Transnational and decolonizing queer digital/quick media and cyberculture studies

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I argue that while queer studies within communication and cultural studies must take a transnational and decolonizing turn to move away from solely white and US-centric ways of conceptualizing queer lives and experiences, it should also further theorize the role of mediation, new media technologies, and quick media applications in queer worldmaking.

KEYWORDS:

• queer
• quick media applications
• transnational
• decolonization
• new media

Notes

1 Richard Dyer, The Cultures of Queers (London: Routledge, 2002).

2 Larry Gross, Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America (New York City: Columbia University Press, 2001).

3 Katherine Sender, “Queens for a Day: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and the Neoliberal Project,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 23, no. 2 (2006): 131–51.

4 Lisa Henderson, Love and Money: Queers, Class, and Cultural Production (New York City: New York University Press, 2013).

5 Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin, ed. Queer Cinema, the Film Reader (New York City: Routledge, 2004).

6 Bruce E. Drushel, ed. LGBTQ Culture: The Changing Landscape (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2021).

7 Michaela Meyer, “Media, Sexuality, Identity: Thoughts on the Role Text, Audience, and Production Play in Cultural Discourse,” Sexuality and Culture 17, no. 3: 379–83.

8 Gust A. Yep, “Queering/Quaring/Kauering/Crippin’/Transing Other Bodies in Intercultural Communication,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6, no. 2 (2013): 118–26.

9 Bernadette Marie Calefell, Monstrosity, Performance, and Race in Contemporary Culture (New York City: Peter Lang, 2015).

10 Shinsuke Eguchi, “Japan’s Masculinist Politics: An Intersectional Queer Critique of Actor Narimiya Hiroki’s Retirment from the Entertainment Industry,” Women and Language 43, no. 2 (2020): 317–24.

11 Godfried Asante, “Glocalized Whiteness: Sustaining and Reproducing Whiteness Through “Skin toning” in Post-colonial Ghana,” Journal of Intercultural and International Communication 9, no. 2 (2019): 87–103.

12 Ahmet Atay, “Seeing the Italian Culture Through the Eyes of Ferzan Ozpetek: Queers, Immigrants, Global Nomads, and the Changing Nature of Italian Society,” Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture 4, no. 3 (2019): 271–85.

13 Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: When Old and New Media Collide (New York City: New York University Press, 2006).

14 David Bell, An Introduction to Cybercultures (London: Routledge, 2001).

15 Radhika Gajjala, “An Interrupted Postcolonial/Feminist Cyberethnography: Complicity and Resistance in the ‘Cyberfield,’” Feminist Media Studies 2, no. 2 (2002): 177–93.

16 Ananda Mitra, “Virtual Commonality: Looking for India on the Internet,” in Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety, ed. Steve G. Jones (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage), 55–79.

17 Lisa Nakamura, Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet (New York City: Routledge, 2002).

18 Jonathan Corpus Ong, “Queer Cosmopolitanism in the Disaster Zone: ‘My Grindr Became the United Nations,’” The International Communication Gazette 79, no. 6–7 (2017): 657.

19 Myria Georgiou, Media and the City: Cosmopolitanism and Difference (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2013).

20 Ahmet Atay, “Digital Life Writing: The Failure of Diasporic, Queer, Blue Tinker Bell,” Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture 9, no. 2 (2018): 183–93.

21 Rahul Mitra and Radhika Gajjala, “Queer Bloggings in Indian Digital Diasporas: A Dialogic Encounter,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 23, no. 4 (2008): 403.

22 Ong, “Queer Cosmopolitanism,” 657.

23 Ibid.

24 Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs, and Charlton Macllwain, “#CommunicationSoWhite,” Journal of Communication 68, no. 2 (2018): 254–66.

25 Ahmet Atay and Yea-Wen Chen, “Introduction: Reimagining Transnational Possibilities and Decolonial Potentials in Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy,” in Postcolonial Turn and Geopolitical Uncertainty: Transnational Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy, ed. Ahmet Atay and Yea-Wen Chen (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020), vii–xix.

26 Shinsuke Eguchi, “A Transnational Queer of Color Vision: Toward the “Future” of Autoethnography,” Journal of Autoethnography 1, no. 3 (2020): 309–14; Ahmet Atay, “Transnational Queer Communication Pedagogy,” in Queer Communication Pedagogy, ed. Ahmet Atay and Sandra L. Pensoneau-Conway (New York: Routledge, 2020), 92–104.

27 Ahmet Atay, Globalization’s Impact on Cultural Identity Formations: Queer Diasporic Males in Cyberspace (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015).

28 Gust A. Yep and Ryan Lescure, “A Thick Intersectional Approach to Microaggressions,” Southern Communication Journal 84, no. 2 (2019): 113–26.