporation of Facebook profiles to stand in for a biographical narrative. However, interview participants and their profile content demonstrate that this cross-platform connection is not sufficient for verifying others’ identities or authentic intentions to date queer women. Since the women I interviewed often detected deceptive profiles, such as those belonging to men or couples, their identity modulation focused on saliently displaying female-identification and queer sexual identity as indicators of authentic intentions. Participants balanced these displays of sexual identity with minimal identifying details, slowly layering communication with matches through multiple communication technologies to verify and reveal personal information before meeting in person. Through these identity modulation practices, queer women formed a loose networked public that was often permeated by Tinder’s dominant heterosexual public. Chapter Four examines queer women’s use of Instagram, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s (1965) class-based theory of photographic practice to understand Instagram as a platform that holds the potential of class mobility. Analysis of photos with hashtags relating to queer women (e.g., #lesbiansofinstagram) and interviews reveal queer women’s adherence to platform practices in alignment with this goal. Individuals often engaged in identity modulation that made their sexual identity salient as part of their personal brand for the purpose of self-promotion. For many participants, identity modulation also involved maintaining their Instagram photos away from the view of potentially homophobic audiences, such as certain family members. These identity modulation practices enabled queer women to connect as a networked intimate public, which provided the support and attention conducive to helping them attain their financial and reputational aspirations.

19 In Chapter Five, I focus on a point in Vine’s history when queer women were active and visible through their use of LGBTQ hashtags. Taking inspiration from Nina Wakeford’s (1996) description of community practices on a lesbian email list, I identify a similar closeness among Vine’s communities of queer women. Drawing on the affordances of Vine’s 6.5-second looping videos, their identity modulation involved accentuating sexual identity and desire in Vines to build affinity through shared experiences and to make collective identity statements. Interview participants shared how they negotiated these forms of participation while also minimising the salience of their identity displays for discriminatory and harassing audiences. With their connections forged through shared identity statements, the queer women I spoke with participated in networked counterpublics that challenged dominant discourses of sexual identity, gender, and race. Chapter Six brings these findings together to discuss aspects of identity modulation that were specific to the practices of queer women featured in this thesis while also exploring identity modulation’s broader applications. Queer women’s identity modulation drew on LGBTQ media representations as well as symbols associated with lesbian culture and fashion to signal sexual identity. These representations supported identity modulation in the service of purposes that were particular to these women and their platform use, which included dating, self- promotion, and collective critique. While the queer women in this study often circumvented platform constraints, they also experienced impediments to identity modulation, including embedded platform biases and other users’ discriminatory practices. Identifying these impediments frames a discussion of ways that users and platforms are addressing them in their own interests and further steps that can be taken to facilitate identity modulation. Since individuals can experience stigmatisation of other aspects of identity, developing the concept of identity modulation makes way for future research about how people manage the display of different, or multiple, stigmatised identifiers in their social media participation and representation.

20

Chapter 2: Modulating Representations in Networked Publics

2.1 Introduction

A friend of mine’s parents once gave him a DVD containing a recorded sermon about the evils of homosexuality. As we watched it together, we wrote down counter-arguments he could pose to help his parents accept his sexual identity as a gay man. While the sermon’s main tenets have mostly faded from my mind, the DVD’s opening scene remains vivid: standing centre stage, wearing jeans and a tucked in checked shirt, the pastor explains that he will be focusing on gay men but will not be discussing women because “lesbians are just too complicated.” This has become a running joke among my queer female friends: when television shows write us out of the script, when the dating app market is saturated with apps for gay men but few for queer women, when heterosexual friends still ask in hushed voices how women actually have sex – we laugh it off; perhaps it is because of our complexity. But just because queer female sexual identity is perceived as complex, does not mean that it should be avoided, ignored, or rendered invisible. It does, however, point to the lengths that queer women may need to traverse in order to create and manage representations of their sexual identity, especially in contexts where a range of people are privy to them. The first part of this chapter synthesises literature about past and current LGBTQ and queer women’s media representation. This has been a complex journey for me, as I have needed to move beyond accounts of gay men’s representation and LGBTQ representation as a whole, which often receive greater attention from scholars, to focus on portrayals of queer women. These portrayals are not disconnected from gay men’s representations but they do involve layered implications of gender discourses that have enduringly subjugated and sexualised women, regardless of their sexual identity. Examining these historically embedded discourses contributes to a greater understanding of the current state of queer women’s representation in television, film, and print media. Contemporary representations span from sexualised depictions targeting male audiences to more nuanced characters, who reflect a diversity of racial, class, and gender identities. By

21 becoming familiar with these representations, I establish a foundation for examining how queer women may incorporate, reproduce, or alter certain forms of representation in their social media participation. The chapter then turns to a discussion of social and technological dynamics that social media platforms introduce into everyday life. boyd (2011) explains how, through social media’s affordances, the content users produce is enduring and highly visible to potentially vast and overlapping audiences. This visibility facilitates people gathering around content (or representations) in networked publics, which can enable dialogue and participation in public life (boyd, 2007). However, social media’s features and functions for increasing the visibility of representations across audiences can blur the contextual boundaries that usually separate family, friends, colleagues and other contacts. Studies show that LGBTQ people develop strategies of managing overlapping audiences by reinstating contexts (e.g., Livia, 2002; Renninger, 2014). These strategies include targeting some audiences with encoded representations while segmenting and separating audiences through the use of privacy settings. These practices for participating in networked publics form the basis of this thesis’ key concept: identity modulation. Identity modulation is a process whereby individuals draw on social media features and functions to adjust the prominence of their sexual identity in relation to personal identity indicators (e.g., legal name). Identity modulation can be enacted to different degrees and draw on a variety of technological mechanisms. An apt example (drawn from Chapter Five) involves queer women dancing sensually in Vine videos to attract attention from other queer women. Their sexual identity is recognisable but they often obscure their personal identifiability by using pseudonyms, excluding their faces from videos, and not cross-posting to other platforms. Toward the end of this chapter, I explore studies of LGBTQ people’s digital media use, which demonstrate that identity modulation is shaped by practices involving bodily representation, normative pressures to present recognisable identities, and platform-specific features, policies, and cultures. As it provides the strategies necessary for people with stigmatised identities to participate in networked publics, identity modulation is essential to understanding queer women’s social media participation and representation.

22 2.2 Ways to be Gay: Representations of Sexual Identity

This study looks closely at queer women’s social media practices as forms of digital representation that have the capacity to portray and communicate about sexual identities. Producing and sharing photos, videos, and posts on social media platforms extends the representation of certain identities that are often absent, minimal, or framed in particular ways in more formal types of media, such as television and film. Taken together, all these forms of media representation shape individuals’ self- perceptions and the perceptions of broader audiences. Feminist scholars have long asserted that media representations have power, since they can influence attitudes in ways that reinforce and justify oppression, discrimination, and domination (Marchment, 1997). Carolyn Kitch (2001) reminds us that this power of media imagery is largely “prescriptive rather than descriptive” (p. 3) in that piecemeal or biased coverage subtly shapes opinions. She uses the example of 1998 news reports asking, “Is feminism dead?” which gave the impression that feminist movements were universally in decline while, in actuality, many women retained feminist views. Media representations of all sorts influence the visibility of certain types of people and particular attitudes. With LGBTQ representation slowing increasing over the past four decades, the outcomes have been variable. A recent survey (Bond & Miller, 2017) found that watching mainstream television was positively correlated with young gay and bisexual men’s negative self-perceptions, which researchers posited was due to stereotypical portrayals of gay characters. Another survey of more than 600 bisexual people (Johnson, 2016) showed that enduring negative media portrayals of bisexual identity affected individuals’ mental health, reinforcing their perception that biphobia remains widespread. At the same time, focus groups with LGBTQ people show that the increased number of celebrities coming out helps queer people to feel more broadly accepted (Watson, 2016). Studies have also shown that viewing gay and lesbian characters can increase positive attitudes toward sexual minorities (Levina, Waldo, & Fitzgerald, 2000; Schiappa et al., 2006). One study, involving viewers of the late 1990s sitcom Will & Grace, described this effect as arising from the “parasocial contact” generated when media representations stand in for social contact with previously unknown others (Schiappa et al., 2006). These findings provide evidence for the implications of media representation that I mentioned in the

23 introductory chapter: media representations can influence individuals’ self- perceptions and their ability to communicate a recognisable identity to others while also shaping widespread perceptions of LGBTQ people. Identities conveyed and constructed through media representations are reflective of particular discourses, styles, and contexts at specific times in history. Alan Sinfield (1998) discusses the formation and dissolution of gay and lesbian subcultures that have produced a dominant “metropolitan” model of gay identity linked to urban lifestyles. While gay identification rests upon historically situated norms, policies, and social pressures, such as congregating in “gay villages” – urban neighbourhoods dominated by gay-friendly services and venues – shifts in these elements have also changed signifiers of sexual identity. Living in a historically no longer signals LGBTQ identity today, as these spaces have become gentrified and increasingly inhabited by upper-middle class heterosexual people while LGBTQ people and venues are now more geographically dispersed across cities (Ghaziani, 2014; Gorman-Murray & Waitt, 2009). Since sexual identity representations are highly fluid and contextually contingent, looking back at LGBTQ representation informs an analysis of contemporary queer women’s representations. Larry Gross (2001) notes that most media is “produced by and for the majority” (p. 12) and is about the majority while less content is a) produced by the majority and about a minority, or b) produced by a minority about that minority. While majority- produced broadcast media has the widest dissemination, LGBTQ people also have a history of producing alternative media, reappropriating broadcast media to elevate their voices (Atton, 2002; Silverstone, 1999), which has supported communities and movements. Examining LGBTQ representations brings to light identity indicators, stereotypes, celebrity icons, and discourses that shape sexual identity representations.

2.2.3 LGBTQ media representation over time In tracing increasing LGBTQ media representation over time, Suzanna Walters (2001) illustrates how LGBTQ characters were practically non-existent in film and television prior to the 1970s. This coincides with transformations in LGBTQ identity politics and public responses to political movements. The homophile movement of the 1950s and 1960s consisted of organisations, such as the Mattachine Society, which advocated for assimilation with mainstream society and

24 were rarely visible in the media as they downplayed differences among heterosexual and homosexual people (Warner, 1999). However, the 1970s saw a rise in identity- based movements, particularly feminist, race-based, and gay and lesbian movements. The 1969 Stonewall Riots, an uprising of LGBTQ people in response to a police raid on New York’s Stonewall Inn, marked a turn in LGBTQ activist organising that resonated across the United States (D’Emilio, 1983) and influenced movements in Canada (Goldie, 2001) and the United Kingdom (Mowlabocus, 2010). The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) formed as a coalition of gay and lesbian groups, which expanded the fledgling gay and lesbian press into a series of regular newspapers to inform people about activist organising and provide a sense of community (D’Emilio, 2012). Analysing news coverage of political demonstrations that continued into the 1970s, Stuart Hall (1993) observes that news outlets labelled identity groups, such as the GLF’s gay and lesbian groups, as “minorities” to accentuate their deviancy and distance them from the “majority.” While activist organisations claimed this minority label in order to argue for protections as distinctive groups, this contributed to essentialist debates over what defined a real gay or lesbian person, eventually leading to the dissolution of the GLF and other organisations (Beasley, 2005). While the formation of identity-based groups contributed to problems of labelling and defining gay and lesbian identity, it increased the visibility of these sexual identities to the extent that the formal media began to take note. Broadcast media throughout the 1980s perpetuated the view of gays and lesbians as a minority and introduced the ‘coming out’ narrative as a way of revealing their presence among the majority. Eve Sedgwick (1990) argues that narratives either perpetuate the notion that gays and lesbians are “a small, distinct, relatively fixed homosexual minority (what I refer to as a minoritizing view)” or that homosexuality is “an issue of continuing, determinative importance in the lives of people across the spectrum of sexualities (what I refer to as a universalizing view)” (Sedgwick, 1990, p. 1). Television shows of the 1980s took a minoritising view with intermittent gay and lesbian characters featured in once-off episodes (Walters, 2001). A salient example in my mind is an episode of the original Canadian teenage drama, Degrassi Junior High,8 in which one of the main characters, Snake, had his brother

8 The show originally aired in the late 1980s but I watched these episodes as reruns in the early 1990s.

25 visit. When Snake’s brother came out as gay, Snake initially rejected him but reinforced his own heterosexuality through conversations with friends and eventually came to accept his brother. The episode ends with Snake’s brother being kicked out of his parents’ house after coming out to them and he drives off into the sunset, letting Snake know that he will return, “When I’m welcome.” Such coming out narratives have become media rituals, as “formalized actions organized around key media-related categories and boundaries” (Couldry, 2003, p. 29). Coming out narratives position the media as an authority through which a standard tale of secretiveness, difficulty, admission, and moving on (constituting a clear boundary between before and after) is repetitively deployed to build a normative performance of homosexuality (Boross & Reijnders, 2015; Walters, 2001). Other once-off television appearances involved gay characters dying from AIDS, which were associated with efforts to raise awareness about AIDS but largely served to depict it as a gay men’s plague and associate gay identity with danger, risk, and irresponsibility (Hart, 2000). While these minoritising representations gave the appearance of increasing acceptance, they constructed gay and lesbian identities as associated with strife and rarity to the extent that coming out served to delineate a clear difference between a show’s main characters and gay and lesbian outsiders. Moving into the 1990s, political movements and media representations increasingly shifted toward universalising perspectives. Queer activist organisations formed around the premise that gender and sexual norms are constructed and they asserted that discrimination based on these norms should be a universal concern (Seidman, 2001). Activist groups, such as Queer Nation, staged highly visible and disruptive demonstrations to draw attention to the AIDS epidemic, arguing that it was a crisis concerning everyone and not just gay people (Gould, 2009). This activism paralleled increasing visibility through alternative media, as LGBTQ groups produced queer zines that challenged gender and sexual discourses (Barnard, 1996; Collins, 1999) and created other forms of media, such as In The Life, an American gay and lesbian news program debuting in 1992 (Tropiano, 2014). As Joshua Gamson (1998) describes, popular talk shows at this time were obsessed with showcasing sexually and gender diverse people, from drag queens to gay teenagers, lesbian cops, and bisexual couples. While this publicity was not always positive, especially since talk show guests were often framed as lower class or abnormal in comparison to the audience, it provided an outlet for large audiences to hear about

26 LGBTQ people’s lives and dispelled notions of their rarity. This universalising visibility paved the way for an increased volume of LGBTQ personalities and characters in screen media. The late 1990s saw a proliferation of gay and lesbian characters on television with ongoing storylines that reflected a move from universal to individualised politics and forms of citizenship. Although Ellen DeGeneres’ coming out in 1997 through her autobiographical sitcom tied into a universalising narrative, as she gained acceptance from friends and family, Ellen largely portrayed homosexuality as a personal struggle (Dow, 2001). Bonnie Dow (2001) identifies how the show constructed coming out as an act of psychological and personal autonomy, since disclosure released Ellen from the mental strife of living in the closet. Through scenes, such as Ellen discussing her sexuality with a therapist or distancing herself from politically militant lesbians, the sitcom constructed sexual identity as an individualised issue rather than a political one. Similarly, the 1998 sitcom Will & Grace included two gay men among its main characters who were often involved in storylines about coming out as a personal duty, permitting them to live harmoniously among heterosexuals (Battles & Hilton-Morrow, 2002). According to Kathleen Battles and Wendy Hilton-Morrow (2002), sexual difference in Will & Grace was indicated by personal quirks and exaggerated stereotypes, such as Jack’s effeminacy and preoccupation with fashion, which provided comic relief but precluded viewers from joining these personal narratives with overarching political implications. These individualised narratives coincide with the less confrontational form of LGBTQ organising that followed the diminishing AIDS crisis and has endured into the contemporary political climate. This approach argues for gay and lesbian rights as individual rights owed to citizens in neoliberal societies (Richardson, 2005). Diane Richardson (2005) discusses neoliberalism not only as a policy of reduced state intervention in favour of commercial interests but also as a set of social and cultural expectations regarding individual freedom, the responsibility to self-regulate, and citizenship through consumer participation. These have shaped LGBTQ movements, as gay and lesbian people struggle to be seen as ‘good’ citizens. Shows like Ellen and Will & Grace depict lesbian and gay characters getting along with others, working, consuming, and avoiding being politically disruptive. From the 2000s onward, LGBTQ media representation has further departed from a focus on difference to accentuate appealing, sensual, and normative aspects of

27 stereotypically gay lifestyles. Abandoning media representations denying LGBTQ people’s sexual agency, such as by shows alluding to but never depicting gay kisses on screen (McKee, 1996),9 the rise of shows like Queer as Folk (QAF) and The L Word sensationalised homosexuality. As a drama focused on the lives of gay men, both the British and American versions of QAF defined characters by their sexuality, inviting heterosexual viewers to become “homovoyeurs” (Manuel, 2009, p. 283). Sheri Manuel (2009) points out that while the show contained some storylines challenging heteronormativity, it catered to heterosexual viewers by depicting characters as sexually interesting but otherwise “normal,” white, middle-class gays and lesbians, avoiding storylines about people of colour or transgender individuals. Sally Munt (2000) further highlights QAF’s inclusion of pride narratives – stories where homophobia is challenged – next to the reinforcement of the stereotype that gay men are only concerned about sex. To make their characters available to hetero and homosexual imaginations, both QAF and The L Word, a drama about a friendship group of queer women, have relied on stereotypes. Sedgwick (2006) laments that although The L Word provided “an important contribution to cultural politics” (p. xxi) by depicting multiple, interconnecting lesbian lives on prime time television, the show also portrayed characters policing each other and upholding norms in relation to feminine appearance and class. Extending neoliberal narratives, these shows highlighted individuals’ personal success and integration with mainstream norms, showcasing their status through plotlines located in wealthy suburbs. They communicated characters’ sexual identity not only through sexual activity but also through consumption in the form of urban lifestyles and pastimes (e.g., clubbing, personal grooming/fitness) associated with those who have successfully taken on a metropolitan gay or lesbian identity (Sinfield, 1998). This approach to LGBTQ representation remains prevalent across contemporary broadcast media and reflects present debates concerning LGBTQ identity politics. Some scholars and advocates believe the move away from dwelling on difference signals what Out magazine editor James Collard (1998) first described as a “post-gay” sensibility. Amin Ghaziani (2011) summarises Collard’s vision of post-gay individuals those who are able “to define oneself by more than sexuality, to disentangle gayness with militancy and struggle, and to enjoy sexually mixed

9 I recall my own frustration while waiting multiple seasons for Willow and Tara to finally kiss on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

28 company” (p. 102). This is similar to Steven Seidman’s (2002) suggestion that some LGBTQ people may be moving “beyond the closet,” discarding the need to come out because sexual identity has become unremarkable. However, minimising difference also relates to Lisa Duggan’s (2002) concept of “homonormativity” as “a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them” (p. 179). Homonormativity is tied to the commercialisation of LGBTQ identities and lifestyles, which scholars have identified as giving the false perception that LGBTQ people enjoy full participation in society (Johnston, 2005; Kates & Belk, 2001; Richardson, 2004; 2005). Eve Ng (2013) identifies underlying homonormative narratives in a widespread form of broadcast content that she terms “gaystreaming,” which depicts upper-middle class LGBTQ people – mostly gay men – who appeal to a range of audiences through their exhibition of and/or aspiration toward luxury lifestyles.10 This focus on normative identities and lifestyles even tempers the slowly increasing representation of transgender people in screen media, which is often limited with regard to race, class, and binary gender identities. This is evident in the media attention garnered by white trans celebrity Caitlyn Jenner, whose wealth helped her to embody “the gold standard of femininity” (Compton & Bridges, 2016, p. 84). While moving away from emphasising sexual identity as a label or a burden, contemporary media representations tend to sustain LGBTQ visibility that meets normative expectations with regard to other categories of identity.

2.2.4 Queer women’s representation The previous account of LGBTQ media representation heavily features gay men’s representation, since it has been and continues to be more frequent and visible than that of queer women (GLAAD, 2015). However, queer women’s representation has often differed from portrayals of gay men, resembling more closely women’s media representation in general. The media have historically omitted women or only included them in roles that are secondary to men (Byerly & Ross, 2006). Prior to the 1990s, lesbian characters in cinema were subject to what Terry Castle (1993) conceptualises as a “ghost effect” (p. 2), or apparitional rendering, as they were barely identifiable. Annamarie Jagose (2002) explains that this invisibility is due to

10 See also Sender, 2007.

29 women’s sexuality only being conceivable in relation to men’s sexuality. The sexual scripts of heterosexual culture have constructed men as dominant and active sexual beings, rendering women as passive and objectified. Through this logic, lesbians are always constructed as secondary to men, not gay men, and not actual (heterosexual) women, placing them at the bottom of representational hierarchies and denying them any characteristics of their own (Jagose, 2002). This challenge of representing queer women in their own right surfaces across media forms and shapes how queer female identity is communicated in different historical and political contexts. Long before their representation in broadcast media, queer women grappled with depicting sexual identity in self-produced media. In her exploration of early 20th century lesbian fiction, Theresa de Lauretis (1993) describes authors’ difficulty writing about women’s sexuality without comparison to men’s sexuality. She explains that the female subject is constructed in terms of “a sexual difference (women are, or want, something different from men) and of a sexual indifference (women are, or want, the same as men)” (p. 142), leading representations of sexuality to always reference men. De Lauretis notes that while famous authors like Gertrude Stein attempted to sidestep this with genderless and ambiguous writing, Radclyffe Hall’s work integrated sexual indifference. Hall’s novel, The Well of Loneliness, published in 1928, raised controversy and incurred censorship as it told the story of a masculine-presenting lesbian protagonist, Stephan Gordan, and her relationships with women (Gilmore, 1994). Stephan’s masculine gender, or ‘gender inversion’ as was the medicalised term at the time, reinforced sexual indifference. However, as de Lauretis (1993) points out, the character also opened up the possibility of a “reverse discourse” that reclaimed “erotic drives directed toward women, of a desire for women that is not to be confused with woman identification” (p. 146). The character’s masculine expression of desire made available the notion of women’s sexual attraction for each other, separate from identifying as and affiliating with female identity, which was thought to lead some women to inadvertently engage in same-sex sexual acts. Viewing masculine performances as reverse discourses is similar to Jack Halberstam’s (1998) assertion that female masculinity disconnects masculinity from the white male body. This enables women to express masculinity as part of female sexuality and to challenge the constraints of feminine gender norms, becoming active sexual agents.

30 Masculine and diverse identity representations became central to queer women’s self-produced and alternative media over time. Yvonne Keller (2005) explains that despite male authors contributing to the 1950s explosion of lesbian pulp fiction, women wrote a large subset of novels in which they depicted nuanced characters and defied stereotypes. Stemming from 1970s identity-based movements, queer women produced media that confronted normative discourses. Feminist and lesbian musicians challenged gender norms through their appearance, lyrics, and sound, aligning with masculine-perceived genres like punk and rock (Sport, 2007). Queer female authors wrote about the multiple inequalities women faced, such as the Black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde’s poetry and prose, which provided a view of her life and the intersection of race, class, and sexual identity (de Lauretis, 1993; King, 1988). Sue-Ellen Case (1993) describes the emergent butch/ aesthetic of 1980s and 1990s lesbian bar culture as a form of camp in terms of its performative irony, playing on gender tropes to express sexual desire. Women worked this aesthetic into media and culture through fashion and theatre, often in the form of drag king performances that challenged conventional notions of masculinity (Rosenfeld, 2003). Queer women’s production of alternative media into the 1990s continued to represent diverse identities while also reflecting the fragmentation of feminist and identity-based organisations. For example, Dana Collins (1999) notes that the zine Brat Attack countered some feminists’ anti-pornography stances by including erotica and displaying rarely visible identities, such as “leatherdyke.” Masculine representations retained the attention of queer female audiences, such as the large fan following that k.d. lang’s masculine style and music attracted (Allen, 1997). This inclusion of a range of gender and racial representations in queer women’s alternative media has co-existed alongside broadcast media representations spanning from stereotypical to boundary pushing. As I mentioned previously, tracing queer women’s representation across television, film, and print has been a complex endeavour for me. This is in part because such representation in broadcast media has been neither entirely homogenous nor diverse, neither all femme nor all butch, neither completely objectifying nor emancipatory. I have also had to recognise my personal biases in examining this area, since my experience of viewing queer or lesbian representations in these formats was largely one-sided while growing up. What I recall of my personal media viewing aligns with the critiques I have read about representation in

31 the 1990s and early 2000s. Ann Ciasullo (2001) scorns media and print outlets for the explosion of “lesbian chic” (p. 578) representations in the 1990s that showcased feminised lesbian bodies while erasing or pathologising butch gender representations. She recalls lesbians in make-up and feminine clothing embracing on the cover of Newsweek and asserts that “mainstream representations of lesbianism are normalized-heterosexualized or ‘straightened out’ – via the femme body” (p. 578). Following these sorts of representations into the early 2000s, Lisa Diamond (2005) notes the rise of “heteroflexible” characters and media personalities as hyperfeminine women engaging in same-sex sexual activity to titillate male viewers. She recalls highly publicised celebrity spectacles, such as Madonna and Britney Spears kissing at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards (Diamond, 2005, p. 107), as instances that reinforce heteronormativity: women are depicted as trying out sexual activity with each other to confirm their heterosexual identity. A bit later in the 2000s, I remember blushing when Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” came on the radio, afraid that liking it may lead others to make assumptions about my sexual identity. But as Perry asserted her heterosexuality in press interviews and critics denounced the lyrics as attention-seeking (e.g., Cinquemani, 2008), the song’s queerness became questionable and I relaxed a bit as it took over the airwaves. Alongside these representations, television characters and media personalities emerged in the 1990s and 2000s who challenged gender stereotypes and heteronormativity. Contrasting the Newsweek cover mentioned earlier, GQ ran an issue in 1993 that depicted model Cindy Crawford shaving the face of k.d. lang, who was dressed in a pinstripe suit (Walters, 2001). This gender-bending cover reflected broader trends toward androgyny in fashion, which challenged gender norms in the 1990s (Arnold, 2001). Newspapers across the United States included cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For weekly comic strip from 1983 to 2008 (Garner, 2008), depicting a range of lesbian characters’ lives and providing political commentary. Frederik Dhaenens (2014) asserts that although scholars have identified many instances of television shows reinforcing heteronormativity, several shows airing from the early 2000s until the 2010s and beyond also depict queer resistance. He observes shows involving “queer deconstruction strategies” (p. 522), as storylines that challenge norms relating to gender and sexual identity, such as the lesbian character Kima in The Wire, whose plotline portrays her resistance to the gendered scripts of motherhood. Dhaenens (2014) also identifies “queer reconstruction

32 strategies,” as storylines that “go beyond fleeting and ambiguous disruptions by representing queer and viable alternatives to the heteronormative way of living and thinking” (p. 526). He provides the example of Glee character Brittany Pierce, who refuses to label her fluid sexual identity and is portrayed without a narrative of victimhood. I missed many of these more flexible, diverse, and nuanced representations of queer female sexual identity. In part, this was due to authority figures at home and school in the 1990s, who viewed androgynous and gender bending content as inappropriate. Later on, avoiding this content was part of my personal strategy to not acknowledge or give off hints that I may identify as anything but heterosexual. These contrasting representations hint at the complexity that gender adds to representations of queer women. The L Word consisted of six seasons, immersing viewers in the lives of queer characters that included women of colour, women, a deaf character, and trans characters. At the same time, Daniel Farr and Nathalie Degroult (2008) observe that the show’s characters who transcended gender norms tended to “serve as points of reference to emphasize the ‘appropriate’ femininity of the primary characters” (p. 428). While The L Word’s main cast included mostly feminine characters, femininity is so often associated with heterosexualised media depictions of women interacting sexually for male audiences that feminine queer women are often not acknowledged and are rendered invisible (Vannewkirk, 2006). This invisibility is evident when shows like MTV’s Faking It ensure that the bisexual protagonist wears a piece of masculine (e.g., a baseball hat) clothing to remind viewers of her sexual identity despite her otherwise feminine appearance. While several television shows (such as Queer as Folk) depict queer women as belonging to a gender dichotomy of masculine or feminine (butch or femme), a broader spectrum of gender presentation is evident in individual women’s self-representation. Queer women have introduced terms, such as “masculine of centre” to indicate a range of masculine gender identities (BUTCH Voices, 2011) or “tomboy femme”11 to reflect a gradient of feminine gender identities. Sometimes media representations capture these nuances, such as the range of masculine and feminine queer female characters in the 2011 film Pariah. While screen media representations of transgender queer women have been few, with the 1999 film

11 See http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tomboy%20femme

33 Better than Chocolate as a notable exception, newer shows, such as Netflix’s Sens8, include transgender queer female characters in the main cast. Female gender, whether represented masculinely, femininely, or somewhere in between, introduces dynamics to queer women’s representations that can associate or dissociate them with various audiences’ sexual fantasies, normative ideals, and stereotypes. Queer women’s more frequent inclusion in contemporary film, television, and print media has led to a greater diversity of somewhat contradictory portrayals. Similar to Ng’s (2013) concept of “gaystreaming,” Julia Himberg (2014) laments “multicasting” in lesbian programming that aims to attract vast audiences by including lesbian characters but minimising their sexual identity in plotlines. Multicasting approaches are often coupled with post-feminist undertones that Kate Smith and Imogen Tyler (2017) observe as actually reinforcing heteronormativity and traditional gender roles in contemporary television. They note that long-running shows, such as Coronation Street, which appear to be ground breaking in recent inclusions of lesbian characters, often simply incorporate two women into traditional romance scripts, such as storylines involving large church weddings. However, several films (e.g., Below Her Mouth, see Costa, 2016), streaming web series (e.g., Between Women, see Karlan, 2014), and “Netflix Original” shows have targeted queer female audiences and produced content with diverse representations. Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black (OITNB) “depicts a multiplicity of body types that includes a range of characters with overlapping gender (e.g., cis, trans, masculine, femme, butch), sexual (e.g., lesbian, queer, heterosexual, heteroflexible), class (e.g., working, upper-middle), and racial and ethnic identities (e.g., African American, Caucasian, Dominican, Puerto Rican)” (Symes, 2017, p. 30). Katerina Symes (2017) explains that OITNB draws heterosexual and queer audiences through the relatable, white, feminine protagonist Piper, whose storyline becomes increasingly queered and less focal. OITNB aired in 2013, the same year that the romance film Blue is the Warmest Color debuted with critiques of satisfying the director’s “male gaze” (Juergen, 2013), perpetuating the portrayal of lesbian sex for male audiences. More recent contradictions include media coverage of queer female celebrities that still trivialises their sexual identity, such as misreporting of Kristen Stewart’s female lovers as ‘gal pals’ (McBean, 2016). This contrasts with the ample attention paid to Miley Cyrus’ identification as pansexual (Kimble, 2016) and the wide circulation of Ellen Page’s coming out speech at the Human Rights Campaign’s “Time to THRIVE” conference

34 (Stern, 2014). Page now co-hosts a television documentary, Gaycation, which explores LGBTQ rights issues around the world. Queer women’s representation across new and traditional forms of media involves this intricate constellation of depictions that challenge norms alongside those that uphold heteronormativity. In a 2015 interview, Cindy Crawford stated that she did not think her cover shoot with k.d. lang would be such as “big deal” these days (Commonwealth Club, 2015). Having broadened my knowledge of gender bending and norm challenging women who have featured in the media spotlight over the past decades, I would agree. Yet, the reception of such representations still depends on their audiences and their context. Recently when asking Ivan Coyote, a genderqueer writer, to sign a copy of their12 new book, Tomboy Survival Guide (Coyote, 2016), they shared with me that protesters in my home province of Alberta had blocked Coyote’s literary readings. The protesters’ religious views and lack of understanding about gender ambiguous and trans people fuelled their refusal to let Coyote perform. I felt ashamed for Canada and angry that the substantial media coverage of Coyote’s performances since their debut in 1998 had not changed this situation. The range of examples in this section demonstrate the enduring relevance of Kevin Barnhurst’s (2007) observation that visibility is often a paradox, “spurring tolerance through harmful stereotyping, diminishing isolation at the cost of activism, trading assimilation for equality, and converting radicalism into a market niche” (p. 1). At different points in time, representations of queer identity have been aimed toward assimilating into mainstream discourses, identifying as a minority, emphasising the universality of sexual discourses, and expressing individuality through consumption and self-regulation. Queer women have navigated gender inequalities on top of the frequent stigmatisation of their sexual identity to produce representations spanning spectrums of gender, sexuality, class, and race. Television, film, and print media representations have often portrayed queer women as white, upper-middle class, feminine and sexualised for male audiences but have also featured queer women that challenge these normative ideals and deconstruct stereotypes. Rather than focus on individual symbols of queer female identity, such as the karabiner key ring in the 1980s and 1990s (Cauterucci, 2016), which change rapidly over time and are not uniform across locations or cultures, this section has

12 Ivan’s pronouns are ‘they’ and ‘their.’

35 provided a broader view of trends and challenges across LGBTQ and queer female visibility. This gives a sense of the media representations available to queer women as they participate on social media. It also depicts how approaches to representing identity are fluid and change over different contexts, warranting close examination of how queer women today represent themselves through social media.

2.3 Networked Publics and Identity Modulation As the previous examples of queer women’s alternative media demonstrate, individuals have long produced and circulated mediated self-representations. Scholars have traced how digital technologies have introduced new tools for these self-representational practices, facilitating collaborative production and the integration of broadcast content into individuals’ creative works (Bruns, 2008; Lessig, 2008). Burgess (2006) notes that social media users’ activity often involves “vernacular creativity” as non-elite, everyday creative practices. She observes that vernacular creative content frequently includes cultural “‘hooks’ or key signifiers” (Burgess, 2008, p. 105), such as songs, phrases, or symbols, which make it easy for others to playfully imitate and modify. Through cultural hooks referencing shared meanings and norms, creative texts can become internet memes, which users share widely because of their personal identification with this everyday content (Shifman, 2012; 2014). Tools facilitating users’ production of creative and self-representational content, and interactions surrounding this content, continue to change with developments in digital technology. These changes involve not only the introduction of new content production features, such as Instagram photo filters, but also apps that attract various crowds of users to view representations. As such, scholars have attempted to understand these shifts as shaping participation and representation in networked publics with overlapping audiences. Conceptualising digital spaces of interaction as networked publics has facilitated understandings of new social dynamics and practices involving digital media technologies. Borrowing from Mizuko Ito’s (2008) general notion of networked publics as “social, cultural, and technological developments that have accompanied the growing engagement with digitally networked media,” boyd (2011) develops a more concrete concept of networked publics as “publics that are restructured by networked technologies” (p. 39). She situates this concept among

36 “messy” theories of publics stemming from Jügen Habermas’ (1989) initial notion of an unitary public sphere. Habermas envisioned individuals coming together in the public sphere and bracketing, or putting aside, their differences in order to deliberate as equals. Nancy Fraser (1990) argues that attempting to bracket difference turns a blind eye to systems of oppression that are justified through difference, such as men’s exclusion of women from spaces of public dialogue. She notes the existence of multiple publics, including “subaltern counterpublics,” where “members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counter discourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs” (Fraser, 1990, p. 67). Warner (2002) further defines “counterpublics” as gatherings of people in tension with a larger, more dominant public. He and Fraser understand publics as producing, circulating, and gathering around discourses, such as ideas or texts. boyd (2011) similarly identifies multiple networked publics functioning through social media, which are gathered around particular practices and topics. She describes networked publics as simultaneously “the space constructed through networked technologies” and “the imagined collective that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice” (p.39). Therefore, a networked public is contingent on a platform’s technological architecture as well as the representations produced and circulated using the platform’s features, around which specific publics gather. Scholars have built upon the concept of networked publics to identify how different arrangements of users and platform features come together. Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess (2015) discuss publics that gather around Twitter hashtags, from rapidly forming ad hoc publics around hashtags for acute events, such as emergencies or political controversies, to sustained “hashtag communities” around particular topics, such as television shows. Zizi Papacharissi (2015) discusses how “affective publics” arise as “networked public formations that are mobilised and connected or disconnected through expressions of sentiment” (p. 125). While there are multiple understandings of affect,13 she likens it to intense emotion “as the energy that drives, neutralizes, or entraps networked publics” (p. 7). With the increase in sharing highly affective visual content, such as self-portraits (Hayward, 2013), publics gather around social media content that grips individuals personally

13 For contrasting perspectives and other applications of affect theory, see for example Ahmed, 2004; Paasonen, Hillis, & Petit, 2015; Seigworth & Gregg, 2010.

37 and evokes emotion. Platforms also contribute to the formation of affective publics, as they encourage users to share emotionally personal narratives, which draw increased volumes of activity (Gehl, 2014; van Dijck, 2013). Noting the emotions shared among a community of feminist photographers on Instagram, Magdalena Olszanowski (2015) identifies these women as forming a “networked intimate public.” She builds on Lauren Berlant’s (2008) notion that “a public is intimate when it foregrounds affective and emotional attachments located in fantasies of the common, the everyday, and a sense of ordinariness” (p. 10). Olszanowski (2015) notes how the women saw each other as sharing a feminist vision, platform practice, and risk of repercussions for posting photos of their bodies, all of which generated feelings of intimacy. Other scholars have similarly observed how social media’s affordances for consistent interaction can generate “ambient intimacy” (Reichelt, 2007), while phatic communication through status updates and check-ins with audiences can sustain feelings of co-presence (Miller, 2008) and generate affinity among users (Lange, 2009). Bryce Renninger (2014) observes this affinity among asexual Tumblr users who he views as comprising a “networked counterpublic,” vehemently countering the dominant discourse that all people have sexual inclinations. From hashtags to visual content, networked publics gather around a variety of representations and are comprised by a range of people, including artists, television show devotees, political activists, and identity groups. Acknowledging the multiplicity of networked publics provides a foundation from which to explore the kinds of networked publics with which queer women engage and the representations they circulate to gather such publics. Platforms’ networked affordances introduce social dynamics that shape how individuals connect with particular networked publics. boyd (2011) describes how social media’s affordances make interactions and their content (the texts around which publics gather) more persistent, replicable, scalable, and searchable. In other words, posts to social media stick around and they are easily reproduced, viewed by numerous people at once, and can be located through efficient search mechanisms. boyd (2011) describes how these affordances and social media’s networked architecture can render audiences invisible, collapse social contexts, and blur the boundaries of public and private. Zizi Papacharissi and Paige Gibson (2011) highlight a fifth affordance, shareability, as social media’s architecture and features encourage a culture of sharing over withholding information. As individuals share

38 increasing amounts of information, they must determine how to negotiate these dynamics that amplify their content to potentially vast and overlapping audiences. In this thesis, I use the term “identity modulation” to describe these practices of negotiation.

2.3.1 Identity modulation Scholars have often conceptualised invisible (or unknowable) and overlapping social media audiences as a challenge for interpersonal interactions and a privacy issue. Marwick and boyd (2011) found that, on Twitter, users responded to this by approaching others as “imagined audiences,” developing a “mental picture of who they’re writing or speaking to” (p. 128), since they cannot be aware of everyone who will view their content. This notion is akin to Benedict Anderson’s (1983) longstanding concept of “imagined community,” as groupings of individuals who are not all known to each other, such as a nation, but imagine some commonality with one another. However, many platforms facilitate connections with contacts of varying familiarity, including friends, family, colleagues, and previously unknown others, while also collapsing the social, temporal, and spatial contexts that usually separate these individuals (boyd, 2011). Several social media scholars have applied Erving Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical concepts of front stage and backstage to understand how users deal with this dynamic (Hogan, 2010; Lim, Vadrevu, Chan, & Basnyat, 2012; Papacharissi, 2012). Goffman (1959) observes that individuals present a tailored “front stage” self to particular audiences and a less formal “backstage” self when those audiences are absent. Noting how social media complicates the re-building of contexts, Hogan (2010) asserts that, on a platform like Facebook, many users continually present a front stage self, appealing to the lowest common denominator of contacts. However, as Papacharissi and Gibson (2011) explain, social media users must sacrifice some personal information and privacy in return for sociability. Therefore, users are likely to share more than formal and unanimously acceptable content. Several studies of social media users’ disclosure of personal information challenge dichotomies of front stage versus backstage, sharing versus not sharing, and private versus public. Patricia Lange’s (2007) investigation of YouTubers’ identity management strategies demonstrates a range of practices blending notions of

39 private and public. YouTubers shared content in ways that were “publicly private,” publicly posting information but limiting access or intelligibility, or “privately public,” concealing personal information but posting widely. Marwick and boyd (2014) describe teenagers’ use of similar practices across several platforms where they employ a suite of tactics to protect their privacy. For example, they often use “social steganography” (Marwick & boyd, 2014, p. 1058), posting content in plain sight that is only meaningful to certain audiences who understand its symbolism. Livingstone (2008) shows that as teenagers grow older, they shift toward subtly signalling identity through connections with peers rather than overt social media posts of self-expression. These tactics re-contextualise social media representations, as they enable targeting specific audiences while obscuring personal information for others. Such approaches align with Helen Nissenbaum’s (2009) observation that the notion of privacy in relation to digital media is now that of “privacy in context,” as individuals expect their personal information to remain subject to the norms and audiences in the context where they share it, even if it is possible to reproduce and view it elsewhere. These studies reflect that rather than behaving in public or private ways, social media users continuously tailor their participation and representation to rebuild contexts and target specific audiences. Managing LGBTQ identities in networked publics involves applying these strategies and tactics in a twofold way. In my Masters thesis, I focused on how LGBTQ university students negotiated collapsed contexts on Facebook, identifying how some students intentionally collapsed audiences together for coming out posts while others rebuilt contexts through coded messages and applying privacy settings (Duguay, 2016a). While it was outside that study’s scope, several participants discussed how they posted more freely about their sexual identity on other platforms. This finding can be understood alongside studies of old and new technologies, which show that LGBTQ people adjust two aspects of identity – personal identifiability and sexual identity – in order to represent themselves in desired ways. For example, Anna Livia (2002) writes about how gay men using the French Minitel (a 1980s telephone-based precursor to the internet) constructed elaborate pseudonyms, which concealed their legal names but also divulged information about their physique and sexual preferences to simultaneously create a “sense of secrecy, privacy and dangerous pleasure” (p. 204). In contrast, a lesbian Minitel community required users to purchase an annual subscription, which was viewed as providing the security

40 necessary for users to be ‘out’ to one another, posting under their first names (Chaplin, 2014). Tamara Chaplin (2014) notes that this difference between chat rooms may be attributed to the increased risk of negative consequences associated with exposing gay men’s sex-related conversations over lesbian activists’ discussion of event organising. Pseudonyms reducing personal identifiability enabled gay men to post openly about sexual desires while lesbians posting under their first names maintained conversations with little sexual content. LGBTQ people also adjust the prominence of these aspects of identity to navigate networked publics on contemporary social media. Recalling Renninger’s (2014) study of asexual Tumblr users, he notes that the platform allows users to have multiple pseudonymous blogs, which ensures that a blog is not tied to any single identity. This provides a context where Tumblr users can make strong (a)sexual identity statements while minimising risks to their personal safety. Tobias Raun (2014) describes trans peoples’ intense and immersive vlogs (video blogs) on YouTube. These videos are highly personal, as they provide a mirror for vloggers allowing them to evaluate their transition over time, and public, as they broadcast representations of trans lives to counter their absence and stereotyping in mainstream media. Depending on vloggers’ decisions, such as whether to include a name, location, or other identifying information, the videos can meet either of Lange’s (2007) definitions of publicly private or privately public. For men on Gaydar, “face pics” serve the purpose of verifying others’ self-descriptions while legal names are less important (Mowlabocus, 2010, p. 104). Mobile dating apps, such as Grindr, enable users to share profiles stating their sexual preferences while facilitating sexual encounters in private spaces (Ahlm, 2016), ensuring that the moment of identifiability between users occurs off the app. Jessa Lingel and Adam Golub (2015) found that in response to Facebook’s increased enforcement of its real name policy, drag queens developed workarounds to maintain their stage persona as separate from their everyday lives, such as by creating separate drag fan pages. As the participants in my earlier study retained their legal names on Facebook, they regulated the noticeability of their sexual identity representations in relation to the prominence of this identifiable information. In each of these instances, personal identifiability and sexual identity are adjusted according to a networked public’s audiences, norms, and features.

