Gender-Technology-Trust: Feminist Reflections on Mobile and Social Media Practices

ABSTRACT

This special issue of Australian Feminist Studies aims to make an interdisciplinary contribution to ongoing feminist conversations around gender, technology and trust – with a particular focus on mobile and social media debates, dialogues and empirical examples. We strategically conceptualise the contingent relationality of gender and technology and trust as a hyphenated assemblage of ‘gender-technology-trust’, and foreground the complex, ambiguous, and nuanced theoretical and empirical development and analysis of what it means to ‘trust’ in the age of ubiquitous mobile and social media. The five articles and one interview included in this special issue emerge from the global and Australian context (ranging across rural and urban settings), and brings together feminist scholars to critically engage with gender-technology-trust relations that characterise quotidian life.

KEYWORDS:

• gender
• technology
• trust
• mobile media
• social media
• digital media

Feminist Intrepretations of ‘Trust in the System’

This special issue aims to make an interdisciplinary contribution to ongoing feminist conversations around gender, technology and trust, with a particular focus on mobile and social media debates, dialogues and empirical examples. We bring together a range of perspectives and approaches to mobile and social media, focusing on users’ everyday practices which deploy, negotiate and subvert digital networks and mobile interfaces to generate a sense of trust in both people and technology. These perspectives draw from global settings and patterns as well as urban, suburban and rural environments in Australia.

The theme for this special issue emerged from the Association of Internet Researchers conference (https://aoir.org/aoir2019/) held in Brisbane (Australia) in October 2019 where scholars were invited to respond to the topic ‘Trust in the System’. Indeed, trust is one of the most critical issues currently facing both internet users and researchers, including trusting and evaluating online information and digital content (Bodó 2020; Schwarzenegger 2020), managing one’s own data (Lupton and Michael 2017), understanding the political and epistemological weight of algorithms and filtering (Williams 2017; Kanai and McGrane 2020), negotiating locative media (Pink et al. 2019), and navigating the many interfaces that make all of this possible. At this conference, we noted that many researchers interested in the broad intersection of gender and technology responded to the conference theme by focusing on mistrust or distrust in media and communication platforms and infrastructures. In the context of internet users, mistrust has been described by Christoph Lutz, Christian Pieter Hoffmann and Giulia Ranzini (2020) as operating in tandem with feelings of uncertainty, resignation and powerlessness. These affective responses to trustworthiness and privacy online are further complexified by gendered experience, and it is this intersection – between gender, technology and trust – that provides the context for this special issue. The issue poses a provocation around the ways digital media engenders (dis)trust or (mis)trust in our everyday lives, with an emphasis on gendered specificities of technology use.

As mobile and social media devices and practices become more ubiquitous (around 91% of Australians now own a smartphone (Deloitte 2019)), scholarly work exploring the variable spectrum of trust and distrust users have towards their devices, and the connections, disconnections and sense of community they afford, are timelier than ever. As we come to rely on our devices across multiple contexts of communication and knowledge-sharing, we need to take stock of the possibilities and limitations that reside in the complex relations between users and devices. The articles and interview in this special issue offer critical analyses of users’ perceptions and practices regarding mobile and social media, and suggest how feminist interventions can provide important insights into such relations.

The Gender-Technology-Trust Relation

We strategically conceptualise the contingent relationality of gender and technology and trust as a hyphenated assemblage of ‘gender-technology-trust’. In doing so, we foreground the complex, ambiguous, and nuanced theoretical and empirical development and analysis of what it means to ‘trust’ in the age of ubiquitous mobile and social media. Hyphenation signifies a particular conceptual use of the terms, indicating a relationality or merger between the three that precedes any heuristic separation. Mark Vagle suggests that such hyphenated use operates as an experiment with an idea to ‘loosen up’ (2014, 596) terms to be conceptually open and productive. Hyphenation, in this way, captures the multiplicity, ambiguity, and irreducible complexity of contemporary media and communication practices.

