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Gender and Relatability in Digital Culture

Managing Affect, Intimacy and Value

Palgrave Macmillan

Authors:

  • Looks at digital media culture and the ways in which young women and girls relate together through the microblogging site Tumblr
  • Explores questions of self-identity as they pertain to affect, emotion and gender
  • Analyses humorous ‘reaction-GIF’ blogs

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About this book

This book explores the practices and the politics of relatable femininity in intimate digital social spaces. Examining a GIF-based digital culture on Tumblr, the author considers how young women produce relatability through humorous, generalisable representations of embarrassment, frustration, and resilience in everyday situations. Relatability is examined as an affective relation that offers the feeling of sameness and female friendship amongst young women. However, this relation is based on young women’s ability to competently negotiate the ‘feeling rules’ that govern youthful femininity. Such classed and racialised feeling rules require young women to perfect the performance of normalcy: they must mix self-deprecation with positivity; they must be relatably flawed but not actual ‘failures’. Situated in debates about postfeminism, self-representation and digital identity, this book connects understandings of digital visual culture to gender, race, and class, and neoliberal imperatives to perform the ‘right feelings’.

Gender and Relatability in Digital Culture will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including gender studies, cultural studies, sociology, and media studies.

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University, Caulfield, Australia

    Akane Kanai

About the author

Akane Kanai is a lecturer in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University, Australia.


Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Gender and Relatability in Digital Culture

  • Book Subtitle: Managing Affect, Intimacy and Value

  • Authors: Akane Kanai

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91515-9

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-91514-2Published: 03 August 2018

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-08264-2Published: 26 January 2019

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-91515-9Published: 21 July 2018

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XI, 195

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 13 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Gender Studies, Culture and Gender, Cultural Studies, Digital/New Media

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access