41 In light of these examples, I wish to build on theories of networked publics by introducing a new concept related to identity management on platforms. I define “identity modulation” as the way that individuals continuously make decisions about whether and how much to make their sexual identity recognisable in relation to personally identifying information (e.g., name, location, face)14 for particular social media audiences. The term invokes the analogy of adjusting device settings, such as volume or brightness, as variables that can be altered by the user but are often subject to the affordances and constraints of the available controls. Through identity modulation, LGBTQ people develop strategies and reappropriate digital features to increase the salience of identity cues for certain audiences. At the same time, they must deal with programmed restrictions, policies, and homophobic audiences, which may complicate their identity modulation. While this concept mainly builds on studies of networked publics and LGBTQ people’s digital media use, it also aligns more broadly with contemporary studies of how LGBTQ people manage information about sexual identity across social situations. Jason Orne (2011) observes that rather than making one pivotal coming out statement, LGBTQ people practice “strategic outness” as “the continual contextual management of sexual identity” (p. 682), tailoring how much they disclose in an ongoing manner given the social context. Identity modulation involves strategic outness, as individuals determine how salient to make their sexual identity in their social media profiles, photos, and videos, but also pairs this with users’ agency in relation to platform affordances for adjusting the prominence of their sexual identity and other forms of identifying information.

Conditions of identity modulation As individuals modulate the salience of their personal identifiability and sexual identity, conditions of embodiment, normative pressures, and platform specificity shape these processes. Bodily representations can immediately identify an individual or accentuate sexual preferences and desires. Individuals often follow norms to associate themselves with particular identities. Platform policies, features, and practices also delineate appropriate identity representations. These conditions shape how individuals enact identity modulation in networked publics.

14 In this definition, I mean personally identifying information, or personal identifiability, as any information that might make an individual recognisable to unintended audiences. Since many people are widely known by their legal name and appearance, these aspects often make individuals highly identifiable.

42

1. Embodiment The body plays a key role in LGBTQ people’s identity modulation, as bodily descriptions and portrayals feature in overt and encoded representations of identity. Early fantasies of the internet painted it as removed from physical experience, occurring in a virtual or cyber space that enabled ‘identity tourism’ as users took on fluid identities, shapeshifting across social interactions (Ferreday & Lock, 2007). Donna Haraway’s (1991) iconic “Cyborg Manifesto” envisioned the cyborg as a hybrid human and machine, transcending bodily constraints and socially constructed binaries, especially gender, through the possibilities of digital technology. However, Kate O’Riordan (2007) notes that utopic visions of technology enabling individuals to transcend bodily concerns of gender and sexuality are often based within privileged white, middle-class viewpoints. She asserts that notions of an online/offline divide and denial of material, embodied qualities of queer online experiences have been a stumbling block for researchers. Instead, many studies show how bodily qualities are essential to digital participation and representation. Embodied representations are even pertinent to identity modulation in text- based environments. In her study of a lesbian Bulletin Board System (BBS), Shelley Correll (1995) observes that women framed interactions by describing the BBS as a bar, co-constructing its material qualities (e.g., the pool table, fireplace, and hot tub) and relating to each other by describing their physical positioning within this scene. When flirting, women used verbs with particular demarcations (e.g., ) to communicate actions and referenced body parts through emoticons like <> to signify a vulva. This coded language relating to the body is similar to today’s use of emoji to connote body parts, such as representing a penis (Rogers, 2015). John Campbell (2004) similarly notes that in gay men’s early Internet Relay Chat (IRC), men communicated about the body through a particular vernacular “allowing patrons to convey a strong image of bodily attributes” (p. 113). This vernacular included bodily descriptors, which were dependent on the chat room’s context, such as “big” meaning muscular in #gaymuscle chat and fat in the #gaychub room. Men also exchanged their “stats” as quick summaries of bodily attributes (e.g., height, weight). Participants on a lesbian mailing list also constructed a “Muff Diva Index” to encode their signatures with information about their position on a butch-femme spectrum (Wakeford, 1996). These practices resemble early newspaper lonely-hearts ads,

43 saving on the cost of print space by displaying bodily information in a condensed manner (Beauman, 2011; Laner & Kamel, 1978). These text-based codes asserted sexual identity as well as availability and desirability to attract other LGBTQ people. The body’s central role in LGBTQ people’s identity modulation has intensified with technological developments allowing for easier uploading and streaming of visual content, which is used not only to display sexual identity but also to assert one’s position within subcategories of identity. Sharif Mowlabocus (2010) describes how gay men’s digital culture has become permeated with the discourse of “cybercarnality,” characterised by two tropes: “the pornographic remediation of the gay male body” (p. 58), as the increasing ubiquity of idealised pornographic images of gay men available through the internet, and “technologies of self-surveillance and corporeal regulation” (p. 58), as men critique and police each other according to these idealised bodies. Mowlabocus explores cybercarnality within the context of Gaydar, a gay lifestyle website with forums and dating functionality, where men strive to portray pornified, ideal bodies in their profiles. Similarly, Andil Gosine (2007) traces how the redesign of profiles on Gay.com refocused interactions on users’ images, disrupting strategies of non-white users who passed for white in a text-based environment but now experienced racial discrimination. Indeed, dating websites and platforms have been complicit in aiding gay men to weed out those who do not meet idealised, white body compositions, providing filters and algorithms that render certain body types and races invisible (Light, Fletcher, & Adam, 2008; Lim, 2016). Joy Hightower’s (2015) investigation of a lesbian dating website revealed that although women could choose identity labels (e.g., femme, butch, queer) in profiles, others’ acceptance of these identities was contingent on a matching bodily presentation through photos. were more highly valorised than those with queer or butch gender presentations, leading users to claim more feminine identities but only insofar as their images could match. Visual content authenticates claims individuals make about belonging to identity groups where certain bodily appearances are required for membership (e.g., muscle-laden ‘masc’ gay men and slim, femme lesbians). Mobile media also make location and real-time presence available as indicators of identity. Referencing Adriana de Souza e Silva’s (2006) notion of “hybrid spaces” as “mobile spaces, created by the constant movement of users who carry portable devices continuously connected to the Internet and to other users” (p.

44 262), Mowlabocus (2010) examines gay men’s early digital cruising practices through Bluetooth mobile technology. He writes about how mobile technology simultaneously allows men to locate each other in space and time, accelerating interactions and enabling cruising in liminal spaces, such as daily train commutes. Blackwell, Birnholtz, and Abbott (2015) discuss how apps like Grindr co-situate gay men on the app and in physical space, enabling them to know that other gay people are nearby even in heteronormative environments. While presence on an LGBTQ- related app or in an LGBTQ venue can indicate sexual identity, bodily location can also communicate personally identifiable information, such as an individual’s place of work or home. Embodied user practices and platform features conducive to embodiment constitute a central means of verifying personal identity, such as by adding a ‘face pic’ to a profile, and asserting sexual identity through displays of sexual preference, availability, and desire.

2. Normative pressures The above examples of gay men striving to present ideal, pornified bodies and queer women attempting to be interpreted as femmes demonstrate that LGBTQ people’s identity modulation is often subject to normative pressures. The norms and identity roles perpetuated in broadcast media often provide recognisable scripts for digital media participation. One example of this includes the digital mediation of coming out through online video, which has become a standard genre on YouTube (Alexander & Losh, 2010; Wuest, 2014). Jonathan Alexander and Elizabeth Losh (2010) describe how YouTube coming out videos have developed a common rhetorical structure: “They presume the presence of an addressee, they are oriented around a transformative speech act, they respond to discourses around community building, and they recognise enduring ambiguities in the construction of sexual orientation, sexuality, and gender” (p. 48). Similar to Hollywood portrayals of coming out, YouTubers confess their sexuality as a personal secret that transforms them upon admission, upholding the normative coming out narrative as an individualised problem. However, Alexander and Losh (2010) note that despite this narrative’s routinisation across videos, some YouTubers’ discussion of the instability of sexual identity challenges mainstream expectations that sexuality is fixed. Broader platform practices also allow for remixing, mash-ups, and creative variation on standardised coming out narratives. External pressures, such as broadcast media’s

45 coming out rituals, can guide LGBTQ people to represent their sexual identity in normative ways but individuals can also resist normative pressures. Institutions, users, and platform conventions can also exert normative pressure on individuals’ identity modulation. Following numerous suicides of LGBTQ youth, author and advice columnist Dan Savage posted a YouTube video with his partner, directing the message of “It gets better” to LGBTQ young people and encouraging them to believe that adulthood will be more positive than their present experience (Muller, 2011). Hundreds of users responded by creating their own videos, which Savage formalised into an institution – the It Gets Better (IGB) campaign – with an invocation for LGBTQ people and heterosexual allies to submit similar videos. Given Savage’s identity as a gay, upper middle class, white American man and the campaign’s impetus to imitate his message, scholars have criticised IGB as reinforcing homonormative narratives of LGBTQ identity, which are individualised, tied to privilege, and refrain from challenging heteronormative systems (Goltz, 2013; Grzanka & Mann, 2014). Gal, Shifman, and Kamf (2016) view the homogeneity of IGB videos as stemming from their meme-like format, since memes “both reflect norms and constitute a central practice in their formation” (p. 1700). IGB is just one example of several LGBTQ campaigns that have become institutionalised through digital technology.15 Their normative pressure functions through the collective practices of certain demographics of users in conjunction with digital features and formats – such as memetic production – that reinforce the reproduction of practices into norms. As LGBTQ people have become recognised as a niche market, the commercialisation of LGBTQ sexual identities also exerts normative pressures on individuals’ identity modulation. Dating websites for men seeking men often offer drop-down menus with prescribed identity categories, limiting sexual representation to commodifiable market segments for targeted advertising (Light et al., 2008). Numerous LGBTQ lifestyle websites, or affinity portals, emerged in the mid-1990s and were particularly rife with stereotyped, commercial content (Aslinger, 2010). Campbell (2005, 2007) writes about how large corporate portals like PlanetOut.com and Gay.com provided the guise of community and possibility of finding romance to

15 More recent campaigns include the Human Rights Campaign encouraging users to change their profile photos to equals signs (Vie, 2014) and YouTube’s #ProudToLove Pride Month campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSiehK2asbI

46 entice users into sharing personal information for tailored marketing. Just as gaystreamed broadcast programming glamourises homonormative identities (Ng, 2013), LGBTQ YouTube micro-celebrities provide largely apolitical content while pursuing careers as what David Craig and Stuart Cunningham (2016) term “social media entrepreneurs.” LGBTQ YouTubers demonstrate how they attain idealised appearances and lifestyles (e.g., Ingrid Nilsen’s channel focused on fashion and make-up), often downplaying sexual difference to appeal to a range of audiences and corporate sponsors. These examples demonstrate how LGBTQ people are often subject to pressures to cater to commercial interests, which construct stereotyped and homogenous sexual identities to be advertised and realised through purchasing associated products. LGBTQ people’s identity modulation is subject to normative pressures that reduce the distinctiveness of individuals’ self-representations while offering a potentially more acceptable, highly recognisable identity script.

3. Platform specificity Platform features, governance, and cultures influence identity modulation, shaping the ways that users can increase or decrease the prominence of personal identifiability and sexual identity. In applying this notion of platform specificity, I draw again on Rogers’ (2013) concept of “medium specificity” to look at how particular platforms influence users’ participation in networked publics. This approach draws on scholars’ findings that different platforms contribute to varying user outcomes and practices (Blank & Groselj, 2012; Papacharissi, 2009). The walkthrough method enables this examination of platforms’ technological, economic, and governance-related influences. In the above examples alone, there are many digital features and policies determining how users carry out identity modulation. BBS and chat rooms are programmed to allow pseudonyms of a particular length and to function with Unicode symbols that enable users to assemble emoticons (Correll, 1995; Livia, 2002). Affinity portals and dating websites or apps define the categories (e.g., bear, twink) through which users describe themselves (Light, 2007). Dating apps instil policies alongside built-in regulations to shape the expressions of sexual desire upon which their success relies, such as Grindr’s prohibition of nude photos and sexually explicit phrases (Roth, 2015). The visibility of YouTube coming out videos is contingent on platform features, such as tagging and searchable titles, that permit

47 videos to be retrieved from YouTube’s enormous database (Alexander & Losh, 2010; Wuest, 2014). Technological features and associated policies not only determine the extent to which users can adjust the salience of sexual identity but also shape the embodied and normative forms through which users accentuate or downplay aspects of their identity. When boyd first developed the notion of networked publics in 200716 and later elaborated on the social dynamics of networked publics with Marwick in 2011,17 social media had not yet fully moved into the platform paradigm of providing major, commercial communications infrastructures (Burgess & Banks, 2014). Having identified strategies for monetisation through advertising, data mining, and corporate partnerships, platforms are now major commercial players that shape user activity toward their profit-driven interests. Tarleton Gillespie (2012) discusses how platforms are often complicit in promoting content that their software deems algorithmically relevant, generating platform-curated “calculated publics.” Bruns and Burgess (2015) note that that these calculated publics, such as Twitter’s official “hashtag pages” compiling tweets for popular hashtags from sources it deems authoritative, often overshadow users’ self-organised ad hoc publics. As platforms are now a prominent outlet for publicity and exposure, broadcast media outlets often aim to dominate feeds and feature sections, as evidenced by Christian Fuch’s (2013) observation that media corporations were responsible for almost all of YouTube’s top ten videos and the majority of Facebook’s most popular fan pages in 2013. Popular accounts with many followers, such as celebrities, brands, and politicians, have developed intricate promotional strategies to occupy much of the dialogue in today’s networked publics (van Dijck & Poell, 2013; Duguay, 2016b). Platforms’ commercial influences steer identity modulation, sometimes burying individuals’ representations under broadcast or advertiser content. Platforms also influence identity modulation in accordance with particular norms and biases. Lisa Nakamura (2002) identifies how technology developers’ biases, differential economics of access to digital technology, and users’ racial ideologies combine to perpetuate “cybertyping” as ways that the internet “propagates, disseminates, and commodifies images of race and racism” (p. 24). Cybertyping can contribute to segregation, such as when white, upper-middle class

16 boyd, 2007 17 boyd & Marwick, 2011; Marwick & boyd, 2011

48 teenagers abandoned MySpace and its racially diverse user population for the gated walls of Facebook, which initially only allowed users with university affiliations (boyd, 2012a). Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández (2017) identifies how users and contemporary technologies come together in forms of “platformed racism” that occurs by “amplifying and manufacturing racist discourse both by means of users’ appropriations of [platform] affordances and through their design and algorithmic shaping of sociability” and “a mode of governance that might be harmful for some communities” (p. 931). Gender-based violence and sexism is also similarly perpetuated on platforms, such as through the ways that #Gamergate proponents used Twitter’s affordances to threaten and harass female gamers (Braithwaite, 2016). Platform features and policies that overlook or fail to recognise certain identities, alongside mass forms of user discrimination, can lead individuals to reduce the salience these aspects of their identity.

Cumulative practices of identity modulation While I have discussed once-off instances of identity modulation, such as deciding which drop-down category to include in a dating profile, posting a coming out video, or choosing a pseudonym, individuals’ everyday social media use involves the accumulation of identity modulation decisions over time. Since ongoing participation in networked publics requires the continual negotiation of potentially vast, overlapping, and often unknown audiences, scholars have identified new technosocial practices that users employ to accomplish this. They involve sustained approaches to claiming to be authentic, attaining micro-celebrity status, and participating in identity-based collectives. While I outline these below, the majority of literature relating to these practices does not examine how individuals with stigmatised identities, such as LGBTQ people, engage in these practices. Or, when they do consider individuals outside of normative categories, these studies do not examine how they manage such practices among vastly differing audiences. As the following chapters will show, identity modulation is a prerequisite for queer women enacting these practices and a continual process that they must deploy as part of broader strategies for attaining their desired participation in networked publics. boyd and Marwick (2011) observe that users engaging with networked publics often strive to maintain a positive impression with their audiences, which can be attained by appearing “true or authentic” (p. 124). Scholars across the social

49 sciences have examined authenticity (see Vannini & Williams, 2009), identifying that it is not inherent but is generated through shared beliefs and interactions (Barker, 2012). Authenticity involves the ability to reference the appropriate cultural symbols and meet expectations associated with claiming a particular identity within a given context (Grazian, 2010), such as referencing lesbian television characters in a dating profile while claiming a lesbian identity. Some digital media scholars have examined performances of authenticity as carefully curated displays of intimacy, connections with others, and responsiveness to followers (Gaden & Dumitricia, 2015; Marwick, 2013b). Brady Robards (2014) mobilises Giddens’ (1991) concept of identity as a self-reflexive process to understand how a Facebook profile become a “self-reflexive product,” attesting to a user’s authentic identity. I build on this in the following chapter and further apply Gidden’s (1991) notion of authenticity, as consistently referencing a biographical narrative, to the way that Tinder structures authenticity. The notion of authenticity, in terms of seeming real, genuine, and relatable to others, arises across the following chapters. They draw attention to how signalling authenticity through knowledge of queer cultural symbols, intimate self-displays, or social media biographies involves indicators of personal identifiability and sexual identity that require ongoing modulation in the purview of overlapping audiences. The capacity of platforms to facilitate individuals accumulating large audiences for their everyday representations also gives rise to a set of practices that can be understood as micro-celebrity. Theresa Senft (2008) first wrote about micro- celebrity in her study of ‘camgirls,’ women who shared their lives online using webcams in the late 1990s. She explains that while conventional celebrity is generally tied to capital (fame supported by large amounts of money), which creates a separation between celebrities and ‘average’ people, micro-celebrity depends on forging a connection with the audience (without guarantee and regardless of capital). As this approach to connecting has become more common across social media, Marwick (2016) describes micro-celebrity as “a self-presentation technique in which people view themselves as a public persona to be consumed by others, use strategic intimacy to appeal to followers, and regard their audience as fans” (p. 333). Constructing a micro-celebrity persona involves tactics of self-branding. Alison Hearn (2008) also builds on Giddens’ (1991) theories to describe how the reflexive project of the self is now constituted by the labour of self-branding in certain mediated cultural forms, such as reality television and social media. She defines self-

50 branding as, “the self-conscious construction of a meta-narrative and meta-image of self through the use of cultural meanings and images drawn from the narrative and visual codes of the mainstream culture industries” (p. 198). A publicly self-branded persona incorporates cultural references to speak across audiences and functions “in the service of promotion and possible profit” (Hearn, 2008, p. 213). This is evident in studies of popular Instagrammers, such as Marwick’s (2015) analysis of “Instafamous” users whose references to the mainstream culture industries involve showcasing ‘cool’ jobs, such as modelling and tattooing, and emulating the glamour and luxury of traditional celebrity culture. Similarly, Crystal Abidin (2014) identifies how some users have become social media “influencers” among young people in Singapore, gaining volumes of followers by showcasing their consumption of luxury items and becoming “arbiters of taste” (p. 123). As the Instagram and, to a lesser extent, Vine case studies show, when queer women engage in micro-celebrity on social media, identity modulation features in their decisions around which aspects of identity to involve in self-promotion and what cultural references they choose to associate with their identity. Platform technologies and users also come together in ways that enable new forms of community based around particular aspects of identity, facilitating collective critique of social norms. Collective community practices often involve affective gestures, such as sharing selfies (self-portraits taken by the subject) for the purpose of connecting with others and challenging biases. For example, NSFW18 communities of women on Tumblr post nude selfies to garner affirmation from each other and make multiple body types visible (Tiidenberg & Gomez Cruz, 2015) and Muslim women who wear niqabs post selfies to shift notions of them as being voiceless (Piela, 2013). Tim Highfield (2016) describes how the exchange of humorous memes and tweets can gather people in solidarity around political causes. Scholars have written about how assemblages of users, designers, and digital technologies give rise to emergent technocultures, as cultural values and practices become fused with and expressed through digital technology (Brock, 2012; Sharma, 2013). In his analysis of hashtags circulating among Black Twitter users, Sanjay Sharma (2013) points out that Black individuals enter a platform assemblage whereby hashtags combine with “a particular style of humour which has been

18 Not Safe for Work.

51 associated with elements of African-American culture” (p. 59). Both Sarah Florini (2014) and André Brock (2012) identify that this combination facilitates a digital restructuring of the Black cultural practice of “signifyin’” as a “linguistic performance that allows for the communication of multiple levels of meaning simultaneously, most frequently involving wordplay and misdirection,” (Florini, 2014, p. 224), through which Black Twitter users carry out social critique and confront racism. Queer female identities come with their own set of stereotypes and cultural tropes, such as typically ‘lesbian’ fashion items (e.g., plaid shirts) and inside jokes (e.g., bringing a U-Haul to a first date). The case studies highlight how queer women can use such cultural indicators of sexual identity to gain entry to communities and participate in collective critique, but individuals also downplay or eschew them depending on their target audiences or context.

2.4 Conclusion The majority of literature about LGBTQ representation and digital media use focuses either on gay men or on LGBTQ as an aggregate identity. Only a few of the studies covered in this chapter featured queer women and these usually involved their use of older technologies, such as BBS and chat rooms. This study is one of the few that looks squarely at queer women’s use of contemporary digital media technologies. However, the paucity of research about queer women is not enough to structure an entire thesis. Instead, as I have outlined, the very complexity of queer women’s representation and the dynamics of networked publics provide the foundation for investigating how these come together when queer women participate on social media platforms. Queer women’s representation across broadcast and alternative media has met multiple challenges. Gender discourses that deny women sexual agency often render invisible a sexual identity that is removed from male sexual desires. Queer women have produced alternative media and informed media representations that span a range of identities, representing women whose sexual identity overlaps with multiple racial, class, and gender identities. While screen media has often represented queer women as hyperfeminine and sexualised for male viewers, these representations are countered by more nuanced representations targeting queer female viewers and challenging discourses of heteronormativity. These forms of

52 representation comprise the broader media landscape as queer women produce their own representations using digital media. Networked publics gather around representations that, through platform affordances, are often visible to potentially vast, overlapping audiences. In order to represent sexual identity in networked publics, studies of LGBTQ people point to a continuous process of adjusting the noticeability of sexual identity in relation to personal information. I have termed this identity modulation, as a more nuanced lens than binary notions of public and private, which can be used to examine practices of targeting or sometimes reinstating contexts between particular audiences. Instead of maintaining certain representations as public or private, front stage or backstage, LGBTQ people tend to be out to certain audiences through multiple practices that manage the salience of their sexual identity in relation to their personal identifiability. Through identity modulation, individuals can use digital technology to adjust their self-representations and appear somewhat queer or queer to particular audiences. Identity modulation processes are shaped by: practices of producing embodied representations, which can emphasise personal or sexual identity in different contexts; normative pressures that guide individuals to present recognisable identities in alignment with dominant scripts; and platform-specific features, policies, and cultures of use. Developing the notion of identity modulation enables an understanding of how queer women participate in networked publics on Tinder, Instagram, and Vine. As the following case studies demonstrate, queer women modulate personal identifiers and indicators of sexual identity throughout their self- representations on different platforms for certain purposes, such as to verify their authenticity, engage in self-promotion through micro-celebrity, and participate in identity-based collectives.

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Chapter 3: Displaying Authenticity on Tinder

3.1 Introduction “Grindr for straight people” (Muston, 2013) was how the media described Tinder following its release in 2012. The established everyday use and popularity of apps for men seeking men paved the way for Tinder’s marketing toward and uptake by a heterosexual user market. By the time I started using Tinder in late 2014, it was commonplace in heterosexual and queer dating scenes across urban areas. Prior to meeting my partner through the app and subsequently deleting it from my phone, I have three distinct memories of my Tinder use, which resonate with some of the women’s experiences recounted in this chapter. First, I recall selectively peering at profiles, wondering if several of the women displayed were actually interested in dating women or if Tinder had sorted them into the wrong category. I also remember visiting a friend in a small city and our conversation about my research bleeding into discussion of her dating life. She looked at me incredulously when I suggested she try Tinder. Noting that everyone in the city knew everyone else, she believed that using the app would be like embarrassingly announcing her intimate sexual and dating desires to all of her acquaintances. Finally, my most common experience of Tinder took place on the couch in my apartment, where I usually Tindered in the evenings, waiting for the screen to refresh and display new users because I had easily swiped through all the queer women in my neighbourhood. My suspicion of other users and my friend’s wariness reflect an overarching theme that emerged from my investigation of Tinder and queer women’s participation and representation on the app. Queer women’s activity focused on asserting their authenticity, in terms of being who they claimed to be, and verifying the authenticity of others. This preoccupation with authenticity stems from Tinder’s discursive framing and technological features. Its functionality as a mobile app increases the likelihood of meeting others in person, creating a need to quickly establish authenticity. Tinder’s mandatory connection with Facebook is framed as the solution to establishing others’ authenticity but its swipe mechanism undermines this. Users and the media have perceived the swipe’s rapid, binary, and visually based decision-making as being conducive to arranging casual sex (Carpenter & McEwan, 2016; College Humor, 2014), drawing into doubt the authenticity of users

55 claiming intentions toward dating and forming longer-term relationships. The queer women who I interviewed held similar perceptions, interpreting Tinder’s swipe as supporting its reputation as a “hookup” app. They frequently deflected advances from accounts that did not belong to other queer women, such as men and fake profiles requesting sexual photos. These perceptions and experiences drove interview participants to become adept at displaying their sexual identity and verifying authentic intentions toward dating other queer women. While there are many ways of understanding authenticity, as noted in Chapter Two, Giddens’ (1991) concepts are a useful starting point for examining authenticity in the context of Tinder. Giddens views identity, or the “self,” as a “reflexive project” (p. 5) that is constantly revised as individuals make decisions. However, establishing authenticity with another person requires smoothing this ever-shifting identity into a consistent biographical story. Giddens explains, “The authentic person is one who knows herself and is able to reveal that knowledge to the other, discursively and in the behavioural sphere” (p. 187). Being able to describe and demonstrate a coherent self-narrative indicates authenticity.19 On Facebook, for example, biographies accumulate in the Timeline section of users’ profiles, establishing authenticity over time as individuals make consistent posts. However, Tinder users swipe rapidly on static biographies, requiring alternative ways to reference consistent self-narratives. This referencing draws on two mechanisms that Giddens (1991) describes: “symbolic tokens” that “have standard value, and thus are interchangeable across a plurality of contexts” (p. 18); and “expert systems” (p. 137) as sources of advice or information that shape individuals’ choices. While Tinder takes Facebook accounts as symbolic tokens, queer women using the app demonstrate their authentic intentions to date other queer women through other references to their sexual identity, such as mentions of LGBTQ-friendly television shows. They display these references upon the advice of, or by observing, “experts,” such as friends or online columnists, but eventually become experts at asserting their own authenticity.

19 Giddens (1991) discusses how such a narrative gives meaning and logic to otherwise arbitrary life decisions. He explores how there may not be any underlying purpose to life but people construct their purpose on a daily basis. Since we all do this, we are much more likely to trust a person who can introduce themselves in a way that indicates an underlying meaning to their actions, making them appear predictable and reliable.

56 The interviews with queer women discussed later in this chapter demonstrate that their identity modulation was most concerned with these processes of displaying and verifying authenticity. Since they could not assume other users on Tinder had intentions to date queer women, this became the main area of authenticity that they sought to establish. Participants attempted to verify that potential dates were female- identified and attracted to other women as indicators that they authentically intended to date women. As such, identity modulation involved emphasising sexual identity in profiles and conversations with matches. However, with these women prominently displaying their sexual identity, encountering fake or predatory accounts, and acknowledging the app’s hookup reputation, they also took steps to minimise personally identifying information until after verifying a match’s authenticity. Through these practices of identity modulation, queer women on Tinder formed a loosely connected public, gathered around profiles that shared common references and symbols, which functioned – somewhat uncomfortably – alongside the app’s dominant heterosexual public.

3.2 Tinder’s Authenticity Problem I conducted a walkthrough of Tinder’s technical features in July 2014, using the Apple iPhone version and multiple research accounts, examining how app features and options shifted depending on profile parameters (e.g. age, gender). I established Tinder’s environment of expected use through corporate materials, news articles, and Tinder-related social media posts from the app’s launch in 2012 until September 2016. Through this analysis, I identified Tinder’s importing of Facebook profiles as the platform’s solution to authenticity verification. However, Tinder’s interface is designed around the key functionality of the swipe, which trivialises the matter of authentic relationship seeking, as users rapidly sort through profiles based on visual appearance. Since the swipe instantiates Tinder’s hookup reputation, bringing with it connotations of risk and unequal gender discourses, this generates a need for queer women to employ additional mechanisms to display and verify authenticity.

Mobile dating and the Facebook solution On Tinder’s registration screen, a large blue button provides the only course of action: “Log In with Facebook” (Figure 3.1). As soon as this mandatory

57 connection is established, Tinder imports a user’s first name, age, recent photos, gender, likes, and friendlist to display in one’s profile. In 2014, Tinder’s Frequently Asked Questions (now removed) responded to users’ concerns over why they must login through Facebook, “We use Facebook to make sure you are matched with real people who share similar interests and common friends.” While this connection provides supplemental information about users, its primary purpose is to ensure users are “real” – to verify their authenticity.

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Figure 3.1: Tinder login screen.

Verifying user identities and intentions has been a longstanding concern throughout the development of communications technologies. With the introduction of the telegraph, operators developed unique signatures to identify themselves (Standage, 1998). With the home telephone, an impetus emerged for callers to announce themselves, later providing the rationale for caller identification (“Caller- ID”) to automatically display a caller’s name and number (Katz, 1990). With online and mobile technologies, user norms have developed alongside debates juxtaposing the freedom to use pseudonyms with the need for a “real name web,” thought to hold users accountable by making them legally identifiable (boyd, 2012b; Hogan, 2013). Whereas people participating in online forums may never meet each other in person, digitally mediated dating presents a more pressing need for verifying aspects of

58 identity because its end goal is (most frequently)20 to meet face-to-face. On dating websites, much effort goes toward evaluating others’ dating profiles (Heino, Ellison, & Gibbs, 2010). Studies show that users take account of multiple cues and outside information (e.g., Googling potential dates) to reduce uncertainty before meeting up (Gibbs et al., 2011). Mobile dating apps further intensify the need for identity verification as they co-situate users on the app and in physical space (Blackwell et al., 2015). For women, online dating and dating apps pose an additional risk because of gender roles that place responsibility upon them to be wary of dangerous and predatory men (Farvid & Aisher, 2016). As a company whose success depends on the widespread participation of women, Tinder’s connection to Facebook gives the appearance of an apt tool for verifying others’ authenticity and, by extension, giving the sense that it is safe to meet them in person. Facebook’s policies and design lend themselves to the use of profiles as mechanisms of authenticity verification. Facebook (2015a) asserts that its “real name requirement” – the need for individuals to use their legal name or a name by which they are commonly known – enables people to connect by displaying their “authentic identities.” Since its inception, Facebook has promoted the use of real names, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg stressing that this enhances the transparency of communication among users (Raynes-Goldie, 2010). For several years, Facebook policed profiles based on whether they appeared to use a legal name. It positioned legal names as symbolic tokens of authenticity, since they are likely to be used across contexts. Legal names also reference biographical narratives through material evidence, such as birth certificates or other pieces of ID, which Facebook can request for identity verification (Scudera, 2015). With Facebook establishing the display of legal names as a platform requirement and user norm, Tinder imports this expectation that its users are legally identifiable. After public backlash against the suspension of pseudonymous accounts belonging to drag queens and transgender people (Nichols, 2014), Facebook reframed its approach to authenticity verification. In a public apology, Chief Product Officer Chris Cox (2014) specified, “Our policy has never been to require everyone

20 Kane Race (2014) notes how some men seeking men use hookup apps, such as Grindr, as repositories of sexual photos they receive or find in others’ profiles. They also sometimes engage in sexual discussion with other users without the intention of meeting up. As noted later in the chapter, some women whom I interviewed mentioned similar uses of Tinder, as matching with someone provided a confidence boost and allowed them to engage in mutual approval of sexual desirability. However, most participants used Tinder to arrange in person encounters.

59 on Facebook to use their legal name. The spirit of our policy is that everyone on Facebook uses the authentic name they use in real life.” While decentring legal names, this policy shift requires users to engage in consistent self-referentiality across the narrative of their profile. This aligns with Robards’ (2014) dual understanding of the Facebook profile: “First, as a tool that can be used in the process of reflexive self-making, and second, as an object (or a product) of that project” (p. 29). This object comprises a coherent biography, accumulated over time and under the observation of personal acquaintances for whom individuals present a consistent narrative. It is imported into Tinder as a quick reference to authenticity.

The swipe perceived as inauthentic Once users login with Facebook, Tinder does not prompt them to tailor their profile further but instead launches them into the app’s main activity: swiping. In the swipe screen, users are presented with others’ profile “cards,” which prominently display a main profile photo with minimal information (e.g., name, age) underneath. Users swipe left to “pass” on a card and right to “like” a card. If two users swipe right on each other, they form a match (Figure 3.2), unlocking the messaging screen. Nagy and Neff (2015) explain that a technology’s “imagined affordances” – functions that it is believed to serve – emerge among users’ perceptions, designers’ intentions, and the technology’s materiality (i.e., its buttons, functions, and associated interactions). The swipe’s functionality configures the majority of user interaction with the app into a single gesture, which Tinder’s developers and users imbue with meaning.

60 Redacted for publication in compliance with copyright law

Figure 3.2: Tinder match screen. 21

Qualities of the swipe functionality include its binary, rapid, and visual emphasis during users’ decision-making processes. From a software development perspective, Werning (2015) observes that swiping to sort options conceptualises infinite space on either side of a smartphone screen. This allows users to categorise others into bottomless repositories. The binary left or right swipe does not allow users to remain undecided about a card – there is no “maybe” option – and only users paying for Tinder Plus obtain a “rewind” feature, enabling them to retrieve a dismissed card. The gesture of swiping is simple and quick, complying with its developers’ vision, as co-founder Sean Rad describes, “We always saw Tinder, the interface, as a game” (Stampler, 2014). Sorting users according to attractiveness builds on previous online rating games, such as Hot or Not, created in the early 2000s. It also shares similarities with Facebook’s initial iteration, Facemash, designed for Harvard students to rank each other (Kaplan, 2003). Tinder’s early promotion expanded this theme, posting YouTube videos of app launch parties (since removed), which emphasised fun and physical attraction through scenes with Maxim models and copious alcohol consumption. Users could also playfully click on an early version of Tinder’s homepage to bring into view model-like men and

21 Screenshot from Tinder’s opening login screens.

61 women in swimsuits as examples of users on the app.22 Tinder’s developers and marketers perceived the swipe’s qualities as producing a game-like app based around the evaluation of sexual attractiveness. Media outlets reporting on, satirising, and circulating opinions about Tinder extended its initial framing to associate the swipe with casual sex. An early YouTube video by College Humor (2014), which now has more than 9.5 million views, told a “modern fairy tale” of Tinderella and Princeton who met on the app, had sex, and lived happily ever after “because they never spoke again.” Interpretations such as this emphasised Tinder’s use for hookups over forming relationships. Since casual sex is a common preoccupation of “media panics” (Drotner, 1999) associating sexual activity with negative and dangerous outcomes, the media’s panicky descriptions of Tinder connected it with these notions. When a study associated an increase in sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) to “high-risk behaviors including using social media to arrange casual and often anonymous sex” (Rhode Island Government, 2015), media outlets immediately implicated Tinder with headlines such as, “Rhode Island blames STD spike on hookup apps like Tinder” (Schumaker, 2015). Reporters have also included Tinder in the headlines of tragedies in which the app facilitated contact, for example, nicknaming an accused murderer the “Tinder killer” (Sutton, 2015). Other media articles and campaigns have critiqued Tinder for leading to shallow hookups over meaningful relationships (Eler & Peyser, 2016), asserting that the app reduces people to “pieces of meat” (Hello Velocity, 2016; Maureira, 2014). While Peter Nagy and Gina Neff (2015) do not separate the media from the broader category of users in determining how a technology becomes associated with imagined affordances, media producers not only constitute authoritative users who form opinions about platforms, but they also circulate dominant interpretations widely. This media framing has given Tinder the reputation of being a hookup app. Individual users’ interpretations of Tinder reflect this hookup reputation, which has particular implications for male and female users. Surveys of Tinder users identify entertainment as the top motivation for use (Carpenter & McEwan, 2016; Ranzini & Lutz, 2016) and the most frequent users as those seeking sexual partners (Carpenter & McEwan, 2016). These studies demonstrate Tinder’s casual use, not for serious romantic pursuits, and its frequent role in arranging sexual activity.

22 I accessed this page through a search using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20130403040153/http://www.gotinder.com/

62 Observing dialogue about Tinder on social media shows that the app’s association with hooking up is experienced differently due to gender discourses associated with casual sex. The Tinder subreddit (r/tinder) is dominated by male users discussing the optimal profile display to attain hookups and includes screenshots triumphantly depicting Tinder chats leading to casual sex. While these conquest stories receive the equivalent of textual high fives from other Redditors, female users re-post men’s vulgar, forceful, and unwanted sexual solicitations to @tindernightmares on Instagram. Their posts reflect gender inequality in hookup culture, which rewards men for sexually aggressive behaviour while placing responsibility on women to selectively deflect most advances to avoid being shamed (Bogle, 2008; Farvid & Aisher, 2016; Kalish & Kimmel, 2011). Facebook falls short when female users need to know that potential matches will not demand sexual behaviour and also shame them for participating in sexual activity. Therefore, Tinder’s hookup reputation reintroduces a crisis of authenticity on multiple levels. The limited information imported into Tinder does not enable users to verify consistent aspects of character, such as how matches will treat a partner. Further, Facebook may be sufficient to verify that a user is real but cannot help users to determine others’ authentic intentions, especially when they claim to be seeking romantic partners but Tinder’s widespread interpretation is that it is used to arrange casual sex. As Tinder’s hookup reputation became more widespread, the company made several attempts to intervene in this interpretation of the swipe’s affordances. Pinch and Bijker (1984) describe technological development as an iterative process whereby developers and users vie over the meaning of an object. They note two approaches to stabilising a technology’s interpretation: “rhetorical closure” (p. 426), attempting to produce the dominant discourse about an object; and “redefinition of the problem,” (p. 427), reframing a problem with the object as its solution. Through updates to its promotional approach and design, Tinder has endeavoured to present the app as solving the problem of meeting new people (Craw, 2014) and, most often, the problem of meeting new romantic partners for relationships. Its first narrative promotional video, #ItStartsHere,23 abandoned dark nightclubs to depict young people socialising in well-lit, diverse settings (e.g., parks, beaches), concluding with a man and woman meeting for a romantic rooftop date. Tinder’s social media

23 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiJV1HIHTlY

63 campaign, #SwipedRight,24 implied that the “right” way to use the app was to find long-term partners. It showcased engagement and wedding stories from couples who met through Tinder (Figure 3.3).25 Within the app, Tinder has imposed a “swipe limit” for non-paying users, enforced by “an algorithm that intelligently limits the number of likes a user can make in a consecutive 12 hour period” (Tinder, 2015b). Updates have increased the amount of personal information displayed in profiles and available through the swipe screen, adding users’ occupation and education to their swipe cards (Lam, 2015). These design interventions modify qualities of the swipe so that it is no longer continuous and based solely on visual appearance. They attempt to alter user perceptions to align with the interpretations encouraged in Tinder’s promotional materials.

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Figure 3.3: Instagram post from the #SwipedRight campaign.