The articles contained in this special issue variously conceptualise trust as problematic, contingent, important, dangerous, risky and necessary. Annette Baier’s germinal work on a feminist philosophy of trust and antitrust begins by determining ‘there are immoral as well as moral trust relationships’ (Baier 1986, 232) – meaning trust relations can be the basis of moral and immoral outcomes, and that mistrust and trust can be mobilised by those with ill intentions. In introducing this special issue, we build on Baier’s definition of trust, as an ‘accepted vulnerability to another's possible but not expected ill will (or lack of good will) toward one’ (Baier 1986, 235). The articles in this special issue are diverse in their approaches to thinking about trust – while some contributors are hopeful that people, places, devices, institutions and communities in which we place our trust will not intentionally betray or harm us, others argue there is often an inherent distrust in people and devices that impacts upon the way we communicate and share media content. The gendered experience of trust from a feminist perspective is further complicated by the knowledge that certain bodies are often at a greater risk from harm, as those whose lives and experiences are marginalised in and by social systems are often targeted with violence on the basis of gender or gendered expression (Webster et al. 2017; Powell and Webster 2018). This is illustrated poignantly by Baier who states ‘the ultimate point of what we are doing when we trust may be the last thing we come to realise’ (Baier 1986, 236) that is, we may only realise the consequences of our trusting after it has been betrayed. Yet we acknowledge that trust is not binary in terms of moral and immoral forces, and the articles in this special issue grapple with such complexity and challenge dominant notions of trust, risk and vulnerability.

The relation between gender and technology is an enduring topic in feminist thought. For over thirty years, Donna Haraway’s evolving work on the human-technology relation has called for radical rethinking of how humans relate to technology (1991, 2008, 2016). Haraway’s works have inspired generations of feminist scholars to critically explore how technologies are imbricated in gender, race and class consciousness, which is ‘an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism’ (Haraway 1991, 155). What scholars of feminism and technology need, according to Haraway, is not unity but affinity – an acknowledgement of our partial perspectives, our limitations and our complex relations with machines and non-human others. In a similar vein, renowned feminist sociologist Judy Wajcman (1991, 2000, 2010) has long argued that technology is always historically situated and shaped by the social. As she has argued, ‘a feminist perspective shifts our understanding of what technology is, broadening the concept to include not only artefacts but also the cultures and practices associated with technologies’ (2010, 143). Such a shift in perspective means scholars seeking to understand gendered technological relations must look at the ways in which technologies can be deployed and employed in situated, contingent ways. Special issues of humanities, philosophy and cultural studies journals have also explored gendered engagement with technology. A special issue of the European Journal of Women’s Studies (Åsberg and Lykke 2010), for example, focused on feminist technoscience studies, and the relation between gender and technology. The issue considered how global socio-technical forces such as capitalism impact on localised gendered practices and adaptations, and showed how the impacts of social systems, technologies and sciences are experienced in specific ways, often highly dependent on identity and subjectivity. Extending such feminist scholarship, this special issue considers current social and mobile media uses, ambiguities and complexities.

Our aim is to build on this substantial history of feminist approaches to the human-technology relation. The articles in this special issue are empirical works that seek to make sense of the intersection of gender, technology and trust through feminist analyses situated in global and Australian contexts. Each article draws on feminist philosophies of thought to unpack what is often unspoken or unmarked in everyday practices. In so doing, the contributions reveal what is frequently hidden in gender-technology-trust relations, and actively participates in the feminist agenda more broadly: to challenge and dismantle hierarchies and systems of domination (Moreton-Robinson 2000; Stephens 2015; Coleman 2016).

