[Commlist] New textbook: Gender and Digital Media - A Critical Companion

We’re delighted to announce the publication of our new textbook, *Gender 
and Digital Media: A Critical Companion *(2026, Routledge), edited by 
Hakan Ergül. The book is now available in both e‑book and print formats. 
The full text—along with all individual chapters—is *freely accessible 
as Open Access* (funded by UCL) via the link below. Please feel free to 
download and share it widely with students, colleagues, and anyone in 
your network who might be interested!

_https://www.routledge.com/Gender-and-Digital-Media-A-Critical-Companion/Ergul/p/book/9781032671314 
<https://www.routledge.com/Gender-and-Digital-Media-A-Critical-Companion/Ergul/p/book/9781032671314>_

The book offers an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the 
evolving relationship between gender and digital media. With chapters on 
queer and trans communities online, digital intimacy, feminist 
approaches to technology, gaming, fandom and fanfiction, digital 
diaspora, identity, representation, and gendered hate, it highlights how 
gender is shaped and expressed across intersections of class, race, age, 
sexuality, and technology. Our key objective is to foreground 
diversity—both in the topics explored and in the voices represented.

Positioned at the crossroads of media studies, cultural studies, 
sociology, and feminist approaches to technology—and extending into 
audience and fan studies, film and reception studies, Internet studies, 
critical race theory, posthuman thought, postcolonial theory, game 
studies, and transgender and queer studies—the book brings range of 
perspectives together through a shared critical orientation.

The book gathers situated knowledge and lived experiences from a wide 
range of cultural and geographical contexts. With contributions spanning 
Bangladesh to Chile, India to China, and including Iran, Palestine, 
Turkey, the UK, and the US, the volume weaves together voices that cross 
geopolitical, cultural, and epistemic boundaries, centering decolonial 
engagements with gender and digital media.


Each chapter is followed by a *critical essay* written by a graduate 
student. These short pieces draw on MA and PhD research or course 
assignments, offering concrete examples of how the book’s theories and 
methods can be mobilized in practice.

/
/

/Gender and Digital Media: A Critical Companion/ is ideal for advanced 
undergraduate and graduate students in gender studies, media studies, 
cultural studies, media sociology, the arts and humanities, and the 
social sciences more broadly.


Here is the list of authors and their contributions:

*Table of contents*

Editorial introduction

/Hakan Ergül/


Chapter 1. Understanding gender and digital media: key concepts

/Kate Gilchrist and Hakan Ergül/


*PART I: BECOMING gendered selves, desire, and the digital everyday*

*
*

Chapter 2. Gender and identity in the postmodern, posthuman, and 
postdigital era

/Sara Hawley/

Essay 2. Flowing together, apart: an allo‑autoethnography of inscribing 
female kinship and intimacy

/Tanya Geggie/

Chapter 3. Queer and transgender studies of digital media
/Kata Kyrölä/

Essay 3. Kuaxingbie and transgender in the age of digital platforms

/Zhuanxu Xu/

Chapter 4. Dating and romance online: reimagining intimacy, transforming 
the self, and negotiating risk/
Kate Gilchrist/

Essay 4. Queer Indian youth and online intimacy: examining intimate 
relationships on social media
/Jaskirat/

Chapter 5. Fandom and digital media: a sandbox for creative gender, 
sexuality, and feminist configurations
/Audrey Jean/

Essay 5.  Self‑perception in slash fanfiction characters: queer gaze and 
desire towards the male body in /Star Trek/ slash fanfiction

/Audrey Jean/

/
/

*PART II: SEEING representation, race, and the politics of the gaze*

Chapter 6. How we are seen: why representation still matters
/Kata Kyrölä/

Essay 6. Ambiguous representation of bisexuality in the film /Chasing Amy/

/Yuanwanruo Chen/

Chapter 7. Ten things I hate about genres: gender and genre in the 
post‑digital era
/Lucía-Gloria Vázquez-Rodríguez/

Essay 7. Challenging tradition: a comparative analysis of gender 
representation in shōnen through Hinata Hyuga and Mikasa Ackerman

/Mala Annamma Mathew/

Chapter 8. Understanding the historical foundations of race, beauty, and 
gendered hatred online
/Karen Wilkes/

Essay 8. Social media influencing

/Laila Strachan/

/
/

*PART III: RESISTING b/elonging, activism, and masculinities online/*

Chapter 9. Gender and minoritised childhoods in the digital era
/Feryal Awan/

Essay 9. Digital politics of young activists in Chile
/Laura Manzi Araneda/

Chapter 10. The manosphere between the global and the local
/Sama Khosravi Ooryad & Jacob Johanssen/

Essay 10. Online hate, memes, and the rising Iranian manosphere
/Sama Khosravi Ooryad/

Chapter 11. Gender and belonging in digital diasporic spaces
/Hakan Ergül/

Essay 11. “This country rejected me before meeting me”: challenging 
migrant representation as Other in European media
/Maya Aziz/

*
*

*Part IV: INTERVENING games, gendered technologies, and feminist futures*

Chapter 12. Researching digital games, players, and gender
/Diane Carr/

Essay 12. Gaming and the abject in survival horror
/Shiqing Li/

Chapter 13. Haptic histories, virtual traces: excavating gender‑diverse 
XR innovation
/Sarah Atkinson/

Essay 13. Feminist epistemologies for preserving XR
/Zeynep Abes/


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