Despite these interventions, Tinder’s hookup reputation has remained entrenched in media interpretations of the app. This was evident when tensions between Tinder and the media reached a high point with the release of a Vanity Fair article titled, “Tinder and the dawn of the ‘dating apocalypse’” (Sales, 2015). It featured stories from New Yorkers who described using Tinder as focused on

24 See http://swipedright.gotinder.com/ 25 See https://www.instagram.com/p/_AcXO2HMAb/

64 hookups, never leading to relationships, and akin to online shopping. Tinder responded with tweets asserting that its app has many purposes aside from sex, including “travel, dating, relationships, friends and a shit ton of marriages” (Tinder, 2015a). Regardless of the company’s protests and design changes, Tinder’s primary interpretation remains as a tool for arranging casual sex. In combination with gender discourses and media panics pertaining to sexual activity, this interpretation increases the need for women to verify other users’ authenticity in ways noted earlier. For queer women, Tinder’s interpretation instantiates a need to verify that others are not seeking to engage in heterosexual hookups. Instead, they seek to establish that potential matches are queer women with authentic intentions to date women and this requires more evidence than Tinder’s select references of users’ Facebook profiles.

3.3 Identity Modulation and Authenticity I recruited interview participants over December 2015 – January 2016 through social media networks, posting calls for participants in the Facebook groups and pages of Brisbane-based organisations for LGBTQ people and queer women. I also tweeted using local hashtags (e.g. #bne, #gaybrisbane, #lgbtbrisbane) and spread the call through my personal social networks. Although others have recruited Tinder users for interviews through the app (Ward, 2016), I decided against this for practical and ethical reasons. With the small amount of information contained in profiles and many users swiping through profiles based on their initial photo, users would be unlikely to right swipe on a research account, inhibiting my ability to contact potential participants. I also felt uncomfortable setting up a research account in an intimate space characterised by perceptions that its purpose is for facilitating sexual encounters and dating.26 The low probability that users would read my biography explaining my researcher role prior to swiping posed a risk of unintentional deception. With Tinder’s intimate framing and technological configurations conferring a higher degree of privacy than other platforms, requiring users to login to view content (as opposed to viewing Instagram or Vine content without an account), I also did not feel comfortable collecting and analysing users’ profile content without

26 Some of my discomfort may have also stemmed from having used Tinder locally for dating, posing difficulty in terms of completely separating a research account from my dating history or connections that individuals may make between the two.

65 their permission. User content that I analysed came solely from interview participants, who provided screenshots of their profiles. I interviewed ten female-identified individuals with diverse ages, occupations, and sexualities (Table 3.1). Participants ranged from 19 – 35 years old and included post-secondary students, individuals in the service industry, and professionals. Several participants disliked using labels for their sexual identity but noted at least one term with which they frequently identified, with three identifying as gay, three as lesbian, one as bisexual, one as queer and “attracted to a small subset of men,” and one as “homoflexible” sometimes identifying as bisexual, pansexual, or gay. Two participants were from central Canada and, out of the eight remaining Australian participants, seven were located in Brisbane and one in Melbourne. All lived in urban areas and only one participant spoke of using Tinder in a rural location. All participants were also white, which could be attributed to multiple factors, including demographics across my networks. Although Tinder has not publicly shared user demographics, the app’s close connection with Facebook, which historically began as a white, more socially elite alternative to MySpace (boyd, 2012a), may encourage a larger white user base. Frequent racism and discrimination experienced by people of colour on dating apps (Gosine, 2007) may also reduce their participation on Tinder, which has several reports of attracting racist users (e.g., CBC News, 2015). These limitations in terms of the sample’s concentration in urban areas and lack of racial diversity warrant future studies to identify whether other groups of participants have had similar experiences. Many participants chose their own pseudonyms and some opted for playful handles that they would use on Tinder if their Facebook name were not required. I coded interviews and profile screenshots using sensitising concepts (Silverman & Marvasti, 2008) from the literature and themes that emerged during the Tinder walkthrough (see Appendix 1 for code tree).

66 Table 3.1: Tinder Interview Participants

Pseudonym Age Occupation Sexual Radius Age Seeking Orientation (km) Range Danaë 19 Student Lesbian 117 18–26 Women

Phyllis 23 Student; liquor Lesbian 40 18–26 Women store clerk

Caitlin 24 Nurse Homoflexible 100 22–40 Women

Julia 28 Accountant Gay 60–90 18–33 Women (men once)

Briana 28 Student Queer 20 22–40 Women (men once)

Bec 30 Unemployed Lesbian 80 18–40 Women

Gertie 34 Accountant Gay 100 25–45 Women

Laura 34 Project manager Pansexual 30–40 28–40 Men and women

HotChocolate 35 Medical Gay Varied 25–37 Women secretary

ThunderGoddess 35 Consultant Bisexual 51 28–45 Men and women

Preliminary analysis of differences between participants’ “Discovery Settings” – the radius in kilometres, age range, and gender preferences within which they were searching for matches – provided insights into their approaches to dating with Tinder. No one selected Tinder’s maximum search radius of 160km, disliking the prospect of long drives or trips on public transport to meet a match. A girl that Phyllis met lived outside of her preferred radius but was “special, ’cause I’m making that journey” of about 80km. The requirement for potential suitors to be nearby differs greatly from aims of early non-location based online dating, which promised to help users find soul mates regardless of physical location (Quiroz, 2013). On average, participants sought women within an age range of 15 years relative to their own age. This wide range coincides with findings that same-sex couples tend to have greater age differences than heterosexual couples (Andersson, Noack, Seierstad, & Weedon-Fekjaer, 2006) and popular media depictions of lesbian couples with significant age gaps (Keating, 2015). This defies relationship age norms and heteronormative dating scripts depicting only young women as desirable. Most participants specified that they were ‘seeking women’ so they would only be shown

67 women’s profiles. Two participants switched their preferences to ‘seeking men and women’ once to explore potential matches but shortly returned to seeking only women. Two others regularly browsed men and women’s profiles but also spoke about the difficulties of including men in their searches, discussed later as illustrating users’ conflicting intentions. While the majority of interview participants used Tinder with the intention of forging relationships, including friendships and – more commonly – romantic relationships, they perceived Tinder mainly as a hookup app. This perception formed from their conversations with others, interpretations of the swipe’s emphasis on appearance, and experiences deflecting sexual advances from deceptive profiles. In response, participants engaged in identity modulation to emphasise their intentions to date other queer women, achieved by making sexual identity noticeable in their profiles. They became experts at detecting others’ sexual identity, associating a queer, female identity with authentic intentions to date women. Participants’ sense that queer women were scarce across apps further increased the need for them to be visible and be skilful in seeking out others. However, with Tinder’s hookup reputation and participants’ clear indicators of their sexual identity, their identity modulation involved effort to reduce the volume of personally identifiable information they shared on the app and to verify others’ authenticity using multiple forms of communication prior to meeting in person.

3.3.1 Superficial Tinder Appearances and displays of normative identities Tinder’s swipe featured in participants’ narratives, as they repeatedly referred to Tinder as “superficial.” Their attitudes resembled what Elija Cassidy (2013) terms “participatory reluctance,” where “amongst members themselves, a primarily dismissive attitude toward the site and its users dominates” (p. 76). Similar to the men using Gaydar in Cassidy’s (2013) study, the women with whom I spoke predominantly had a negative view of Tinder, perceiving that it was rare to initiate meaningful connections or relationships through the app. Participants identified the swipe as contributing to Tinder’s superficiality by focusing on appearance and, to a lesser extent, normative expectations relating to socioeconomic status. They also spoke about Tinder’s features and encounters with men as contributing to a sense

68 that Tinder’s male population generally expected women (queer or not) to participate in heterosexual hookups. Participants discussing Tinder’s superficiality often noted the emphasis that swiping placed on user attractiveness. Laura, a 34-year-old project manager, echoed others in admitting, “The whole thing with Tinder is, it’s just based on looks. So, I often don’t even read the bios.” While participants acknowledged the 500-character bios, where users can describe themselves in text and emoji, as the only space for self-description that Facebook did not pre-fill, they rarely left Tinder’s swipe screen to read them. Bec, a 30-year-old, and Caitlin, a 20-year-old, both mentioned that they would like Tinder’s design changed to display bios more prominently. Caitlin was the only participant who limited her right swiping to users who completed their bio. She refused to engage in continuous swiping, “You would never approach people like that in real life.” Danaë, a 19-year old student, disagreed and insisted that it was okay to judge users based on appearance because “that’s what we do in real life anyway,” but she made the effort to read select users’ bios, “I will always read someone’s profile if I find them remotely attractive… People always look a bit different in real life anyway.” ThunderGoddess, a 35-year-old consultant, pointed out that this was reciprocal in that others rarely read her bio, “They’ll just look at your face and they’ll go ‘hot, not, hot, not, hot, not.’” Participants felt that Tinder’s swipe exaggerated the role of appearance in meeting new people. With an emphasis on visual appearance, participants felt the need to present themselves as normatively attractive. Women started using Tinder either on the advice of friends or media articles and looked to these sources, as well as others’ profiles, for signals about how to construct their appearance. Phyllis, a 23-year-old student, outlined: “I’ve heard you need a face photo so people don’t think you’re ugly…” Continuing as she scrolled through her photos, “I’ve got a tattoo, so that’s my interests; I went on the Zombie Walk and I’ve got friends, so I’m not a psycho… They’re not all selfies, I’ve got depth to my personality.” Several participants listed similar stipulations, requiring a clear self-portrait, a photo with friends, and a full- body shot “so they can tell whether or not you’re fat,” ThunderGoddess explained. Participants were aware of clearly depicting their face and body so that users could rapidly identify that they met normative standards of attractiveness. They also attempted to incorporate hobbies, as indicators of social status, into a visual format that quickly communicated desirable qualities. Articles and friends who provided

69 advice about how to construct profiles acted as expert systems (Giddens, 1991), disseminating information about how to construct an authentically desirable profile. While mainstream standards of attraction were evident in participants’ passing mention of preferred body types, such as “sporty” or “not fat,” participants more adamantly sought users who adhered to gender norms. Similar to Hightower’s (2015) study of the lesbian dating site WomynLink, participants reproduced gender hierarchies as they favoured feminine gender performances over masculine ones. Danaë, who is feminine presenting, described her type in terms of this gender hierarchy, “I’m attracted to feminine-looking women. So, my level of femininity or a little bit higher, but I can also go down to the chapstick area too. But yeah, I just personally don’t find the butch look attractive.” Reinforcing normative discourses of femininity as highly desirable, Danaë ranks less feminine, chapstick lesbians below lipstick lesbians and does not consider dating women who are less feminine. Genderfluid and trans individuals are absent from her spectrum of attraction. Other self-identified feminine participants, including Phyllis, ThunderGoddess, and Julia, echoed Danaë’s opinion. Julia, a 28-year-old accountant, summarised, “I only like girls that look girly.” Despite this majority, a few participants were more flexible in their gender preferences. Briana described, “I probably find myself more attracted to typically femme women but that doesn’t exclude more masculine women, like, even transmasculine people.” Participants’ focus on embodied gender presentation reflects a similar emphasis on physical attraction and idealised masculine bodies across gay men’s use of chat rooms, websites, and hookup apps for partner seeking (Campbell, 2004; Mowlabocus, 2010). However, apps for men seeking men tend to include multiple gender categories, from bear to twink (Light, 2007). My study’s participants focused solely on how closely women embodied feminine ideals. Tinder’s settings accentuated this focus, only allowing users to identify as male or female and seek men, women, or both. If this information cannot be gleaned from Facebook, Tinder presents a mandatory gender selection screen (Figure 3.4). These settings alongside the swipe’s emphasis on appearance shaped participants’ self-representations to reflect attention to normatively desirable gender presentations.

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Figure 3.4: Mandatory gender selection screen.

With Tinder’s addition of education and occupational information on swipe cards, these became prevalent indicators of socioeconomic status. Participants sought users who shared similar education levels and a reputable job, indicating income and status. Danaë looked for users attending the same university as her, “I’m like, ‘I feel closer to you because we have shared this experience.’” With university serving the latent function of bringing together early adults within the same social class (Medley-Rath, 2013), Danaë is likely to share similar social networks, cultural understandings, and economic status with others at her university. Even if participants did not want to be influenced by a user’s occupation, having it visible appealed to their biases. Job information “subconsciously” affected Bec’s swiping decisions, “I don’t really care what people do for a job but having it there might make you think about it.” In contrast, ThunderGoddess wished that all users displayed their job status, “I had one guy send me a message like, ‘Oh yeah, so I manage a Walmart store’ and I would have loved to [know that] before I swiped on him because I would not have swiped on him.” Phyllis self-censored her information, waiting until she was no longer a grocery store clerk before displaying her job. She believed others did the same if they worked in jobs perceived as low-status, “They’ve already been like, ‘Oh, I probably shouldn’t put that I do plumbing for a living.”

71 Through these decisions about how to display their gender, education, occupation, and interests, participants modulated these aspects of their identity. Given Tinder’s emphasis on visual appearance and the ability to rapidly dismiss users with a swipe, participants felt the need to appeal to normative appearances and signifiers of status in order to garner right swipes. Certain qualities in participants’ photos and on their profiles, such as jobs, universities, and other memberships that could be rendered visible served as symbolic tokens of their authenticity, referencing their participation across different social contexts. These self-representational practices share continuity with previous forms of mediated dating. “Lonely Hearts ads” dating back to 1695 were commonly formatted in newspapers and magazines, stating “man seeks woman” or “woman seeks man” followed by a string of desired qualities (Beauman, 2011). Ads of men seeking men tended to focus on physical appearance, including self-descriptions of being “well hung” alongside abbreviated partner requirements to fit character restrictions and avoid the high cost of print (Laner & Kamel, 1978). As mentioned in Chapter Two, text-based online flirting involved coded pseudonyms and email signatures to specify body types, gender presentation, and sexual preferences (Livia, 2002; Wakeford, 1996). Videodating introduced previewing dates “in living colour” (Woll, 1986) and dating websites have incorporated profile photos and more expansive biographies (Gosine, 2007; Mowlabocus, 2010). However, Tinder’s swipe accelerates and intensifies the focus on qualities that can be visually communicated. Participants were reflexive and sometimes abashed about their biases. When discussing education, Danaë prefaced her opinion as a “little bit of snobbery.” ThunderGoddess followed a description of how she frequently perceives masculine lesbians as unattractive with, “Sorry, these are the kind of horrible things you’re going to learn about people in interviews.” Similarly, Phyllis warned, “It sounds really bad,” before she talked about swiping left on “butch lesbians.” Bec felt her preferences sounded “super mean.” Individuals’ participatory reluctance (Cassidy, 2016) about using Tinder as a superficial app gave rise to cognitive dissonance over selecting users based on appearance and immediately visible swipe screen criteria. Not wanting to be seen as superficial themselves, participants were quick to point out that they often chatted with matches, getting to know them before deciding whether to meet up, which they felt was counter to Tinder’s reputation of being for hookups.

72 Hookup perceptions Several participants saw Tinder as superficial because they believed that its core functionality and original purpose was to instigate hookups. Gertie and HotChocolate illustrated this while recounting a news story about a man who murdered a woman he met through Tinder: Gertie: That was exactly around the same time [as we were on Tinder], and everyone is just like, “You’re on Tinder? That’s how that guy met that chick!” HotChocolate: Well, see, they were meeting to hookup. Gertie: Do you even know that? HotChocolate: Well, that’s what’s implied. Interviewer: Did it freak you out? Gertie: No, I just laughed it off. But again, that was a stigmatism [sic] attached to being on Tinder. While Gertie and HotChocolate stated their main purpose for using Tinder was to find friends, they observed their “straight friends” using it mainly for hookups. Media coverage of the “Tinder murderer” (Sutton, 2015) of whom they spoke focused on Tinder’s role in facilitating strangers meeting up for sexual encounters, which was sensationalised as always dangerous, making way for HotChocolate to associate hooking up with tragic outcomes. Five participants responded to Tinder’s hookup reputation with an attitude of not taking the app “seriously,” since its framing did not meet their broader goals of meeting friends and dates. A couple of participants referred to Tinder as a game and talked about “playing” it with friends. This included Phyllis letting her friends choose her profile photos after a couple of drinks and Laura evaluating profiles with a friend, agreeing that Tinder was more like “people watching” than selecting potential partners. These participants mainly viewed Tinder as an entertaining pastime, aligning with survey findings that entertainment is the primary motivation for using Tinder (Carpenter & McEwan, 2016). Although some participants’ perceptions of Tinder shifted over time, their encounters with men still mainly involved unprovoked solicitations for hookups. Bec noted a shift in Tinder’s reputation, “When I got Tinder, there was the whole vibe around it being very superficial and just for hookups… Nowadays, everyone’s got Tinder, it doesn’t matter.” Julia agreed, recalling that she used to assume everyone

73 on Tinder wanted to hookup, “That’s what most people say – that’s what Tinder is for. People say you won’t find anyone genuine on Tinder, but it’s not true because everyone has it these days.” While two participants were open to “whatever” including hookups, none reported solely using Tinder for casual sex. Participants had not felt pressured by women to send sexual messages or meet up for a one-time sexual encounter. Instead, participants’ perception of Tinder as a hookup app was largely shaped by the persistence of men seeking sexual attention. When Laura, who identifies as pansexual, switched her preferences to ‘seeking men and women,’ she was surprised by, “The douchiness with the men” finding that they “just kind of get right into that whole culture of sexting.” Similar to the experiences of numerous female users of Tinder, OkCupid, and other dating websites (Vitis & Gilmour, 2016), Laura frequently received unsolicited sexual messages and “dick pics.” Participants attributed men’s increased expectation of hooking up and greater sexual aggressiveness to gender roles, which Tinder’s affordances intensified. When Briana was at a music festival, she switched her settings to seeking ‘men and women’ but avoided chatting with any matches for fear they would want to initiate a sexual encounter immediately, “Women have a lot more expectation of a lot longer conversation – that it’s not necessarily all about the hookup. It can be about dating. I think that’s set by society’s expectation of women and their sexuality.” Studies of Grindr have identified hookup apps’ location-based, real time features and streamlined functionality (e.g., rapid chat in text message format) as a frame for in person meet-ups that, together with users’ intentions, pre-defines them as casual sexual encounters (Licoppe et al., 2015; Race, 2014b). Briana’s comment speaks to a difference among women seeking women, which Sarah Murray & Megan Ankerson (2016) note in their examination of how female gender roles counteract hookup app features geared toward rapid meeting up. Tinder’s display of user proximity and real time messaging combine with existing gender norms that situate men as sexual aggressors and women as being demure. Participants’ realisation of these gender roles shaped how they approached other users. Phyllis, who was open to having casual sex with women she met through Tinder, was frustrated at how difficult this was to initiate in light of gender roles: Some girls start sort of opening up the casual sex realm of things and you’re like, going on with it, discussing, and then suddenly they’re asking, ‘What will you do to me? Blah, blah, blah.’ And you’re like, “What will you do to

74 me?’…And I feel like I would be so pissed off if I were a guy on Tinder because girls [would treat] me like that all the time. I’d be like, ‘Fuck off, this is a two-way thing.’ Since men were expected to pursue women, female users seeking same-sex sexual encounters often required Phyllis to contribute the majority of sexual advances. In contrast, Caitlin, who identifies as homoflexible but “didn’t bother” to consider men on Tinder due to receiving sexually explicit messages on other dating sites, became more cautious in initial conversations with women, “I’m very, very careful not to be too aggressive, reflecting on my own experiences, particularly with men.” Heteronormative gender roles and women’s past experiences with men shaped interactions among queer women on the platform. Tinder’s perception as a hookup app also framed participants’ interactions with men. Similar to how Grindr’s features set up encounters to be no-strings- attached (Licoppe et al., 2015), ThunderGoddess shared that many of her meet ups with male Tinder dates ended uncomfortably: If I go on a date with a woman on Tinder, she’s not automatically expecting it to end with sex whereas I think a lot of the men do expect that the date will end with sex… I can’t even accept a cup of coffee from a guy because of what I think he’s going to expect in return, which sucks. Although women generally have concerns that accepting gifts or payments will obligate them to perform sexual acts within existing dating scripts (Bogle, 2008), ThunderGoddess felt that Tinder heightened the expectation of hooking up. Reflecting how online sexual harassment spurs women to leave digital publics (Megarry, 2014), she was nearly ready to quit Tinder altogether because men she matched with treated her like “a walking vagina.” Similar to Tinder’s popular reception, participants viewed it as a superficial hookup app because of the emphasis its swipe functionality placed on visual appearances and Tinder’s association with the unequal gender discourses of hookup culture. Participants felt the need to accentuate normatively desirable aspects of their identity so that others could rapidly identify them as attractive suitors. Most participants’ self-representations were not aimed at men and even participants whose sexual identities included attraction to men often only configured their settings as “seeking women.” Their decision to modulate identity in order to be less visible to male users on the app reflects their discomfort with men’s expectations that they

75 would engage in sexual activity through Tinder and in hookups. In response to these expectations, participants developed modes of detecting and verifying whether other users were queer women with authentic intentions to date queer women.

3.3.2 Detecting and displaying sexual identity Detecting authentic intentions through sexual identity In examining others’ profiles, participants were concerned with verifying users’ gender and sexuality, which they connected to intentions: they assumed queer women authentically intended to date other queer women. Given their negative experiences with men, participants were vigilant for indications of fake female profiles designed to deceive them into engaging sexually (e.g., sexting) with a male user. Julia spoke about being “catfished” by “someone who’s a fake, a guy pretending to be a girl or something.” She recounted instances of this: There was this one [user] that was a girl and then they’re like, ‘Can you send me some photos? Send it to this number.’ And then I got my housemate to call the number and it was a guy’s voicemail… If they start talking dirty straightaway or they ask for nudes, then it’s a guy. That’s happened to me probably five times – probably more than that actually. Briana had a similar experience on a different app, which she referred to as “baiting” in which a user “pretended to be somebody who was quite forward and female. They had all these pictures up on their profile and then started talking about blow jobs and then started sending me quite explicit photos…trying to bait me around their place, like, ‘Come over.’” Displays of immediate sexual aggression were incongruent with participants’ expectations for female behaviour on the app, alerting them to a user’s inauthenticity in terms of gender performance. Similar to Panteà Farvid and Kayla Aisher’s (2016) study of Tinder use among heterosexual women, participants viewed Tinder as carrying a degree of risk, which tied them to the responsibility of protecting themselves from potentially dangerous users. Participants deemed these profiles as “fake,” most likely belonging to predatory males, and blocked them to maintain their safety. Participants also received frequent solicitations from heterosexual couples seeking an additional female sexual partner, which required them to detect and deflect these users if they were disinterested. Lesbian or gay-identified participants

76 felt that these invitations disregarded their sexuality. Julia specified in her bio that she was “100% gay, because I didn’t want people asking for threesomes.” ThunderGoddess and Caitlin felt that users expected them to be interested in threesomes because they self-identified as bisexual in their profiles. ThunderGoddess recounted a message from a man asking, “If a guy and girl are ready to go, why would you say no to a threesome?” assuming that her bisexuality was inherently connected to a desire for multiple partners. Caitlin was not opposed to engaging with multiple partners but felt that solicitations for threesomes were sexually objectifying, “Asking someone to get involved in your relationship to have some fun with them, it’s quite dehumanising. It’s treating someone like a toy or, you know, an appendage on the relationship.” While some users who were looking for threesomes stated this in their profile, many presented profiles that only featured the female member of the couple without indications of their intentions. Participants viewed these female profiles as inauthentic, since they deceived participants into swiping with the presumption that they were selecting a single woman seeking other women. Participants often attributed these solicitations to heterosexual women wanting to satisfy men’s fantasies of lesbian sexuality. Danaë identified these users as having the “straight girl look,” characterised by taking “duck face selfies” in party dresses. She explained: The straight girl look is like the, ‘I’m going to go out tonight and get drunk and have sex with a guy and it’s going to be so much fun. And I’m just on Tinder for friends/sleep with me and my boyfriend. While Danaë sought feminine women, she recognised an ultra-feminine demeanour as indicating heterosexuality. Similarly, Phyllis steered clear of women with photos where: They’re hanging off the arms of dudes or if they’ve got pictures of themselves almost kissing girls, like, they’re this far apart and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, look at how gay I am!’ and I’m like, ‘No, that’s like the straightest photo you could take.’ She was familiar with the aesthetics of faux displays of queerness, sensationalised in the media and designed for grabbing men’s attention (Diamond, 2005). Participants perceived these displays as inauthentic because they were linked to intentions of appealing to men’s desire and could not lead to a relationship if the women were not actually queer.

77 A final area of inauthenticity that participants spoke about was in relation to women who were looking for friendship and not a sexual or romantic relationship. While participants sometimes used Tinder to find friends, they more often associated it with sex and dating. Bec recalled matching with her current girlfriend, “I was like, ‘I just want to make some new friends because my whole friendship group has disappeared.’ She’s like, ‘Yeah cool, me too.’ And then, obviously, we started dating.” Starting a new relationship was the most common reason among participants for deleting Tinder. Julia explained, “If I was in a relationship, I wouldn’t make friends on there. I don’t think it’s appropriate.” Some participants hid their profile when commencing a new relationship but it was more common to delete the app, removing it from a partner’s view while retaining matches if re-downloaded in the future. Danaë deleted the app when starting a relationship but downloaded it again when the relationship turned rocky. She received a confidence boost from matching with users, which told her, “Well, this person thinks I’m attractive!” but she eventually felt guilty and deleted Tinder again. These instances of discontinuing and suspending Tinder use illustrate that participants mainly viewed the app as useful for finding sexual and romantic partners and rarely for making platonic friends. Participants felt the need to verify that potential matches were also authentically seeking more than friendship. ThunderGoddess found this difficult, “What I don’t get is, how am I supposed to tell which of these women are interested in women and how many of them are interested in making new friends?” Danaë was frustrated, “There’s so many people on there that are like, ‘Just looking for friends.’ I’m like, ‘Uh, that’s not what you use Tinder for. Get friends in real life.’” Her wording constructs Tinder as a separate space from “real” or everyday life, the purpose of which is dating. When discussing improvements that could be made to Tinder, Briana suggested a profile field for “sexuality” so she could “know if that person is going to swipe on me or whether they’re just looking for – like, if they’re straight and looking for friends.” Her comment restates participants’ heuristic for evaluating profiles: if a user could be confirmed as undoubtedly female-identified and attracted to women, then it could be assumed that she was authentically seeking a sexual or romantic relationship with another woman. This spurred women to emphasise sexual identity in their approaches to identity modulation on the app.

78 Displaying and verifying sexual identity Participants based their self-representations of sexual identity on friends’ advice, media articles, practices noted on other profiles and, ultimately, according to the indicators they looked for and wanted to see on others’ profiles. These outside influences functioned as expert systems (Giddens, 1991), indicating how to construct a queer, female profile, and participants eventually became experts themselves. Their approaches spanned from subtle hints to clearly stated labels. Laura relied on Tinder’s Discovery Settings, “If other women have ‘women’ as their interest, then that’s how they’re going to see me and that’s how they’re going to know I’m interested in women.” Three women discussed the common practice of using emoji in their bio to subtly and quickly identify as attracted to women. “I chose the girl-on- girl emoticon,” Gertie described the image, , with two women holding hands, “I realised that’s what everyone was doing, so I did it just to help out, I guess.” Participants who relied on Tinder’s functionality and subtle emoji tended to also have sexual identifiers in their photos and Facebook interests, which drew on LGBTQ culture or deviated from feminine gender expressions. In one profile photo, Gertie posed with a rainbow crosswalk and rainbow-lit bar in the background, easily identifiable as being in the midst of an LGBTQ pride festival. Both Laura and HotChocolate challenged gender norms in their profile photos, with Laura showing off short hair in more androgynous photos and HotChocolate in mid-flex while weightlifting at the gym. Bec’s photos also displayed her tomboy style (Figure 3.5). She explained: I just don’t feel the need to tell everyone necessarily, like flat out. That’s why I try to convey it through the photos as well…people should be able to pick up on that. In my real life, I present pretty much as gay, you can tell [by] looking at me, basically. Since her appearance transgressed feminine gender norms, she was confident that others interpreted her sexual identity clearly. Hairstyles, fashion, and selfies at LGBTQ events function as symbolic tokens of authenticity (Giddens, 1991) on participants’ profiles, as they attest to women’s queer identity across contexts and apart from Tinder.

79 Redacted for publication in compliance with copyright law

Figure 3.5: Bec's main profile photo.27

Women with predominantly feminine gender presentations in profile photos tended to more distinctly state their sexual identity. ThunderGoddess declared herself “bisexual, not bi-curious” in her bio because, “I’m not one of those women that walks down the street and has people realise that I’m queer.” After she requested that one of her matches ensure he read her profile, he cancelled their date and told her he “can’t deal” with her sexual identity, which he had overlooked by only reviewing her photos. Danaë changed her profile to clearly state her sexual identity, “I don’t feel like people would look at me and be like, ‘She’s gay.’” She discussed this progression, “So I just did the two girl emoticon, which I kept seeing on other people’s profiles… But then it always really annoyed me when people didn’t have anything written.” Now her profile contains and lists her interests: “I love theatre, festivals, markets, films, books, and traveling. Oh, and girls ” For Caitlin, clarity was more important than specifying nuances around her identity. She included ‘bi’ to identify herself as bisexual because “if you said ‘pan’ [pansexual], it may require further explanation, depending on who you’re talking to. If you said ‘homoflexible,’ again, further explanation, so it’s a convenience thing.” She felt it was essential to communicate about her sexuality in ways that others would understand.

27 Image displayed with permission; further identifying information removed.

80 Connecting sexual identity with user intentions, participants derived strategies for deducing this information. Danaë explained the indicators she looked for: There’s a three-stage thing to how confident I am that they’re gay. If they have the two-girl emoji but nothing else, then I’m like, ‘Maybe.’ And if they have the two-girl emoji and then they have [Facebook] ‘likes,’ like [LGBTQ club nights], then I’m like, ‘Probably.’ But if they’re like outright, ‘Oh, I like girls’ or they slip in that they’re gay somewhere, I’m like, ‘Yep.’ If sexual identity was not evident from a user’s profile, conversations with matches often included questions about what a user was looking for or topics associated with queer identity. Phyllis referenced shows with LGBTQ characters and popular culture, “I just say things like, ‘Oh, do you watch Orange Is the New Black? Or, have you seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show before?’” She expanded on this approach: A really good question that used to work is, if you ask them if they thought Kristen Stewart was gay, and if they said yes, then they’re gay because a straight girl would not know anything about Kristen Stewart being gay. But if they said [she’s] bisexual, then they’re bisexual because only a bisexual would say that Kristen Stewart’s bisexual because she’s sleeping with dudes and chicks. This test worked for a short period of time when the media was speculating about celebrity Kristen Stewart’s sexual identity. Phyllis drew on the media’s erasure of bisexual women to identify bisexuals as people who point out their rare instance in media coverage. Verifying users’ gender, sexual identity, and intentions extended into participants’ processes for becoming more acquainted with matches. This also involved assessing matches’ authenticity more broadly, consistently referencing a biography as indicators of being reliable and safe to meet. This involved delicate processes of identity modulation, as participants exchanged personal information for details from matches while attempting to limit identifiability if a match had yet to be fully verified as authentic. Some participants felt that identifying a match as a woman was enough to increase safety in meeting up. Danaë planned to meet with

81 one of her matches for a less sexual version of “Netflix and chill,”28 which they named “TV and cuddles.” She said: I feel like when you’re dating women, the risk factor is lowered. I know there’s still danger present in every sort of interaction where you don’t actually know the person, but I just feel like you’re more likely to be able to overpower them and escape. ThunderGoddess also made this differentiation, “I wouldn’t think twice about inviting a female first date to my house for coffee, but I would never do that with a guy.” This gender difference speaks to perceptions of women as weaker, gentler, and more trustworthy than men but also relates to participants’ experiences of men they encountered through dating apps and their expectations of sex. Layering multiple forms of communication with matches helped participants to verify their identity and feel safe meeting up. This reflects the concept of media multiplexity (Haythornthwaite, 2005), whereby individuals with stronger social ties use more forms of available communications media than those with loose ties. As users desired to strengthen connections with their matches, they increased their forms of communication. Despite Danaë’s increased trust in women, she only agreed to meet at her match’s house after they exchanged page-length text messages “three to five times a day” for a week. Bec rationalised meeting her match in private after establishing multiple forms of contact, “If you Facebook and then, at least, you speak to them on the phone, you get a good grasp of whether they’re crazy or not.” Instead of valuing Tinder’s pre-match requirement for logging in with Facebook, participants found that adding each other on Facebook post-match helped to evaluate and verify a user’s identity. Danaë explained this process as “a safety thing… It goes from Tinder to Facebook, so then at least if you’ve got them on Facebook, you sort of know their whole life by then.” After her catfishing experiences, Julia became an expert at judging a Facebook profile’s authenticity, “I add them [on Facebook] and I can tell that’s a fake profile. They’ve only got 50 friends or something and 20 photos – it’s fake.” Facebook played an important role in participants’ authenticity verification process but generally only after matching and when they could explore a match’s entire Facebook account rather than Tinder-curated content.

28 The practice of watching television through the streaming service Netflix while hooking up. See http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/netflix-and-chill

82 Beyond Facebook, participants established and verified authenticity through text messaging, phone calls, and other apps. Bec added some matches to , since she felt it provided a better understanding of her “daily life.” Briana opted for the pseudonymous messaging app, Telegram, “I’m looking for something that is still a little bit anonymous. I don’t like having them on Facebook straight away, but also just having a better chat feature and just allowing a bit of time to get to know them.” Most participants still took extra precautious when communication culminated in physical meet ups. Laura described her “personal best practices,” stating, “I don’t pick places unless they’re in public…and I won’t run out the door and meet someone [in] private.” Women tended to communicate with matches for days and weeks prior to meeting, which aligns with findings that lesbian relationship formation has a slower temporal rhythm than that of gay men using hookup apps for immediate encounters (Murray & Ankerson, 2016). Each new layer of communication, from other messaging apps to Facebook, exchanging phone numbers, and eventually meeting in person, slowly increased participants’ personal identifiability, modulating the flow of this information to their matches.

3.3.3 Identity modulation across platforms Participants maintained their Tinder account among other social media and dating apps, which contrasted, complimented, and sometimes required separation from their Tinder use. With dating apps still somewhat stigmatised (Leong, 2016), and considering Tinder’s hookup reputation, women were most commonly concerned about Tinder activity appearing on Facebook. Phyllis hesitated before connecting the two platforms, “I don’t want people to know that I’m on Tinder, like my Facebook people to know I’m on Tinder.” She read the login screen’s fine print to ensure that Tinder had an import-only relationship with Facebook. Most participants were not concerned that connecting Facebook and Tinder would out them to others.29 However, when Julia set up her Tinder account, she had recently ended an engagement with a man and wanted to date women but had not yet come out to many people. She made an additional Facebook account: “I had a gay one and a straight one… I’d add people that I talked to [on Tinder] on Facebook and I didn’t

29 This was likely due to the sample’s homogeneity in terms of belonging to dominant identity groups (white, younger, mid-to-high SES), providing the safety to come out across social networks.

83 want everyone else to see that, so I kept it separate.” Julia’s Tinder matches were a liability on Facebook since their activity might indicate her switch to dating women. As she came out to more people, she transferred new contacts to her old Facebook account and deactivated the new one. These participants took steps to ensure that their sexual identity (and Tinder use altogether) was salient to others on Tinder but did not reach their Facebook audiences. Other participants did not feel as though they could limit the audiences for their self-representations on Tinder. Although Caitlin prefers potential partners to know that she is polyamorous, she removed this information from her Tinder bio, “Everything I’ve written, I’m quite happy to state out in public, and that’s how I check my profile.” HotChocolate and Briana echoed this inevitability of social media information becoming “public” regardless of the platform. Speaking of Tinder’s connection with Facebook, Briana said, “I understand why people would think it would be a privacy issue but…I’m aware of how much is being shared. I think we can’t really escape [the] sharing of information in this digital age.” While some participants attempted to instil boundaries around platforms, others felt that they had no recourse for identity modulation given the connections between platforms and their overlapping audiences. Participants were also concerned about how their Facebook selves represented them on Tinder and how much information Tinder users could access through Facebook. While Danaë preferred her friends and Tinder matches to call her by this name and not her legal one, she could not change her name on Facebook because she was friends with her parents and grandparents who insisted on using her legal name, “They’ll be all like, ‘Why did you change it?’” With Tinder’s emphasis on Facebook names, she felt that requesting Tinder matches to call her Danaë would seem suspicious so she used her legal name despite the discomfort it caused her. Caitlin’s Facebook was filled with evidence of her political views and photos from protests she attended, which she did not display on Tinder with the concern that matches would think she was too extreme. Several participants separated their Tinder photos from Facebook audiences by uploading them to a private Facebook album and then importing them into Tinder. Bec did this for safety reasons, “People can identify you on Facebook from your photos on Tinder… If you get that crazy person that starts to stalk you, that can be quite concerning.” ThunderGoddess described Tinder’s connection with Facebook as “slightly terrifying” for this reason,

84 acknowledging that a Facebook name and photo could easily be Googled for more information. Briana removed the education and job information Tinder imported from Facebook, “I think it’s interesting to know somebody’s occupation as a general sense, but to know if they’re in a company – a small company, that might be problematic.” Since Facebook contained a great deal of information relating to participants’ personal identifiability, the modulated its flow to Tinder, wishing to not be fully identifiable from their dating profiles. Women often viewed having a mutual Facebook friend as a deterrent to matching. It did not help Danaë to identify whether a person was queer, “The majority of my Facebook friends are straight.” Instead, she said, “It’s kind of creepy when you come across complete strangers and they have so many mutual friends, and you’re like, ‘How don’t I know about you? Why has no one told me about you?’” She took this as a signal to be cautious. Phyllis used this feature to steer clear of mutual friends of exes and family members, “You can just sort of weed them out a little bit.” While Facebook information made it easy for Tinder users to spot existing acquaintances, this did not contribute to friendships or shift them into romantic or sexual relationships. Laura spoke with her friend about “what’s the friendship etiquette when you come across a friend” on Tinder. They agreed that chatting with friends through Tinder was redundant because they were already in contact through texting or calling. ThunderGoddess described, “We both acknowledge each other’s presence, read each other’s profile, make a comment about somebody else’s profile…and then we go back to being stock standard friends.” Danaë explained that Tinder’s framing did not shift friendship dynamics even when attraction was present: I knew this girl was bisexual and single, and she was attractive, and I’d met her before. I swiped her and turned out, she swiped me, and then I said something like, ‘Well, now we matched on Tinder, I guess we’re obligated to flirt.’ But the woman did not flirt back, “I felt so disappointed…Like, ‘now I’m going to have to see you again IRL [in real life] and we’ve matched on Tinder but not had a conversation. So, that failure’s just going to loom above us.” Participants’ avoidance of friends counteracts Tinder’s claims to be for maintaining social relationships and that friendship ties can increase the appeal of potential matches. Further, in contrast to modulating personal identifiability with previously unknown matches until mutual attraction is determined, matching with acquaintances complicated participants’

85 ability to manage these existing relationships across contexts. Altogether, participants’ challenges in balancing Tinder’s connection with Facebook resembled difficulties that Cassidy (2013) observed in his study of men seeking men managing connections across Gaydar and Facebook. These men encountered similar issues with regard to Facebook making them personally identifiable, leading to increased threats to their privacy and personal safety. However, queer women’s experience of Tinder differs in that they must connect these services to use the app at all. Separating Tinder activity from other social contexts was a key strategy for participants in modulating their identifiability – personally and as a Tinder user. Bec did not connect her Instagram account or offer other account information in her bio “because if someone finds one of my social medias [sic], they can find all of them because I have the same username on everything.” She did not want to encounter her Tinder matches on these other platforms. ThunderGoddess was not concerned about being recognised on Tinder so long as she was only seen by other users, “I figure, you know, they’re on Tinder too.” These participants followed an approach of “privacy in context” (Nissenbaum, 2009) by maintaining Tinder separate from other platforms and social situations. With Tinder’s mobile affordances, this practice involved separating audiences across social media and physical space. HotChocolate sometimes used Tinder at work but hid this activity because she would be outed if her colleagues spotted her swiping on women’s profiles, “I didn’t feel that it was necessary to openly out myself at work because I’m there to work as a secretary. I’m not a lesbian secretary, I’m just a secretary.” Several participants only Tindered in private places, such as at home, or obscured others’ view if in public, such as on the train, establishing spatial boundaries to keep physical audiences from viewing their activity. Maintaining Tinder use separate from other contexts constitutes a form of identity modulation enabling participants to use the app without stigma from others while reducing their personal identifiability to matches who may otherwise glean information from overlaps between these contexts.

