[Commlist] ICA 2021 / Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Studies Interest Group

ICA: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Studies Interest Group


The hybrid 71st Annual International Communication Association 
Conference (ICA) to be held in Denver between 27-31 May 2021.

Proposals (300 words) to present on this panel must be sent to 
(paromita.pain /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(paromita.pain /at/ gmail.com)>by Nov 1, 2020, 
for consideration.

In the process of opening new spaces for discussions of queer sexuality, 
the internet and digital technologies have facilitated, a process of 
connectivity that have created important nodes of identification, 
belonging, and support (Pullen, & Cooper, 2010). These spaces, in 
different parts of the world, symbolically, have evolved to become 
collective sites of resistance to sources of oppressive power, 
encouraging the active exchange of queer ideologies across distant 
spaces and facilitating the formation of ‘queer counterpublics’ 
(Soriano, 2014).

The interconnectivity made possible by internet technologies enables the 
swift exchange of queer ideologies and networks across ways of life in 
distant spaces, where queer individuals ‘get to experience something of 
a queer community’ and obtain advice and information about a variety of 
queer issues (Fraser, 2010). As early as 2010, researchers Earl, 
Kimport, Prieto, Rush, & Reynoso (2010) found that the lesbian, gay, 
bisexual, transgender (LGBT) movement, for instance, almost exclusively 
used online protest actions. Boyd & Marwick (2011) haveexplicated SNSs 
as networked publics, where an imagined collective emerges “as a result 
of the intersection of people, technology, and practice ... .... for 
social, cultural and civic purposes, and they help people connect with a 
world beyond their close friends and family. (p. 39).  A telling example 
is the LBGT political party Ladladin the Philippines which over the 
years developed a wide set of internet-based campaign strategies, 
including online narratives and discursive spaces in its website 
(Soriano, 2014).

Besides connectivity, as Taylor, Falconer, & Snowdon (2014) have shown, 
social networking sites are a ‘space’ thatare helpful in providing a 
smoother transition to ‘coming out’ as queer and that online technology 
can be used as an effective tool to negotiate this process in different 
ways. Sobré-Denton (2016) shines a critical lens for grassroots activism 
through social media community-building emphasizing that SNS can be 
sites of cultural transmission and intercultural community-building; 
operating as spheres that facilitate resistance through ‘speaking back’ 
to certain power structures (Mitra, 2010).But queer or no, social media 
with its ability to create and encourage conversation also sustains 
certain gendered patterns of communication. For example, the stalking 
and trolling of women, especially lesbians, online is real and often 
unceasing (Ejaz & Imtiaz, 2015.;Chawki & el Shazly, 2013; Chen & Pain, 
2017).

Lesbian and gay activism may now circle the globe, but it is vastly 
understudied (Brown, 2009). Also, much of LGBTQ studies have been 
characterized by a predominance of US and Western perspectives 
(Ammaturo, 2016; Von Wahl, 2017). Emphasizing a deeply intersectional 
lens to the study of queer and transgender issues and digital media and 
technologies, centered in efforts that delve into topics such as race, 
disability, and colonialism as co-assembled with gender and sexuality, 
this panel seeks to examine how transitional LGBTQ education and 
activism has transformed, both positively and otherwise, with the rise 
and proliferation of digital platforms in different countries globally. 
This panel is particularly interested in examining and learning more about:

- How is social media and digital technologies used in the sphere of 
LGBT activism, education and empowerment.

- Digital media objects and online spaces as key sites for understanding 
identity and power, both in the present technological moment and across 
the history of computing.

- Social Media and digital cultures that are created or come about for, 
or by queer and transgender people who experience or have experienced 
different types of oppression on digital and offline scenarios

- Cyberqueer spaces are constituted as points of resistance against the 
dominant assumption of heteronormativity (Soriano, 2014).

- How are LGBTQ issues framed on social media and what do we learn from 
that framing?

- Digital media objects and online spaces as key sites for understanding 
LGBTQ identity and power, both in the present technological moment and 
across the history of computing.

- How do activists use social media to educate and mobilize audiences?

- How can the potential of social media be further extended for LBGT 
activism?

- Digital media objects and online spaces as key sites for understanding 
LGBTQ identity and power, both in the present technological moment and 
across the history of computing.

Proposals (300 words) to present on this panel must be sent to 
(paromita.pain /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(paromita.pain /at/ gmail.com)>by Nov 1 for 
consideration.


--
Dr. Paromita Pain
Assistant Professor, Global Media Studies
The University of Nevada, Reno.
Phone: 7373468957
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