Feminist Reflections on Mobile and Social Media Practices

As noted by Larissa Hjorth and Sun Sun Lim (2012) and contributors to their Feminist Media Studies special issue, the intimacy and mobility afforded by mobile media practices distinctively marked the beginning of the twenty-first century. Almost a decade later, our special issue refocuses on gendered mobile and social media intimacy, and how it is intrinsic to shifting modes of mobility, the instrumental erosion of distinctions between public and private, and the everyday navigation of physical spaces. The final contribution to this issue presents an interview we conducted in April 2021 with Kathleen Cumiskey who wrote about the protective feelings afforded by mobile phones for women in the aforementioned Feminist Media Studies special issue. In our interview, Cumiskey re-engages with her previous work and discusses how today ‘people, and especially women, are using their phones in really creative ways to expand or to bring to the forefront their realities and experiences of what it means to be a woman or gendered in particular ways’ (100). She also contemplates the political and affective possibilities of mobile media with an acknowledgement that ‘smartphone use could be quite solitary and personal’ (101). Negotiating and navigating the possibilities of mobile and social media is an iterative theme throughout this special issue, especially as it pertains to the variety of uses, locations and contexts across Australia.

The practices and implications of trust in relation to gender, mobile and social media unfold differently across rural and urban settings. Amber Marshall’s contribution to this special issue, for instance, is concerned with the digital divide in rural Australia, drawing from a Marxist feminist perspective and empirical data from interviews conducted in Far North Queensland (Australia) to investigate how farming women access, use and manage digital connections. Marshall shows that in rural settings, women have a greater uptake and use of digital technologies, compared to men, and suggests that many Australian farmers experience less affordable and less reliable digital connections and devices which results in limited digital skills and literacy. In contrast, Jess Hardley and Ingrid Richardson’s article explores the embodied experience of smartphone users in (sub)urban spaces, and considers how the geo-locative and network functionality of mobile media impacts upon the perception of safety and risk at night. They apply a postphenomenological framework to ethnographic data collected in Perth and Melbourne (Australia) to explore the concept of (dis)trust in relation to the heightened danger experienced by women in the urban night, and the ‘fallibility’ of the mobile phone as conduit to safety, or as an effective shield against risk and the unwanted attention of strangers.

Salient examples of the relational synergy of gender-technology-trust are presented in various ways throughout this special issue. In the opening article, building on her keynote speech at the AoIR conference in 2019, Bronwyn Carlson agitates the idea of trust by contending that the very concept demands an infiltration of ‘the system’ in order to incorporate the views and experiences of Indigenous users. Trust in online data or archives, social media platforms, or information ‘out there’ on the Internet, for Carlson, is intermeshed with 200 years of colonisation of Indigenous people in Australia. At the same time, Indigenous people use online platforms to ‘express identity, connect with community, to learn and play, to seek love, organise political action, find lost friends and family, search for employment, to seek help in times of need – and much more’ (Carlson, 21). Technology and trust, in this article, are presented as multiple and malleable. As Carlson agues, Indigenous women and LGBTQI+ people are being increasingly exposed to extreme and traumatic threats of violence online, as an extension of offline gendered and racial vitriol. Despite this, Indigenous users are also ‘social agents’ who seize the opportunity to ‘re-imagine a more diverse approach to the online systems of communication’ (Carlson, 21).

Similarly, Caitlin McGrane’s contribution focuses on re-imaging mobile and social media relations through a gendered lens, and argues smartphones and their related applications can enhance women’s personal, professional and affective lives. McGrane seeks to expand the debate around the gendered impacts of smartphones to account for some of the more positive, affirmative aspects of using these devices. Catherine Archer, Amy Johnson and Leah Williams Veazey investigate how women in closed or secret Facebook groups navigate the gendered boundaries, labour and safety of online groups. Their findings show that the labour required of administrators to keep these groups ‘safe’ from intrusion is highly gendered and context-specific. The authors argue private, closed or secret Facebook groups can serve a variety of purposes for women to help them become active participants in a controlled public sphere. However, these potential benefits are not without caveats. As Archer et al. demonstrate, the potential for security leaks, privacy breaches, online harassment and trolling mean participants and researchers must acknowledge the limitations and situate them in context along with the benefits. Throughout the special issue, the gendered relations between women, their devices and their worlds are documented to show how the complexity of gender-technology-trust relations can be effectively exposed and critiqued through feminist scholarship. As each contribution reveals, the gender component of the gender-technology-trust relation is significant when thinking through the potentials and limitations of connectedness, fluidity, vulnerability, risk and safety in mobile and social media practices.