Dating apps, communities, and a scarcity of women Other dating websites and apps provided queer women with functionality for identity modulation that they found lacking in Tinder. Some preferred the ability to initiate conversations with any user, favouring OkCupid and Plenty of Fish’s messaging capabilities to Tinder’s double opt-in matching. These older websites

86 were also popular for their expanded user profiles, containing more fields for information about sexual identity and intentions. Participants perceived OkCupid as supporting and attracting users with more diverse gender and sexual identities. Briana noted, “I think it has a lot more queer involvement. They’ve recently added the ability to have different genders… I also believe it was quite kink-friendly at one point.” Along with ThunderGoddess, Laura, and Caitlin, she described the website’s multiple profile options and questionnaires, which include topics about sexual attraction and relationship styles, as allowing more nuanced self-representation. Participants also turned to websites and apps specifically targeting queer women in order to more easily display their sexual identity. These conversations included some comparison of app functionality but mostly centred on broader challenges of constructing queer women’s visibility when women are often assumed to be heterosexual. Toward the end of each interview, I asked participants to discuss more broadly how Tinder helped them to identify that there were other queer women nearby and whether Tinder could contribute to community building among queer women and LGBTQ people. The community question fizzled out with participants asserting that Tinder (at the time) only allowed for one-on-one communication and that they had not met many friends through the app. Tinder’s binary gender options and lack of profile fields for specifying different identities also did not reflect the diversity of the LGBTQ communities to which participants belonged, inhibiting community building through these hard-coded forms of exclusion. Participants had several views about Tinder’s role in identifying other queer women, however, and despite seeming separate from discussions of community, their responses touched on wider challenges for queer women in terms of counteracting feelings of isolation. Tinder’s affordances enabled several participants to identify queer women in contexts where their sexual identity would not otherwise be recognisable. ThunderGoddess knew many LGBTQ people through her volunteer roles with community organisations, “but there are bi people who have nothing to do with the gay community. They happen to be bi, they don’t really see the gay community as a place for them…Tinder allows me access to meet both markets.” She highlighted that many bisexual women are not identifiable outside of environments where participation signals sexual identity. Tinder helped Briana to identify queer women, “especially when I was in an office setting surrounded by a majority of straight

87 people.” Their experiences are similar to findings that gay men’s use of hookup apps establishes a co-presence with other men on the app, enabling them to feel connected even when physically situated in a heterosexual context (Blackwell et al., 2015). Danaë described Tinder as “more successful even than going to a gay club or bar because you have no telling factors even in a gay club that people are gay.” For her, finding feminine queer women was difficult in LGBTQ venues with the increasing heterosexualisation of queer spaces and young people’s movement away from gay and lesbian stereotypes (Ghaziani, 2014). Tinder enabled participants to modulate their sexual identity across digital and physical contexts, increasing its noticeability for nearby queer women. Despite enabling users to sometimes identify queer women, Tinder’s interface, gender demographics, and the configuration of its location-based search also contributed to a sense that the nearby population of queer women was very small. Danaë despaired when she swiped through all of the women’s profiles in a Tindering session: When you get to the end of Tinder and there’s like, ‘There’s no one new around you.’ And it does refresh all the time, new people come on but still, you’re like, ‘There’s no more.’ And you’ve got to think like, ‘Of course there are lesbians that don’t have Tinder and they’re still out there.’ But you’re like, ‘That’s it. I know all of them.’ This was a common experience for Laura, “My friend and I would…be like, ‘Let’s play Tinder together.’ …She was interested in men only, and at the time, I was women only, and I’d be done in ten minutes and she could go on and on.” While the volume of male users appeared inexhaustible, the sense that Tinder had a scarcity of queer women’s profiles was exacerbated by the need to weed out fake female profiles, couples, and heterosexual women. Participants also frequently encountered male users in their searches for women, which they guessed was either a glitch in Tinder’s filter or due to men switching their gender to ‘female’ to attract women’s attention. With participants in mid-sized cities concerned about swiping through all the women around them, there was consensus that Tinder would not be effective in small cities and rural areas. Phyllis spoke about a small city she used to live in: There’s three lesbians there, so you can’t use Tinder. If you want to date someone there, you go down to the bar and you find that other lesbian and

88 you date that lesbian... Everyone will know in five minutes, and then if you’ve got to break up with them, you’ve got to move cities – you can’t stay there. Her experience reflects how digital technology does not always provide rural LGBTQ young people with access to communities and practices available in urban centres (Gray, 2009b). Caitlin was moving to a rural area and felt hesitant about whether she would use Tinder, “There’s no privacy when you’re using social media in a small town.” App designers have yet to address the complications that location- based functionality poses for users in sparsely populated areas, as they are generally employed by technology firms and start-ups enmeshed within and catering to mainstream, urban populations (Marwick, 2013b). Identity modulation is limited for individuals using geolocative apps in less populated areas because their ability to adjust indicators of personal identifiability is constrained when most people in their vicinity already know them. Participants also felt that Tinder’s location sorting was unreliable. ThunderGoddess explained: It’s a location-based app but it’s not a proximity-based app. It’s not like going on Zomato – aka Urbanspoon – and being like, ‘Find the closest restaurant to me stat!’ ‘Find the closest hot guy or hot girl next to me stat!’ I don’t use it at clubs. Zomato lists restaurants in order of proximity, pinpointing locations on a map. While ThunderGoddess was not advocating for her exact location to be shown, she contrasted Tinder with Grindr’s grid layout, which organises users by proximity. Grindr (2016) promotes its app as enabling men to hookup at “zero feet away,” which is why ThunderGoddess believed that it would be more useful than Tinder at dance clubs and in cruising spaces. Some apps targeting queer women have re- skinned Grindr-like designs, replicating this functionality. Bec recalled logging into Tinder and seeing only users who were 30km away but then opening Brenda, a grid- sorting app, and seeing women within 2km. She said of queer women, “I know they’re around, but I don’t think they’re on Tinder.” Turning to apps marketed to queer women, participants still encountered challenges of identifying and connecting with other women. Australian participants mentioned Wapa, a later version of Brenda with a name that means “beautiful woman; smart or elegant; courageous” (Wapa, n.d.), which participants often

89 misnamed “Whopper” or “Whacker.” Advertised as a “gay dating app for women,” Wapa requires users to “agree” in response to pop-ups explaining that it is an app for women to “make friends, find a girlfriend, or just have a chat” and that it is not “a sex app.” However, this did not prevent the volumes of sexually explicit messages Briana received from men using fake female profiles. Seeking to remedy this, the self-described “lesbian app” Her (formerly Dattch) adopted Tinder’s approach to identity verification, requiring users to login through Facebook or Instagram to verify their female gender. Her launched in Australia on 22 October 2015 (LOTL, 2015) – less than two months prior to my interviews – and five participants were already using it. Phyllis was pleased with the app’s profile fields for gender and sexual identity, making it so “you can tell it’s a gay app.” Julia felt that this influenced the user population, “I like Her because I’ve found there’s more gay girls on there. There’s not as many bi or girls who have threesomes on there, and you have to choose [your] orientation… It’s probably better than Tinder, actually.” Participants pointed to Her when I asked them about community building because the app includes more social features than Tinder. It allows users to declare whether they are in a relationship and if they are seeking friends while also providing “local” and “global” feeds of user posts, community chats, and nearby LGBTQ events. Many participants appreciated these apps targeted at queer women because they facilitated clear self-representations of sexual identity and user intentions. Even with Her’s features for verifying and catering to queer female identities, the scarcity of queer women remained a problem. Briana was sceptical about the app’s future, “I don’t see it taking off because there’s not enough people actually using it.” Danaë felt that Tinder remained “vastly superior” due to its larger volumes of users, especially those with gender presentations that fit her preferences, “I just felt like there weren’t many feminine lesbians or bisexuals on [Her].” While Her and Wapa were popular in Australia, Canadian participants did not mention them. ThunderGoddess remarked that she had seen apps for queer women rise in popularity in Canada and then quickly fail: The concept of, like, a Crushr or Vagster or whatever they have for queer women, I think that it’s a good idea that works in London, San Francisco, you know, L.A. and New York but if you’re outside of a place like that, there just isn’t the critical mass to be able to make it work.

90 This contrasts with studies and media articles about hookup apps targeting men seeking men, which describe apps like Grinder as providing access to a seemingly endless supply of potential partners (Nevins, 2016), contributing to a sense of connection and gay sociability (Race, 2014; Shield, 2016). Several factors could contribute to reduced visibility of queer women on apps, such as the smaller proportion of self-identifying queer women found in demographic surveys of LGBTQ populations (e.g., Pew Research Center, 2013), women’s reduced social privilege and job security in comparison to men – making it more difficult to come out – and greater prospects of being harassed by men and deceptive users. Regardless, participants’ experiences of running out of profiles or feeling as though dating apps for women are doomed to become wastelands perpetuated a sense of isolation and despair among many participants. These conditions demonstrate the importance of queer women being able to self-represent on dating apps and identify other queer women.

3.4 Conclusion With the affordances of mobile dating, Tinder heightens the need for users to establish others’ authenticity, in terms of determining that users are who they claim to be and, by extension, determining users’ actual intentions on the app. Applying Giddens’ (1991) understanding of authenticity as consistently referencing a coherent biography, it is possible to understand how Tinder’s connection with Facebook attempts to establish authenticity through users’ coherent Facebook profiles, which have accumulated over time. However, media and user perceptions of Tinder’s swipe functionality undermine this solution, as Tinder’s hookup reputation introduces gendered expectations associated with casual sex, which requires additional ways to verify users’ authentic intentions. Participants’ experiences of interacting with men, fake profiles, couples, and heterosexual women led them to develop practices of verifying that potential matches were indeed queer women intending to date other women. Therefore, their identity modulation involved making sexual identity recognisable through symbolic tokens (Giddens, 1991), such as style and fashion, serving as consistent references to gender and sexuality across multiple contexts of their lives. Participants also relied on platform features, user norms, and references to LGBTQ media to signal their sexual identity. They modulated sexual identity in

91 relation to personal identifiability while verifying their matches’ authenticity through practices involving media multiplexity (Haythornthwaite, 2005), layering multiple forms of communication before meeting in person. These queer women’s identity modulation on Tinder enabled them to connect for friendship and, more often, for dating and forming romantic relationships. While queer women’s visibility on Tinder did not entirely counter participants’ sense of a scarcity of potential partners, it allowed them to sometimes feel less isolated by identifying queer women nearby on the app and in person. Through these practices, queer women’s Tinder participation forms a loosely connected public. Although not a community, due to Tinder’s one-on-one matching, queer women were connected through viewing each other’s profiles, as “texts” around which a public gathers (Warner, 2002), which contained references to shared understandings of queer, female identity. This public functioned alongside a much larger public of heterosexual users, the boundary of which participants felt to be very permeable due to their interactions with men. Male users often attempted to communicate across publics by creating fake profiles, selecting misleading gender settings, or as part of a heterosexual couple propositioning women for threesomes. Participants also found that forays into the heterosexual public, such as by selecting “seeking men and women,” opened them to a deluge of sexual messages and expectations from the men with whom they matched. Gendered interpretations of Tinder’s swipe and the company’s early marketing as part of hookup culture fosters this dominant heterosexual public, perpetuating gender normative dating scripts across the platform, which queer women even navigated in their interactions with each other. The permeability between these two publics intensified participants’ need to verify that others’ authentic intentions aligned with theirs, which mainly involved dating queer women. These publics function in connection with Facebook’s publics, constituted by the audiences for whom users display periodic status updates that form a coherent biography. While Tinder use was only possible through participation in Facebook publics, participants experienced discomfort with regard to the apps’ close connection. Much of their identity modulation involved attempting to separate Tinder publics from Facebook publics to inhibit the flow of personal information and indicators of sexual identity across them. Queer women’s identity modulation on Tinder was subject to the conditions of embodiment, normative pressures, and platform specificity. Participants’ self-

92 representations mainly featured their bodies, such as through selfies and close-ups, visually communicating normative attractiveness and conveying indicators of status that could be quickly noticed in the swipe screen. They represented sexual identity in embodied ways, such as through fashion, hairstyles, and LGBTQ venues featured in their profile photos. Participants also modulated their personal identifiability in embodied ways, such as by importing Tinder photos only from private Facebook albums. In addition to normative pressures in their visual self-representations, participants regularly deflected normative expectations and stereotypes imposed by other users, such as the notion that bisexual women would always want to participate in threesomes. Tinder also imposed normative pressures on self-representations. The app’s binary gender settings limited users to gender categories of “male” and “female” while the perpetuated an image of white, feminine (i.e., wearing pink), generic women as a standard symbol of queer, female identity. As noted throughout the chapter, Tinder shaped queer women’s identity modulation, contributing to its focus on displaying and verifying authenticity, while providing affordances and constraints for this activity. Although the app provided few features for displaying sexual identity, participants developed practices of making consistent references to their gender and sexuality in photos, bios, and conversations with matches. Since Tinder’s integration of Facebook fell short of enabling them to verify users’ authentic intentions to date queer women, participants developed expertise in detecting and verifying users’ authenticity. The in-built connection between Tinder and Facebook apps complicated identity modulation, increasing participants’ efforts to maintain separate audiences on each platform. However, participants drew on multiple forms of communication, including further exploration of matches’ Facebook profiles, to supplement Tinder’s limited mechanisms for authenticity verification. While this analysis has focused on queer women’s participation and representation on an app designed for one-on-one interaction, the next chapter explores how authenticity is just one concern relating to users’ identity modulation when they seek to engage broader social media audiences.

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Chapter 4: Aspiring Toward Instafame

4.1 Introduction My Instagram account is boring. It took me two years and an overseas trip, promising beautiful landscapes and travel snapshots, to gain the courage to post photos on my public account. While I dabbled in posting more personal photos, my account remains the visual doppelganger to my Twitter account, with content only viable for an imagined audience of professional acquaintances. My account’s drudgery is exactly why I was gripped by queer women’s content on the platform. I spent hours scrolling through hashtag searches, such as #lesbiansofinstagram, mesmerised not just by the rainbow-filled memes and couples kissing but by the volume of intimate selfies – thousands of women looking directly at the camera, inviting the viewer into their homes and lives. I had a big, “You’re doing it wrong” moment when my interview participants listed all the LGBTQ YouTubers and celebrities they followed. I began following several queer women from the cast of Orange Is the New Black and quickly noticed that, save for the occasional photo shoot, these celebrities’ posting techniques were not altogether different from those of my interviewees. From women with 100 followers to those with 1 million, their work of capturing sleek perspectives, using multiple hashtags, and selecting intriguing filters produced a polished overall self-representation. Unlike my standard ‘urban sunset’ photos, many of these women incorporated personal and recognisable aspects into their images to communicate both their individuality and alignment with broader trends and styles. It did not take long to recognise these women’s approaches to self- representation as enacting micro-celebrity practices, self-branding and displaying intimacy to forge a connection with audiences (Marwick, 2016; Senft, 2008), which also included aspects particular to Instagram. From promoting burlesque performances to selling underwear, these women’s micro-celebrity practices involved “aspirational labour” (Duffy, 2016), as “creative activities that hold the promise of social and economic capital” (p. 443). According to Brooke Duffy (2016), aspirational labour includes displaying authenticity, forging affective relationships with audiences, and demonstrating brand devotion for self-promotion. The women with whom I spoke discussed many ways of signalling authenticity, relating to followers, and showcasing particular commodities, including self-

95 commodifying displays. Marwick (2015) observes that Instagram gives rise to a particular variety of micro-celebrity, which she terms “Instafame.” With Instagram’s emphasis on visual imagery and the dominance of selfie-taking practices, she argues that direct connections with audiences, which are imperative in conventional micro- celebrity approaches, take a backseat to fame garnered through visual self- presentation. Instafamous users attract audiences by reproducing “conventional status hierarchies of luxury, celebrity, and popularity that depend on the ability to emulate the visual iconography of mainstream celebrity culture” (Marwick, 2015, p. 139). Specifically, micro-celebrity practices on Instagram involve the production of stylised visuals, displays of conspicuous consumption, and references to celebrity culture. These findings are supported by Abidin’s (2016) study of “Influencers,” whose sleek Instagram selfies showcasing luxury commodities and lifestyles accrue thousands of followers, leading to brand partnerships and financial gain. Therefore, aspirational labour on Instagram draws on these platform-specific micro-celebrity strategies. While Marwick and Abidin focus on highly followed users in their studies, my analysis of queer women’s use of Instagram examines how everyday users incorporate micro-celebrity and Instafamous practices, with close attention to platform influences and the role of sexual identity. Although Marwick (2015) highlights some platform features that shape micro-celebrity practice on Instagram, this chapter’s application of the walkthrough method demonstrates how micro- celebrity practice has become a default Instagram activity. Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1965) analysis of class distinctions in photographic practice, I examine how Instagram’s vintage aesthetic and photo filters offer the potential for users to transform their photos into artistic works. The platform sets a high standard of stylisation, focusing on professional, creative, and celebrity users, through which individuals can accrue social and economic capital. This emphasis on aesthetic stylisation is seen throughout content with hashtags related to queer women, whether it is used to draw attention to pornographic or fantastical images of lesbians or disrupted through memetic content originating from other platforms. These findings from the walkthrough and textual analysis set the stage for understanding queer women’s identity modulation through practices of micro- celebrity that are shaped by Instagram’s affordances and constraints. Interview participants’ activity aligns with Senft’s (2008) observation that micro-celebrity

96 involves three themes: reflectivity, as mediated self-representations serve “as mirrors for those who choose to display themselves to the world;” reflexivity as “the way our dialectical exchanges place us in a continual feedback loop with others;” and refraction, occurring “when one person’s definition of public is another’s definition of private or professional” (p. 34). Sexual identity is made salient through reflectivity and reflexivity while its refraction is managed in relation to personal identifiability. Among these conventional approaches to micro-celebrity, queer women also integrate Instafamous practices. They adopt stylised visuals, showcase queer fashion and commodities, and reference popular and LGBTQ culture, signalling sexual identity in ways that garner attention on Instagram. Through Instafamous approaches to identity modulation, queer women form a networked intimate public, propelling them closer to realising their personal and financial aspirations.

4.2 A Platform for Instafame Queer women’s participation and representation on Instagram take place among framing and features that are conducive to micro-celebrity in the form of Instafame. While Marwick (2015) highlights the platform’s visual emphasis and filters as conducive to the stylisation associated with Instafamous imagery, she focuses more on user practices than technical affordances. Similarly, in an analysis of pregnant Russian-speaking women’s Instagram accounts, Katrin Tiidenberg (2015) notes that their adherence to dominant discourses of heteronormativity appears to be supported by Instagram’s “sociotechnical affordances [that] suit complacent performances and the reproduction of dominant ideologies” (p. 1754). Since these studies take users – rather than technological features – as their starting point, their acknowledgement of Instagram’s influence in Instafamous practices of producing stylised images and referencing dominant culture does not delve in detail into the shaping role of platform features and discourse. My Instagram walkthrough, conducted in 2015 using the iPhone version, identifies how exactly Instagram emphasises aesthetic stylisation in ways that hold the potential of bestowing social capital upon users who successfully produce such visuals. This potential spurs users toward micro-celebrity activity aimed at achieving social mobility or sustaining status through the accumulation and retention of followers.

97 Developing the Instagram aesthetic Instagram’s design, vision, and materials reference older forms of photography and creative practices that imbue the app with a particular aesthetic. Speaking from the perspective of Instagram’s founders, the platform’s FAQs explain how they named the app: When we were kids we loved playing around with cameras. We loved how different types of old cameras marketed themselves as ‘instant’ – something we take for granted today. We also felt that the snapshots people were taking were kind of like telegrams in that they got sent over the wire to others – so we figured why not combine the two? (Instagram, 2015b) Stemming from this inspiration, Instagram’s icon resembles a 1970s Polaroid camera, which produced photos on square, polarised paper before the photographer’s eyes (PLR Ecommerce, 2014). This mimicry of Polaroids was evident in Instagram’s standardised square photo format until an update in 2015 allowed users to upload portrait and landscape photos (Instagram, 2015c). Instagram also references another popular classic camera – the Kodak ‘Instamatic,’ a point-and-shoot film camera – in its aspiration to be a quick outlet for photo production and sharing (Gibbs et al., 2016). Displaying the app’s name in cursive writing at the top of the screen suggests pre-digital forms of production and display as well. Instagram invites users to access an app that combines contemporary mobile, digital photo sharing with symbols of older photographic technology. Understanding Instagram’s strategic reference to older photographic technologies warrants a closer examination of the development of photography’s tools and practices over time. As Polaroid and Kodak cameras became standard household technologies, photography transitioned from an activity of the elites to what Bourdieu (1965) terms a “middle-brow art,” accessible to everyone and used to mark everyday occasions, like children’s birthdays. Digital cameras have since nearly replaced these analogue forms, providing a more immediate way to produce photos and allowing for their distribution as digital files (Chesher, 2012). Building on the expediency of digital photo sharing, Flickr launched in 2004 as one of the first platforms to provide online photo libraries paired with social networking features (Harrod, 2009). Flickr’s architecture focused users on images over text, unlike Facebook and Twitter’s initial text-heavy features, and enabled users to make photos public or share them in groups with previously unknown others (Van House, 2007).

98 The ubiquitous integration of digital cameras into smartphones – particularly iPhones – and the adoption of apps through Apple’s iOS led to higher consumer demand for app-based platforms where individuals could instantly upload photos (Chesher, 2012). Instagram’s launch as a quick, point-shoot-share photo app met this demand faster than Flickr could address the mobile market (Siegler, 2010). However, agility in the marketplace does not fully explain Instagram’s rise to popularity as a tool of micro-celebrity. Instagram builds on these older photographic technologies while promising to facilitate attainment of a longstanding photographic goal: the production of unique and artistic photos. Bourdieu (1965) explains, “Popular photography is trying to consecrate the unique encounter (although it may be experienced by thousands in identical circumstances) between a person and a consecrated place, between an exceptional moment in one’s life and a place that is exceptional by virtue of its high symbolic yield” (p. 36). Moments and locations of high symbolic yield are set apart and distinctive, accessible to only a subset of (generally, upper class) individuals. Photos that capture and elegantly display these highly symbolic moments and locations are considered artworks. Increasingly expansive online archives of digital photos, such as Flickr’s libraries and Google’s image search, have demonstrated how volumes of digital photos can quickly render everyday snapshots mundane and repetitious. Instead, Instagram promises a way for users to display photographic artworks, as unique encounters that symbolically reference upper class lifestyles. This promise is evident in Instagram’s app store description, which states, “Transform your everyday photos and videos into works of art and share them with your family and friends” (Apple, Inc., 2015a). Users are encouraged to continue sharing everyday photos, including selfies, food shots, and landscapes that hold personal meaning for them, but only after Instagram transforms these images into works of art. This platform objective bridges the lacuna that Bourdieu (1965) notes between everyday “peasant photography” – mundane photos of holidays and birthdays – and higher status “bourgeois” photographic artworks. The description continues: “See the world through somebody else’s eyes by following not only the people you know, but inspirational Instagrammers, photographers, athletes, celebrities and fashion icons” (Apple, Inc., 2015a). Instagram invites users to exhibit their transformed photos next to iconic and celebrity users’ images displaying their lavish lifestyles. This positioning appears to offer a level playing field upon which

99 everyday individuals can attain celebrity styles and potentially draw similar amounts of attention. Blurring the divide between everyday users and upper class personalities is accomplished through an Instagram aesthetic – a common stylisation among platform photos that, when achieved impeccably, can transform everyday photos into status symbols. Instagram’s use of older icons and technological references draws on what Bjørn Schiermer (2014) terms the rise of “late-modern hipster culture” that, firstly, strives toward individuality, enacted most commonly through distinctive clothing and tastes. Secondly (and somewhat paradoxically), hipsters engage in a form of imitation that adopts and venerates “aesthetic styles of the recent past” (p. 174). Instagram’s references to Polaroid and Instamatic cameras appeal to this later trait, as the app venerates past photographic technology. Schiermer (2014) highlights how hipster retrieval of older media technologies also aligns with the struggle for individuality. He explains, “In contrast to the full-blown digital media completely ‘reproducible at will’, the pre-digital technologies still conserve a ‘remnant’ of ‘individuality’” (p. 176), which is introduced through older technology’s pops, cracks, scratches, and other imperfections embedded in their media production. Instagram images often achieve distinctiveness through this vintage aesthetic that adds grainy, faded, and over saturated effects to photos. Hipster culture has become appropriated into popular, upper class lifestyles.30 Ico Maly and Piia Varis (2016) trace the spread of hipster traits across locations and contexts, noting how it has become globally recognisable by a set of commodities, such as an “iPhone, skinny jeans, the beanie hat and big glasses” (p. 641). They note how these commodities are now more commonly purchased from mainstream fashion shops, such as Urban Outfitters and American Apparel, rather than thrift stores. Even searching for and retrieving genuinely vintage items from second-hand shops requires a significant amount of leisure time and money. In the context of photography, Bourdieu (1965) asserts that “aesthetic is only one aspect of the system of implicit values, the ethos, associated with membership of a class” (p. 8). By attaining the Instagram aesthetic – a vintage, hipster, artful aesthetic – individuals

30 Australia’s high-end urban brunch venues always remind me of this, as I pay upwards of $5 to enjoy a coffee in a vintage mug, served on a second-hand wooden table, surrounded by old light fixtures and fading Polaroid photos in kitschy frames.

100 assert themselves as part of an upper class that is affluent enough to participate in individualised and imitative practices. Instagram provides the photo filter as the focal tool for attaining its aesthetic. At the time of the walkthrough, the app offered 28 filters for photos and 14 for videos, which enable users to apply multiple adjustments to images at once. While users can manually adjust photo elements, the filter menu is the foremost photo- editing tool, presented immediately after a user takes a photo (Figure 4.1). Users cannot design filters. Instead, Instagram releases them in batches as part of the company’s “commitment to creativity,” enabling users to “brighten and enhance your photos in refined, beautiful ways” (Instagram, 2015d). Michele Zappavigna (2016) points out that filters extend Instagram’s reference to past photographic technology in that camera filters were once physical glass or plastic disks fitted over the lens. Instagram’s filters also maintain the rhetorical link to vintage aesthetics through names associated with periods of time (e.g., 1977) or places (e.g., Nashville) (Zappavigna, 2016).

Redacted for publication in compliance with copyright law

Figure 4.1: Instagram filter menu.

Filters imbue photographs with the Instagram aesthetic by achieving the balance between individuality and imitation that symbolises (now gentrified and

101 popularised) hipster culture. Lisa Chandler and Debra Livingston (2012) describe how filters transform digital photography’s banal, flawless prints into distinctive images by applying algorithmically derived ‘faults,’ mimicking older photo developing techniques. Each photograph connotes individuality, as the multitudes of algorithmic imperfections available through each filter gives a sense of the image being rendered unique, while it imitates Instagram’s overall vintage aesthetic and the emotions tied to it. Ayelet Kohn (2015) notes this effect in her analysis of Instagram images of war, stating that the app’s “aesthetic processing and design… easily – almost inevitably – elicit positive responses since they utilize predetermined formulas” (p. 4). She describes Instagram’s filters as “instant emotion buttons” (p. 3), eliciting admiration for the image’s artistic techniques, which is transferred into positive affect toward a photo’s subject matter. Meryl Alper (2014) raises similar concerns around whether Instagrammed images of war glamourise it through their ‘faux-vintage’ style. By developing filters and encouraging their use, Instagram offers a quick and easy way for users to potentially attain the platform’s ideal aesthetic and, by extension, access its symbolic capital of upper class membership. Comprised of a short biography followed by a grid of photos, the profile testifies to how skilled users are in achieving the Instagram aesthetic. This layout is akin to older practices of creating Polaroid photo mosaics, which draw attention not to individual images but to the photos’ overall artistic display (Buse, 2010). Several users recognise this quality of their profile and invoke additional display techniques, such as by making multiple posts that together comprise a larger image across a line or block of photos (Casti, 2013). This individual practice demonstrates that on top of Instagram’s framing and automatic enhancements, users develop further stylisations to set them apart. This reinstates a hierarchy of images within Instagram, dividing users into the Instafamous – those who successfully follow stylistic conventions and are rewarded with followers and attention – and the aspirational, as those who are still developing these techniques. Therefore, Instagram’s overall popularity stems from the promise of enabling all users to produce artwork while its usefulness as a branding tool relies on the elevation of certain users who attain new levels of stylisation and develop status-accruing practices, such as featuring luxury commodities or referencing celebrity culture.

102 Fostering Instafamous practices Throughout the development of photographic technologies, elites have always derived niche ways of producing images that differentiate them from everyday users. Robert Castel and Dominique Schnapper (1965) recall the ‘camera clubs’ of mid-20th century as groups that painstakingly developed photographic techniques to justify their activity as constituting artistic production. Bourdieu (1965) notes that individuals join camera clubs to engage in high photography as the “poor man’s aestheticism” (p. 64) – an aspirational means to shifting social classes. Similarly, Burgess (2009) observes that avid Flickr users developed skilled stylisations as they integrated everyday photo-taking practices with professional photography and art discourses. Unlike this bottom-up refinement of aesthetics derived by the users of a photographic technology, Instagram’s materials and features showcase idealised stylisations and define the means through which users can gain status. Through its screens, navigation, and user-facing materials, Instagram valorises certain photographic techniques and the reference of upper class lifestyles. Even during registration, screens depict youthful, fashionable users with the skill and affluence required to capture photos of urban landscapes from impressive vantage points (Figure 4.2). After completing the required fields, users encounter a “Suggested” screen (Figure 4.3) to help them find accounts to follow. Instead of featuring the most popular Instagram accounts, users highlighted in this screen are chosen for their “commitment to creativity and community” (Instagram, 2015e). These accounts demonstrate encouraged photo styles and content, including polished images of landscapes, fashion selfies, and life in creative or desirable occupations. Instagram’s blog also models the highest attainment of platform stylisation, from articles focused on photographic technique (e.g., the “How I shoot” series) to highlighting users who produce creative, obscure, and beautiful content (e.g., the “Featured Instagrammer” series). These materials and design choices reinforce a standard of stylisation for users to aim toward.

103 Redacted for publication in Redacted for publication in compliance with copyright law compliance with copyright law

Figure 4.2: Registration screen. Figure 4.3: "Suggested" screen for new users.

Instagram’s treatment of images as artworks justifies platform constraints on sharing that preserve its aesthetic while challenging users to assert status through their personal images. While the app enables automatic cross-posting to numerous other platforms, images created on these other platforms must be manually copied and uploaded to Instagram. These extra steps discourage the dilution of the Instagram aesthetic through non-photographic images, such as text or animation. Further, Instagram does not include a feature for re-sharing – or ‘regramming’ – others’ photos to one’s followers. Instagram’s (2015a) guidelines support this design choice and advise, “Don’t share content that isn’t yours.” These restrictions have given rise to platform etiquette of attribution when third party apps or screenshots are used to re-gram photos (Walters, 2016). With these restrictions on sharing, users are guided to rely less on distributing cultural or celebrity images or statements to gain status. Instead, they must produce such references in their own photos, such as by mimicking celebrity poses or displaying luxury items. As Bourdieu (1965) notes that certain photos function to integrate individuals into a group and express collective unity, users must learn to produce such images, which serve as “a technology for the reiteration of the party” as they transform “good moments” into “good memories” (p.

104 27). Instagram provides the guidance and technological scaffolding for individuals to showcase good memories as stylised images with cultural references. Instagram’s treatment of photos as artwork also aligns with notions of ownership that shape platform advertising into an aesthetic activity. Although digital tools for replicating media have challenged notions of copyright (Benkler, 2006; Lessig, 2008), Instagram has taken a strong stance on image ownership following past platform developments. After Facebook acquired Instagram, the company proposed an advertising approach of using individuals’ photos to support commercial content (Taylor, 2012). However, unlike users’ compliance with Facebook displaying their likes or attention to particular brands in others’ News Feeds, user uproar on Instagram caused the company to abandon this approach. Later, when Instagram rolled out its modified advertising strategy in 2013, it reassured users, “As always, you own your photos and videos. The introduction of advertising won’t change this” (Instagram, 2013). ‘Sponsored’ advertisements now appear in users’ feeds as Instagram-vetted images that fit the platform’s aesthetic. Advertising and brand promotion on the app also widely occurs through individuals, such as “Influencers” (Abidin, 2016), acting as brand ambassadors to promote items that compliment and supposedly enhance their luxury lifestyles. Through this approach, the platform avoids mundane advertising to the masses and instead perpetuates an economy based on individuals’ desire for class mobility through commodity consumption. This economy solidifies the practices of Instafame that Marwick (2015) observes, which include stylised visuals, conspicuous consumption, and references to celebrity culture, as these signals attract attention and become incentivised through the possibility of profitable brand partnerships. The platform’s extensive regulation also renders invisible swathes of images that do not align with normative celebrity and popular culture. Instagram retains a long list of sensitive words that, when entered into the hashtag search, do not return any images (McHugh, 2013). This mechanism is designed to limit access to “abusive content,” which includes hashtags associated with violence and self-harm but mainly pertains to images violating Instagram’s guidelines against displaying nudity and sexual intercourse (Instagram, 2015a). While #lesbian has been censored throughout three years of researching this thesis, searching a similar uncensored hashtag, such as #girlswholikegirls, returns pornographic content next to photos of fully clothed couples kissing, travel shots, memes, and even a bowl of #gay muesli for #breakfast,

105 showing that the platform’s inconsistent yet broad censorship obscures vernacular creative content while not comprehensively blocking prohibited content. With Instagram’s 13+ age designation (matching Facebook’s) in the app store, it is in the platform’s interest to maintain a wide user base by using a broad-brush approach to censoring non-normative content while encouraging a platform filled with celebrities, selfies, and landscapes that adhere to its dominant aesthetic and featured stylisation. By applying understandings of historical photographic practices to the app’s contemporary photographic technology, these walkthrough findings demonstrate how Instagram encourages platform-specific practices of micro-celebrity. Through its vintage aesthetic and filters, the platform appears to democratise the process of producing artistic photos as status symbols. Instagram seems to be the perfect tool for aspirational labour, providing a mechanism for producing creative content as a way to access social mobility across classes. However, Instagram also models and rewards a standard of stylisation beyond that which can be attained through filters alone. Design features and policies that constrain sharing other users’ content focus individuals on producing their own stylised images that reference celebrity and luxury lifestyles. These aspects of photography, Instagram’s features, and user adaptation combine to give rise to Instafamous practices across the platform.

4.3 Commercial, Fantasy, and Disruptive Aesthetics To sample content with hashtags related to queer women, I first ran hashtag searches for common sexual identity labels (e.g., #lesbian, #bi) and noted popular related co-hashtags. As I entered hashtags into Instagram’s search bar, it displayed the number of posts with that tag and suggested other frequently used tags. I ranked these, removed very similar hashtags, and created a list of the top 20 hashtags (Table 4.1), to which I added #queergirls and #translesbian to increase the diversity of images. I conducted API queries for these hashtags using the University of Amsterdam’s Instagram Scraper,31 which returned approximately 20 of the most recent photos and their metadata for each hashtag. Although some tags were periodically censored during collection, like the aforementioned #lesbian, the scraper

31 This tool no longer works due to Instagram’s restricted access to its API (Bernhard, 2016). This reflects a larger trend of commercial social media platforms increasing regulation and privatisation of user content for their profit-making purposes (Burgess & Bruns, 2015).

106 still returned content. This indicated that Instagram blocked these images through the user interface rather than removing them altogether.

Table 4.1: Popular Instagram Hashtags related to Queer Women

Hashtag Total posts as of 9 November, 2015 lesbian 8,549,965 6,100,332 bi 3,189,214 loveislove 2,606,059 les 1,673,220 girlswholikegirls 1,177,955 lesbiansofinstagram 1,007,298 dyke 687,859 gaygirl 528,334 lesbehonest 459,744 lesbianlove 424,981 boi 336,640 lesbiancouple 264,008 lezzigram 170,047 lipsticklesbian 153,367 inkedlesbians 72,629 lesbianfunhouse 44,550 instalesbians 29,913 hellagay 25,915 dykesofinstagram 15,576 queergirls 4,605 translesbian 878

I reviewed images as they were returned and continued collection until reaching thematic saturation. I sorted the images into categories based on recurring subject matter (Table 4.2), which amounted to 436 individual images after deleting duplicates. This total excludes several explicitly pornographic images that I deleted as they were scraped as a precaution against unwittingly possessing child pornography or other illegally produced content. While the image categories do not reflect the volume of photos that reference or represent queer women but are posted without hashtags, they provide a sense of the visual landscape of LGBTQ female- related content that is searchable and easily viewable on Instagram.

107 Table 4.2: Number of Images According to Subject Category

Subject Number of images Self-representations 225 Memetic texts 114 Men 29 Commercial – pornography services 24 Heterosexy lesbians 22 Commercial – other 10 Landscapes 9 Other 3 Total 436

Content categories shared similarities with other studies of hashtag samples, which identified a range of photo subjects, product placements, and self- representations (Gibbs et al., 2016; Leaver, 2015). Aligning with the platform’s encouragement to post everyday and aesthetically pleasing images, the sample included nine landscape shots of beaches, cities, and country scenes, and the ‘Other’ category included an interior design photo and picture of a hamburger. Tagging banal images like this with sexual identifiers can transfer the cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) demonstrated through the photo to identity-related qualities of its originator. For example, a posh interior design with #lesbian could convey the sense that lesbians are posh. With my sample containing some hashtags that were not female-specific (e.g. #lgbt, #loveislove), 29 images featured men, which I did not analyse further. There were also ten commercial advertisements: eight publicising LGBTQ events, one promoting a lesbian web series, and an advertisement for sausages, illustrating how advertisers sometimes apply hashtags arbitrarily to gain user attention. These smaller categories reflect Instagram’s platform vernaculars – shared conventions and practices – which are preoccupied with materiality and cultural production (Gibbs et al., 2016). The larger categories of commercial sexual services, heterosexy lesbians, and self-representation all represented sexual identity for different purposes while incorporating Instagram’s aesthetic and platform stylisations. In contrast, the category of memetic texts disrupted this aesthetic to make identity statements that stood apart from the rest of the platform content. Altogether, these categories demonstrate how queer female sexual identity is widely represented through Instagram’s affordances for multiple purposes.

108 Commercial sexual services This category is under-represented, since I deleted many sexually explicit photos during data collection but retained less explicit photos that did not contain full nudity or depict sexual acts. These photos were posted for the purpose of advertising sexual services, such as pornography videos, web camming, sexting, or sexual chat. They often featured a woman by herself with a camera angle focusing on sexualised body parts, such as her breasts or buttocks (Figure 4.4). These images sidestepped censorship through avoiding full nudity, such as by having the model wear a small bikini or photoshopping shapes over genitals. They often aligned with the Instagram aesthetic by using filters and attempting to re-create everyday photos but in sexualised ways, such how Figure 4.4 displays a messy room, typical of teenage selfies on the platform, but also captures the bed in the background and focuses on the model’s body. This sort of image reflects the popular ‘amateur’ genre of digital pornography that appears user-produced, even when produced by actual companies or professionals (Paasonen, 2010). The Instagram aesthetic is conducive to such images, as it visually augments everyday photos to give them a fantasy-like appeal.

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Figure 4.4: Image posted to draw attention to sexual services.

109 Accounts producing these photos were connected with a broader infrastructure of sexual services or companies with an overt aim of targeting male customers. Photos included captions inviting users to direct message (DM) for “Hot sex chat right now!” Several images instructed users to send messages to a username on Kik, an anonymous messaging app often used for trading sexual services (Olson, 2014). Account names were pseudonymous, such as “@thirsty_of_lesbian_sex,” and profiles included links to pornography or paid webcam sites. Little in the photos or captions referenced queer women. They often displayed a lone female alongside hashtags like #lesbianlove, tapping into the pornographic trope of women having sex with each other for men’s enjoyment (Jenefsky & Miller, 1998) but still displaying an individual woman as available for heterosexual activity. These images implicitly addressed male audiences through common depictions in heterosexual pornography, including hyperfemininity and a focus on white, skinny, young (often pubescent looking) women. Sexually explicit content is plentiful, regardless of Instagram’s policies and censorship measures. Instagram’s (2016a) Help Center warns, “The safest thing you can do is never share nude photos,” encouraging users to reflect on what would happen if the images “got out of your control.” These admonishments, aimed at individual users, ignore the prominence of commercial services violating platform regulations. Although some self-representations in my sample included women showing their midriff, muscles, or underwear, commercially motivated accounts produced the only nudity or pornographically sexual content I encountered. Despite Instagram’s broad censorship and relatively quick removal of pornographic images, this type of content is produced in such high volumes that searches on most queer women’s hashtags return explicit images at any time of day. Since these images are removed within hours and their accounts blocked, these users do not accumulate micro-celebrity attention in the same way as professional or independent pornographers who promote their work through sustained relationships with online audiences (Attwood, 2007). However, some of their strategies for grabbing momentary attention reflect Instafamous practices, such as the use of stylised visuals and presenting the female body as a commodity for audience consumption.

110 Heterosexy lesbians Another category contained images of predominantly white, young, and feminine women but these were notably different from pornographic representations. These photos often featured two (clothed) women kissing or embracing sensually in a romantic location, such as in front of a beautiful landscape or at their own wedding. The images emphasised femininity through women’s fashion, make-up, shiny straightened hair, and well-tended eyebrows, often drawing on Instagram’s aesthetic and incorporating a grainy or highly saturated filter to achieve a fantasy-like effect. While these images may appeal to a male audience, they generally targeted an audience of queer women, expressing ideal appearances and relationships to tap into queer women’s aspirations and desires. These photos often contained at least one signifier of lesbian culture, usually a fashion item, implying the subjects’ queerness. Rarely present all at once, these included snapback hats, sportswear, skater apparel, baggy jeans, and loose tank tops. The addition of men’s fashion items uses masculinity to express non-heterosexual female sexuality (de Lauretis, 1993; Halberstam, 1998). These images, in particular, reflected the fashion of queer characters featured in popular television shows aimed at teenage audiences. For example, many women in the photos resembled the lesbian lead of MTV’s Faking It, whose feminine presentation is punctuated by various hats and sports jackets. Photos that did not focus on stargazing or weddings included women surfing, rock climbing, waterfall jumping, and participating in other sports. Some images seemed to involve everyday couples whose picturesque selfies were now being passed around Instagram. Others appeared to feature models and bordered on absurdity, such as by portraying women making out on a cliff face. I draw on Amy Dobson’s (2015) notion of “heterosexiness” to understand these fantasy images as what I have termed “heterosexy lesbians.” Dobson describes heterosexy as the way that girls are socialised from a young age to align themselves with normative standards of femininity and heteronormativity by adopting the “symbols, fashion, poses and behaviours invested with current gendered ideals of sex-appeal” (p. 40). In her exploration of young women’s social media profiles, she found that they commonly posted heterosexy “digital dreamgirls” (p. 55) as representations of out-of-reach objects of feminine desire. As dreamgirls are passed throughout visual culture, they become commoditised media images that demonstrate transformations and replications of the ideal woman. While queerly

111 feminine and masculine gender presentations can both challenge heteronormativity and, as I mentioned in Chapter Two, feminine lesbians are often overlooked, these images of heterosexy lesbians uphold an ideal of normatively feminine attractiveness that is fused with white, slim bodies and upper-middle class affluence. As a recurrent set of tropes, mixing different backgrounds with alternating outfits and poses, they commoditise a particular image to strive toward. Just as Instagram images tagged with #fitspiration provide visual incentives to attain a sculpted body, heterosexy lesbians perpetuate an image of the ideally attractive lesbian, who is evidently so because of her romantic relationship. Pseudonymous aggregator accounts circulated these images with numerous hashtags, disseminating them to thousands of followers and beyond. These accounts often belonged to early adults and teenagers who shared “admin” duties. For example, @bi.sexualasf was managed by a self-proclaimed 20 year-old and 16 year- old who warned, “We post dirty vids as well. Beware before you follow.” Rather than the pornographic content described earlier, their “dirty” images were comprised of softer sexual depictions of heterosexy lesbians kissing or on top of each other with partial clothing. Just as young women’s dreamgirl depictions enable them to explore their sexual identity but also reflect aspirations to be perceived as sexually desirable (Dobson, 2015), posting heterosexy lesbians may dually constitute queer young women’s sexual exploration of desire and conformity to normative ideals of attractiveness.

