(Re)Producing sexual subjects: youthful complexities in producing intimacy, sexuality and desire in social networking sites

This paper aims to look into the struggle over meaning in social network sites (SNSs), also defined in literature as a genre of networked publics (boyd, 2011). From combined insights in media cultural studies and social theory, this paper will argue that networked publics and its redundant semiotic practices create ongoing contexts for an endless producing, reproducing and consuming of sexuality, intimacy and desire. Particularly, we will question (1) to what extent these representations confirm and/or transgress heteronormative intimacies, sexualities and desires and (2) question the mediated and public role of the technological platform in confirming or transgressing heteronormativity. Theoretically, this paper wants to contribute to a rethinking of the often taken for granted social interactionist logics when looking into digital cultures. Although research on youth and SNSs is expanding, it often comes to neglect the intersections of power/difference and gender/sexuality. By continuously emphasizing the pre-discursive ‘self’ in the redundantly used concepts of ‘self’-representation and ‘self’-performance, it wipes out the complex different youthful subjectivities as described by McRobbie (1994) in proposing a cultural sociology of youth. This contribution wants to make clear that networked publics are the ultimate mediation of contemporary networked society where late modern subjects are produced, reproduced and consumed. Therefore, the societal need for a digital literacy that goes beyond technological skills is stressed. Therefore we argue for a combined queer pedagogy that questions norms and values, emphasizing diversity. This inquiry departs from a sample of 204 social network site profiles of Northern Belgium youngsters between 13 and 18 y.o. The sample was collected in November 2010 on Netlog, the most popular SNS among Northern Belgium youth. Netlog is a mainstream SNS, but different from Facebook since it allows more creative content creation. Therefore, the website is highly popular among a young public. The procedure of the analysis is informed by a multimodal model for website analysis as elaborated by Pauwels (2011) in ‘The Sage Handbook of Visual Research Methods’ and a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006). After making an inventory of salient features of the data, a limited quantitative content analysis informed by sensitizing concepts is done to determine which profiles and specific semiotic practices contain references to intimacy, sexuality and desire. The most important part of the research uses these specific relevant profiles and practices for more in-depth qualitative analysis of the textual and visual. To expose the struggles over meanings and understand how this producing, reproducing and consuming works, we make use of a deconstructive queer criticism. Particularly troubling the heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990) is approached as a political project (Chambers, 2008). Meaning, showing how and where heteronormativity operates, but also fails and undercuts its own messages.