Ragan Fox

Gays in (Cyber-) Space Ragan Fox

Computer-mediated communication offers opportunities for gay men to affirm their identities in digital contexts. Many gay men have turned to online journals, or "blogs," and internet-bound broadcasts, otherwise known as "podcasts," to perform their subjectivities. Digital performances of gay identities potentially intervene on reductive understandings of gay male identity that are prevalent in several mass mediated modes of communication. This project is grounded in a review of literature relevant to performances of identity, personal narrative, social activism, and online methods of cultural intervention. Through the use of virtual ethnographic methods, the author reveals that gay bloggers and podcasters construct multiple online personas and skillfully manipulate language to articulate their needs, desires, fears, reflections of the past, and hopes for the future. Audience members react to the generative texts by finding their own ways to contribute to online performance and bolster gay male subjectivities. The book concludes with a discussion of how bloggers, podcasters, and audience members work in an activist manner.