Memetic texts This category included pictures with words, image-based statements, animations, and intertextual references that encourage shared understandings of identity. Since these images often were not photographs, or were augmented photographs in ways not available through Instagram, they were highly noticeable as they resisted and disrupted the Instagram aesthetic. One prominent format referenced popular culture, such as posts featuring YouTubers or stills from television shows and movies. Stills often made statements about sexual identity through an actor or celebrity’s words, such as a scene from American Horror Story where one character responds humorously to another’s distain for homosexuality (Figure 4.5). Other posts took the form of digital fandom (Hillman, Procyk, & Neustaedter, 2014), with users sharing images of LGBTQ celebrities or characters that unite them with a

112 community of fans. The prominence of these images reflects Marwick, Gray, and Ananny’s (2014) finding that young people often share about LGBTQ-themed popular culture on social media in order to signal their sexual identity, interpret life experiences, and articulate same-sex desires. This practice persists despite Instagram’s features that inhibit cross-posting and sharing media from other platforms.

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Figure 4.5: Post with stills from American Horror Story.

Many fandom pictures, jokes, and slogans contained identity statements, allowing users to personally declare their sexual or gender identity through more general posts that can be shared among others also claiming this identity. Statements often took an explanatory or educational format, looking to increase others’ understandings of minority sexual identities (Figure 4.6). This format is highly popular on Tumblr, where users who regularly share such statements often accrue the title of “Social Justice Warrior” (SJW), as a self-claimed politically progressive identity and a derogatory label for overly politically correct users (Renninger, 2014). Since Tumblr users are not able to automatically cross-post to Instagram, they manually screenshot or download Tumblr content and upload it on Instagram. Teenagers primarily managed Instagram accounts sharing this content, reflecting

113 Tumblr’s popularity with young people (Bennett, 2013a). These images resonate with Alex Leavitt’s (2014) finding that exogenous memes on Twitter, those created outside of the platform, have different purposes, meanings, and are engaged with differently from endogenous memes created in Twitter. Manual cross-posts from Tumblr have a different appearance from native Instagram posts, often lacking Instagram’s aesthetic, and import Tumblr’s social and political commentary.

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Figure 4.6: Identity statement post.

Another format included classic meme-style images, containing a photograph framed by lines of text at the top or bottom. These involved jokes targeting audiences through shared experience or agreement. One read “Hers & Hers” across the top, displaying pairs of slightly different black-rimmed glasses, tubs of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and terrariums, implying that queer women tend toward the same fashion and hobbies as their partners. Memes like this invite engagement as they draw on a shared culture or stereotypes (Shifman, 2014), with which queer women can simultaneously identify or brush off through the use of humour. Altogether, these images comprise memetic texts, since they draw on collective, creative approaches and cultural logics characteristic of meme-making (or “memetic”) practices (Milner, 2015). Although television stills, illustrations, identity statements, and image macros present different formats, they follow logics of production focused on generating images that tap into shared cultural meanings and history. Approaching these texts as memetic allows for understanding them as images that can simultaneously enable personal self-representation while signalling

114 affiliation with a larger community or cultural group (Shifman, 2014). Just as political memes can inspire affect or intense emotion to rally individuals around a common cause (Papacharissi, 2015), many of these memetic texts aimed at generating collective affect. They addressed homophobia, fears of discrimination, and a lack of human rights, aiming to foster a sense of shared suffering and resilience. While departing from Instagram’s aesthetic, these images can also be used in Instafamous strategies, as their references to popular media and culture can convey status and garner cultural capital. With this content constituting a large proportion of the sample, what appear as mere jokes or inspirational quotes actually serve to connect queer women through shared experience and culture.

Self-representations This sizeable category involved individuals’ representations of themselves and their lives, predominantly taking the form of selfies as “photographs that one has taken of oneself, typically…with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2015). Several self-representations included partners, friends, family, and pets, and were frequently captured in mundane locations, such as the bedroom, car, or bathroom. When images included individuals engaged in activities, these were everyday situations like sitting at a coffee shop or walking through nature. This subject matter constitutes the “peasant photography” that Bourdieu (1965) speaks of as prolific with the spread of photographic practice. It also matches Instagram’s expectation that individuals share everyday photographs for transformation within its app. These images can foster micro-celebrity connections with audiences because, as Nancy Baym and Theresa Senft (2015) describe, a selfie “initiates the transmission of human feeling in the form of a relationship” (p. 1589). In conjunction with displaying affective intimacy, Marwick (2015) notes that selfies are a standard tool of Instafame, as they are often stylised and used to promote commodity items and celebrity-like lifestyles, replicating poses of the rich and famous. She explains that everyday selfie practices and celebrity media production are mutually influential, as average users and celebrities mimic each other. Selfies in this sample ranged from highly stylised and polished to everyday snapshots, reproducing differing degrees of Instafame imagery. Similar to the way that Instafamous accounts focus on luxury commodities and styles (Marwick, 2015), selfies in my sample usually drew attention to the

115 poster’s style and appearance. Focusing on body shapes and zooming in on tattoos, piercings, and pieces of clothing, images often involved fashion tropes stereotypical of lesbian culture. This included items mentioned in the previous discussion of heterosexy lesbians, such as backward hats, but extended to more masculine signifiers, including short haircuts, baggy plaid shirts, and dapper style clothing (e.g., bow ties and suits), characteristic of masculine-presenting women who identify as bois, androgynous, or butch. These fashion displays contribute to the “conspicuous prosumption” (Williams & Marquez, 2015) of gender on Instagram, as the way that gender is produced and consumed across the platform with the explicit intent of engaging others in the shared construction of gender symbols and norms. Prosuming lesbian fashion invites others to easily identify and engage on the basis of shared sexual identity. Technical manipulations often enhanced these images’ emphasis on appearance. Individuals frequently applied filters and used third party apps for visual effects that were not available through Instagram. These included adding borders, blurring sections of the image, creating collages (prior to Instagram enabling this feature), and adding captions and emoji by uploading images edited in Snapchat. These modifications contribute to the tacit labour of selfie-taking that appears seamless and effortless (Abidin, 2016). Combined with women’s poses and curated fashion, these technical alterations belie that selfies are often not quick snapshots but are instead frequently staged self-reflections (Bellinger, 2015), intended to be read as casual but carefully designed to achieve a self-promotional effect. This analysis demonstrates that Instagram’s visual landscape of photos with hashtags related to queer women contains a range of contrasting images. Photos drawing on extremely exaggerated gender stereotypes to advertise commercial sexual services are in direct opposition to memetic identity statements that challenge normative gender and sexual discourses and yet these images co-exist on one platform. Instagram’s aesthetic is conducive to fantasy-like images, from pornography to fantasy lesbian couples, and is also used to stylise selfies. Aside from commercial pornography, it is possible to imagine how the other categories of images can be used in the service of Instafamous self-representational approaches. Young women may circulate heterosexy lesbian images to demonstrate their awareness of norms and expectations of attractiveness. Individuals might post memes with popular culture references and selfies that mimic celebrity poses to

116 affiliate themselves with particular lifestyles. In each of these instances, individuals stand to gain status by connecting with others who recognise these shared references and by asserting themselves as belonging to certain identity groups and classes.

4.4 Identity Modulation Through Instafame To find interview participants, I separated individuals’ images from those of commercial, group, or aggregator accounts. This constituted slightly more than half of the content sample: 246 images produced by numerous women to whom I sent interview requests through Instagram’s Direct Message feature. Receiving few responses, I coordinated six interviews through this approach and two through a call for participants across my social media networks, interviewing eight women in total (Table 4.3). Participants were located in several countries, identified with multiple ethnicities, and ranged from 24–46 years old. All participants but one gave consent for their photos to be used in scholarly works. Several women wanted to be identifiable by their Instagram username, included in the table below, and I selected pseudonyms for those who did not. I coded interviews, drawing on background literature, the walkthrough, and the user content analysis for sensitising concepts (Silverman & Marvasti, 2008), which helped to identify themes across these women’s experiences (see Appendix 2 for code tree). Early in my analysis, it became apparent that these women’s self- representations involved micro-celebrity practices as aspirational labour toward their economic and personal aims. Kelzz dreamed of making it big with her dancing and leaving her warehouse job. Alex created a second account (@dapperdykes) to promote her clothing line for gender non-conforming people. Emi showcased her tattoo business while her girlfriend, Queenie, promoted her modelling and burlesque shows. Kamala hoped to draw bookings for her motivational speaking seminars and Julie spread the word about her children’s yoga and recreational programs. Those without economic motivations still sought to build a particular reputation: Thea portrayed herself as a well-read college student and Mïta advocated for trans rights as a vocal trans activist. Central to their aspirational labour were indicators of sexual identity, which were modulated through enduring micro-celebrity practices and Instafamous approaches. Senft’s (2008) themes of micro-celebrity, as involving reflectivity, reflexivity, and the negotiation of refraction, were evident as individuals

117 shared intimately about their sexual identity to forge relationships with audiences. Instafamous practices of producing stylised images, displaying commodities related to sexual identity, and referencing popular, recognisable forms of ‘lesbian’ or queer culture were also interwoven throughout micro-celebrity activity. Women’s identity modulation was evident as they made their sexual identity salient through reflective and reflexive self-representations while their management of refraction targeted particular audiences.

Table 4.3: Instagram Interview Participants

Pseudonym/ Sexual Ethnic Username Age Country Occupation Gender orientation background Alex 24 USA Barista; Female/ Gay Hawaiian, @a1exthehuman clothing designer gender non- Chinese, conforming Filipino, White

Kelzz 25 USA Warehouse Female Lesbian African @kelzz32 employee; American dancer

Thea 26 Australia Master's student Female Lesbian White

Emi 30 USA Tattoo artist; Female/ Lesbian Japanese; drag king genderqueer White

Queenie 31 USA Burlesque dancer; Female Lesbian White @Queenie_von_ plus-sized model; curves vegan butcher

Mïta 35 Canada Undergraduate Transfemale Lesbian White @Mitagibson student

Kamala 40 Thailand Motivational Female Lesbian Thai speaker

Julie 46 Canada Children’s program Female Lesbian White facilitator

4.4.1 Reflective self-representations Participants included intimate portrayals of sexual identity to forge relationships with audiences while engaging in popular platform practices and referencing queer culture to reflect a desired representation of their sexual identity for themselves and their imagined audiences. They largely achieved this by using hashtags, displaying relationships, and posting strategically tailored selfies. The six

118 participants with images in my content sample used LGBTQ hashtags regularly. Kelzz explained why she increased her hashtag use: I’ve had somebody recently ask me if I was a boy or a girl, so I had to clarify and let him know, yes, I’m a lesbian female and I dress as a male. But like, it’s just me. You know what I mean? Like, I live me so I don’t think it’s different but I guess I have to explain to people who don’t know. So when I hashtag ‘lesbian,’ it’s basically, I’m just letting them know what I like and my lifestyle. LGBTQ hashtags enabled her to personally claim a particular sexual identity while also referencing a collectively constructed lesbian ‘lifestyle’ outside of the norm. Alex also seamlessly strung together these aspects of personal and broader reference, “So if I feel like I look really gay, I probably will use #gay just, again, it's a big part of my identity.” Kelzz and Alex saw their sexual identity not just as an orientation but also as a lifestyle that should be recognisable to others through a particular look. Similar to how Instafamous users reference luxury lifestyles (Marwick, 2015), sexual identity hashtags reference LGBTQ lifestyles made imaginable through media representation, stereotypes, and commercialisation. Participants included numerous LGBTQ hashtags to further define their identity and increase the visibility of their images. Alex continued, “It depends on the picture – if I want a lot of people to see it, I’ll probably use more hashtags and more identifiers because there’s more of a chance someone will stumble upon it.” She frequently added #boi and #androgynous, underscoring her fluid gender identity. Mïta explained why she used #translesbian, “#Lesbian is such a big cloud…that’s when you have to get into the multiple hashtags…to kind of filter people, like, to funnel people that are similar to you.” Taking a broader approach, Emi used #lesbiansofinstagram and #dykesofinstagram interchangeably “so other lesbians and will find my photos” without concern for differences in these identity terms. LGBTQ hashtags serve the dual purpose of being personal identifiers of sexual identity as well as contributing to a hashtag community (Bruns & Burgess, 2015) based around shared sexual identities. Participants who were in relationships featured their partners in photos and platform practices to communicate their sexual identity. Julie often tagged her

119 partner in photos using @mentions.32 Emi and Queenie, a couple, also tagged each other and added hashtags, such as #truelove and #cantwaittomarrythisbabe. Since same-sex female couples are often disregarded as just friends or ‘gal pals’ (McBean, 2016), these tags unambiguously indicated their relationship. Mïta added #pansexual to photos with her wife, “For a while, it was ‘bisexual’ but she wasn't really bisexual because like, she didn't know the term pansexual, basically, you know. And now that she knows about it, that's what she prefers.” #Pansexual affirms Mïta’s identity as a transwoman, since it is thought to be a more inclusive term than bisexual, which sometimes indicates attraction solely to cisgender people (Elizabeth, 2013). By identifying her partner’s sexual identity as pansexual in photos, Mïta underscored her own identity as trans and her wife’s acceptance of it. Couple hashtags allowed participants to communicate their sexuality and relationship commitment. Emi described the hashtag she created with Queenie: #rainbowdashandsoarin4ever, which is cause, um, my girlfriend has rainbow hair and so she gets called Rainbow Dash a lot and then my, uh, drag persona that I have is – looks a lot like the other pony, Soarin. So we've decided those are our names. Their hashtag references My Little Pony characters, the symbols of which also appear in their matching tattoos, displayed in a #moonday photo (Figure 4.7). Similarly, Julie and her partner share a hashtag that combines their animal nicknames with a love statement, such as #catslovedogs, which she adds to their photos. Queenie described the multiple functions of the couple hashtag, “People can recognise that, you know, it's both of us and it's something that we share and yeah, it's mostly just personal, makes me happy.” The hashtag signals the relationship to others so they can recognise it as a statement of commitment while also signifying the relationship’s existence for her personally. It also creates an archive of relationship photos, enabling the couple or others who click on the hashtag to view their photos in aggregate.

32 @mentions were originally introduced on Twitter (Halavais, 2014). They link to another user’s account, notifying that user and their followers of the mention.

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Figure 4.7: Queenie's #moonday selfie with Emi.

Couple selfies also communicated sexual identity. For Julie, who came out later in life and has a feminine gender presentation, these photos were the main indicator of her sexuality on her account: I think it's very hard for me to actually communicate my identity as a lesbian in a selfie without being with my partner because of – in terms of the way people sort of stereotype LGBT people, I don't think I necessarily fulfil any of the stereotypes. Since Queenie was recently divorced from her husband, posting photos with Emi reinforced her lesbian identity, “I am posting a lot more selfies that are not just of me since I’ve been with Emi because, for me, it’s just been such a freeing part of my life to be able to really be true to myself…” While these photos are key in Queenie’s self-representation, Emi posts fewer couple selfies because she has been out since the age of 17. However, she adds photos with Queenie’s prompting, “It’s like, ‘Oh well, you haven’t been posting photos of us, so’ – so I get bullied into it sometimes.” Queenie’s reliance on Emi in her self-representations speaks to heteronormative discourses that assign higher status to couples (Renold & Ringrose, 2016), making it easier to come out or defy norms when in a relationship. Posting couple selfies was also part of Queenie’s participation in platform practices. She informed Emi during our interview, “I #moonday-ed your butt,” referring to the image in Figure 4.7, of which Emi had not been previously aware. Since this photo incorporates their My Little Pony-themed couple hashtag and tattoos, this popular culture reference more broadly asserts a shared sexual identity,

121 since LGBTQ online fandom communities have appropriated the show and reimagined certain characters as queer.33 Overall, couples’ self-representations served as personal portrayals of sexual identity and intimate relationships as well as images that appeal to broader audiences by reproducing platform trends and celebrity practices of posting couple selfies (e.g. Bayley, 2017) and sometimes referencing queer popular culture. Participants also considered how clothing and fashion reflected their sexual identity. When describing the process of taking a selfie that Thea admitted was “actually a very staged photo” (Figure 4.8), she described her hat as essential because it was: A lesbian thing. Actually, like I wear a lot of backwards hats to sort of make a statement to people who – because I don’t – because I think I look straight, so it sort of lets people know…so yeah, other lesbians are going to know, generally. With her otherwise feminine appearance, Thea adopted the backwards hat as a masculine fashion item to signal her lesbian identity. Its potency as an indicator of sexual identity is owed to its association with lesbian identity in popular media portrayals, such as celebrity YouTuber Hannah Hart’s frequent choice to don a backwards hat. Similarly, Kelzz reflected on a photo from her childhood that she posted as part of the platform trend ‘Throwback Thursday’ (#tbt), “I really like that picture because I wasn’t too girly back then…I have a little button-up and, yeah, that kind of suits me.” She was pleased that the photo matched her current gender presentation as part of her lesbian identity.

33 See for example, the “Rainbow Dash” fan wiki: http://mlpfanart.wikia.com/wiki/Rainbow_Dash

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Figure 4.8: Thea's staged selfie.

Participants’ emphasis on fashion in selfies was associated with their desire to mimic celebrity styles in ways that reflected their sexual identity and glamorous LGBTQ lifestyles. As I discussed with Alex about her numerous stylised selfies, which included creative angles of her flat-brimmed hat, short haircut, and tattoos, she joked, “The more I look like Justin Bieber in the pictures, the better.” Lesbian culture has appropriated Bieber’s feminine masculinity as an indicator of queerness expressed through drag performances, fashion items, and the iconic Bieber-style haircut34 (Brickman, 2016). Since Bieber’s fashion attempts to assert his masculinity, which is routinely called into question by his boyish mannerisms and emotional songs, replicating his gender representation gives an ironic nod to this fluidity. It also portrays a soft masculine presentation, characteristic of the ‘boi’ gender identity (in contrast to hard masculine ‘butch’ gender presentation), popular among some lesbian celebrities, such as Ruby Rose (Hoff, 2015). By incorporating celebrity styles into her self-representations, Alex not only depicts her sexual identity but also identifies with affluent lifestyles. Using hashtags, featuring partners, and focusing on appearance were the main ways participants represented sexual identity. While some participants stated their sexual identity in their profile, others used the space for inspirational quotes, personal details, and usernames for other social media accounts. Thea’s ex-girlfriend featured in her profile photo, which she did not remove when they broke up. She said, “It’s something that I don’t really think about” but noted that she would change

34 See https://lesbianswholooklikejustinbieber.tumblr.com/

123 it immediately if it were on Facebook, since acquaintances would ask questions. Alex explained, “No one really looks at profile pictures anyways.” She spoke for six participants who rarely changed their profile details. This aligns with observations that social media activity has shifted from a focus on the profile as a static self- representational statement to dynamically displaying user updates as an aggregated self-reflection (Ellison & boyd, 2013). Participants stressed the need to regularly post new photos in their feed, with Kelzz asserting, “I try to post every day.” They understood these fresh photos as integral to others’ impressions of their identity. As a reflective view of sexual identity, the process of tailoring self- representations and posting them on Instagram contributed to feelings of self- validation. Kelzz experienced a shift after she made her account public, “It kind of broke the shell I was hiding in – in a way, and it opened me up to be even more okay about who I am.” Alex’s participation on LGBTQ hashtags allowed her to “see what a lot of other people are doing… It’s kind of helped me find myself in a lot of ways.” Using Instagram while separating from her husband and forming a relationship with Emi, Queenie explained, “It’s been a huge life change for me and a really positive thing for me to finally feel like that’s something that’s very public…and so it’s been actually very self-validating to have that be instantly recognisable [as] who I am.” Mïta created her account after transitioning and often posted selfies, “I think it helped quite a bit, actually… You have all this reinforcement from people who are in a similar situation commenting and liking your pictures, you know, so it’s a bit of a boost there.” This aligns with findings that social media can facilitate LGBTQ people’s exploration and early self-representation of gender and sexual identity (Craig & McInroy, 2014; Szulc & Dhoest, 2013). Similar to the way that trans vloggers’ videos provide a mirror that helps solidify their sense of gender identity (Raun, 2014), participants’ self-representations enabled them to feel more comfortable and as though identifiers like gay, lesbian, and trans were a stable part of their overall identity. Participants also imagined their self-representations as reflecting a particular image of queer women and LGBTQ people to broader audiences. Mïta often added #LGBTfamily to photos with her wife and children (Figure 4.9) and explained that this was: To portray just gender broadness and just LGBT awareness, you know, there's not just a man and a woman who can have a family. There can be two

124 women that can have a family, there can be two women that can have kids, genetic kids, you know what I mean? She aimed to expand people’s notions of family and to demonstrate that transgender people can be parents. Kamala openly tagged her photos with #lesbian because people “never show about ‘I am lesbian’ and [what it is] to live the lesbian way in Thailand.” She wanted to create a visible “LGBT world” on the platform for other queer women in Thailand to see that they were not alone. As Mïta used these hashtags on photos of camping trips and Kamala posed in urban landscapes, their photos can be considered “everyday activism” (Vivienne & Burgess, 2012), as images that make meaningful statements by showcasing personal lives that challenge social norms. As part of these reflections of identity, participants’ application of Instafamous practices, such as by stylising staged selfies and photos with partners while referencing popular culture, celebrity styles, and collective LGBTQ cultures, gathered attention for their self-representations and engaged audiences.

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Figure 4.9: Mïta's photo inviting users to view her family camping trip on YouTube.

4.4.2 Reflexive self-promotion Aligning with Senft’s (2008) observation that micro-celebrity involves reflexive dialectical exchanges, participants’ use of hashtags and other platform features also connected them with others for the purpose of accumulating audiences as fan bases, which provide attention and feedback. To attain this, individuals engaged in processes of observing popular or celebrity Instagrammers, replicating their techniques, and adjusting their posts based on user response (e.g., gains in

125 followers, increases in likes). Several women carefully chose aesthetically pleasing backgrounds and angles for images, such as Kelzz repurposing a parking lot in her neighborhood into a sleek dance video backdrop (Figure 4.10). Kamala often shot themed photo series, “Maybe ten, twenty, thirty in the one location…just to know, what did you see from the same location?” She felt that showcasing interesting locations around Thailand could spark dialogue with her followers. Mïta eschewed Instagram’s filters for manually adjusting photo saturation and hue while Emi and Julie used third party apps to add borders and create collages. Kelzz accelerated her footage to fit more content into the app’s 15-second video duration. Julie and Kamala maintained a store of old photos to substitute at moments when they did not have any current photos. Several participants also created personal hashtags, such as #tattoosbyemi and #kingkelzz32, serving to further transform the self into a recognisable and memorable brand. These reflexive upskilling and self-promotional practices, involving individuals’ iterative tailoring of techniques to suit their aspirations, provided the means to attaining the stylised aesthetics that Marwick (2015) notes as essential to Instafame.

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Figure 4.10: Kelzz' dance video, filmed in a parking lot with black borders added.

Participants paired these self-representational practices with networking techniques to connect with audiences and accumulate followers. Platform norms and technical features facilitated finding popular hashtags for content. Queenie noticed that many users added ‘ofinstagram’ to topics and stumbled on #vegansofinstagram

126 to represent her vegan identity. Platform mechanisms helped Mïta to find popular hashtags, “So I typed in ‘art’ and then it brought ‘artoftheday.’ I’ve never used that hashtag before but I believe it had like three million uses so I tagged it that way.” Participants also engaged in hashtag trends, such as Queenie’s #moonday photos and Emi’s #flexFriday snapshots at the gym. Participants who sought to engage widely added numerous hashtags in a post’s caption and comments, copying and pasting lists stored on their phones. Thea recognised hashtagging as a way of seeking attention and she often made fun of herself and others by adding sarcastic hashtags: I made a joke with the #24birthdaycandles #24yearsoflife #birthday #candles #cake #fun #yum #8hashtags #makethat9 – because that was a joke on like, people over-using hashtags and I used to think it was really stupid. I still do that a little bit like, #imputtingthisjustforthesakeofahashtag Despite feeling that users could sometimes add too many hashtags, many participants hashtagged photos to increase their visibility in others’ searches and to participate in hashtag communities (Bruns & Burgess, 2015) involving particular topics or groups of people. Another networking technique involved attaining the attention of popular Instagrammers or celebrities, most commonly by using the @mention feature to “shout out” other accounts. When Queenie posted meals made with ingredients from a nearby “vegan butcher shop,” she shouted out their account and the shop eventually offered her a job. Alex’s @dapperdykes account only became popular after a well-known trans user shouted it out, promoting it to his thousands of followers. This resembles YouTube practices of creating collaborative videos where popular YouTubers feature each other or up-and-coming users to share audiences (Morris & Anderson, 2015). Emi reflected on her experience of interacting with a radio DJ as an example of how the platform enables connecting with “bigger name people.” Kelzz tagged one of her videos so it would be counted in a celebrity’s Instagram dance contest and when he reposted it, she gained many new followers. Alex described a similar experience, “There was a picture of Ruby Rose holding a pair of my boxers that came out, and I sold a few hundred pairs that week.” As a popular, genderfluid celebrity, Ruby Rose’s promotion of @dapperdykes (Figure 4.11) raised awareness of the brand to its target audience. Through these networking practices and Instagram’s affordances for building large, interconnected audiences, even everyday users can build sizeable fan bases.

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Figure 4.11: Ruby Rose's photo as the @dapperdykes profile picture.

While participants adjusted their self-representations to audience feedback in the form of likes and follower counts, they also sometimes connected one-on-one with others. Kelzz and Alex imagined other queer women as their target audience and often flirted with users. Kelzz met a previous girlfriend this way: I posted a picture…it's just a quote on the picture…saying like 'double-tap if you'd date me.' So there were like people double-tapping and… I just started going down the feed of who liked it and then I saw her picture. I was like ‘ooh she's cute', so I went to her page and then I DMed [direct messaged] her, so then from there we started talking on DM and then it just moved to cell phones and then next thing I know, I’ve got a girlfriend. While Kelzz’s close proximity to this user facilitated their relationship, Alex often had fleeting interactions with women who submitted photos to her @dapperdykes aggregator account, “It’s just commonplace for Instagram, for there to be brief flirtations and short friendships and then it’s kind of a revolving door: more people coming in, other people kind of slipping out.” In contrast to Tinder framing interactions for the purpose of dating or hookups, there was no expectation that Instagram flirting would lead to a relationship. Regardless, these participants responded to women’s attention and continued to make flirty posts. Followers also reached out to participants with questions or to show appreciation. Mïta received at least one message every day from trans people or their partners, asking about her transition and requesting advice. She responded to each message because, “I was once one of those people that was struggling with how to do this, you know, so I get back to everybody that is looking for help.” By showcasing her experience, she positioned herself as an expert and key resource for other trans Instagrammers. She also compiled an album of Instagram photos,

128 featuring her family and showcasing her life post-transition, posting it to Reddit to support and inspire trans users on that platform. This cross-platform sharing extended her dialogue to new audiences while also drawing them to her self- representations on Instagram. Queenie received feedback about photos she posted in support of causes. She participated in #rockthecrop, a trending hashtag encouraging women of any size to wear any clothes they want (including crop top shirts) and received positive messages, such as: “It’s so good to finally see a body like mine in this kind of public light and it being positive and sexy.” These once-off interactions were less like reciprocal friendships and more akin to fan-celebrity encounters, where fans feel intimately connected to celebrities and are often moved to share this sentiment with them (Ferris, 2004). Queenie’s followers frequently recognised and complimented her in person: We went to a roller derby event Saturday night and one of the roller girls came up to me and said, “Oh my God, Queenie Von Curves, I stalk you on Instagram.” …I feel like, especially locally, I have a really great exposure to people through Instagram… This instance demonstrates the permeation of Queenie’s digital micro-celebrity into physical spaces, as her fan base provided feedback on the app and in person, indicating that her content resonates with them. Marwick (2015) notes that with Instagram’s minimal space for and emphasis on text comments, Instafame departs from models of micro-celebrity that rely on reaching out to audiences directly and textually through comments and written acknowledgements. However, participants’ behind-the-scenes interactions with followers and photo-inspired dialogue on other platforms demonstrate the endurance of these forms of direct interaction. Since they are less outwardly visible, they remain harder to trace than on-platform, public- facing conversations. Not only did participants develop their self-representations reflexively through interactions with hashtag communities, fans, and popular accounts, they also felt connected to a broader LGBTQ community. Kelzz sensed that self-identifying as lesbian accrued her support, “Whatever I post is ok because I always feel like there’s LGBT [people] backing me up.” Julie noted that LGBTQ Instagrammers made her feel less alone, “If I’m going to follow somebody, it’s because they’re either identified as LGBT or yeah… I feel connected just through looking even though I

129 don’t actually hashtag LGBT.” Thea followed lesbian-identified celebrities, like Ellen Page, and YouTubers, such as Hannah Hart and Ingrid Nilsen, because it “makes me feel more included in the community… A lot of them just post like, everyday pictures of what they’re doing and stuff, so it makes you feel like maybe you’re actually friends with them or, you know, you have more insight into their lives.” Identifying as queer or even simply providing an audience for other LGBTQ Instagrammers enabled participants to reflexively contribute to and receive support from this broader community.

4.4.3 Managing refracted self-representations Senft (2008) mentions “refraction” as the way some audiences perceive the personal aspects of self-representations as suitable for public viewing and others perceive them as content that should be private. For me, this theme also conjures the scientific concept of refraction: as light hits a target, it can be refracted, or deflected, to other surfaces in the process. While social media users produce their images for an imagined audience (Marwick & boyd, 2011), these representations can be inadvertently refracted, or received, by other unanticipated audiences. On Instagram, queer women negotiated the refraction of self-representations that communicated their sexual identity to unintended audiences, which included: known acquaintances, who were likely to be offended or react negativity; unknown and pseudonymous audiences, who often responded in crass, harmful, and violent ways; and Instagram’s moderators, who imposed platform values derived from dominant discourses. Participants managed these refractions through modulation processes that made their sexual identity less salient in these contexts. This involved multiple approaches, such as separating audiences, ignoring harassers, and self-censoring images. Self-promotion on Instagram went hand-in-hand with having a public account, visible to anyone using the app or desktop website. Emi created her account in response to declining engagement on her Facebook page, which she suspected was because she did not pay to boost her posts. Since private accounts require users to approve follower requests before they can view content, Emi saw this as a deterrent to accumulating followers, “Well, what’s the point of doing it if – how do you get all this attention for things if only the people I select see it? Kind of defeats the purpose.” Thea noted that requesting to follow an account “puts people off following

130 you.” Julie recently switched her account to private for fear that “creepy people” might try to follow an account about children’s programs. However, upon finding that her partner’s account was public for promotional purposes and reflecting that “I’m supposed to let everybody follow me, it’s a good thing!” she switched it back to public. Having a public account increased the likelihood that personal acquaintances, including homophobic audiences or those offended by representations of sexual identity, would view or follow participants’ Instagram photos. Participants modulated the salience of their sexual identity for the audiences through content decisions, selective hashtagging, and maintaining boundaries between platforms. Julie described the process of coming out as, “Happier and better for me personally but professionally and socially harder.” Since she used Instagram to promote her children’s programs and maintain connections with church members, she was subtle in photos indicating her sexual identity. Rarely displaying intimacy with her partner, she described a small photo in a collage that showed them kissing as, “The most outrageous thing I’ve done on social media!” Continuing to scroll through her photos, she noted, “Whoa, back down on November 30th, there’s another radical kissing-on-the-cheek one!” While Queenie and Emi, who live in a larger urban area and work in less stringent occupations, posted couple selfies embracing in bed together, Julie felt that photos showing the occasional kiss with her partner could be overwhelming for traditional and religious audiences. She shied away from using LGBTQ hashtags, “People will say, like, why would you – do you need to be ident- Like, that voice of people who are critical about the LGBT movement comes into my head and intimidates me.” She felt that adding a sexual identity label to her photos would be viewed as needing to be identified, rather than simply passing under the radar of audiences that tolerate but do not fully accept homosexuality. Most participants, however, managed to maintain their Instagram account separate from these sensitive audiences and posted more freely than they would on Facebook, where their families, colleagues, and older acquaintances viewed their content. Alex shared a meme on Instagram that said, “You are somebody’s reason to masturbate,” which she deliberately avoided sharing on Facebook because, “I feel like Facebook is more family-oriented. My grandma is on Facebook but she’s not on Instagram, so I’m ok with posting it on Instagram because no one I’m related to is going to see it.” Queenie also posted to Instagram more freely because her ex-

131 husband’s family was not following her whereas she felt obligated to maintain Facebook connections with them. Kamala observed, “My Facebook friends and Facebook followers don’t like to use Instagram.” Of social media users in Thailand, 19% had an Instagram account in 2015 compared to 32% with a Facebook account (Statista, 2016). This is similar to findings in the USA showing that Facebook remains the most dominant social media platform, with 72% of online Americans using Facebook compared to 28% using Instagram (Duggan, 2015). Maeve Duggan (2015) also found that Instagram was most popular with younger users, with 55% of American users between the ages of 18–29. Given these differences in platform demographics, participants still found some friends on Instagram but family and older audiences often remained on Facebook. Despite this, Instagram’s interface integration with Facebook (prompting users to add mutual Facebook friends) and shared policies created connections between the platforms that participants somewhat uncomfortably accepted. Thea’s acquaintances were likely to search for or ask about her Instagram account, saying: “‘Oh, nice to meet you, do you have Facebook?’ or then, ‘I found you on Instagram because I had you on Facebook.’” Tama Leaver (2015) notes that Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and other shifts over time, such as the platform’s increasing popularity, have challenged users to alter their privacy practices and expectations of posting only for particular audiences. Facebook’s stipulation that users present their ‘real name’ self (Raynes-Goldie, 2010) translates into Instagram’s platform vernacular of being identifiable, visually and by choosing a recognisable username, such as participants’ handles containing their first names. However, that the two platforms remained distinct meant that Facebook audiences had to intentionally and voluntarily seek out Instagram photos. Mïta explained: There are pictures on Instagram that are a little bit more risqué…like, there’s more boob-age or whatever, and having my grandparents or uncles and aunts on [Facebook] – it’s like, if they want to see it, they can go on my Instagram, you know what I mean? Placing these images on Instagram gave her relatives a choice about seeing them whereas Facebook’s Newsfeed algorithms would automatically push them into view. Similarly, Thea posted a photo of a book with a lesbian protagonist, using different hashtags for Facebook than Instagram, “I just put #reading and #onlineshopping and I didn’t put #racism or #lesbians on Facebook.” She conjectured that Facebook

132 would show the photo to her family and older contacts, who would find certain hashtags contentious. Alternatively, using #lesbian on Instagram would be “getting the audiences that I want for it.” Anticipating how and to whom Facebook Newsfeed algorithms present content reflects social media users’ construction of an algorithmic imaginary that shapes their sharing activity (Bucher, 2016). Participants used hashtags to pull desirable audiences to their self-representations on Instagram in contrast to Facebook pushing their activity to unintended audiences. Having a public account also involved time and effort to manage the refraction of self-representations to negative, harassing, and aggressive audiences. While participants desired attention from some previously unknown individuals, such as friendly audiences who would become fans, these other accounts responded to their self-representation with various forms of threatening and unwanted attention. Some women received sexually explicit and harassing messages. Mïta could only recall two messages from users discriminating against trans people but she received large volumes of sexually explicit messages: What I was getting with Kik and I still get with Instagram – though not as much – is the fucking dick pics. I just – it makes me throw up, right? Like I don't want to see that stuff. What goes through a person's mind that makes – like that tells them 'yes, this is a good decision'? She attempted to dissuade these users by capitalising “LESBIAN” and “MARRIED” in her biography but the sexual messages did not subside. Queenie came to expect dick pics and sexual comments as she accumulated male followers with her modelling and burlesque photos. She viewed these as “just part of what I have to deal with in the industry I’m in.” However, she noticed an increase in angry and negative comments from men after she started posting photos with Emi: I think for some of the straight male followers that I had, who would comment or like the photos that I had that were scantily clad or things like that, I think knowing I was a lesbian was a turn-off for them because they couldn't imagine things, to be honest. Posting photos of her relationship made her unavailable as a sex object while Emi’s non-heterosexy appearance inhibited pornified lesbian fantasies. Within a broader media environment that still portrays lesbians as heterosexualised for men’s enjoyment (Diamond, 2005; Jackson & Gilbertson, 2009) and among Instagram’s

133 volume of pornographically represented #lesbians, male users demanding sexual attention was a regular occurrence. The volume of harassing accounts and Instagram’s limited options required users to be constantly vigilant in defending their self-representations. Mïta did not hesitate to block users “instantly – if I click on it and it’s rude or like, pre-gender re- assignment surgery, ‘Hey, nice package, blah, blah, blah’ – blocked, see ya!” Queenie often ignored direct messages because they were “always just super inappropriate stuff like dick pics or requests for naked photos.” While the volume of unread messages made her inbox unusable, she did not expend the energy to block users and remove the messages. Instead, she was more concerned with public-facing comments on her photos, “As soon as somebody says something inappropriate about a photo, then they’re blocked.” Julie culled spam accounts from her follower list, “Anybody who I don’t know…who has a picture of themselves in a bikini, is generally going to get blocked by me. And maybe that’s why I stopped getting all of those, you know, ‘#follow4follow, #followme’ because I blocked a lot of the creepy weird porn on Instagram.” Her blocking efforts were a preventative behaviour to protect her self-representations from becoming rife with comments by accounts attempting to gain followers or sell products. Aside from disabling a user’s ability to comment on photos or send messages, blocking has no other repercussions. Blocked users retain their accounts and their comments remain on photos, requiring individuals to manually delete the content that motivated them to block the account (Instagram, 2016b). In contrast to Marwick’s (2015) finding that users who are already Instafamous tend to ignore critical or hateful comments, these everyday users felt the need to scrub such comments from the self-promotional images they wanted to be visible to their networks. However, participants found that new spammers and harassing accounts emerged despite their blocking efforts. Sometimes harassing accounts were particularly malicious in their activity and Instagram’s reporting system left individuals with little recourse. Alex’s account was duplicated by a user who copied her photos and attempted to deceive others into thinking this fake account represented her. She explained, “I reported it to Instagram and it didn’t get taken off for months and that person kept uploading pictures of me, even though the girl I was dating wasn’t responding to her – or him – or anything.” While the account eventually disappeared, Alex never heard back from Instagram. Although blocking and flagging mechanisms provide the appearance of diligent

134 platform governance, they also enable platforms to evade responsibility for regulatory actions by placing the burden on users to engage with flagging features (Crawford & Gillespie, 2014). The platform offered few mechanisms to help users modulate their identity so that it did not attract the attention of these harassing accounts and also did little to deter such behaviour, since there were no broader repercussions for harming users. A couple of women also managed refractions of sexual identity that came to the platform’s attention. Following a professional photo shoot promoting her clothing line, Alex posted a photo to @dapperdykes that featured two women in their underwear (Figure 4.12). It was eventually flagged as inappropriate, which Alex pointed out was “interesting because you see girls all the time in less, but I think there are a lot of homophobic people that like to just bash on my @dapperdykes page.” As an advertisement for boxers, the models in the photo are wearing at least as much (if not more) clothing than photos posted to Instagram by mainstream underwear companies, such as Victoria’s Secret (@victoriassecret). Although the post did not violate Instagram’s guidelines, Alex received a warning that her account could be deleted and complied by removing the photo. Retaining her followers and the @dapperdykes archive took priority over fighting allegations that the photo was inappropriate.

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Figure 4.12: Alex's promotional @dapperdykes photo.

135 Instagram’s inconsistent restrictions on nudity also limited Queenie’s self- representations, “You can only get so nude on Instagram.” She posted some of her burlesque photos, creatively covering her nipples using Photoshop, but mostly shared these images to Tumblr. Similar to Tumblr’s options allowing users to self-identify their content as ‘adult-oriented,’ Queenie felt that Instagram should allow some forms of nudity: I don’t know why some people get picked on [for nudity on] Instagram and others don’t… For some reason [pornographic images] get by somehow while other artistic photos or even some photos promoting breast cancer awareness and things like that, they get flagged and taken down. Queenie’s participation on hashtags like #freethenipple, a campaign arguing for female nipples to be allowed in public (Zeilinger, 2015), and her own photos pushing the boundaries of Instagram’s guidelines align with feminist artists’ challenges to Instagram’s authority in censoring the female body (Olszanowski, 2014). Alex and Queenie’s experiences demonstrate attempts from the platform and other users to regulate queer female bodies. While the above examples focus on unintended refractions of self- representations, participants generally intended their Instagram images to be refracted broadly across several platforms. In addition to Queenie’s NSFW Tumblr account, she also used her Instagram account to draw traffic to her official website for professional bookings. Kelzz tested her dance videos on Instagram and posted the most popular ones to Twitter where she hoped that celebrities would notice and retweet them. Kamala created a cross-platform professional presence by linking her Instagram account to her inspirational videos on YouTube, her blog, Google+, and the messaging app Line. These practices move beyond Instafame to involve strategies of micro-celebrity that engage with an interconnecting social media ecology. Instagram was particularly suited as a hub for this cross-platform self- promotion, as its aesthetic and features enabled queer women to create polished and artful self-representations. Platform practices of referencing popular and celebrity culture alongside metrics demonstrating attention through follower counts and likes allowed these women to exhibit cultural and social capital, facilitating them to more closely reach their aspirational goals.