Feminist Mobile/Social Media Studies

With the rise of mobile phones, over the past two decades the intersection of feminist theory with critical interpretations of mobile media practices has received attention by a number of key scholars, such as Hjorth (2013, 2014), Leopoldina Fortunati (2005, 2009, 2018) and Fortunati and Sakari Taipale (2012). Such work has considered how mobile and social media have particular significance in terms of the gender-technology relation, with a focus on intimacy, mobility, and affect and embodiment. This work on mobile intimacy is demonstrative of the situated, contextual practices performed with, through and by mobile and social media. In the years since Hjorth and Lim’s special issue of Feminist Media Studies (2012), smartphones have become even more ubiquitous and their effects even more contingent.

Indeed, in the social and mobile media era, networked connectivity is increasingly intimate and embodied. Embodiment and affect (Gregg and Seigworth 2010) are key to understanding the nuanced experiences of everyday mobile and digital technologies (Irwin 2016; Wellner 2016). Such an approach accounts for how some bodies and identities are often more at risk from the incursions and affordances of social and mobile media. Hjorth and Richardson refer to this as a ‘hierarchy of risk … that acts upon our bodies differently, depending on our age, gender, ethnicity, or social milieu’ (2017, 9). Articles in this special issue of Australian Feminist Studies contribute to this debate in their focus on feminist approaches to vulnerability, embodiment, fluid identity and critiques of normativity which all consider the hierarchy of risk engendered by and through gender-technology relations.

The articles presented in this special issue emerge from the global and Australian context – ranging across rural and urban settings. The Australian specificity of some of the articles speaks to the particular challenges of connectivity and trust that face Australian users. Other gender-technology-trust relations are globally relevant, such as women’s reliance on the mobile phone to feel safe, particularly at night (Cumiskey and Brewster 2012; Hardley 2021). Each contribution offers new critical insights into the irreducible relation between gender and technology and trust – the challenges facing Indigenous Australians who seek to harness the community-building affordances of social media in the face of racist content and threats of violence (Carlson), the complexities of digital labour experienced by women living in rural Australia (Marshall), the embodied experience of smartphone users in urban darkness (Hardley and Richardson), Facebook groups which attract membership from mothers seeking online ‘safe spaces’ (Archer, Veazy and Johnson), human-nonhuman assemblages that women create with their smartphones (McGrane), and feminist reflections on gendered relations with mobile phones (Cumiskey).

This special issue has brought together feminist scholars to critically engage with gender-technology-trust relations that characterise quotidian life. It explores how mobile and social media can be animating or affirming forces for feminist interrogations of gender-technology-trust. At the same time, the articles capture how mobile and spacial media can be fraught with risk, mis/distrust, leakiness and fear. It is our hope that the contingent, multiple and contextual relations of gender-technology-trust presented in this special issue inspire further feminist critical engagement within mobile and social media scholarship.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jess Hardley

Jess Hardley is a PhD candidate in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. She is also an Associate Lecturer in Communication & Cultural Studies at Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. Her research interests include phenomenology, feminist theory, ethnography, embodiment, mobile media and the urban night. She is co-author of Mobile Media and the Urban Night (Palgrave, forthcoming), has published in several journals, and has presented research at international conferences. She is also on the editorial board of the journal Digital Geography and Society.

Caitlin McGrane

Caitlin McGrane is a researcher and feminist activist. As a researcher, she is a PhD candidate in the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT University. Her doctoral research investigates the gendered uses, practices and impacts of smartphones. As an activist, she works on projects challenging gender-based harassment and abuse online and in workplaces.

Ingrid Richardson

Ingrid Richardson is Professor of Digital Media in the School of Media & Communication, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia. She has a broad interest in the human-technology relation and has published widely on the phenomenology of games and mobile media, digital ethnography and innovative research methods, the cultural effects of urban screens, wearable technologies, virtual and augmented reality, remix culture and web-based content creation and distribution. Recent co-authored books include Ambient Play (MIT Press, 2020), Exploring Minecraft: Ethnographies of Play and Creativity (Palgrave, 2020) and Understanding Games and Game Cultures (Sage, 2021).