“I HAVE NO ONE, I NEED SOMEONE”: CONTEXTUALIZING AMANDA TODD WITHIN THE “MY SECRETS” VIDEO GENRE by Joanne Farrall A thesis submitted to the Department of Gender Studies in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada March 2015 Copyright ©Joanne Caitlin Farrall, 2015 Abstract The 2012 suicide of BC teenager Amanda Todd captured Canadian and worldwide imaginations in part because of Amanda’s impassioned plea for help on YouTube a month prior to her suicide. My project contextualizes Amanda’s death within the genre of “My Secrets” YouTube confessional videos, as well as within and against larger neoliberal discourses about violence, especially violence facilitated by the Internet. I coded 162 My Secrets videos produced on YouTube between 2008 and 2013 and compared their contents to media accounts of youth suicides that took place during this time period in North American contexts. My subsequent analysis traces and critiques not only public conceptualizations of bullying, but also Western mainstream commitments to (cyber)bullying discourses that stem from a history of racist colonial violence and are used to justify ongoing systemic violence against, and surveillance of, marginalized peoples. Videos in this emergent genre demonstrate the enormous pressure under which young women who are experiencing violence are compelled to present a positive story, as well as the failure of neoliberal culture to deal with the realities of youth trauma. Ultimately, my study suggests that My Secrets videos contain simultaneously resistant and disciplinary possibilities. ii Figure 1 “My Secrets” by MsJaelo CONTENT NOTE This project balances the reproduction and analysis of stories that are told in My Secrets videos, in the media, and on the Internet, with the dangers of reproducing objectifying discourses that reduce people to their suffering. I have not included explicit images of hatred or violence found on the Internet referring to Amanda Todd or to any other case. I centre the voices of the videographers who make My Secrets videos, and have included a series of screen shots of the cards they produced to tell their own stories. Whenever a screen shot is taken from my sample, I cross-reference this with the coding in Appendix C. This thesis contains stories of rape, sexual violence, racism, homophobia, and misogyny, and engages with the discourses that (re)produce them. iii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ ii Content Note………………………………………………………………………………………………………….iii List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. vi Chapter 1 Introduction: Contextualizing Amanda Todd .................................................................. 1 1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 1.2 What is Being Left Out? ...................................................................................................... 18 1.3 My Secrets ............................................................................................................................ 27 1.4 Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 32 1.4.1 Previous use of Content Analysis on YouTube Generated Content ............................. 34 1.4.2 Coding ........................................................................................................................... 36 1.4.3 Demographics of my Sample ........................................................................................ 40 1.5 Discussion ............................................................................................................................ 42 1.6 Theoretical and Methodological Framework ....................................................................... 43 Chapter 2 When it Doesn’t Get Better: Disclosures of Bullying and Harassment in My Secrets . 52 2.1 My Secrets as an Anti-Bullying Genre? ............................................................................... 52 2.2 Gendered Harassment as Classed Violence in My Secrets .................................................. 58 2.2.1 Gendered Harassment in Suicide Cases ........................................................................ 62 2.2.2 Gendered Harassment Following Sexual Violence ....................................................... 66 2.2.3 Gendered Harassment Following Rape in Suicide Cases ............................................. 68 2.2.4 Gendered Harassment for “Attention Seeking” ............................................................ 70 2.2.5 Girlhood as a Regulatory Site of Attention ................................................................... 73 2.3 Cyberbullying ....................................................................................................................... 76 2.3.1 Self-Harm in My Secrets ............................................................................................... 77 2.4 Issues of Race and Racism in Bullying Narratives .............................................................. 79 2.4.1 Race and The Problem of Cyberbullying: Felicia Garcia, Rehteah Parsons, and Anonymous ............................................................................................................................ 82 2.4.2 Racist Harassment in My Secrets .................................................................................. 85 2.5 Homophobic Harassment and Violence in My Secrets ........................................................ 86 2.6 When “It” doesn’t “Get Better” ........................................................................................... 92 2.7 Survivorship Narratives in My Secrets: Beyond “It Gets Better”? ...................................... 96 2.8 Offers of support ................................................................................................................ 100 iv Chapter 3 Beyond Bullying: Systemic Violence and Economies of Attention ........................... 102 3.1 Beyond Bullying ................................................................................................................ 102 3.2 Which videos get attention? ............................................................................................... 103 3.3 Questions about Authenticity and Cultural Legibility in My Secrets ................................ 110 3.4 Questions of Illegibility ...................................................................................................... 120 3.5 “Ordinary, Chronic and Cruddy, Rather than Crisis Laden and Sublime”: Domestic Violence in My Secrets ............................................................................................................ 124 3.6 Similarities Between Discourses of “Battered Women” and “Bullied Children” .............. 127 3.7 Revisiting the Problem of Cyberbullying: Kimberle Proctor ............................................ 132 3.8 “Crimes” Rather than a “Sociological Phenomenon”? ...................................................... 138 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 146 Appendix A Amanda Todd Video Transcript .............................................................................. 155 Appendix B “My Secrets” Video Timeline ................................................................................. 158 Appendix C Coding ...................................................................................................................... 164 v List of Figures Figure 1 “My Secrets” by MsJaelo ................................................................................................. iii Figure 2 Amanda Todd screen capture ............................................................................................ 1 Figure 3 Images from Amanda's Video Used in Art Show ............................................................ 18 Figure 4 VID-019 Zoe Royer “No one knew what went on in my home.” ................................... 32 Figure 5 Bullying in 82 videos by category ................................................................................... 55 Figure 6 VID-019 “My dad pulled out [a] gun and shot my mom” ............................................... 57 Figure 7 Amanda Todd Video Description: “I’m not doing this for attention.” Posted one month before suicide attempt. ................................................................................................................... 72 Figure 8 VID-005 “Please, I’m not looking for attention or sympathy” ....................................... 73 Figure 9 VID-075 “When I was 8, 7, or younger, my dad started raping me! :(” ......................... 77 Figure 10 VID-088 “I’m Gay <3” .................................................................................................. 87 Figure 11 VID-027 “I’m Gay :)” ................................................................................................... 88 Figure 12 - VID-118 “I’m 24, Pansexual, and Fat...” .................................................................... 89 Figure 13 VID-128 “AND I’M A