136 4.5 Conclusion This chapter has shown how queer women’s participation and representation on Instagram involves platform-specific practices of micro-celebrity. Applying Bourdieu’s (1965) understandings of photography as an activity defined by one’s class position, it became possible to see how Instagram’s discursive framing and design features hold the potential to enable users to become associated with upper class lifestyles. These platform influences give rise to a particular Instagram aesthetic, encouraging polished, glamourised, and fantasy-like images. This aesthetic is reproduced in content with hashtags relating to queer women, from pornography to heterosexy lesbians and selfies mimicking celebrity styles, save for disruptive memes and manually cross-posted content. Instagram’s aesthetic also lends itself to users’ Instafamous practices, demonstrated by queer women’s highly stylised photos, showcasing queer fashion and commodities, and references to popular and celebrity LGBTQ culture. These findings identify the material connections between Instagram as a platform and users’ micro-celebrity practices, which had only been explored in limited ways previously. They also highlight that everyday users – not just popular accounts – carry out Instafamous practices. Beyond these conclusions, the chapter illustrates how processes of identity modulation can enable queer women to make their sexual identity salient as a component of micro-celebrity practice focused on reaching their aspirational goals. Queer women’s identity modulation on Instagram combined longstanding micro-celebrity practices with Instafamous approaches. Aligning with Senft’s (2008) themes of micro-celebrity, participants reflected their sexual identity in intimate displays to connect with audiences and tailored their self-representations reflexively according to feedback. This was made possible by maintaining Instagram as separate from platforms with sensitive audiences, namely Facebook, enabling individuals to indicate their sexual identity without their representations being accentuated for these audiences. Participants further enacted identity modulation as they managed refractions of self-representations to harassing audiences and platform moderators, targeting desirable audiences while attempting not to attract unwanted attention. Combining these micro-celebrity practices with Instafamous, platform-specific techniques enabled participants to further accentuate their sexual identity for target audiences, such as by participating in platform trends, using popular hashtags, shouting out accounts with many followers, and producing stylised images that

137 garnered fans. Accentuating sexual identity through micro-celebrity practices involved embodied approaches, as queer women layered self-representations of their bodies with queer fashion items and indications of their relationships while framing them with LGBTQ hashtags. These practices were also subject to normative pressures, evident in participants’ efforts to not be rendered invisible, attempting to counter a ‘straight look’ with queer hashtags. Participants also resisted gender expectations and heteronormativity as they deflected harassing and sexually aggressive messages. Their references to popular culture, commodities, and celebrities associated with LGBTQ lifestyles tended to highlight white, upper class, commercialised, and normatively gendered representations of LGBTQ people and associated celebrities that already dominate broadcast media. However, many of the images arising from participants’ identity modulation also contrasted with broadcast media representations, making visible multiple ethnicities, gender identities, occupations, and lifestyles of queer women that are often absent from public view. Through these forms of identity modulation, queer women formed a networked intimate public that enabled feelings of self-validation, mutual support, and shared identity. Similar to Berlant’s description of an intimate public as “a bloc of consumers, claiming to circulate texts and things that express those people’s particular core interests” (p. 5), queer women’s Instagram photos served as visual texts relating to shared subject positions and LGBTQ culture. Reflecting Olszanowski’s (2015) observation that intimate publics become networked through digital technology, the circulation of queer women’s texts was networked through Instagram’s technological architecture. The platform’s features facilitated connections among users, including hashtags, @mentions, and follower relationships. Berlant (2008) specifies that intimate publics function through affective and emotional expressions grounded in a sense of ordinariness, which queer women communicate through bedroom selfies, breakfast snapshots, and documentation of their everyday lives. Intimate publics are also “marked by the historical burden of being harshly treated” (Berlant, 2008, p. 10), which is evident in individuals’ exchange of memes that challenge homophobia and personal representations that raise awareness about diverse identities. By making their sexual identity salient, queer women connected with each other in this networked intimate public, sharing selfies and receiving positive feedback, accumulating supportive fans, and sharing the experience of defying heteronormative expectations.

138 Queer women’s identity modulation took on another characteristic that Berlant (2008) observes in intimate publics: it was juxtapolitical, “flourishing in proximity to the political” (p. 3) but mainly avoiding political conflict for the purpose of self-promotion. Participants were mainly preoccupied with micro- celebrity practices, portraying their personal lives to foster intimacy with their followers. Instead of building authenticity through consistent references to identity, as discussed in Chapter Three, queer women established authenticity through the micro-celebrity approach of sharing personal details that are perceived as intimate and difficult to fake (Gaden & Dumitricia, 2015; Marwick & boyd, 2011). Through this process, trappings of the self become incorporated into self-branding strategies (Hearn, 2008), such as the contortion of names into custom hashtags. Scholars have highlighted the expansive labour involved in such self-promotion, with Abidin (2016) noting the tacit and emotional labour required for producing and managing selfies circulated on social media. Duffy’s (2016) notion of aspirational labour identifies the work required for women to navigate gender discourses and participate in cultures of conspicuous consumption, often with uneven or unpromising outcomes. She notes that this work is highly individualised, as aspirational labourers assume responsibility for their own promotional activity as well as for the risks of it not paying off. Therefore, even as queer women connected in the form of a networked intimate public, their interactions were often once-off or distant, treating followers as fans, and focused on representing oneself rather than forming a united front to engage in political dialogues. Despite this juxtapolitical quality, a queer women’s networked intimate public on Instagram should not be viewed as inconsequential. These activities, combined with Instagram’s potential for social mobility through the display of status-enhancing images, combined with queer women’s micro-celebrity strategies across platforms to bring them closer to realising their financial and personal goals. While I have highlighted Instagram’s role in facilitating queer women’s self- promotion and connection within a networked intimate public, it was also evident across this chapter’s findings that several platform features and practices inhibited identity modulation for these purposes. In order to manage the salience of their sexual identity for particular audiences, many participants resisted in-built connections between Instagram and Facebook, such as by disabling automatic cross- posting features. The platform’s lack of features for deflecting harassment also

139 increased queer women’s labour in relation to maintaining their self-representations free of hateful or sexually explicit comments. Instagram has since introduced a “keyword moderation tool” that automatically blocks comments containing words that users identify as offensive (Systrom, 2016). While this tool is one step toward remedying the problem of widespread harassment, it presents another broad form of content censorship on the platform, which may constrain user interactions with followers (e.g., a compliment, such as “Work it, bitch!” could inadvertently be censored by users attempting to block offensive uses of the term “bitch”). This coincides with Instagram’s far-reaching content moderation policies and flagging system, which spur queer women toward self-censorship and often render their self- representations invisible through broad sweeping hashtag censorship. However, queer women developed workarounds and turned to alternate platforms to circumvent Instagram’s limitations on their micro-celebrity practices. Overall, this analysis has demonstrated how queer women’s identity modulation on Instagram takes on the form of micro-celebrity and Instafamous practices, as queer women accentuate the salience of their sexual identity for self- promotion through a networked intimate public. The next chapter shows how such self-promotional practices raise tensions among platform affordances and identity modulation approaches focused on forming close-knit communities instead of pursuing individual aims.

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Chapter 5: Vining as Collective Identity Work

5.1 Introduction The first time I watched Vine videos (“Vines”), I stopped within a minute – several 6.5-second videos fit into a minute. Vines auto-played as I scrolled through a cacophony of users singing, delivering jokes, and shouting in skits. I blushed as women danced in front of their camera phones, making sexual gestures that would seem tame in music videos but felt very intimate in this informal context. Experiencing sensory overload, I put down my phone and surmised that the office was not the best environment for getting into the Viner mindset. A week later, I set up my laptop at home where volume fluctuations would not be a problem, navigated to Vine’s desktop website and quickly plunged down a rabbit hole of continuous viewing. Beginning with the homepage’s featured content, I soon grew tired of young men’s skits and outrageous stunts or artistic stop-motion videos. Searching by LGBTQ hashtags, I found a gathering of users, comprised mostly of Black women, who created flirty and humorous Vines alongside social critiques. Their content abounded in 2014, building on platform-wide trends, but dried up toward 2015 and is barely traceable on the video archive, which Vine transitioned into after decommissioning its social network in 2016. This chapter reconfigures themes from the previous case studies, making sense of Vine’s temporary communities, which formed around texts generating a sense of collective identity. Digital technology has historically facilitated spaces of collective LGBTQ participation and representation (Cooper & Dzara, 2010; Edwards, 2010; Thomas, Ross, & Harris, 2007). In Wakeford’s (1996) early investigation of a queer women’s email list named “Sappho,” women represented their sexual identity to connect with each other, producing a mutually understood set of vetting practices (e.g., demonstrating female and lesbian identity through usernames or topics) and communicative codes, such as the Muff Diva Index for identifying butch/femme gender presentation. The women discussed topics concerning them as lesbian and female-identified individuals and shared about their personal lives, providing regular updates about their families, pets, and partners. While Wakeford examines this community as an instance of how the body still matters in text-based online contexts, I also interpret Sappho as an example of

141 collective identity building. Wakeford notes that identity codes were always changing but their refashioning was a “communal process” (p. 101). Supported through the email list’s technological features, such as signature blocks where coded information could be added, these women exchanged shared experiences while collaboratively defining and representing sexual identity. This kind of activity relates to Gray’s (2009) observations of “collective labor” (p. 21) among young people who, together, undertook the work of collectively crafting and articulating queer identities online and in their rural locales. It also resonates with the concept of “networked identity work” (Vivienne & Burgess, 2012), as networked technologies make possible these connections, which accumulate to make statements of identity visible. Combining these concepts, queer women’s activity on Vine comprises a sort of collective identity work, which is made possible through networked practices of identity modulation. Vine’s 6.5-second looping video affords the creation of affectively intense, narrative, and memetic representations that can be used to build close-knit connections and engage others in shared practices of media creation. This is evident throughout Vines with LGBTQ hashtags, the majority of which were produced by queer women to build affinity, entertain, critique dominant discourses, and participate in communities. These queer women accentuated aspects of their sexual identity along with other elements of identity, such as race, in Vines to connect with others and produce collective identity statements. Both Sharma (2013) and Brock (2012) discuss how racial identity emerges on platforms as a technocultural assemblage, stemming from technological affordances and the values that users and designers bring to these technologies. Similarly, these queer women on Vine did not simply reference multiple facets of identity by importing existing cultural practices and texts into digital contexts. Instead, their participation and representation were intricately intertwined with digital technologies so as to give rise to new ways of signalling sexual identity, such as through thirst trap clips or humorous looping skits. These Vines were highly visible (at one point in time), facilitated by hashtags and frequent posting practices, and they critiqued dominant sexual, racial, and gender discourses. Therefore, queer women’s participation in producing and circulating these texts constituted a networked counterpublic, which challenged the status quo. While Vine’s affordances facilitated and shaped queer women’s technocultures, platform features and dominant practices also posed challenges for

142 identity modulation and community connections. Just as queer women circulated selfies among Instagram’s commercialised and sexualised visual landscape, queer female Viners generated videos vying for visibility among Vine’s featured content. Building on scholars’ observations that racism and gender biases can become embedded in platform architecture and practices (Bivens & Haimson, 2016; Matamoros-Fernández, 2017), this chapter illustrates how platform designs can reproduce inequalities while also providing tools for users to discriminate against cultures, whether they are sexual, racial, or gendered cultures. Receiving volumes of hateful and discriminatory comments eventually led the Viners with whom I spoke to modulate their identity representations to target audiences on other platforms. While Vine’s affordances contributed to emerging technocultural practices among queer women, the individualised, entrepreneurial ethos of micro-celebrity (Hearn, 2008; Marwick, 2016) combined with embedded platform values to inhibit and eventually obscure their collective identity work.

5.2 Professionalisation of the Vine I analysed Vine’s company materials and media articles from the app’s launch in 2013 until January 2017 when its deactivation process was underway. I conducted the technical walkthrough in June 2015, using the iPhone version of the app, taking into account subsequent platform updates. This enabled situating Vine’s unique video format within precursor and contemporary visual formats to understand its affordances for users. While Vine’s framing of the app as a hybrid of Twitter and Instagram did not strongly steer users toward producing a dominant aesthetic, gradual changes to the platform professionalised the production and display of Vines. This shifted the platform from a focus on two-way communication, involving displays of identity that invited engagement, to an entertainment-based model similar to YouTube and streaming television services. Such changes fostered passive viewership in audiences, placing their attention on a limited number of Vine stars.

Vine’s anticipated uses and user affordances Vine’s framing upon its launch situated the platform between the mandates of Twitter and Instagram. A company blog post celebrating the app’s release described it as, “A new mobile service that lets you create and share beautiful, short looping

143 videos.”35 Following a series of less successful social video-sharing apps, such as Viddy and Socialcam, which aspired to be the next “Instagram for video” (Peterson, 2013), Vine’s focus on beauty and creativity aligned with this aim. Early company materials showcased exemplary videos, often featuring works by an artist employed at Twitter, Ian Padgham, who provided tips for producing visually appealing Vines. He advised users to “get a tripod” and “train your tap” – hone the skill of tapping the screen to record for various durations – that were essential for producing the artsy videos Vine frequently featured, such as time-lapse landscapes or stop-motion animation. Similar to Instagram’s Weekend Hashtag Project, Vine rewarded videos demonstrating skill or artistic flare by featuring them in weekly “Mini Festivals” on the company blog. The first Vine, posted by co-founder Don Hofman, was a recording of a waiter preparing steak tartare in a French restaurant in New York City (Waxman, 2016). These early examples and Vine’s encouragement of “beautiful” videos demonstrate its efforts to rival Instagram’s stronghold on visual social media by showcasing similarly artistic and luxury-related images. Twitter’s ownership of Vine imposed a discursive framing that reflected the existing social network’s purpose and practices while promoting Vine as a unique, new product. Vine’s launch blog post proceeded to unite the two platforms’ features and mandates: “We want to make it easier for people to come together to share and discover what’s happening in the world… We also believe constraint inspires creativity, whether it’s through a 140-character Tweet or a six second video.” Vine repeatedly prompted users to login through Twitter and “Find friends” through their Twitter contacts. Company blog posts showcased not only artists but also Vines from common Twitter contributors, including sports networks, celebrities, and advertisers. A blog post from one of Vine’s co-founders, Rus Yusupov, explained the platform’s design rationale in terms that differentiated it from Instagram: Old things are beautiful, but new things should look, well… new. That’s why Vine doesn’t have a play button. It also doesn’t have a pause button, a timeline scrubber, a blinking red light, or dials and a brushed-metal finish to give you the impression that you’re using a dusty video camera. Departing from Instagram’s vintage aesthetics, which could be instantly applied through filters, the distinctiveness of users’ Vines stemmed from a dearth of editing

35 Vine has now removed these blog posts. Quotes included are from my archive, collected using Evernote’s Web Clipper.

144 tools, challenging users to develop recording skills. The “Vine University” section of Vine’s website guided users to this extent, explaining “aspect ratio,” the importance of lighting, and other stylistic considerations. This section also attempted to steer user practices, fostering a “Storytelling” genre with “one person playing two characters having a conversation” and instilling community norms by encouraging users to add hashtags from a list that “the community has already embraced.” With these resources and descriptions, Twitter aligned Vine to its vision of informing the world through formats and practices that exercise “constraint.” Vine’s video format builds on previous visual, digital technologies to afford users with a wider range of purposes than those modelled in Vine’s company materials. Vines were not the first looped visual format distributed online. Jason Eppink (2014) traces a history of the GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), identifying it as, “An otherwise short, silent, looping, untitled moving image” (p. 298). GIFs were developed as open format files, programmed to display multiple images in succession, with an emphasis on interoperability and disregard for original authorship. Similarly, Vine’s cross-posting functionality makes videos interoperable across Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr (Figure 5.1). Vines embedded into webpages or platforms do not display a title or creator’s name unless a user taps or hovers over them with a mouse. Eppink (2014) notes that Tumblr has become a home for GIFs, as its accommodation of larger file sizes enables users to post intricately intertextual GIFs, such as by incorporating frames from television shows to tell a story. Vines share this narrative function and have also become popular on Tumblr. Through their interoperability, minimal emphasis on authorship, narrative function, and streamlined format, GIFs and Vines share similarities.

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Figure 5.1: Vine’s cross-posting functionality.

The short duration and looping function impart Vines with a meme-like quality, which is similar to that of other visual formats and gives rise to widespread user practices of sharing and reproduction. Limor Shifman (2012) observes that simplicity and repetitiveness are key features of YouTube videos that become widely shared memes. These videos are constructed around a single idea or a few protagonists, involving little editing and the inclusion of repetitive elements that make them memorable. Repetitive elements also render these videos highly replicable in that users can include a repeated scene, phrase, or sound in a derivation for audiences to easily recognise its reference to the original. The short duration of Vines enforces simplicity while their looping provides in-built repetition, increasing the ease with which a Vine becomes a memorable meme, apt for sharing and creative reproduction. While numerous Vines became popular memes (to the extent that the platform added features for more easily remixing other Viners’ content), a notable example is Viner Diamonique Shuler’s (@Dom) Vine (Figure 5.2). It featured a woman singing, “Do it for the Vine” to a young girl who twice responds, “I ain’t gonna do it” and then breaks into dancing the third time (Dom, 2014). While the phrase “Do it for the Vine” was the title of a hip hop song that loosely circulated prior to this video, Know Your Meme (2016) reports that @Dom’s Vine accrued

146 more than 592,000 revines (shares within Vine) and 543,000 likes within five months. The Vine’s internal repetition combined with its looped format imparted a rhythm that users appreciated, shared, and remixed using similar dialogue and repetition. Vine’s “Trends” page featured @Dom’s original video and its derivations among the top trending Vines of all time and the platform adopted the phrase as its tagline. The simplicity and repetitiveness of Vine’s looped videos facilitate practices of meme creation and sharing.

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Figure 5.2: “Do it for the Vine” by @Dom36

Considering Vine’s connection with these existing visual formats alongside close analysis of the role of Vine’s loop in a variety of videos (Highfield & Duguay, 2015),37 I have identified three prominent ways that Vine’s looping shaped user content. First, the loop supported a narrative arc. It enabled Viners to build action over the Vine’s duration and deliver a punchline or twist at the last moment. Ending

36 Screenshot from 9 January 2017. As a popular Vine, displaying this image does not pose ethical concerns because the video has already been widely circulated in the public eye. @Dom’s Vine and variations have been archived on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocd2KCoLx8Y 37 This side project explored the role of ‘looped’ content in visual media. Tim Highfield analysed the looping quality of GIFs while I examined the role of the loop in Vines. We collaboratively presented our findings at the Association of Internet Researchers 2015 International Conference, comparing the looping function of these two visual formats.

147 on this high point encouraged repeat viewing to further comprehend the story. Second, this ability to build excitement contributed an affective intensity to Vines. The rapid delivery of information, humour, or visual effects in a short duration grabbed or shocked viewers, invoking them to allow the video to play again. Third, looping enabled users to include a density of detail within videos that could be noticed upon multiple viewings. Vine mash-ups of popular television shows and music videos were common and creators often incorporated rapidly changing frames with special touches that could only be noticed by re-watching the video. These qualities of the loop applied not only to visual content but also to audio since, unlike GIFs, Vines allowed for looped dialogue, sound effects, or music, depending on the user’s aims. The inclusion of sound facilitated the app’s rapid uptake for producing singing, dancing, and lip sync videos. Viners’ widespread use of popular audio clips contributed to the popular success of some songs, such as Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen” (Yoh, 2016). Singer Shawn Mendes was also famously “discovered” for his Vines, in which he performed sections of song covers that affectively grabbed viewers (Ceron, 2016). Vine’s affordances for producing videos with a narrative arc, affective intensity, and dense detail combined with its simple, GIF-like format and memetic repetition to provide a unique visual format. As analysis of Vines with LGBTQ hashtags later demonstrates, queer women harnessed these affordances to produce a range of content beyond that envisioned by Vine’s integration of Twitter’s mandate with Instagram’s aesthetic and luxury appeal. However, shifts in Vine’s vision and design eventually guided users to produce entertaining content over all other forms.

Featured Viners and passive viewership Over multiple updates, Vine’s discursive framing and platform design shifted to render popular users highly visible while leaving the rest of the platform’s content to the mercy of its marginally effective search function. Introducing Channels as the main way to navigate content across thematic categories (Figure 5.3), Vine’s About page explained how featured videos were chosen to appear at the top of these categories: “Featured videos and profiles are selected based on a number of factors, but generally it’s content that we think our users would enjoy viewing.” Similarly, Vine’s desktop homepage included a “Popular Now” section reliant upon a “special formula” that surfaced “original content created by the community that appeals to a

148 wide audience.” Later, a “For You” section appeared at the top of the app, displaying a video feed that Vine described as a “personalized channel filled with Vines you won’t want to miss.” These explanations across sections lack specific details about how users were selected as “featured” Viners whose content was then widely circulated. The platform provided a sense that Vine employees selected some content, which was subject to corporate criteria that were never disclosed. Other phrases referring to a “formula” or “personalization” indicate that algorithmically “calculated publics” (Gillespie, 2012) were programmed into the platform to showcase content based on metrics and other measurable designations of value. From my Vine use, I observed that content that was not featured remained difficult to find, since the search function was slow, did not allow for search filters other than hashtags, keywords, or usernames, and often did not return videos according to a clear logic (e.g., only sometimes displaying Vines chronologically). Regardless of how featured Viners were chosen, they became the most visible users across the platform.

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Figure 5.3: Channels in Vine’s Explore screen.

Launched almost a full year after the app’s release, Vine’s desktop website introduced and later extended features for passive viewership. Similar to Instagram’s desktop version, Vine’s website was not designed for uploading videos. Instead, it presented Vines without the need for users to login, enabling them to view content –

149 starting with curated Vines on the homepage – without an impetus to use the platform’s interactive features, such as liking, commenting, and sharing. Vine later unveiled “TV Mode” on its homepage, allowing users to view Vines in large format as an ongoing reel of clips (Figure 5.4). Incorporating auto-play functionality, this mode showed users consecutive Vines without pauses between. This overrode Vine’s automatic looping and did not provide time for users to interact with the video. TV Mode also displayed Vines without share or comment buttons. Vine later updated its app with a similar “Watch” button, enabling individuals to view Channels and users’ video collections in a constant stream, which was also void of sharing and commenting features. These design changes encouraged a passive form of viewing, situating Vine closer to being an online television service than a social networking platform.

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Figure 5.4: TV Mode (from the blog post “Vine on the Web”).

These changes accompanied Vine’s discursive shift toward being an entertainment provider and updates contributing to the professionalisation of Vine production. A revised version of Vine’s app store description refocused its purpose: “Vine is the entertainment network where videos and personalities get really big, really fast” (Apple, 2016). This aspiration to become an entertainment network positioned Vine among platforms vying to attract users through social media stars,

150 such as iconic YouTubers (Marwick, 2016) or the social media influencers that Facebook pays for exclusive content (Ingram, 2016). Vine’s homepage frequently featured platform-grown stars, such as Andrew Bachelor (@KingBach) who attracted millions of followers with his skits. Platform changes supported this increasingly professional Vine production, providing a wider variety of editing options and the “Snap to Beat” feature enabling automatically tailored audio overlays. While these features made it easier for users to produce more polished Vines, they raised the bar for the production of polished, entertainment quality Vines. With brand-sponsored Viners spending hours or days producing one 6.5- second video, everyday users’ content paled in comparison. Despite these changes, Vine’s interface did not support advertisements and the company had no revenue-sharing arrangements, such as YouTube’s partnerships with content creators (Burgess & Green, 2009). When Twitter purchased Niche, a multi-channel network (MCN) company, to liaise between content producers and brands, the media projected that it would soon arrange income sources for Vine stars (Lafferty, 2015). However, MCNs often leave creators without stable contracts and at the mercy of “precarious creative media management” (Stuart Cunningham, Craig, & Silver, 2016, p. 382). Vine’s top creators attempted to negotiate for the platform to pay them directly but Vine refused and many creators stopped producing content (Lorenz, 2016). By the end of 2016, Vine was configured to showcase professionalised, popular accounts but no longer had ample content from Vine stars to circulate to audiences. These walkthrough findings highlight how Vine increasingly steered the purpose and production of its unique video format. Its initial framing situated Vines among Instagram’s aesthetically appealing content and Twitter’s focus on “what’s happening.” However, the platform’s design was open enough to allow users to harness the short, looping functionality to produce narrative, affectively intense, and detailed content. As Vine’s updates encouraged the formation of a professionalised elite whose Vines were featured above everyday users’ content, the platform became a tool for passive viewership over social engagement. Vine’s affordances and platform changes shaped queer women’s use of the platform, from enabling their production of Vines that connected close-knit communities to fostering individualised micro-celebrity activity that eventually contributed to the dissipation of these same communities.

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5.3 Identity Modulation Through Collective Sharing I observed early in data collection that queer women on Vine tended to use a smaller variety of LGBTQ hashtags than Instagrammers. Viners included several hashtags in video captions, sometimes even filling comments with additional hashtags, but few were related to sexual identity or specific to queer women. In late 2015, queer women dominated as content contributors to hashtags without a gender specification, such as #LGBT or #RainbowGang. Similar to my approach to Instagram content, I recorded the total number of posts for popular LGBTQ hashtags (Table 5.1), which Vine reported in the app’s search screen. Since Vine had a closed API, it was not possible to find or create a digital tool for automatically collecting Vines and their metadata. Users posted less frequently on Vine than on Instagram and many hashtag searches returned the same content. With these limitations, I manually recorded post information (e.g., date created, URL, username, caption, hashtags) and analysed ten Vines posted by female users from each of the following hashtags: #LGBT, #LGBTCrew, #RainbowGang, #lesbehonest, and #lgbttakeover. Of the few Vines that were not duplicates on other top hashtags, I sampled four from #AllQueerHere and six from #lesbihonest. I combined these with 17 Vines by queer women that I collected in June 2015 from #LGBT for the project mentioned previously (Highfield & Duguay, 2015), for a total of 77 Vines.

Table 5.1: Popular LGBTQ Hashtags on Vine

Hashtag Number of posts as of 11 November 2015 LGBT 103,848 LGBTCrew 43,590 RainbowGang 38,382 AllQueerHere 25,671 lgbttakeover 19,376 lesbehonest 12,905 lesbihonest 4,587 lgbtpride 3,416 dyke 3,029 girlswholikegirls 492

As I examined Vines, I added descriptive and topical codes (Morse & Richards, 2002), noting qualities of videos and users (see Appendix 3). Some trends

152 were evident during this stage of coding. There were 45 videos containing music: 22 with rap and hip-hop songs, 13 pop songs, and the rest were instrumental or other genres. In 20 videos, special effects (e.g., boarders around the image) or a watermark indicated editing with a third party app. These users bypassed Vine’s scarce editing features to add new visual and audio qualities to videos. Individuals appearing in Vines were diverse in terms of race and gender presentation. There were 57 women presenting as feminine, 30 presenting more masculinely (e.g., butch or dapper styles of clothing), and 7 presenting as genderqueer or androgynous but identifiable as women through their pronouns or use of female-related hashtags.38 I identified 41 women as Black, 23 as white, 2 as Hispanic, and race was unclear for the remaining women. This greater number of Black users resonates with media commentary highlighting the high volume of Black people’s participation on Vine (Hill, 2016; Hughes, 2016; St. Felix, 2016). Although Vine did not release information about user demographics, a study in 2012 found that 28% of online Black Americans used Twitter compared to 12% of white Americans (Smith & Brenner, 2012). Black women’s active participation on LGBTQ hashtags may have stemmed from a sizable population of Black Viners who were drawn to the platform through their use of Twitter. Given the limited sample size, these numbers cannot be generalised to the Vine population. However, they provide an indication of the diversity of people using LGBTQ hashtags and common aspects of videos, such as music and special editing. It is appropriate at this point to elaborate on the notion of race, as it is relevant to this content and the experiences of my interview participants. I understand race to be a sociocultural construct by which people place particular meanings upon skin colour and culture, often to impose hierarchies of power. This chapter necessitates discussion of racial identity, particularly Black American identity, as Vine videos demonstrate how it intersects with sexual identity. I draw on Brock’s (2012) incorporation of W.E.B. Du Bois’ writing to understand Black American identity as “the intersection between Black communal solidarity and a national White supremacist ideology” (Brock, 2012, p. 532), with race constructed not only by self-identifying groups but also by those who impose inequality based on skin colour. My interview participants discussed taking pride in their racial identity

38 This total is greater than 77 because some videos featured more than one person.

153 as well as instances in which others imposed notions of race upon them. In the content sample, I identified users as Black from their appearance and profile information even though I agree with Sharma (2013), who argues that visual assessments of racial identity are flawed, since race is a construct dependent on individual self-identification and emergent social interactions. While it is not my intention to profile users according to race, to ignore race or to avoid identifying the prominence of Black users on Vine would continue the ongoing erasure of Black culture and the oppression of Black people. During my second stage of coding, I grouped content into thematic categories according to a video’s main purpose. Vines tended to focus on generating affinity, staging performances, or sharing in fandom. These purposes were often overlapping but I discuss them in succession for clarity.

Vines of affinity In her analysis of YouTube, Lange (2009) developed the term “videos of affinity” for those serving the purpose of building and maintaining communicative connections with others. Researchers have identified this communicative function of digital, visual content on other platforms, like Flickr and Snapchat (Bayer, Ellison, Schoenebeck, & Falk, 2016; Van House, 2011). Lange describes videos of affinity as spontaneous and informal, containing in-jokes, personal glimpses of life, and references that resonate only with their target audience. This concept suits many of the Vines that I examined, which users filmed within their homes – often in the bedroom, bathroom, or kitchen. Women mostly used the front-facing camera, producing an intimate sort of video selfie. Most women held their phones as they spoke, sang, or danced, producing a shaky, informal image and giving the viewer a sense of being in close proximity. As Lange (2009) points out that the body is important in fostering affinity, Vine users holding the phone nearby, capturing their body, and filming their material surroundings builds closeness and familiarity with viewers. Vines of affinity encompassed particular themes: displaying everyday life, expressing intimate details or opinions, and communicating desire and desirability. Several videos captured 6.5-seconds of daily life, such as a Viner shooting the hail outside a window, exclaiming, “It’s that time of year again #snow and #RainbowGang.” In another Vine, a woman filmed only a view of her arm while

154 walking her dog (Figure 5.5). This highlighted her tattoo along with the caption, “2nd session can’t wait to finish this piece #batmantattoo #lesbehonest #highlife #Batman #tattoo.” These Vines resembled the equally mundane Instagram images of food, pets, and everyday activities but without filters or much attention to aesthetic appearance. Through these short, simple posts, individuals maintained what Leisa Reichelt (2007) terms “ambient intimacy,” as a way of “keeping in touch” made possible by social media’s affordances for regularly posting personal information. While these Vines had little to do with sexual identity, their hashtags enabled women to claim an LGBTQ identity as central to their everyday moments while simultaneously accessing a public of queer women.

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Figure 5.5: A Viner displaying a new tattoo.

Some videos more directly addressed an audience of queer women, asking questions and vocalising thoughts, feelings, and opinions. Questions ranged from, “How was your day?” to “Do you still use this?” as posting frequency dwindled in late 2015. These Vines accrued few comments but also did not anticipate responses. Instead, they served as a form of phatic communication, which has become common to social media (2008), constituting utterances for the sake of sociality. Vincent Miller (2008) argues that phatic communication on social media can generate what Christian Licoppe and Zbigniew Smoreda (2005) refer to as “connected presence,” the multiplication of encounters through digital technology until relationships become “seamless webs of quasi-continuous exchanges” (Licoppe & Smoreda, 2005,

155 p. 321). With direct address Vines, these women sought to build and maintain connections with others through the platform. While hashtags identified LGBTQ people as the imagined audience for these Vines, some videos more specifically called for queer women’s attention. Recording in the intimate space of her car (another common backdrop), a woman shared relationship woes, “When your plan be immaculate but your bitch ain’t loyal so shit don’t work out how it’s supposed to,” and sang the words, “Struggles of a gay.” She spoke specifically about her relationship and then used broader phrases and hashtags, such as #TheStrugglesofALesbian, to resonate with other queer women. These sorts of Vines presumed a shared experience or knowledge associated with sexual identity. Several Vines included angry rants or statements of superiority, such as one that presented a static photo of celebrity Nicki Minaj overlaid with rapper Fabolous’ song “We Good” where he sings, “You wasn’t there when we needed your help, so we good” (Figure 5.6). These Vines indicated rifts among users, whereby others could show their support and solidarity through likes. They constituted the video equivalent of “subtweets,” posts on Twitter calling out or criticising another individual but without names in order to maintain deniability and privacy from onlookers (Marwick & boyd, 2014). Vines of affinity generated closeness by developing a sense of shared experience and constructing in-groups based on social conduct on the platform.

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Figure 5.6: “We good” post directed to an unnamed user.39

39 Username displayed with permission.

156 The most common theme in my sample involved individuals participating in the platform practices of singing, lip-syncing, and dancing to showcase their body and communicate desire. Many of these videos enacted a practice colloquially termed “thirst trapping” where individuals post images of themselves intended to “trap” or arouse audiences. Thirst trapping has become common on social media, with media outlets like Buzzfeed providing commentary on celebrity and everyday users’ thirst trap photos (Stopera, 2014). While common across Vine, it was popular among queer female Viners, who often included #ttsquad (“thirst trap squad”) alongside LGBTQ hashtags. Holding the phone at arm’s length and using the forward-facing camera, feminine women tended to show cleavage, shake their hips, and record with the camera above them. Masculine women often wore sports bras, showed their abdominal muscles (Figure 5.7), danced with thrusting movements, and filmed from a lower angle to appear dominant. Similar to Instagram selfies, these videos displayed items associated with lesbian fashion, such as backwards hats, piercings, and tattoos. Women across gender presentations indicated sexual desire by licking their lips or flicking their tongue and including emoji with sexual connotations in captions, such as as a “pussy” (a slang term for vulva). However, unlike Instagram selfies, the motion, audio, and duration of these Vines added to their sensuality, sending more sexually overt messages of desire to their audience.

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Figure 5.7: Thirst trap lip sync video.

User practices combined with platform affordances and regulations to shape thirst trap videos. Many thirst trap Vines played rap or hip hop songs reflecting thirst trapping’s roots in trap music, a genre of rap with heavy tones and lyrics about street

157 culture (DJ Mag, n.d.). Trap music originated in Black communities of the Southern United States and has increased in popularity over the past decade (Lee, 2015). With ties to Black culture, thirst trap videos were not only expressions of sexuality, but also served to fortify connections across Vine, namely among Black Viners, through a common practice. Further, Vine’s 6.5-second loop allowed sensuality to build over the course of the video. Women often included sexual gestures at the end, inciting users to watch again to catch these moments. While Twitter has a history of minimal censorship, it has more recently developed stronger rules against pornographic content (Griffin, 2015). This, along with media outcry over the deluge of pornography posted to Vine within its first month (An, 2013), contributed to Vine’s “Explicit Sexual Policy” prohibiting videos containing a range of sex-related displays. The policy states that Vine allows “suggestive posts, just not sexually explicit ones” and lists forms of nudity that are permitted (e.g., “in a documentary context”). The final bullet in this list includes “clothed sexually suggestive dancing.” Through this regulatory caveat, combined with Vine’s affordances and users’ practices, thirst trapping emerged as a prominent element of queer women’s technocultural participation on the platform. The aggregation of thirst trap videos provided a highly visible representation of queer women’s sexual desire. In particular, Black and butch queer women’s sexuality was prominently visible through Vine’s LGBTQ hashtag publics. Thirst traps’ reliance upon explicit song lyrics sung by men in order to communicate sexual desire can be viewed from multiple perspectives. Recalling de Lauretis’ (1993) examination of how female sexuality can rarely be expressed without reference to male sexuality, the videos can be understood as women taking on masculine or feminine roles, with masculine women adopting the voice of a male rapper to express sexuality. However, I see these women as queerly appropriating these songs, many of which contain misogynistic lyrics, by re-contextualising them in the performance of queer female sexuality. Many Vines only sampled lyrics expressing desire and describing giving women sexual pleasure while leaving out derogatory references to women. Both masculine and feminine presenting women used lyrics sung by men, without the availability of female-led mainstream songs with similar sexual content directed toward women. Subtle displays of lesbian culture, such as fashion, gestures, and emoji, as well as direct captions and hashtags targeting female viewers accompanied thirst trap Vines so that men could never be mistaken as the

158 intended audience. Therefore, these Vines appear to queer expressions of male sexual desire for the display of LGBTQ female sexual identity. Thirst traps constituted Vines of affinity, since they were sometimes directed toward users in flirtatious ways but more commonly aimed to strengthen social bonds among women participating on these hashtags. Women often smiled playfully at the camera and included in-jokes in captions, such as adding a winking emoji to the lyric, “I don’t expect nothing from no guy,” referencing a shared sexual identity that is disinterested in men. One woman’s dance video was captioned, “Screaming happy birthday to lisa… I hope you enjoy your day beautiful,” celebrating another Viner with a friendly salutation while still presenting her body within the conventions of thirst trapping. Kane Race (2014) notes that gay men are using digital technology to arrange “new spaces of sexual sociability and redistributions of intimacy” (p. 506). These spaces include physically sexual activity as well as friendly engagements that have sexual qualities, such as chatting, watching pornography, and collective browsing of hookup app profiles. I interpret the women, who dominated Vine’s LGBTQ hashtags with thirst traps, phatic communication, and everyday Vines (many produced all these types of video), constituted a public enacting forms of sexual sociability. Across their Vines of affinity, queer women’s identity modulation accentuated aspects of sexual identity in relation to other elements of identity in order to connect with other Viners.

Performance and entertainment Several Vines aimed to deliver a performance or entertain through jokes, narratives, and collective identity statements. While these videos also involved affinity-building elements, such as holding the camera and speaking toward the screen, they required planning and smooth delivery within the confines of 6.5 seconds. Some users performed elaborate narratives to grab viewers’ attention. One woman’s video was captioned, “When ppl ask obvious questions ” and began with her stating, “I’m going to go to sleep” and shutting her eyes. As a different character with glasses and a high-pitched voice, she asked, “Are you tired?” Then, as the original character, she shouted an equally obvious question, “Bitch, are you alive? Are you alive?” These narrative stories, involving the use of objects or clothing as “instant-characterisers” (Marone, 2017, p. 55) to transform users into multiple characters, are one of the most frequent sources of humour on Vine and often attract

159 fan followings. This Vine received more than 1000 likes, 200 revines, and 100 comments. Many performances of collective identity were crafted to resonate with and represent queer women or LGBTQ people. One video started with a close-up of a woman’s face overlaid with serious music as she engaged in flirtatious behaviour, pursing her lips and running her fingernails along her neck. The music then stopped and the scene cut to the same woman playing the recipient of this attention, who confusedly asked, “Are you flirting with me?” Pairing this video with the hashtags #flirting #girls #RainbowGang targeted queer women, particularly those presenting a feminine gender identity, who may also have difficulty flirting with women because others presume them to be heterosexual. Another video began with a clip of the White House in rainbow colours for American LGBTQ Pride celebrations (Figure 5.8). It faded to a woman asking, “Oh, I’m sorry, did that offend you?” Then cut to protestors with signs saying, “God hates fags.” Fading back to the woman, she concluded, “Well, that offended me.” This video countered backlash against prominent displays of LGBTQ symbols, pointing out that they are still needed because discrimination remains prevalent. Vines such as this were poignant, quick responses to the shared adversity that LGBTQ people face.

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Figure 5.8: Opening scene from a Pride 2015 response Vine.

