Diary Weblog Readers: Girls and the Consumption of Self-Representation(s)

• In Event: Gender, Agency, and Technology

Abstract

The prevalent production and consumption of blogs by girls to negotiate self-presentations, self-images and statuses call for additional research. Recent literature on blogs reveals intersections between time and affect, connection and privacy, personal and social representations. Blogging takes place within an ideological framework and context of indeterminate cultural categories, interactivity, neoliberalism and postfeminism. Girls are objectifying themselves and seeking to consume others’ self-representations in a controlled environment, a narcotic against their disempowerment. Blogs enable girls and women to project and monitor or survey their self-image and self-presentation as they perform, participate and consume within a broader online community. However, as blogs enable girls to customize connections and individualize interactions, they may actually serve to reinforce their separation from other communities.

Author

• Katie McCollough, Rutgers University