Reel Girls: Approaching Gendered Cyberviolence with Young People Through the Lens of Participatory Video
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Reel Girls: Approaching Gendered Cyberviolence with Young People through the Lens of Participatory Video By Hayley Crooks, M.A., University of Toronto, 2012 B.A. (Hons.), Queen’s University, 2010 A thesis submitted to the Faculty and Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies University of Ottawa Ottawa, Ontario ãHayley Crooks, Ottawa, Canada, 2018 Abstract Reel Girls: Approaching Gendered Cyberviolence with Young People through the Lens of Participatory Video This study analyzes young women’s descriptions and conceptualizations of cyberviolence (CV) and cyberbullying (CB), including how they both challenge and reify mainstream CB discourses. The central themes analyzed include the way(s) in which self-representation in social networking sites (SNS) are constrained through the limited options young women describe as being available for self-expression in these spaces, how notions of publicity, privacy and context-specific communication in SNS factor in girls’ descriptions of platform architecture, and how platform architecture often amplifies CV. Finally, the study unpacks the reasons that young women offer to explain why adults are often so out of touch when it comes to understanding CV and its relationship to young people’s digital culture. This dissertation contributes to cyberviolence studies, feminist new media, and girls’ digital culture studies, and has relevance for critical feminist criminology, by centring the voices of young women in order to investigate cyberviolence through participatory video (PV) with a sizable number of young women. The findings are based on data collected through eight PV workshops, two co-produced short documentaries and six focus groups with one hundred and twelve (112) participants in total under the larger umbrella study “Cyber & Sexual Violence: Helping Communities Respond” (2013-2016). This project was a community partnership between the Atwater Library and Computer Centre in Montreal and the TAG Lab at Concordia University, and was funded by Status of Women Canada. I employ an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that puts feminist new media studies, feminist approaches to online misogyny and girls’ digital culture studies into conversation with the extant literature on cyberbullying and cyberviolence. This theoretical approach is used to examine how the social norms in the discourse communities of SNS that girls ii outline in their descriptions of CV are structured through age-old misogynistic myths and impossible contradictions around femininity. Employing a participatory arts-based feminist lens allowed me to invite participants to share their perspectives in an accessible and fun way while examining their work through qualitative thematic analysis. Among the many findings this research produced, three key themes extend as threads that run throughout the dissertation. First, my participants did not relate to the term ‘cyberbullying’ in the way that adults often use it. While researchers and policy-makers continue to debate how to define cyberviolence and cyberbullying, participant responses illustrated the need for more dialogue around the toxic social norms and assumptions that currently structure young people’s digital culture, mainstream CB debates and anti-CB programming. Secondly, young women’s focus on issues of publicity versus privacy, anonymity, and peer surveillance highlights both the nuances that girls’ voices contribute to ongoing CB debates and how SNS amplify age-old double standards facing women and girls in visual culture and the public sphere. Finally, the themes of empathy and education that emerged from participants’ suggestions for strategies with which to address CV underscore the systemic changes that will be necessary in tackling the continually evolving and widespread phenomenon of cyberviolence. Participants conceptualize CV and CB as existing along a continuum of daily interactions in SNS that include encountering everything from mean jokes to sexual violence. Keywords: girls, young women, cyberbullying, cyberviolence, digital culture, participatory video, arts-based research, youth, feminism, new media iii Acknowledgements First, thank you to the smart, generous, and brave young people who contributed their voices, art and input to this research. Thank you for producing video with me and challenging my assumptions about ‘cyberbullying’. To my advisor, Sylvie Frigon, thank you for being a strong role model, encouraging mentor and for always being there with words of encouragement and guidance. You model artistic and innovate ways to build bridges between the ivory tower and the broader community. My sincerest thanks to the other dedicated and inspiring members of my committee: Jennifer Kilty, Shoshana Magnet and Valerie Steeves, you are all incredibly generous scholars whose work has been foundational to my thinking. You have provided me with knowledge I hope to pass on to others. Special thank-yous to the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa, Kathryn Trevenon, Michael Orsini, Sylvie Thériault, Natacha Lemieux, Laurel O’Connor, Shanly Dixon, Mia Consalvo, Eric Craven and Sandra Weber. Celeste Orr, you have made navigating this multi-year-long stretch of graduate school a pleasure. You are a wickedly smart, hilarious person and I treasure our friendship. Stephanie, my writing buddy, our writing sessions and your strict attention to the timer have greatly contributed to the completion of this project. Thank you to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the University of Ottawa for their financial support. Monica Coral Hemstock and Dean Stephen Crooks, you are the best parents, and I am privileged to be your daughter. Mum, thank you for teaching me that education of all kinds is never a waste of time. Dad, thank you for demonstrating that “entertainment is a fundamental part of education!” You two have been supporting me in every way possible every day of this journey and on all the other ones. I love you both. iv Finally, Cory, you are a wise and witty person of integrity. Our conversations, cooking, adventures and daily routine make for a rich, warm and sustaining home. I’m lucky to have you for my fellow traveller. Thank you for everything. I love you. v Glossary of Terms CB Cyberbullying CBO Community-Based Organization CV Cyberviolence GIF Graphics Interchange Format ICTs Information Communication Technologies ISP Internet Service Provider MMOG Massively Multiplayer Online Games OSN Online Social Network(s) PAR Participatory Action Research PV Participatory Video SNS Social Networking Sites QTA Qualitative Thematic Analysis VAWG Violence against Women and Girls VR Virtual Reality YPAR Youth Participatory Action Research vi Table of Contents Abstract Acknowledgements Glossary of Terms Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1 Statement of the Problem ............................................................................................ 5 Research Aims ........................................................................................................... 8 Research Contributions ............................................................................................... 11 Chapter Organization .................................................................................................. 14 Chapter Two: Literature Review, Part One: Reading and ‘Doing’ Gender in Digital Culture: Feminist New Media Studies .................................................................................................. 19 Feminism, Gender and (New) Media Technologies: Historicity .................................. 21 Utopian/Dystopian Discourses and the Space Between: Haraway, VNS Matrix and Cyberfeminism ........................................................................................................... 30 The Possibilities and Limits of Participatory Culture: Interactivity, the Network Society, and the Digital Divide in the Age of Convergence ......................................... 41 Chapter Two: Literature Review, Part Two: Regulating Girls: Approaches to Girls’ Digital Culture and Content Production in the Context of Cyberviolence ........................................... 46 Girlhood, Digital Culture and Cyberbullying .............................................................. 50 “Teen Drama” or Cybermisogyny? Missing Voices in Cyberbullying Literature and Policy................................................................................................................... 59 From Mean Girl to Passive Victim: Popular and Scholarly Discourses around Girls and Cyberbullying ...................................................................................................... 62 Chapter Three: Theoretical Framework: “Cyberbullying is kind of like background noise”: Feminist Approaches to Girlhood, ‘Cyberbullying’, and “Networked Misogyny” ................... 70 vii ‘Cyberbullying’ or Harassment? Unpacking Hate Propaganda, Online Harassment and Cyberviolence in the Conceptual and Legal Landscape in Canada ........................ 72 Silencing and Censorship as Social Control: “Networked Misogyny” ......................... 76 Applying Pierre Bourdieu and Stuart Hall to Girls’ Conceptualizing of Cyberviolence ... 82 ‘Good Girls’ and ‘Good Old Girls’: Girlhood, Subcultures,