Staged performance videos aligned with Vine’s guidance for storytelling and mimicked styles that were popular across the platform but their relation to queer women’s experiences set them apart. As per the tips on the Vine University webpages, these videos incorporated multiple characters, voiceovers, music, and

160 other techniques. Creating videos for the purpose of entertainment, such as through humorous stories or antics, was a prominent practice across Vine hashtags. Vines’ looping rhythm was congruent with humour (Marone, 2017), accentuating punch lines and spurring users to like and share if they identified with the video. When queer women used these techniques, their videos called out to users through their shared experiences of navigating queer sexual identity within heterosexual culture. They provided a repository of stories, jokes, and self-shot images of queer women creating videos and making statements with agency. Such performances are congruent with Abidin’s (2016) notion of “subversive frivolity,” as identity expressions involving much tacit labour (e.g., staging characters, splicing shots together) while possessing under-visibilised and under-estimated generative power. These Vines involved forms of identity modulation whereby queer women placed emphasis on their sexual identity to go beyond expressing commonalities to making statements of solidarity and countering heteronormative discourses. Remixes and media texts Some Vines contained only clips of other media, which warrant a separate category not because of their prevalence but due to their striking difference from other videos with LGBTQ hashtags. In my sample, these Vines only appeared with #LGBT – the most generic hashtag – indicating that they may not be contributing to the same network of queer women who frequently used more distinctive hashtags like #RainbowGang. One Vine spliced together scenes from the music video for Hayley Kiyoko’s song “Girls like Girls,” which tells the story of a teenage girl who falls in love with another girl but must physically fight her controlling boyfriend in order for the girls to be together. The remix Vine focused on scenes between the two girls, showing them kissing and flirting, with the caption, “THIS IS RUSHED AND SIMPLE BUT I JUST CAME OUT AS A LESBIAN TO MY FAMILY AND THEY ARE SO SUPPORTIVE OF ME AND I WANTED TO CELEBRATE.” The caps locked text, coming out announcement, and video featuring young girls indicate that the Vine’s creator was likely a teenager. In her identity modulation, she shared about her sexual identity while minimising her personal identifiability by re-purposing music video clips without filming herself. Other remixes involved scenes from the videos of popular LGBTQ YouTubers. Two featured scenes from Ally Hills and Stevie Boebi, openly gay, popular YouTubers who accrued a larger fan following when they started dating in

161 2015. Announcing their relationship through a duet on YouTube, the couple has created many “collabs” (videos shot together), which their Viner fans remixed. Another popular YouTube lesbian couple, Shannon and Cammie, starred in a Vine that combined scenes of them kissing, traveling to beautiful destinations, or having fun (Figure 5.9). These YouTubers follow practices of micro-celebrity, sharing intimate details of their lives and self-commodifying, selling a put-together and desirable persona (Marwick, 2016). Viners highlighted these qualities, glamorising the couples and aspiring after similar lives, demonstrated through captions such as, “Relationship goals af [as fuck] ” or more blatantly, “I want a cute relationship like Stevie and Ally so much.” As I observed in my looped videos project with Highfield (2015), these Vines were commonly cross-posted to Tumblr where they circulated among the platforms’ fandom communities (Hillman et al., 2014). Beyond participation in fan culture, Viners used these media texts to articulate their sexual identity as well as sexual and romantic desires.

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Figure 5.9: Shannon & Cammie fan remix.

These Vines stand out from the rest through their homonormativity, featuring only young, normatively attractive, affluent, and feminine women. By depicting relationships that are otherwise normative and traditional, these clips reinforce heteronormativity and gender roles in much the same way as contemporary television shows featuring lesbian weddings that serve to minimise difference among heterosexual and homosexual characters (Smith & Tyler, 2017). These remixes also continue the frequent erasure of butch gender identities in broadcast media (Ciasullo,

162 2001). Most strikingly, all of the women in these videos are white without exception. Given that the majority of videos on these LGBTQ hashtags displayed a diversity of racial and gender identities, this homogeneity appeared out of place. These Vine content categories overlap and contrast with the themes I identified in relation to LGBTQ hashtagged Instagram images. Remixes of YouTube celebrities and their storybook romances are similar to images of heterosexy lesbians, which also present homogenous bodies and relationships. YouTubers constitute heterosexy lesbians depicting the archetype of cool lesbian sexuality in contemporary society, made palatable for multiple and broad audiences through homonormativity. While Vine remixes of YouTubers are similar to Instagram images expressing fandom, it does not make sense to categorise some Vines as memetic texts. With Vine’s repetitive looping and short duration, almost all videos have replicable qualities and intertextual references, imbuing them with memetic qualities. The category of commercial sexual services is also not relevant, since I did not encounter pornography during data collection. This indicates that Vine’s censorship tactics may have been more robust than Instagram’s or that the lower volume of posts to Vine enabled the platform to remove pornography more quickly. Aside from remixes of media texts, almost all Vines constituted self-representations, as creators most often starred in their own videos. Vines of affinity that showcased everyday life and included close-ups of one’s body share similarities with Instagram selfies that serve as self-identifications of sexual identity and seek to create connections with others. However, Vine’s video format allowed for more dynamic self-representations whereby individuals could generate affinity and make statements through direct addresses, performance, and narratives. Content across these categories involved identity modulation, as queer women emphasised sexual identity to create connections and statements while also adjusting their personal identifiability. As is evident from the clips discussed, individuals often accomplished this by omitting face shots or other identifying details and by using media texts to reflect personal stories.

5.4 A Tale of Two Vines By the time I began arranging interviews with queer female Viners, posting frequency on LGBTQ hashtags had rapidly declined. This was a lesson for me to

163 never assume that a research field site, especially a digital research site, would perpetuate the same activity indefinitely. After my content collection in November and December 2015, I attempted to recruit interview participants in early 2016 using the same approach as with Instagram. I sent messages through Vine to 15 women featured in my content sample who still appeared to be using the platform (many stopped posting or deleted their accounts). Without any responses, I created a Vine calling for participants, to which I added LGBTQ hashtags. Although this Vine accrued ten likes, three revines, and more than a thousand loops, users did not respond. I also turned to my networks, tweeting and Facebooking my call for participants, but given Vine’s small user base, this approach was also unsuccessful. My experience reflects a digital research dilemma that will only become more challenging. Platforms are adding more features to protect users from spam, such as Vine’s inbox displaying messages from “Friends” by default with an obscure “Other” screen for messages from users that one is not following. It is increasingly difficult to connect with previously unknown users on social media. Popularity filters and algorithms can also leave calls for participants buried under content with more views or likes. I decided not to post interview requests as comments on Vines, since they would appear out of place and draw attention to the user’s sexual identity. Given this experience, in the future I may use ethnographic approaches when investigating platforms that pose difficulties for engaging with users one-on-one. By posting more of my personal content to LGBTQ hashtags, connecting as a Viner first and a researcher second, I may have gained access to more users. However, ethnographic approaches also pose challenges regarding covert participation and disclosure of researcher status (Hine, 2008), and take more time than was allowable for this multi-sited study. In any case, my experience brings to light challenges that contemporary digital platforms pose for accessing research participants. I interviewed two Viners who used the platform in contrasting ways. I contacted them using email addresses provided in their Vine profiles – a rare piece of user information that enabled me to send a message outside the scrutiny of Vine’s inbox filter. In March 2016, I held a Skype interview with Chrissy (@chrissyscreationss), a 25 year-old, lesbian-identified woman living in the Mid- Atlantic United States with her wife and two children. She was working as a teaching assistant and childcare provider but also selling her “creations” – paintings and handmade jewellery – through her social media accounts and website. She began

164 using Vine in September 2013 and posted up to 20 times per day during the height of her use. At the time of our interview, she was posting once or twice a day for her 14,500 followers. Chrissy referred to herself as Black and African American throughout the interview and counted herself among a network of “pro-Black” Viners, “being prideful in our own race” and conducting “Black education through Vine.” Later in the year, I noted one Viner from my content sample, Jaxx (@jaxxgarcia), was still frequently posting videos. We arranged a phone interview around her schedule, as she was working for a marketing company and studying undergraduate courses. Jaxx was in her early twenties and identified as bisexual. She started using Vine in late 2014 as a creative outlet, thinking: “Maybe I can get discovered by Ellen DeGeneres and I can get money to go to school.” Through her Vines, consisting of jokes, rants, and funny stories, she had accumulated 22,600 followers. Jaxx also identified as Latina, Hispanic, and neurodivergent,40 noting that she had Attention Deficit Disorder and anxiety. She reflected these aspects of her identity in her videos. While these women’s experiences were unique to their life situations, their interviews provide insights about the social, cultural, and technological influences that shaped identity work on Vine. Both interviews covered a range of topics about identity and Vine use, lasting around two hours each. I analysed interview transcripts, adding codes for recurring themes and flagging conceptually relevant sections with memos (see Appendix 3). Chrissy and Jaxx provided consent and encouraged me to include their usernames and screenshots of video clips. While their experiences differed greatly, their common and contrasting perspectives provided “thick descriptions” (Geertz, 1973) of everyday Vine use. This use included identity modulation, which enabled them to accentuate sexual identity to connect with communities and target their self-representations toward friendly audiences.

Creating and connecting “I like to post inspirational stuff,” Chrissy told me, “Funny things, relatable things.” Most of her videos functioned as Vines of affinity, sharing snippets of her life, often featuring her wife and children around their home or in the car. Among

40 Jaxx used “neurodivergence” as an inclusive term for people with mental health situations that may be considered outside the norm.

165 these were Vines that spoke to shared experiences, such as a Vine hashtagged #Lesbiansbelike in which she interrogated her wife as to who she was texting, making fun of the trope that lesbian relationships are wrought with jealousy. Chrissy’s Vines also often followed broader Vine trends and addressed the Black Viner community. One Vine with the hashtags #blackmothers and #doitfortheVine replicated the rhythm and format of @Dom’s “Do it for the Vine.” Chrissy posed as a mother, telling her child to do chores (Figure 5.10). She then played the character of a child (Figure 5.11), saying, “I ain’t gonna do it.” The camera flicked between the two characters until the mother said, “[I’ll] whoop your ass!” and the child responded, “I’mma do it!” By remixing a Vine trend and incorporating humorous themes from Black culture, such as the stern mother figure (a recurrent subject in Black Viners’ videos), Chrissy spoke to multiple audiences.

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Figure 5.10: Chrissy as an adult character. Figure 5.11: Chrissy as a child character.

Chrissy referred to these Vines as “relatable,” a term commonly used in hashtag form to draw attention to a shared experience. She stressed, “If things are not relatable and you’re very vain about what you’re posting, people are not going to really care because it has nothing to do with them.” Although media critics have been quick to dismiss #relatable as a narrow millennial practice of young people only consuming content that mirrors their lives (Mead, 2014; Onion, 2014), relatability is

166 a component of social media self-branding strategies, used to assert authenticity (Grow & Ward, 2013). Through her Vines of affinity, showcasing insider symbols, language, and experiences, Chrissy’s consistent references to different facets of identity established her as an authentic wife, mom, and lesbian. She also participated in emergent technocultural practices, akin to those which are prominent on Twitter, contributing to ‘Blacktags’ – hashtags that Black-identified users circulate with racially charged messages and cultural critiques (Sharma, 2013). Chrissy’s remixes of other Black Viners involved a form of participation resembling Black Twitter users’ practice of signifyin’ – linguistic performances that communicate multiple levels of meaning and frequently involve wordplay, humour, and wit (Brock, 2012; Florini, 2014). Twitter’s 140 character limit, threaded responses, and features for audience participation contribute to the technocultural arrangements that afford a networked form of signifyin’ (Florini, 2014). Similarly, Vine’s 6.5-second duration, repetition, rhythm, and features for responding through remixes contribute to platform-specific signifyin’ through video, providing visual and audio components for this practice. By using Vine’s technological features to communicate relatable experiences and Black cultural humour, Chrissy accentuated racial and sexual elements of her identity to connect with communities of Black and queer Viners. Similar to the Tinder and Instagram practices mentioned earlier, she established authenticity by sharing intimate everyday moments and by consistently referencing identity-related symbols, hashtags, and conventions. Whereas performances were the exception on Chrissy’s account, they were the norm for Jaxx, as she applied skills learned in theatre school to entertain followers. In one Vine, she posed as a character saying, “You’re going to hell” (Figure 5.12). Then, as herself, she dabbed pretend tears with a rainbow flag and sarcastically responded, “Oh no, whatever will I do? I will be going to a place surrounded by other lesbians who are horny and willing” (Figures 5.13). This Vine and many of her others were modelled on situations she experienced in person. Jaxx stated that by transforming them into Vines, “It’s kind of a way to bounce back at people who are ignorant.” Her skits made collective identity statements, using her personal experiences to critique and counter sexual, racial, and ableist biases.

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Figure 5.12: Jaxx as a critical character. Figure 5.13: Jaxx as herself.

Chrissy and Jaxx both used Vine to increase the visibility of their intersecting identities and reach out to others. Chrissy aimed to inspire “whoever is willing to listen” but said of her wife and her, “As a married couple, we give a lot of people across the board – like Instagram, Vine, Facebook, across the social media board – it gives a lot of lesbians hope to want the same things.” She hoped to show queer women that they could live proudly and have a family. Her intersecting aspects of identity provided motivation for posting: I feel like I’m stuck in the middle, being in the LGBT community, because it’s hard to be a lesbian and be pro-Black without conviction. It’s hard to be a lesbian mom without conviction. It’s hard to be…lesbian and married and pro-Black all at the same time. She channelled her conviction into Vines, showing people that within this mix of identities, “You can love yourself.” Jaxx began challenging homophobia, particularly biphobia, with her Vines in response to a user’s comment stating, “Oh, you don’t look gay.” She realised that LGBTQ representation on Vine was minimal and struggled to find others posting about bisexuality:

168 The people that do post, you can tell that they’re unsure and they’re not confident – but they want to be. I literally live my life as a confident bisexual woman, and I’m like, ‘I need other people to know that it’s okay.’ Her Vines countered bisexual erasure across broadcast and digital media, “There is no voice. When you have people online saying that Demi Lovato is an ally and Lady Gaga’s an ally, and I’m like, ‘They’re bisexual, what the fuck?’ …It sucks, and I wanted to speak out.” Jaxx was frustrated with celebrities making statements in support of LGBTQ people without implicating their own sexual identity – or with media coverage omitting mention of their sexual identity – adding to the erasure of bisexual identities. She also felt the need to represent her Hispanic background and neurodivergence, stating, “My goal has always been to try to de-stigmatise things.” Both women felt connected to communities through Vine. Jaxx cross-posted her Vines to Tumblr where she had a much larger following of fans who regularly reblogged her videos. She described Tumblr as “Homo Central” with “LGBT- friendly people and people with my sassy, snarky attitude that just relate to [my Vines] on that level.” Her observation resonates with research identifying LGBTQ users as being very active on Tumblr (Cho, 2015) and “social justice warrior” Tumblr users who critique social norms and dominant culture (Renninger, 2014). Looping Vines easily gained traction among Tumblr’s affordances, which Alexander Cho (2015) describes as generating a “queer reverb” of non-linear space and repetition that intensifies affect. Jaxx frequently received messages from Tumblr followers thanking her and sharing their stories of negotiating sexual identity. She recounted a follower’s email: She lives in a country where she would be killed if she was out… She started talking about how my Vine – she’s like, it makes her happy to know there are people like me that are able to speak out for a community and live my life and be happy and proud in a way that she can’t be. And that watching my Vines just filled her with joy, and I’m like, ‘My dumb Vines?’ And then I’m like, ‘Wow, my dumb Vines.’ By challenging bisexual discrimination through stories of her own experiences, Jaxx built and maintained connections with LGBTQ Tumblr users. Chrissy felt broadly connected to overlapping, imagined communities of Black and lesbian Viners. She used LGBTQ hashtags so that other women could find her:

169 You have to state that you’re a lesbian for people to be like, ‘Oh, okay, I want to watch her’ or something. If I don’t say anything, they’re going to assume that I’m just straight automatically, and then I will have a whole bunch of straight people flocking in just to stare me down and say how pretty I am or whatever. Although heterosexual users frequently objectified her, they could be deterred by indications of her lesbian identity. Chrissy felt that heterosexual users and gay men gained attention more quickly than queer women and that she had to use hashtags to gain visibility on Vine. Chrissy connected with others by finding #nightspeak, a hashtag community (Bruns & Burgess, 2015) that was “tailored to lesbians.” #nightspeak had a temporal dimension: since many of the most active users were located in the U.S. Eastern Standard time zone, they commenced conversations during the evening and others across America, along with some international users, contributed over the span of a few hours. Chrissy noted that this was not unique, since other temporal hashtag communities existed, such as #bigPwasted Viners who drank together every Friday. However, videos on #nightspeak were distinct, as they were mostly created by Black queer women and co-hashtagged with LGBTQ tags. They involved content that was common in my sample, such as users talking about their lives, singing, or dancing to entertain each other. This coordinated, regular, and sustained meeting of users on #nightspeak resembled a video-based chat room. Such practices resonate with early uses of hashtags, as Twitter users borrowed the organisational syntax from Internet Relay Chat (IRC) where hashtags designated chat room topics (Halavais, 2014). Chrissy explained that a hashtag’s creator became the “CEO” and CEOs appointed “admins” as administrators to coordinate topics and steer discussions.41 She became friends with the #nightspeak CEO who subsequently made her an admin. During #nightspeak sessions, admins communicated by text message, planning topics to post. One evening, Chrissy contributed topics that drew widespread attention to the hashtag after the CEO and other admins went to bed, “Everybody – big Viners got on the hashtag, small Viners got on the hashtag, and we trended number one.” Their discussion shot to the top of Vine’s “Trending Tags” section, located on the Explore

41 I observed that CEOs and admins often put this information after their user name with the hashtag that they coordinated (e.g., Stef || CEO #imadethisup).

170 tab. Brock (2012) notes that the tendency for Blacktags to trend on Twitter, due to Black users’ conversational participation and close-knit networks, is one of few ways that Black topics come to the attention of other users. Chrissy’s topics fostered so much engagement that the collective conversation boosted the visibility of Black lesbian Viners across the platform. Conflict between the #nightspeak CEO and admins eventually resulted in their migration to different hashtags. Chrissy created her own hashtag, #canwetalkaboutit, to discuss “freaky topics” such as, “Would you ever do a threesome?” She felt that it was important to address sexual topics for people who were afraid or uncomfortable talking about sex, “I’m just gonna flat put it out there [so that] you could say how you feel.” Although her hashtag gained some participation, Chrissy began to see widespread conflict among Viners, “People got too personal, and they started cursing each other out and just bashing each other… It broke the community apart…” Following these conflicts, users went quiet, “We’re trying to just stay off of Vine or lurk on Vine, but don’t even really interact the way we used to.” Her description matched my observation of diminishing user activity. She blamed this conflict and the resulting disengagement on users trying to become “Vine famous.”

Looking for fame in numbers The drive to accrue attention, boost metrics, and potentially profit propelled many Viners. Chrissy described how users could become Vine famous: “A lot of people that stick to their skits, they are able to run a lot of numbers, and then they get seen by other people and a lot of opportunities are presented to them.” She recalled Viners who featured in music videos or TV shows. Chrissy referred to “running the numbers” as users’ preoccupation with increasing data metrics, such as their number of followers, loops, revines, and likes, as evidence of the attention they received. Conversations on hashtags like #canwetalkaboutit dissipated as some Viners gained attention and began to view themselves as being in direct competition with others. Chrissy found interactions becoming less genuine, “You find out that some people are in it for the fame, so they befriend you and talk to you every day just to get shine out of you, so you can revine them and stuff like that.” Getting and giving “shine” involved exchanging likes, follows, and revines with others. While giving shine was a positive practice in reciprocal Viner friendships, individuals with many followers,

171 such as Chrissy, had to beware of others who were just using them to boost their numbers. Marwick and boyd (2011) similarly found that Twitter users, who expected micro-celebrity to involve connecting personally with followers, frowned upon blatant self-promotion tactics. Chrissy pinpointed one incident as the height of conflict in her Vine communities: the Florida Supervine. Over several years, Viners – mainly, Black Viners – held in person gatherings called “Supervines.” A teaser for the Florida Supervine in 2014,42 a predecessor to the one Chrissy mentioned, described it at as, “A weekend of events catered to the social networking app Vine. A weekend for viners made by viners.” Another “Behind the Scenes”43 video featured the event’s coordinators discussing challenges they faced while attendees were networking, co- creating Vines, building friendships, and partying. While their event brought increased traffic to the platform, they note that Vine eventually stopped returning results for #floridasupervine and multiple attendees were banned from Vine without explanation. The event coordinators pondered these developments, remarking, “Whatever [Vine has] against what we’re doing – what we’re doing, it’s only going to benefit Vine. It’s going to make Vine last longer.” The scene faded out with them saying, “Somebody call us,” inviting Vine to reach out, “We can make this work.” While their difficulties using the platform for promotion and Vine’s indifference (e.g., no mention on the blog or homepage) reflect the company’s disregard for these gatherings, users continued meeting into Vine’s final year. In the lead-up to the second Florida Supervine, some users set up crowdfunding accounts that appeared to be for urgent causes, such as needing money for their children’s healthcare, but used the money to attend the Supervine. Chrissy said, “That’s when everything broke apart because we didn’t look at those people the same way.” She summed it up, “You’re scamming us to get to the Florida Supervine.” This inconsistent behaviour raised questions about users’ authenticity, which led individuals to disengage on hashtags frequented by these users. While Chrissy’s experiences made her wary of tactics to become Vine famous, Jaxx’s ambition to profit from her Vines made her keenly aware of strategies for posting successful videos. Jaxx was conscious of her metrics across social media, highlighting that cross-posting Vines to Tumblr reached more users, “If

42 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqMiarPYLzQ 43 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSv91aFWKwY

172 you look at my loop count and my follower count, there’s a big difference,” because she gained the majority of loops on Tumblr, which were counted on her Vine profile. Since it was not possible to cross-post Vines to Instagram through the app, Jaxx did not consider manually uploading Vines to Instagram: “There was no point because it wouldn’t translate over to my Vine count.” She managed her Vines in ways that consistently increased her data metrics. Jaxx’s efforts did not go unnoticed. A Vine representative had recently approached her about potential partnerships and she described the encounter: She definitely works at Vine and she kind of scouts for faces and creators that are good for the brand and are different. And she was like, ‘Look, if you look at the top 40 Viners, they’re all white dudes, and I want to see that changed. I want to see all sorts of colours and sexualities and different communities represented on that Top 40 Chart. While the representative did not offer Jaxx a contract, she called to say, “The company’s aware of who you are.” The representative provided tips for gaining followers, suggesting that Jaxx increase her activity on Twitter. Jaxx agreed but expressed frustration at not quite understanding how to use Twitter. She was more comfortable on Tumblr but felt her resistance was foolish since Vine and Twitter held greater promise of brand partnerships. Since Jaxx’s Vines represented her personal experiences, she held reservations about the labour required to consistently produce videos for the purpose of gaining attention. She developed video production skills as a teenager, “I didn’t have friends growing up, so I was heavily into Internet culture and fandoms and all that, so I did fan videos.” But she was wary of pouring too much work into Vines, “The moment it starts feeling like a job – like a chore – it’s not fun anymore, and it’s no longer authentically myself.” With the app’s scarcity of editing tools, making coherent videos sometimes required multiple third party apps or downloading videos to her computer, using specialised software (if file compatibility allowed), and uploading the final product again. Jaxx’s tension over leisurely participation on Vine and self-exploitation reflect researchers’ observations that producing user-generated content in the online economy is neither fully empowering nor solely exploitative (Banks & Humphreys, 2008). Hearn (2010) notes that social media self-branding plunges individuals into a digital reputation economy, steered by systems of ranking and ratings, which is reflected in Viners’ preoccupation with increasing their metrics.

173 This reputation economy requires that users expend labour toward self-discipline and affective conditioning “to direct human meaning-making and self-identity in highly motivated and profitable ways” (Hearn, 2010, p. 423). Users must be highly motivated to construct self-representations in ways that largely produce value for platforms and their intermediaries, such as MCNs like Niche. Jaxx expressed concern about the professionalisation of her Vines: I just feel like, especially talking to this [Vine] lady, it’s gotten me very overly aware of my Vines. And now when I try to do Vines, my improv isn’t coming as fluidly because I’m starting to care and I’m starting to think, ‘Shit, is it funny?’ and ‘Shit, is this going to get the loop count?’ Jaxx’s deliberation reflects Duffy’s (2016) observations that aspirational labour often involves unnoticed self-presentational work that women in the digital cultural industries undertake as they pursue social and economic capital. While Jaxx aspired toward brand partnerships for her Vines, she felt the pressure of commodifying her self-representations. This involved modulating her identity to accentuate aspects that audiences would find both authentic and entertaining. As reflected by Chrissy’s communities breaking apart and the pressure Jaxx felt, aspiring toward micro- celebrity through social media is marked by asserting oneself as an individual in neoliberal market economies that reward self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship (Marwick, 2013). While individualised self-promotion promised Viners the possibility of fame, signalled by brand partnerships, it also ruptured the collective communities and statements that Vine users built together.

Dealing with “The Hate” Jaxx and Chrissy were subject to onslaughts of user comments that often went beyond negativity into discriminating against their intersecting identities, especially their identities as lesbian and bisexual women. Jaxx discussed this with the Vine representative, “The lady who contacted me was like, ‘Look, we’re trying to weed out these people, so if anybody sends you homophobic or racist hate, you send me their [username] and they’re gone.’” This offer followed Twitter’s recent negative press about the volumes of sexist and racist tweets circulated on the platform (Brown, 2016). Such activity was brought to the public’s attention by celebrity Leslie Jones deleting her account following harassment for her role as a Black woman in the remake of Ghostbusters (when the original film focused on

174 men). Although Vine included blocking and reporting features, the company’s offer of special protection indicated that these mechanisms were not enough to retain audience-drawing users. While the company offered this service to popular Viners like Jaxx, everyday users were left to deal with harassment without additional platform support. Jaxx felt that hateful and discriminatory comments required more than Vine removing select harassers; it was a problem with the platform’s culture and the people Vine attracted. She spoke of being featured on the Popular page or at the top of a channel, “It’s a double-edged sword because part of you is like, ‘Great, awesome!’ in being on the Comedy page, and part of you is like, ‘Here comes the wave of fuckboys.” The term ‘fuckboy’ has origins in hip hop music as an insult to men, similar to ‘bitch’ (Brown, 2015), but has increasingly been used across social and mainstream media as a term for men who sexually objectify women and hold misogynistic views (Boboltz, 2015). Jaxx declared that Vine is “Straight White Boy Fuckboy Central” with volumes of “racist humour and there’s a lot of like, ‘my side chick’ and all that kind of fuckboy humour on Vine.” She referred to skits where some of the most popular Viners, including @KingBach, acted out narratives about hiding their “side chick” from their “main chick” – their girlfriend or wife – as a way to display dominant and virile masculinity. These users attracted likes and revines, likely from a large demographic of white, heterosexual, male viewers, propelling them to the top of channels and the homepage and providing the sense that such humour was acceptable and characteristic of Vine. Widespread negativity and discrimination across Vine was so familiar to Chrissy that she referred to it as “The Hate.” She told me about one early experience: I got so much hate when I first started Vine because I was a lesbian and I was Black, so I had this white guy tell me, ‘You’re like the worst combination in life because you’re – not only are you homosexual but you’re Black. That’s like, the worst combination to be.’ While she received fewer comments like this as she gained followers, they never stopped completely. Users’ constant, scathing critique of her videos, appearance, and identity led Chrissy to self-censor by not posting some of her more personal self- representations to Vine. While she enjoyed singing Gospel songs and frequently sang in Snapchat clips, she did not post the same videos to Vine for fear that users would publicly attack her or remix the clip into a humiliating video if they disliked it. Her

175 fears of users taking these actions reflect how platform features can be used simultaneously as mechanisms for connecting with others as well as for imposing threats and violence. Similar to the Instagrammers I interviewed, Chrissy and her friends ignored the ‘Other’ inbox “because we get a lot of nasty Vines that are, like, genitals,” mostly receiving unsolicited sexual videos. Chrissy experienced a range of negative interactions, from homophobic and racist remarks to harsh, personal critiques and non-consensual sexualised messages. Jaxx and Chrissy handled users’ hate and platform practices perpetuating racism and sexism by countering it within Vine and shifting activity to other platforms. Chrissy started blocking and deleting users, reasoning that, “If you don’t have tough skin on Vine, you will end up killing yourself because of how much hate you get.” Similarly, Jaxx ignored negative personal comments while blocking those who posted discriminatory remarks, “If they’re calling [people] faggots and dykes and whatever, like they do, I’ll be like, ‘Alright, that’s not even part of me having a thick skin anymore!’ and just fuck it.” They also increased their sharing to audiences on other platforms. Tumblr was Jaxx’s main outlet where she poured additional time into maintaining a blog alongside her cross-posted Vines. Chrissy used Snapchat and posted larger volumes of personal content to Instagram where she had accumulated more lesbian followers and maintained an audience of closer contacts. These actions involved identity modulation in the form of targeting friendly audiences and making decisions regarding what kind of content to post on Vine in comparison to other platforms. Along with influencing users not to post intimate clips, such as Chrissy deciding not to post singing videos, these hateful Vine audiences disrupted users’ collective sharing and drove them to alternative apps.

A slow decline Chrissy and Jaxx’s experiences provide examples of multiple influences involved in users abandoning the platform, which may have contributed to the company’s decision to decommission the social network. When I asked, “What happened to Vine?” Chrissy told me, “Vine is completely broken.” She came to see participation as binary: “Either you’re Vine famous or you’re not and that’s just it.” It was difficult for her to connect with new users because she would either come across “famous” users who she already knew or users who were simply “attention- seeking,” looking to accumulate followers. Coinciding with platform mechanisms,

176 such as TV mode, Chrissy and Jaxx felt that many people passively viewed Vines without participating. Chrissy explained, “A lot of people that are new, they lurk. They’re just coming to see the Vines, they don’t really get to be themselves and showcase who they are.” Three of my Instagram interview participants discussed how they would not be inclined to create Vines but instead watched them as a pastime. As Kate Crawford (2009) points out, users that are understood as “lurkers” are rarely entirely inactive and function as audiences of listeners, but they tend not to produce public-facing content. Users were undoubtedly viewing, listening in on Vine exchanges, and sometimes sharing videos, as evidenced by social media laments of Vine’s demise (using #RIPVine). However, their sparse activity on Vine and the lack of new content producers (or platform features for surfacing new and diverse content) contributed to the untenability of Twitter’s continued investment in Vine. Chrissy and Jaxx mentioned that the platform’s constraints on content creation (touted by Vine’s blog as its strength) blocked their creativity. Minimal editing tools required them to use multiple third party apps. Chrissy felt that Snap to Beat was unremarkable since Vine “took forever to get on our level, when we’ve been doing it [for so long], so it doesn’t even matter.” Snap to Beat muted Vines’ native audio, prohibiting Jaxx from acting out skits with seamlessly looping music in the background. Both women wanted to post longer videos and, subsequent to our interviews, were among select Viners to whom the company granted more recording time in a beta feature termed #beyondthevine. However, they did not get to take advantage of it for long before Vine was re-designed into a camera app for posting 6.5-second videos to Twitter without a social network of its own. These examples demonstrate that inflexible platform features also impose platform constraints on identity modulation, steering how users accentuate aspects of their identity and also how they target particular audiences. As Twitter absorbed Vine, the company assumed that users would combine audiences across these two apps and provided mechanisms for identifying Viners’ Twitter accounts. However, as Jaxx and Chrissy went on to focus on Tumblr and Snapchat, it is clear that their target audiences were not concentrated on Twitter.

5.5 Conclusion This chapter has examined queer women’s collective identity work on a platform that facilitated the formation of close-knit communities while also,

177 eventually, contributing to their dissolution. Although Vine’s corporate framing situated the app amidst Twitter’s vision and Instagram’s subject matter, the platform enabled users to explore and develop multiple purposes for the 6.5-second looping video format. The loop’s simplicity and repetition facilitated the production of narrative, affectively intense, and detailed Vines. Drawing on the video format’s affordances, queer women used LGBTQ hashtags to produce Vines of affinity, performances, and remixes for identity-based audiences. As interviews with Chrissy and Jaxx demonstrated, these Vines gathered communities who developed shared technocultural practices and made collective identity statements, such as through producing and sharing Vines that were critical of dominant gender, sexual, and racial discourses. However, Vine’s updates, featuring popular Viners and focusing on entertainment, combined with individual users’ micro-celebrity aspirations to disrupt communities and position the majority of users as passive viewers. Identity modulation was a key process in queer women’s collective identity work. In Vines of affinity, queer women accentuated intimate and personal aspects of their identity, including sexual desire, to closely connect with other women on the platform. They placed emphasis on shared elements of identity in Vines constituting performances and statements, imagining and drawing upon common or relatable experiences among LGBTQ people or other identity-based groups (e.g., Black Viners, Hispanic Viners). Queer women also signalled their identity through media texts and connected through shared fandom, such as by admiring popular lesbian- identified YouTubers. These findings are similar to Kendra Calhoun’s (2016) observations that the genre of “Vine racial comedy” drew on relatable experiences. She explains, “Viners must portray their ideas quickly and effectively, which stereotypes can do since their social meanings are easily recognisable” (p. 2). Stereotypical fashion, character profiling, music, and topics help viewers to rapidly understand a video’s main idea or context. Calhoun notes that Viners also raise stereotypes in their videos in order to “critique the types of people who believe them, the social phenomena that created them, or to subvert social expectations” (p. 2). This is reflected in Chrissy and Jaxx’s skits, which identify stereotypes of lesbians and people of colour in order to counter them. In order to display sexual identity overtly or make strong identity statements, some queer women took steps to reduce their personal identifiability. In many thirst traps, women recorded their bodies from the neck down, leaving their face out of the

178 frame. Other women only produced remix Vines, using media texts to stand in for their self-representation. Since Vine’s uptake was limited, neither Chrissy nor Jaxx were concerned about homophobic personal networks from Facebook following them on Vine and neither of them posted Vines to Facebook, easily maintaining these audiences separate. However, users who posted harassing and discriminatory comments on their Vines spurred Chrissy to self-censor personal displays and both women increasingly tailored their social media activity toward friendlier audiences on other platforms. Following Vine’s impetus to strive toward fame, reflected by metrics that could attract brand partnerships, Jaxx attempted to produce Vines that were both authentic and entertaining to draw more followers. However, she experienced conflict between representing the personal aspects of her identity, including her sexual, racial, health-related identifications, and the need to appeal to broader audiences. Through multiple decisions related to identity modulation, queer women produced Vines that often connected them with communities. Queer women’s identity modulation on Vine involved not only self- identifying as lesbian, bisexual, or other identities, but also identifying with others over shared sexual identity and race. This collective identification gave rise to and sustained several counterpublics that gathered through LGBTQ hashtags and others. Chrissy’s description of #nightspeak has similarities with Wakeford’s (1996) lesbian mailing list: sustained interaction, mutually defined codes (e.g., emoji, gestures), and connections through shared experience. Queer female Viners constituted a counterpublic (Warner, 2002) through their circulation of Vines, as texts that were in tension with the platform’s dominant public (largely white, male Viners) and overarching dominant discourses of heteronormativity and racism. Queer women’s self-representations increased the visibility of Black, Hispanic, butch, and other queer female identities that were largely absent from Vine’s homepage and were harassed, discriminated against, or filtered from Vine’s featured sections. Dominated by Black lesbian Viners, #nightspeak overlapped with the counterpublic of Black Viners whose representations shaped technocultural practices on the platform, from signifyin’ through skits conveying social critique to the incorporation of hip hop, thirst trap, and dance moves into Vines to make sexually sociable connections. For Jaxx, Vine provided a tool for engagement with a counterpublic of LGBTQ Tumblr users, gathered around representations countering biphobia and homophobia. Skits and Vines with identity statements positioned these counterpublics in opposition to

179 dominant public discourse while Vines of affinity strengthened bonds among their participants. Conditions of embodiment, normative pressures, and platform-specific influences shaped queer women’s identity modulation. The majority of Vines that I examined involved users’ representations of their bodies and faces, most often recorded using a phone’s front-facing camera to capture a video selfie. Individuals signalled gender presentation and sexual identity through their bodies, such as through static fashion items but also with dynamic camera angles and gestures that could only be captured in a video format. Queer women’s references to media representations were subject to the availability of popularly recognisable texts, which – at the time of this study – were constituted by highly popular, homogenous YouTube stars. Similarly, the scarcity of popular rap and hip hop songs about women expressing desire for women left thirst trap producers to choose from recognisable male-produced songs that often contained lyrics glorifying gender- based violence and sexism. In contrast to these indirect normative influences, discriminatory and hateful posts directly impacted Chrissy and Jaxx’s activity on the platform, leading them to make certain aspects of their identity less widely visible. Lastly, Vine’s constrained features and user guidance (e.g., Vine University, blog posts) provided normative conventions for videos. These conditions shaped queer women’s identity modulation, influencing how they produced self-representations to connect with others and conduct collective identity work. Vine played an important role in shaping queer women’s identity modulation. While the platform’s features and video format facilitated the formation of close-knit communities and counterpublics, its design also redirected identity modulation toward micro-celebrity aims. Vine’s metrics and mechanisms for featuring users who produced entertaining content encouraged individualised micro-celebrity practices. Chrissy observed how these practices disrupted communities, calling into question whether users authentically intended to connect with others. Jaxx provided a first- hand glimpse of how the pressure to produce content could shift bonds with followers into instrumental connections, pivotal to boosting her follower count as she aspired toward profit making. Vine’s features facilitated identity modulation involving technocultural practices, such as Black Viners signifyin’ through remixed responses to cultural critiques or queer women representing sexual and racial identity through thirst trap videos. However, applying Matamoros-Fernández’s (2017)

180 concept of platformed racism as the notion that platforms can be complicit in emergent biased user activity, Vine amplified sexist, racist, and heteronormative discourses by propelling “fuckboys” to the top of its featured sections, catering to a population of white, male users. The platform’s inattention to Black users’ celebrations of their Vine activity, a lack of recourse for everyday users dealing with discriminatory comments, and a dominant public of passive viewers – rewarding biased Vines with loop counts – pushed users like Chrissy and Jaxx to other platforms. This chapter’s findings demonstrate the key role of communicative features and visual formats in queer women’s identity modulation for building communities and making collective statements. Features for revining and sharing across platforms, in combination with Vine’s short looping video format, facilitated the formation of hashtag communities with sustained interaction. These communities integrated references to sexual identity with digital features to reinforce social connections and make statements challenging heteronormativity. Given queer women’s mention in previous chapters of the potential to feel isolated, digitally facilitated communities can increase wellbeing, provide a social outlet, and enhance queer women’s visibility to others, such as when Black lesbian Viners’ hashtags rose to the top of Vine’s trending section. Therefore, platform interventions that minimise communicative features, such as by stripping sharing buttons from TV Mode, threaten communities and reduce the digital scaffolding for collective identity work. As the case of Vine shows that these platform tactics may have contributed to user disengagement, platforms’ lack of attention and support for diverse user communities does not appear to be a profitable strategy.

181

Chapter 6: Conclusion

Finishing her iced tea, Phyllis mentioned that she was moving on from Tinder. Joining Her, an app marketed to queer women, her profile now read: “Please join my gay girl posse.” She explained, “So, I’m just looking for a large circle of friends at the moment because I’m dating someone. I’m just a bit focused on that right now, which is why I’m ditching Tinder, just going to Her… You can date people on Her but it’s kind of like, just a lesbian bar, I guess, but in real life, like, for online.”

Mïta and I had just finished watching a 15-second Instagram clip of her baby son laughing and playing with the family’s pet dog when she reflected, “I’m very proud of my family; I think that’s my main motivation… It needs to be shown that there’s more than just a father and mother out there that can have a family, you know?”

Chrissy’s ten-year-old daughter wandered across the living room and waved toward the webcam as we discussed Chrissy’s choice to share about her life on Vine. She told me, “Some people can’t live with themselves because the whole world is condemning us for being who we are. So you’ve got to fight back somehow. And there’s people like me that are comfortable being – I’m comfortable being me. So it helps them put themselves at ease and say, ‘I can be myself without feeling like the world is against me.’”

Across the platforms in this study, queer women have discussed participating and self-representing on social media in ways that often lead to feelings of self- validation and new social connections while challenging heteronormative perspectives. Their experiences remind me of Warner’s (2002) assertion that publics enact “poetic world making” (p. 114). He describes, “Public discourse, in other words, is poetic…all discourse or performance addressed to a public must characterize the world in which it attempts to circulate and it must attempt to realize that world through address” (p. 113–114). Through identity modulation, the queer women involved in this study constructed self-representations that addressed specific audiences in order to build worlds, or publics, that reflected the attitudes and circumstances among which they aimed to live. Through her self-promotion as a

183 trans advocate, Mïta contributed to publics on Instagram and across platforms, such as on Reddit, in order to give hope to trans people and their families. By combatting “The Hate” on Vine and displaying relatable moments, Chrissy created and sustained counterpublics that challenged normative discourses and discrimination. As Phyllis pointed out, when these platforms’ features fell short and women in this study were unable to modulate their identities as they desired, they developed workarounds or migrated to new platforms altogether. Practices of identity modulation, which contribute to the formation of networked publics where queer women can see their identities represented and access social support, are especially important when studies still report higher rates of anxiety, depression, traumatic stress, and suicidal ideation for lesbian and bisexual women than for heterosexual women (Shearer et al., 2016). Queer women’s networked publics can increase their visibility, offer routes for attaining personal and professional aims, and draw heteronormative biases into question. These publics hold the potential to counter the stigmatisation, and resulting isolation, which contributes to queer women’s increased threats to health and wellbeing. Therefore, the everyday social media participation on which this study has focused might be mundane, but it is certainly not trivial. In this final chapter, I synthesise the thesis’ findings to highlight how the concept of identity modulation facilitates understanding queer women’s social media use. Identity modulation is how individuals use digital platforms to adjust the salience of different aspects of identity for particular audiences. Across the platforms examined in this study, queer women’s identity modulation was subject to conditions of embodiment, normative pressures, and platform-specific features, policies, and regulations that shaped displays of identity. Individuals’ identity modulation facilitated their participation in contrasting networked publics on different platforms. However, participants in this study also identified impediments to identity modulation, including platform biases, discriminatory user practices, and difficulties being recognised as queer. Identifying impediments to identity modulation enables a discussion of possible future trends, acknowledging how users, platforms developers, and those who shape public discourse (e.g., broadcasters) are already addressing barriers to social media participation and representation. This thesis also paves the way for future research applying the concept of identity modulation to examine how individuals draw on platform features to adjust the prominence of multiple aspects of

184 identity, such as sexual identity and race. I conclude by exploring these broader applications of identity modulation.

