Based upon a three-year ethnographic inquiry into the online activities of LGBT people, this study examines the tensions between the expected uses of Facebook and the uses a diverse network of gay men make of the site. Specifically, this study explores how the online practices of gay male users of Facebook queer the social-networking site. Although a significant number of studies examine how LGBT people queer various spaces in the physical world (Chauncey 1994, Johnson & Valentine 1995, Knopp 1995, Binnie 1995, Ingram 1997, Bouthillette 1997, Quilley 1997), only relatively recently have scholars begun to consider how sexual minorities may be queering online spaces (Campbell 2004, Usher & Morrison 2010, Gray 2010).
By “queering,” I refer to cultural practices that expose and potentially unsettle the heteronormative presumptions of a particular location. To queer a place is to reveal the contested nature of any space and how (hetero)norms must be continually reproduced and reinforced. In this study, queer is not so much a political identity as a deconstructive exercise. By examining gay male practices surrounding profile names, friending, and LGBT activism on Facebook, this study seeks to identify how these users reveal and resist the various (hetero)norms underlying the design and operation of the site.
This is something that has been largely neglected in the existing scholarship on Facebook. Given that online spaces, like offline spaces, are permeated with hegemonic presumptions surrounding sexuality and sexual identity, this study demonstrates that claims based on the online experiences of heterosexual, (mostly) white, (mostly) middle-class, and (mostly) able-bodied college and high school students do not necessarily apply to the experiences of gay men using Facebook. By examining the online activities of these individuals, this study reveals the complex ways in which offline positionality – in terms of sexuality, race, gender, class, age, and physical ability – inform the use of online sites.
About the presenterJohn Edward Campbell
John Edward Campbell (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is an assistant professor in the School of Media and Communication at Temple University. He works at the intersection of critical media studies and political economy of communication. His research explores how diverse groups of people incorporate media technologies into their negotiation of everyday life. His current book project – The Business of Belonging: When Online Communities Became Corporate Commodities – examines the social and political implications of the commercialization of online communities. His first book – Getting It On Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality, and Embodied Identity (2004) –explores the cultural practices of online gay communities.