6.1 Identity Modulation in Networked Publics This thesis’ key contribution to knowledge has been the conceptual development of identity modulation as a way to understand how individuals tailor their participation and representation in networked publics. Bringing the concept of “strategic outness” (Orne, 2011) into digitally mediated contexts, I have defined identity modulation as the continuous decision making practices that LGBTQ people enact on social media to adjust the salience of their sexual identity in relation to their personal identifiability. As the previous chapters have demonstrated, identity modulation enables individuals to make their sexual identity known to specific audiences for particular purposes, such as queer women on Tinder signalling sexual identity in their profiles to attract other queer women. Many of the women whom I interviewed simultaneously reduced personally identifiable cues, such as by removing occupational information from their Tinder profiles. This action enabled them to be less concerned about being recognised by acquaintances, to whom they did not want to display their dating preferences, and to feel safer connecting with previously unknown users. Examples of identity modulation throughout this thesis demonstrate that the ability to make one’s sexual identity known is just as important as being able to obscure this information, since this visibility can enable the formation of networked publics. In this study, queer women’s networked publics helped women to feel less isolated, facilitated self-branding, and provided solidarity for the critique of dominant discourses. In its application throughout these chapters, identity modulation has proven to be a robust concept, and one that is less reductive than a binary notion of privacy and publicness. When I initially came across queer women’s frank Tinder profiles, LGBTQ hashtagged Instagram selfies, and sensual Vines, I wondered how and why these women were putting themselves out there, displaying their sexual identity in these ways. After all, were they not forfeiting their privacy? However, as my analysis of platforms, user content, and interviews with queer women has shown, such representations draw on platform features and arrangements to display sexual identity for particular audiences. The women I interviewed were not concerned with

185 me seeing these images – as a queer woman, I am among the target audience from which they wish to draw matches, followers, and likes. What is less evident at first glance is the labour these queer women use to adjust their personal identifiability and maintain these representations separate from homophobic or discriminatory audiences, such as by refraining from posting the same content to Facebook. While identity modulation encompasses practices previously noted by scholars, such as social steganography (Marwick & boyd, 2014) and maintaining privacy in context (Nissenbaum, 2009), it more broadly considers how individuals manage multiple facets of identity across their social media ecology. Identity modulation is shaped by conditions of embodiment, normative pressures, and platform specificity, which were evident in queer women’s use of Tinder, Instagram, and Vine. With selfies and self-shot video as the most prominent content forms, queer women often used bodily representations to convey their sexual identities. Camera angles, gestures, and cultural codes expressed through and on bodies (e.g., wearing stereotypically queer items or posing like Justin Bieber) could all indicate queerness. Individuals paired these embodied signifiers with digital qualities, such as hashtags, filters, emoji, and musical overlays, creating hybrid physical and digital modes of embodiment. The body played a large role in asserting authenticity on Tinder, demonstrating queerness through difficult to fake indicators, such as a selfie at a Pride festival, which signalled authentic intentions to date other queer women. On Instagram, queer women’s self-representations featured in self- branding, accruing LGBTQ followers through stylised images referencing shared fashion and culture. Queer women’s self-shot Vines displayed their bodies in intimate locations and up-close ways to forge affinity with other women and build communities. Through bodily portrayals, these queer women modified the recognisability of their sexual identity. The body also factored into adjustments queer women made to their personal identifiability. Several Tinder users were uncomfortable with their photos being traceable to their Facebook accounts and a few women maintained these photos in private Facebook albums. Some queer women spoke of posting more intimate photos and couple selfies on Instagram, since their Facebook audiences remained separate. Viners posting thirst traps sometimes reduced their identifiability by cropping their face from the video. Users wanting to obscure their identifiability altogether only posted content from other sources (e.g., YouTube clips) and used pseudonyms.

186 While individuals used representations of the body to convey their sexual identity and to reinforce personal claims about themselves (e.g., gender, age, style, location), they also adjusted bodily representations to minimise sexual identity and personal identifiability if necessary. Normative pressures shaping queer women’s identity modulation reflected dominant discourses throughout society as well as platform features and user practices that designated certain activities as the norm. Similar to how men seeking men on hookup apps feel subject to others’ scrutiny and attempt to display idealised selves (Gosine, 2007; Mowlabocus, 2010), Tinder’s hookup reputation and visually- focused swipe spurred participants to convey normatively attractive appearances and lifestyles. On Instagram, the queer women I interviewed felt the need to reference recognisable indications of sexual identity and appeal to popular culture. Aligning with studies of the commodification of LGBTQ identities (Aslinger, 2010; Campbell, 2005; Light et al., 2008), sexual identity featured as part of participants’ personal brands, accruing followers and attention. Similarly, Viners with micro- celebrity aspirations tailored their self-representations to be relatable. They aimed to convey aspects of identity in ways that resonated broadly across audiences, sometimes at the expense of personal significance, as Jaxx’s experience demonstrated. These ways of displaying identity reflected dominant understandings of what comprises attractiveness and popularity while conforming to normative platform practices. Queer women in this study also recognised pressures to adhere to platform and cultural norms. They reflected on their dating preferences as “super mean” or discussed “running the numbers” on Vine. They spoke of resisting platform norms, such as by supplementing Tinder’s paucity of profile categories with thorough bios. Rather than vie for attention within Vine’s culture of micro-celebrity, Chrissy left the platform for friendlier audiences. As much as queer women drew on norms to experience success on the platforms (i.e., find dates, gain followers), they also posted self-representations that defied normative discourses, presenting images of alternative families, body shapes, and relationship configurations. Queer women’s identity modulation was platform-specific, as platform visions, policies, and features shaped individuals’ practices. As Tinder’s promotional materials combatted its hookup reputation and the app gained popularity, some of my interview participants were less concerned with modulating their personal

187 identifiability, not worrying if people knew they were using it. Along with discursive shifts, updates to features also influenced how queer women approached identity modulation. The introduction of Vine’s featured sections encouraged individuals to share about their identity in entertaining ways that would appeal to broad audiences, much like “gaystreamed” television programming (Ng, 2013). Platform approaches to governance imposed regulations around displaying sexual identity. Although Instagram’s hashtag censorship intended to target content deemed inappropriate, the censorship of LGBTQ hashtags often obscured queer women’s self-representations. Platforms provided technological scaffolding, rules, and guidance for queer women’s identity modulation. This study’s participants also resisted platform-specific framing and mechanisms. Reflecting Pinch and Bijker’s (1984) observation that technologies are subject to interpretive flexibility, platforms were designed in accordance with particular visions but users often reappropriated their features for other purposes. For example, users disrupted Instagram’s aesthetic with memes from Tumblr to produce social commentary. Queer women on Tinder used platforms other than Facebook to verify identity and extend communication with matches. Vine accommodated the widespread user practice of thirst trapping through its policy exception for “clothed sexually suggestive dancing.” These examples demonstrate the back-and-forth shifting of power as users reappropriated, circumvented, and influenced platform architecture and regulations. Participants also used a variety of platforms to serve different needs. Although platforms shaped identity modulation, queer women throughout this study exerted their agency by developing technical skills, using third party apps, repurposing features, or discontinuing use in order to participate and self- represent as they desired. In answer to the guiding questions with which this thesis began, it is now possible to articulate what is distinctive about queer women’s social media participation and representation. These chapters have shown that queer women modulate the salience of their sexual identity in relation to their personal identifiability on platforms in diverse ways that give rise to certain kinds of networked publics. The practice of identity modulation is not specific to queer women; Chapter Two illustrated that it reflects a long history of queer people’s identity management through digital technologies. However, the approaches, representations, and experiences involved in queer women’s identity modulation are

188 distinctive to them. For example, queer women’s approaches to identity modulation on Tinder differed from those of men seeking men on hookup apps, since the women in this study often communicated through multiple technologies before meeting in person. Across platforms, queer women in this study referenced LGBTQ media representations for their identity modulation, drawing on stereotypes and normative tropes (e.g., identifying with white, feminine YouTubers) while also mentioning more diverse representations, such as by quoting characters from Orange Is the New Black. This combination of media references encompasses sexual identity cues that are specific to signalling queer, female identity at this contemporary moment. Further, many participants’ experiences highlighted issues that were particularly challenging for them as queer women, such as feelings of isolation, frequent sexual objectification, and ongoing discrimination. While women frequently experience unwanted sexual attention and harassment on social media (Jane, 2014; Megarry, 2014), queer women in this study spoke specifically about discrimination aimed at them because of their sexual identity and gender in combination. Queer women in this study engaged in identity modulation to achieve platform-specific outcomes. On Tinder, identity modulation enabled individuals to accentuate their identity as female and queer in order to signal their authentic intentions to date other queer women. Queer female Instagrammers made their sexual identity salient through hashtags, images, and cultural references as part of their micro-celebrity practices toward fulfilling financial and personal aspirations. While many Viners also participated in micro-celebrity practices, a portion of queer female users signalled their sexual identity and sexual desires to build close-knit communities and critique the status quo. These findings, and the conditions of identity modulation summarised earlier, address the study’s overarching research question and sub-questions concerned with queer women’s use of social media and platforms’ shaping of these practices. Identity modulation also enabled queer women to form and participate in distinctive networked publics. Again, Chapter Two discussed LGBTQ social media users whose identity modulation facilitated their participation in networked publics. However, this study has specifically demonstrated that queer women’s displays of sexual identity enabled them to connect with networked publics of other queer women, which were shaped by platform features and constraints. On Tinder, queer women formed a loose public, gathered around each other’s profiles and based on

189 one-on-one matching that precluded communities. The platform’s dominant heterosexual public often permeated this queer women’s networked public, invoking the need for individuals to assert their authentic intentions toward dating other queer women. Queer women’s signalling of sexual identity through everyday yet stylised Instagram photos enabled them to connect with a networked intimate public of other queer women who provided validation and support. Their Instafamous practices of micro-celebrity were individualised in ways that maintained distance among this public while still accruing attention toward their personal and financial aims. As queer women’s identity modulation on Vine was concerned with displaying shared aspects of identity, these women formed a networked counterpublic characterised by its tension with dominant publics on the platform and critique of heteronormative discourses. These findings address the study’s sub-question concerned with identifying queer women’s networked publics. Through identity modulation, queer women on Tinder, Instagram, and Vine formed very different networked publics, which were integral to their wellbeing, sociality, and purpose on these platforms.

6.1.1 Impediments to identity modulation This thesis’ findings included instances when multiple factors constrained identity modulation. In platform walkthroughs, I uncovered features, policies, and promotional materials that assumed the app would be used in a specific way without the flexible functionality that identity modulation often requires. While analysing user content, recurrent tropes from popular culture drew my attention to the limits that queer women still encounter when attempting to reference recognisable images of sexual identity. In interviews, queer women recounted that platforms and other users posed several challenges for their participation. Although they frequently found workarounds, such constraints often left them feeling exasperated, hampered connections with other queer women, obscured their visibility to other users, and motivated them to find alternative platforms. While many of these impediments to identity modulation have been evident throughout previous chapters, this summary provides a starting point for considering ways to further facilitate identity modulation:

190 1. Platform monopolies – A quick glance at Tinder’s company history in Crunchbase44 shows the company’s multiple acquisitions of smaller technology companies and their products, from the messaging application Tappy to the latest purchase of Wheel, a video app, which intimates what features developers might introduce next. Since technology companies tend to grow by swallowing these smaller ventures, it is no surprise that a handful of corporate players, especially Facebook and Twitter, dominate the social media ecology. This study’s chapters demonstrate that such monopolies place pressure upon users to present their identity in a unified way across platforms, such as Instagram’s prompts for users to import Facebook friends and Vine’s encouragement to login using Twitter. Importing audiences across platforms, however, encumbers identity modulation by making it difficult for users to target specific audiences and dissolving platform-specific boundaries between audiences. In their rivalry, these large companies also mimic competitors’ features and functions, such as Instagram’s adoption of Snapchat-like ephemeral photos (Horwitz, 2017). This imitation constrains the features available for users to display their identity differently on contrasting platforms. Platform monopolies limit the range of features and functions available for displaying identity through practices of identity modulation while also complicating efforts to separate audiences across platforms.

2. Platformed biases – Several examples throughout this thesis indicated that platform owners and developers do not always consider the diversity of users in their decisions regarding platform promotion, design, and governance. Promotional materials showcased ideal users: the dashing heterosexual couple who met on Tinder; the affluent Instagram artist; and the young, male entertainer on Vine. Platform interfaces often overlooked or obscured identities outside of normative categories, such as Tinder’s omission of gender options other than “male” or “female.” This design choice failed to recognise transgender people as legitimate users, paving the way for reams of harassment against transgender Tinder users (Kleeman, 2015) until the developers eventually added more gender options (Hatch, 2016). Rena Bivens and Oliver Haimson (2016) refer to these

44 See https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tinder#/entity

191 developer decisions as “baking gender” into platforms, since gender binaries are often entrenched in social media software codes and databases. Both Instagram and Vine’s algorithmic mechanisms for favouring popular users and content reflected a form of social media logic that obscures everyday users’ activity (van Dijck & Poell, 2013). Further, Vine’s failure to embrace the thriving communities of Black Viners and their Supervine events, which provided free promotion for the platform, constrained the visibility of its diverse user base. Vine was complicit in perpetuating platformed racism (Matamoros-Fernández, 2017) as well as forms of platformed sexism and heteronormativity, as it amplified the content of racist and misogynist users while not providing the appropriate governance to counter widespread discrimination across the platform. Platformed biases constrain identity modulation by limiting the features available for displaying identity, obscuring diverse identities through platform regulation, and fostering environments where users outside of developers’ imagined ideal appear out of place and as targets for harassment.

3. Relentless discrimination and harassment – Platforms’ limited mechanisms for countering harassment shaped queer women’s experiences of ongoing discrimination and harassment. The women who I interviewed spoke about receiving sexually aggressive and violent messages on Tinder, Instagram, and Vine. They regularly dealt with barrages of dick pics, reflecting other women’s experiences with receiving unsolicited, sexually aggressive messages through social media (Vitis & Gilmour, 2016). They were also subject to name-calling, concerted scrutiny, and harassment on their Instagram and Vine posts alongside discriminatory comments regarding their sexual identity, race, and gender. These women’s everyday use of platforms involved the labour of deleting these posts and blocking users despite knowing that new harassers would appear imminently. Clearly, this is not only a problem of insufficient platform regulation but is also an issue with platform norms and practices that enable (or do little to discourage) harassment and discrimination. Furthermore, it illustrates that a vocal proportion of individuals still holds homophobic and prejudiced opinions, which they voice through social media.

192 4. Individualising infrastructures and practices – Close examination of platform interfaces demonstrated that many features constrained connections and community building. Tinder’s one-on-one matching precluded community formation. This contrasts with, for example, Her’s local and global newsfeeds that enable users to hold group discussions. Instagram and Vine’s navigational structures and promotional materials drew attention to popular users, encouraging individuals to strive toward greater visibility. Commenting sections were limited on these platforms and discussions took place behind-the-scenes through messaging or on other platforms, such as Mïta cross-posting her photos to Reddit to spark an open discussion about trans experiences. Van Dijck (2013) highlights that social media has shifted from enabling networked communication to encouraging profitable “platformed sociality” (p. 5). By elevating individual users, platforms raise the visibility of popular content to draw greater activity, potentially enhancing their profits from advertisers and the collection of users’ saleable data. These individualising infrastructures support user practices of micro-celebrity and self-branding, whereby users package the self as a commodity in competition with others for attention (Hearn, 2008). As Chapter Four’s findings demonstrate, widespread approaches to micro-celebrity on Instagram position individuals in fan/follower relationships that maintain distance and hierarchies among users. In Chapter Five, the collapse of Chrissy’s communities of Black Viners and Black lesbian Viners involved users’ transition to individualised, micro-celebrity production instead of reciprocal community exchanges. These infrastructures and micro-celebrity practices refocus identity modulation on individual aims in ways that loosen user ties in networked publics, reducing the validation, support, and solidarity that such publics could provide.

5. Limited recognisable representation – Despite the range of television, film, and print media representations of LGBTQ people that I reviewed in Chapter Two, I found that queer women’s references to these forms of media as signifiers of sexual identity were fairly homogenous. As Instagram’s heterosexy lesbians and Vine’s remixes of white, feminine, upper-middle class YouTubers reflected, normative images of queer women were prominent across platforms. With the widespread use of on Tinder, the standard symbol for queer women was fused with whiteness and femininity. This homogeneity among media references

193 stemmed from queer women’s need to post about their sexual identity in recognisable ways. On Tinder, these signals needed to be rapid and noticeable from the swipe screen and on Instagram and Vine, individuals’ micro-celebrity practices involved drawing on celebrity and relatable references. Very popular queer female characters and celebrities still often reflect white, feminine, and upper-middle class categories of identity (e.g., Kristen Stewart, Shannon and Cammie). Of course, there are exceptions, such as participants’ references to Orange Is the New Black as a popular show with diverse representations of queer women, but participants mentioned few similar shows. In some instances, references to content produced by or representing queer women were completely missing, such as Vine thirst traps where queer women lip-synced songs by male rappers with misogynistic lyrics. While it is possible to find queer female rappers, such as Angel Haze, their lyrics are less recognisable, since female rappers are altogether less prominent than male rappers on popular music charts (Mohammed-baksh & Callison, 2015). As such, queer female artists are less likely to be featured as Vine-licensed clips for “Snap to Beat” overlays and queer women in this study instead opted to use well known, sexual lyrics from male artists. This reduced range of recognisable representation affects identity modulation because it perpetuates a singular, idealised image of queer women that reduces the visibility of women outside of these normative categories. Queer women in this study who present more masculinely, identify as trans, or who are not white, often eschewed references to these forms of media and instead developed other ways to signal their sexual identity, such as through bodily indicators (e.g., short hair) or discursive tools (e.g., hashtags, bios, skits).

Recognising these impediments to identity modulation is important for several reasons. First, they inhibit individuals from targeting and separating audiences in ways that protect their personal information. Features that encourage the convergence of audiences across platforms, such as by suggesting contacts or cross-posting by default, increase the risk that individuals could be outed to audiences with whom they did not intend to share information about their sexual identity. Furthermore, mechanisms that inhibit the modulation of personal identifiability, such as Tinder’s requirement for Facebook names and photos, can threaten users’ personal safety alongside unintentional outing. Women who speak

194 out against the harassing and discriminatory comments they receive on Instagram and Vine are at risk of being doxxed, having their personal information made public. Doxxing is often committed against women, such as in the case of #gamergate, to extend harassment into physical spaces (Massanari, 2015). As previous chapters have demonstrated that identity modulation facilitates queer women’s participation in networked publics through their ability to target and connect with particular audiences, impediments to identity modulation threaten the formation and endurance of these networked publics. Interview participants spoke about how networked publics of queer women helped them to feel validated, access social support, and form communities of solidarity. Platform designs, user practices, and limited cultural references that hamper identity modulation make it difficult for queer women to access these benefits of networked publics.

6.2 A Way Forward Despite these impediments, users and platforms are making interventions that can facilitate identity modulation and preserve networked publics. As findings demonstrated, when queer women encountered barriers to identity modulation, they often reappropriated features (e.g., using Vine’s rapid video recording for real-time discussions gathered around hashtags), circumvented technical constraints (e.g., using third party apps to further stylise Instagram photos), or transitioned to platforms that better served their needs, such as Chrissy’s Vine contacts transitioning to Periscope for their community discussions. These sorts of user practices are continuing, as individuals reinstate boundaries between audiences by moving to messaging apps and platforms with alternative functionalities. In 2015, the Pew Research Centre noted that 36% of American smartphone owners used messaging apps, such as WhatsApp and Kik, and 17% used apps that automatically deleted sent messages, such as Snapchat (Duggan, 2015). This trend has only increased, as technology business reports attempt educate investors about “the rise of supercharged messaging apps” (Marshall & Weller, 2016). Since messaging apps enable one-on-one communication or discussions among a select group of users, they allow users to target identity displays and connect with specific audiences. These apps facilitate the modulation of personal identifiability, since messenger discussions are not publicly accessible. This is reflected in Chinese young people’s use of the

195 messaging app WeChat for “private social networking” (Gan & Wang, 2015, p. 357), holding conversations among their close friends. While messaging apps are not free from information leaks or platform and government surveillance, as suspicions about WhatsApp’s claims of end-to-end encryption reflect (Ganguly, 2017), users are turning to them to build separate contexts for their social groups. With the women in this study demonstrating media multiplexity (Haythornthwaite, 2005), using multiple forms of communication technologies to connect with others, it is likely that users will continue to adopt a variety of platforms for their identity modulation practices. Another Pew Research Centre study found that in 2016, 56% of online Americans used more than one of the five platforms they measured (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn) (Greenwood, Perrin, & Duggan, 2016). The study showed that Facebook served as a starting point from which users adopted other platforms. The queer women in my interviews also arranged their platform use in relation to Facebook, juxtaposing Tinder, Instagram, and Vine in terms of the additional audiences and features these platforms presented. As users adopt more platforms, they are turning to those with features conducive to identity modulation. Tumblr has been mentioned multiple times throughout this thesis, as a platform that enables strong identity statements through pseudonymous accounts (Renninger, 2014), gathers queer audiences around affective content (Cho, 2015), and, as Queenie mentioned, is less stringent in its regulation and censorship of content. A recent survey of Australian LGBTQ young people ages 16–35 found that 65% of respondents used Tumblr (Byron & Robards, 2017). Through interviews with respondents, Paul Byron and Brady Robards (2017) found that Tumblr provided an “intricate network that supports safe explorations of identity and a sense of self.” With features for reducing personal identifiability and accentuating sexual identity, Tumblr holds the potential to facilitate LGBTQ people’s participation in multiple networked publics and counterpublics. Therefore, users are exercising their agency by dispersing displays of identity across platforms and, as the queer women in my study demonstrated, abandoning platforms that do not serve their needs. Activists and everyday users are also findings ways to combat the discrimination and harassment they experience on social media. Whitney Phillips (2015) describes “countertrolling” or “trolling the trolls” (p. 162) as an effective strategy for deterring relentless online harassers. This involves responding to

196 harassment by finding ways to provoke, humiliate, or shame the harasser. Anna Gensler’s countertrolling strategy involves an art project whereby, upon receiving a dick pic, she draws an imagined “sad-naked” (p. 6) portrait of the sender and posts it across her Instagram, Tumblr, and personal website (Vitis & Gilmour, 2016). Laura Vitis and Fairleigh Gilmour (2016) observe that her drawings use humour and satire to shame individuals who send unsolicited sexual photos and question these men’s sexual objectification of female social media users. Similarly, Emma A. Jane and Nicole Vincent’s “Random Rape Threat Generator,”45 displays the degrading remarks that women receive online in order to increase awareness, demonstrate that women who receive these comments are not alone, and display the mechanically similar comments as absurd and unoriginal attempts to assert gendered forms of power. A number of highly visible feminist campaigns have also propelled hashtags, such as #destroythejoint, #everydaysexism, and #yesallwomen, to the top of Twitter’s trending section in order to call out misogyny and discrimination (McLean & Maalsen, 2016). Several platforms have also been used to instigate dialogues countering racial discrimination, such as sustained activism involving #Ferguson on Twitter (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015). These approaches signal to harassers that their behaviour is inappropriate while enabling individuals to unite in their counter efforts against discrimination. Although not all of these campaigns address gendered or racial harassment compounded by homophobia, they provide models of recourse for queer women and a starting point from which to counter intersectional discrimination. From a corporate perspective, users abandoning platforms due to impediments to identity modulation threatens profit margins. Vine provided an apt example of this: as the company focused on attracting and elevating Vine stars, the mass exodus of everyday users made the platform’s continued operation unviable. Although platforms encourage users to forge connections with others and advertisers (van Dijck & Poell, 2013), Light and Cassidy (2014) highlight how Facebook, for example, provides opportunities for users to disconnect or suspend connection without total account termination. They note that these “sanctioned resistance conditions created by Facebook are necessary to secure continued user participation and connection making” (p. 13). In similar ways, platforms are providing users with

45 See http://rapethreatgenerator.com/

197 greater flexibility for identity modulation practices. Facebook and Instagram have responded to users’ uptake of messaging apps by expanding their messaging functionality. While encouraging the uptake of messaging may cost platforms in terms of reduced sharing of data on Timelines, users’ greater control in tailoring messaging groups may appease frustrations that would otherwise lead them to abandon Facebook for a separate messaging app. Tinder has made a similar concession by recently enabling users to login with their phone number and an email address. A note at the bottom of the login screen states that “Account Kit by Facebook” provides the service. While users no longer need a Facebook account of their own to use Tinder, Facebook’s data collection policy still applies to Tinder users’ activity, ensuring that both platforms profit from gaining users who were previously reluctant to connect accounts or did not have a Facebook account. At the same time, this change facilitates identity modulation, as this login option allows users to choose their name (including a pseudonym) and add photos from their phone’s camera roll. Platforms are likely to continue adding these flexible features as “sanctioned forms of resistance” (Light & Cassidy, 2014), not only because they draw and retain users but also because these users’ sustained activity provides post-demographic data. As Rogers (2009) explains, social media have become “post-demographic machines” (p. 33) that specialise in tracing users’ tastes, interests, favourites, groups, and activity to develop complex user profiles. With this data available, users’ legal names and other individually identifying details become less important since platforms can easily sell post-demographic taste information to data miners and advertisers for re-purposing. It is also possible that platforms will develop greater means of supporting user communities, as this generates sustained activity. Almost two years after Her’s launch in Australia, the Her Team’s questions in the “global” newsfeed reliably garner more than 400 comments and several hundred likes. Relying on physical and digital communities of queer women, the app dedicates a tab to local LGBTQ events and has developed a worldwide ambassador network (Her Team, 2015). Lead Ambassadors are paid an undisclosed amount to host meet-ups among Her users and contribute to the app’s “local” feed while Volunteer Ambassadors provide logistical support for events. While this initiative establishes a system of cheap and unpaid promotion for the platform, it also attempts to address challenges that queer women encounter when using dating apps. For example, regular meet-ups can help users to

198 feel less isolated and shorten the amount of time it takes for them to meet in person. This example reflects how platforms can factor community support into their business plans and budgets. Certain platform designs and business models can also bring micro- celebrities closer to user communities. Cunningham and Craig (2016) point to YouTube as a platform that accomplishes this through a “communitainment” (p. 5413) model that focuses on communication and community as much as hosting entertaining content. This is evident in YouTube’s design: there is a stark difference between the prominence of comments on YouTube in comparison to Instagram or Vine. YouTube comments on a video appear in full (instead of being truncated with “…”) and are presented through auto-refreshing screens as users scroll down on the desktop and app versions, contrasting with Instagram’s three comment default display. Users can also reply to others’ comments, inspiring conversation threads among a popular YouTuber’s fans. While Kylie Jarrett (2008) expressed concern that YouTube’s increasing commercialisation may deter the continued growth of its communities, it appears that the platform’s monetisation strategies are less threatening to communities than platforms without structures of monetary compensation for users’ creative production. By interspersing videos with advertisements and providing users with ad revenue based on the attention they gain, this reduces YouTubers’ direct competition with each other for brand partnerships. In fact, it paves the way for “collabs” with other popular YouTubers to combine the attention of their fan bases and boost revenue. This model also relieves some pressure toward brand placement in videos, which can give the impression that popular users are simply “running the numbers” and not connecting authentically with fan communities. YouTube’s facilitation of audience dialogue and connection was reflected in the uniting of emotional audiences around uploaded videos of N.W.A.’s “Fuck tha Police,” providing visible critiques of race-based police brutality (Edgar, 2016). Designs and business models that support the formation of communities, as networked publics with sustained dialogue, can be profitable and technologically feasible for platforms. Platforms are increasing their efforts to protect users against discrimination and harassment. After all, public outcry and statements from celebrities quitting social media (Stark, 2017) constitute damaging publicity for platforms. As mentioned earlier, Instagram’s new feature allowing users to ban comments

199 containing select words was released as part of an update that also enabled users to remove followers without blocking them, avoiding a block notification that could spur vindictive behaviour (Wiggers, 2016). With this update, Instagrammers can also disable comments altogether, which may detract from forging community connections but is preferable to manually removing strings of violent remarks on a regular basis. In 2015, Twitter publicly acknowledged that the platform had a problem with harassment that was bad for its revenue. Then CEO, Dick Costolo, lamented, “We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face everyday” (Tiku & Newton, 2015). However, in 2017, Twitter is still in the process of developing new tools to help users combat this activity, working on providing the ability to mute topics and turn off repetitive notifications that might be spam or harassment-related (Segall, 2017). These changes are slow but they appear to be picking up momentum. Pressure for platforms to become more transparent in their governance may also improve the way they handle abuse and discrimination. A recent leak of Facebook’s internal training manuals and documents regarding platform regulation has drawn attention to the contradictory and inconsistent ways it deals with content that is deemed inappropriate (Hopkins, 2017). Gillespie (2017) posits that these regulations stem from years of Facebook responding to issues on a case-by-case basis and relying only on judgements made within the company. He calls for greater transparency in platform regulation, with public debate and input from regulatory authorities, which will hold platforms to greater account for protecting users. Therefore, not only is it in platforms’ financial interest to address harassment and retain users, but greater public scrutiny of platform governance may invoke faster and more impactful changes. Although users and platforms are taking action that could facilitate identity modulation, overarching improvements to users’ ability to represent multiple aspects of identity, connect with others, and participate in networked publics rests on broader social changes. Phillips (2015) closes her discussion of online trolling with a similar assertion: Consequently, if lawmakers and pundits really are serious about combating the most explicitly racist, misogynist, and homophobic iterations of trolling, they should first take active, combative steps against the most explicitly

200 racist, misogynist, and homophobic discourses in mainstream media and political circles (p. 158). The homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, misogynistic, and objectifying comments that participants recounted throughout this thesis reflect actual views held by subsets of the population, which are often reinforced through popular and political discourse. Jane (2016) also emphasises that the relentless online abuse directed at women reflects the “seemingly activist-proof misogyny that continues metastasising throughout the broader culture” (p. 115). Digital activism and countertrolling can only do so much if discriminatory and biased discourses remain entrenched in society. The actions of platform developers who assume their users are heterosexual and cisgender, and only program options for these individuals, are extensions of the underlying prevalence of heteronormativity. Similarly, the lack of recognisable media references that depart from idealised white, feminine, upper-middle class archetypes of lesbianism betrays an ongoing cultural hegemony, perpetuating the visibility of representations that minimise difference. While it is true that contemporary television shows, such as Orange Is the New Black, may challenge these dominant representations, political and social change is not linear. The cancellation of another boundary-pushing Netflix series with a large LGBTQ fan base, Sense8 (Miller, 2017), provides a reminder that representation in broadcast media can be inconsistent and is not guaranteed. Based on the examples throughout this thesis, which often involved queer women producing self-representations that made diverse identities visible through hashtags, stylistic conventions, platform practices, and affect, LGBTQ people’s continued participation across social media is pivotal to further countering societal discourses that give rise to abuse and discrimination. Although it may seem counter-intuitive, the prevalence of diverse representations of identity across social media paves the way for greater participation and representation for those who are even further from normative ideals. Countering homophobic and transphobic beliefs would facilitate identity modulation for LGBTQ people because they could better display these aspects of their identity without fear of discrimination. It is also likely that platforms would be better programmed to facilitate the display of LGBTQ identities. However, I want to be clear that even these changes would not eliminate the need for identity modulation. Even if, hypothetically, heteronormative biases were eradicated, identity modulation would remain as an approach to limiting or expanding the amount of

201 identity-related information that individuals share across different audiences. As Nissenbaum (2009) explains, individuals still value privacy in the contemporary digital era – they simply wish to share information within some contexts and not others. Identity modulation enables individuals to adjust the noticeability of multiple aspects of identity, contextualising this visibility for particular audiences. It remains essential for preserving privacy as well as forging connections in networked publics.

6.2 Research Implications and Emerging Questions This thesis’ development of the concept of identity modulation opens opportunities for broader exploration of individuals’ participation and representation on social media. Throughout my interviews, queer women who experienced the greatest challenges in their identity modulation simultaneously negotiated the display of sexual identity alongside other, potentially stigmatised, aspects of identity. Caitlin spoke about representing her queer identity on Tinder while also managing which audiences knew that she was polyamorous. Mïta was often the recipient of unwanted sexual attention for her identification as transgender and lesbian, with users fetishising the former and ignoring the latter. Several participants mentioned racial identity as a complicating factor in their self-representation. Others, such as Kamala posting from Thailand, noted that physical location influenced their social media participation. Working with a concept of identity modulation enables closer examination of how people manage the noticeability of these multiple and intersecting identities. I have, for example, imagined that future research could involve an analysis of religious LGBTQ people’s social media participation and representation. Such a study would take into account how individuals modulate the salience of their religion, sexual identity, and personal identifiability across platforms. Another example that has come to mind involves analysis of the social media use of queer women who have migrated to a new location. Given the thousands of Syrian refugees who have settled in Canada over recent years (Friesen, 2015), new insights could be gained by understanding how queer women among them manage representing their sexual identity, ethnic identity, and personal identifiability across platforms. Such a study would counterbalance the numerous studies of gay male migrants (Dhoest & Szulc, 2016; Shield, 2016) and give a sense of how such a negotiation is distinct for queer women. As Lorde (1984) points out,

202 multiple elements of identity in addition to sexual identity, such as race, class, and gender are influential in everyday life. Identity modulation provides a way of understanding how individuals balance these multiple elements in their social media use. The concept of identity modulation could also be extended to research other stigmatised aspects of identity that individuals may not want everyone in their social media audiences to notice. For example, some individuals view employment status as reflecting an individuals’ character or worth. People who have recently lost their job might wish to suppress this information on certain platforms, such as Facebook, to avoid others’ judgement while simultaneously making their employment status salient on a job search platform, such as LinkedIn. Instead of examining sexual identity in relation to personal identifiability, a study focusing on job seekers could explore whether identity modulation can apply to these individuals’ practices of adjusting their personal identifiability in relation to their job status and targeting this information to certain networked publics. Such research could determine whether identity modulation is an appropriate concept for understanding individuals’ management of various stigmatised identity representations on social media. This thesis also highlights how different platforms shape participation and representation. Having focused on visually based, mobile apps with user practices that lean toward identifiability (e.g., logging in with Facebook, using a variation of one’s real name), future studies could incorporate platforms that encourage greater pseudonymity and ephemerality, such as Snapchat and Whispr. The increasing popularity of messaging apps also calls for research identifying how they fit into individuals’ identity modulation practices. While this thesis has focused on three popular, yet under-studied apps, there is a need for studies that further map how individuals participate and self-represent across social media ecologies. This thesis’ limitations also pave the way for further exploration of queer women’s participation and representation on social media. While my interview samples were small, they provided a depth of insight into users’ decisions, perceptions, and experiences. Future studies may aim to compare these findings with those from larger samples, gathered – for example – through the ethnographic approach mentioned in Chapter Five involving sustained researcher participation in queer women’s networked publics. Research that focuses on individuals’ social media use over a period of time, such as through a diary study, could also provide a

203 greater understanding of how apps like Tinder, Instagram, and Vine fit in relation to queer women’s overall social media use. This approach could identify ancillary platforms, such as LGBTQ-specific apps, that are important to identity modulation even if they may be secondary to popular apps like Instagram, where individuals accrue large, overlapping audiences. This thesis also highlights how platform designs, visions, business strategies, and governance approaches undergo significant changes – sometimes even resulting in their decommissioning. Therefore, future studies would benefit from approaches that examine platforms over time, such as Burgess and Baym’s (2017) “platform biography,” which follows the development of the key features that define a platform. A longer view of platforms can be paired with analysis of user participation and representation through multiple approaches, such as by gathering user content from different periods in a platform’s development or through a series of follow-up interviews with participants. Given the enduring paucity of research focused on queer women, these approaches would provide additional knowledge about their social media use. For its part, this thesis has posed a new way of understanding how individuals participate and self-represent on social media in order to connect with networked publics. Examples from queer women’s experiences, in addition to their profiles, photos, and videos, have identified their practices of identity modulation. Through these practices, individuals draw on platform features to make their sexual identity salient for some audiences while reducing their identifiability to potentially homophobic or hostile audiences. These targeted displays of sexual identity enabled the queer women discussed throughout this thesis to connect with networked publics that enacted world making through the validation and social support they provided to each other while visibly challenging heteronormative discourses. Through this research journey, I have become attuned to my own identity modulation practices, from my couple selfies on Facebook to my ambiguous rainbow photos on Instagram. I have also learned to never underestimate the potential impact of making references to sexual identity through social media, since this may help others to feel less alone, spur them to reach out, or change people’s minds altogether.

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Appendices

Appendix 1. Tinder Interview Analysis – Code Tree

Discovery Settings Seeking (women; men and women) Radius Age Range

Identity performances Building/curating self-representation Demonstrating gender and sexuality Displaying lesbian characteristics or culture Self-identifying sexuality

Participant preferences Being selective in partner-seeking Identifying others’ sexual identity Not knowing others’ intentions Preferring a particular gender expression Wanting to meet people nearby

Tinder’s media ecology Discussing Tinder’s connection to Facebook Experiencing context collapse Experiencing surveillance Mentioning/connecting Instagram Tinder compared to LGBTQ/lesbian apps Tinder compared to online dating People/media discussing Tinder Using Tinder with other (social) media

Tinder intentions and activities Deleting/disconnecting/pausing Tinder Continuous swiping/not reading bios Getting advice/looking at other profiles Hooking up Sexting Invited to threesome Identifying mutual friends Making friends through Tinder Messaging Meeting LGBTQ people Negative experiences/discrimination Biphobia Not knowing about features Planning to meet up Seeing friends on Tinder

245 Tinder affordances Tinder constraints Tinder for fun/gamified Tinder Travelling with Tinder

Emergent Themes Bisexual differing from gay experience Guarding privacy in context Men’s behaviour differing from women’s Not resembling the LGBTQ community Scarcity of women Tinder as superficial Tinder different in rural/smaller places Tinder differing for heterosexual people

246 Appendix 2. Instagram Interview Analysis – Code Tree

Three Levels of Representation

1. Self-Representation Authenticity Building self-presentation Choosing hashtags Using LGBT hashtags #TBT Constructing a profile Keeping one’s profile the same Criticizing oneself Depicting gender identity Depicting sexuality Discussing fashion Minding aesthetics Not knowing tech Putting effort in Taking selfies Using Filters

2. Representation for Connection Connecting with friends Connecting with strangers Creating with others Dealing with unwanted attention Blocking people and deleting comments Developing a style/sharing tips/tricks Direct messaging Flirting and dating Providing support Representing a couple Shouting out other accounts

3. Community and minority representation Being visible Accepting oneself Coming out Encountering an LGBT community Experiencing discrimination Finding ‘people like me’ Following and interacting with celebrities Referencing other media Gaining followers and attention Making a statement Participating in an Instagram community Representing LGBT women Representing ethnicities

247 Platform Influence Critiquing Instagram’s guidelines/responses Encountering advertising Encountering design constraints Encountering porn Feeling ownership Feeling safe Following platform norms Being polite/positive Instagram being instant Instagram changing over time Instilling policies and guidelines Location tagging Emphasizing model users Using 3rd party apps Using devices/hardware

Managing Context Avoiding politics Being anonymous Deciding to have a public account Interacting cross-platform Instagram vs Facebook Instagram vs Tumblr Instagram vs Twitter Instagram vs Vine Using dating apps/sites Using Kik Using Reddit Using Snapchat Using YouTube Paying attention to privacy Recognizing a target audience Being ambiguous Worrying about family Using Instagram for work

Concepts involving subcodes present in other categories:

Lesbian Culture Choosing hashtags Using LGBT hashtags Discussing fashion Following and interacting with celebrities Referencing other media Depicting sexuality Depicting gender identity

Visibility Accepting oneself

248 Coming out Finding ‘people like me’ Gaining followers and attention Being visible Choosing hashtags Using LGBT hashtags Depicting sexuality Depicting gender identity Experiencing discrimination Making a statement Providing support Representing LGBT women

249 Appendix 3. Vine Analysis – Code Trees

1. Video Content Analysis

Video qualities Abrupt loop Animation Black and white Blurry Camera angles Camera shake Dark Different length cuts Emoji Filter Frames Mash-up One cut Photos Photos with video Smooth loop Special effects Sped up Text Watermark Third party app Flipagram Instagram CropVideo Funimate Musical.ly

Music Diegetic Non-diegetic Genre identifiable Beatbox Electronic Instrumental Pop Rap and Hip-hop Rock

Location Bathroom Beach Bedroom Car Classroom Home

250 Outdoors

People Gender presentation Feminine Masculine Androgynous or genderqueer Race Black Hispanic Unidentifiable white Couple Teenager

Subject matter Dancing Fan remix Joke Lip sync Pets Rant Self-display (Selfie) Sexual desire Shout outs Singing Statement Storytelling

2. Interview Analysis

Identity performances Collaboration Communication Community Conflict Disclosing identity Duration on Vine Feedback from viewers Financial gain Fun Inspirational Interpersonal connections LGBTQ community Money Performing Posting frequency Privacy/publicness Relatable Run a lot of numbers

251 Skills The Hate Third party apps Thirst trap Too personal Vine famous

Vine influence Difficult to see new people Editing Hashtags LGBTQ hashtags Looping Mixed audiences Music Passive viewing Re-vining

Other social media Dating apps Facebook Instagram Snapchat Tumblr Twitter

Memo Titles/Subjects

During my analysis of the two interviews, memos were pivotal to identify important points unique to each participant, which were not always captured by codes.

"I really don't care" "It's a double-edged sword" "Just to get shine out of you" "Lesbian and married and pro-black all at the same time" "That lets people know I'm Hispanic" "They just want to be known" "This is my life" "Vine is completely broken" "Vine is Straight White Boy Fuckboy Central" "We trended number 1" #beyondthevine Alternative platforms Attention/visibility through sexuality Contacted by Vine Countering media erasure Data restrictions Dealing with homophobia Florida Super Vine Hashtag Admins and CEOs

252 Hashtag vernacular Latina identity Metrics! She's aware of them Music and skill Noise on hashtags Platform rivalries Remixing - Chilling effect Shareability of Vines Small Viner Gang The Hate Time costs Time costs again Time/Effort costs Too much Tumblr vs Vine US-centric & time Vine behind in technology Vine intervention - blocking for popular users

253