Queering The Map: Safe Spaces And Digital Archive Of Queer Collective Memory
Maria Naum Master's Thesis
New Media and Digital Culture University of Amsterdam
Supervisor: Niels van Doorn Second Reader: Bas Melis
Table of contents:
Introduction _________________________________________________________ page 3 Chapter 1. What are queer counterpublics? _________________________________ page 8 Chapter 2. Formation of queer counterpublics online, and their internet usage _____ page 20 Chapter 3. How platformization of the web affected queer digital media usage ____ page 29 Chapter 4. Queering the Map ___________________________________________ page 38 Conclusion _________________________________________________________ page 48 Bibliography ________________________________________________________page 50
Introduction
As a queer person, I came to realization, that I want to claim my own place in time and space as a member of LGBTQ+ community. My wish to be present and seen in the public comes from desire to be recognized and understood. Thankfully, I am given a chance to live and study in the greatest country famous for invading not peoples but polders. This helps me to realize the trend to personal experience in peaceful activity. Every individual deserves the right to exist and express himself or herself to their true identity. What if queer people can put themselves on the map by doing so quite literally?
I would agree with Ammer, who defined “to put on the map” in 1992 as not only the geographical location as in case with Google maps, but to be famous or be publicized. Moreover, to not just ge-olocate themselves on the interactive map, but also to collect personal stories that reflect queer ex-perience. Queer memories and queer experience constitute a part of the queer world making and represent valuable and significant moments of the LGBTQ+ community existence. With the com-munity-generated mapping project ‘Queering the Map’ this can actually happen.
By working on this project, I am aiming to examine how queer people can use such new media ob-jects to both contribute to collective memory by sharing a personal message and to map out their experiences, while performing those actions anonymously. This paper explores queer digital culture from a perspective of safe spaces and collective memory archives and, in doing so, it offers an out-look on a definition of queer internet, that implies anonymity, participatory culture and identity ex-ploration.
When typing www.queeringthemap.com in the search bar of the internet browser, any user can reach the world map with tons of, at first black dots, and when zooming in, – pins on it. In the “About” section the creator of Queering the Map, designer and researcher from Montreal Lucas LaRochelle mentioned the community-generated mapping project as geo-locating queer moments, memories, and histories in relation to physical space. In fact, notions of ‘queer spaces’ become more abstract and less tied to concrete geographical locations. Though the intent of the Queering the Map project is to collectively document moments of queerness wherever they occur.
Moments of queerness constitute certain events and experiences lived by queer people, that are fur-ther translated into a personal story. For example, those moments would be coming out stories, first times (whether it is a realization or an actual experience) or valuable messages with a political statement. It is important to acknowledge moments of queerness, since they bring the possibility of modification of both offline and online spaces. To elaborate, in online spaces sharing of such mo-ments would bring members of the LGBTQ+ community together through an engagement in the activism that is based on the participatory culture. It is worthy here to make sense of terms like queerness and participatory culture in order to further understand the subject.
The phenomenon of the participatory culture has been described By Jenkins et al. (2006) as offering low-threshold access, support to each other, informal mentorship to pass on knowledge, meaningful exchange and an acknowledgement of one’s own creation. As for the term queerness, Nash (2013) suggests that queerness is about operating beyond powers and controls that enforce normativity. While Oxford dictionary defines it as “the quality or characteristic of having a sexual or gender identity that does not correspond to established ideas of sexuality and gender, especially heterosex-ual norms”.
In order to further make sense of the project, it is worth here to dive in to specific terminology of the topic. Since I am studying queer community, and a queer new media object, first the notion of the word queer should be defined. In this framework Halperin (1997, p. 62) defined the meaning of queer as something that is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, and the dominant. Moreover, he established, that “queer demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the
normative” (ibid). According to Sullivan (2003 in Garwood, 2016, p. 6), queer can be understood as “a way of doing instead of being”. In turn, McLean (2014, p. 5) described queer as a term which attempts to invoke greater inclusion than that of LGBTIAQ because it allows for multiple ways of being. Since queer historically means “odd”, it gives a meaning of bringing unknown and unusual possibilities to a pre-constructed by default heteronormative urban space, be that park, street, or a piece of architecture.
It is important here to make sense of the term heteronormativity and elaborate on its meaning. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines heteronormative as “of, relating to, or based on the attitude that heterosexuality is the only normal and natural expression of sexuality”. Basically, it is the belief, that relationships that of marriage and sex can only happen between two people of the opposite sex.
It needs to be noted, that heteronormativity also assumes that intimacy remains a private affair tied to the domestic sphere, which is often construed as the property of men. To queer heteronormative object or space is to make intimacy a public affair – to have it shed its domesticity and link to pri-vate property. When talking about heteronormativity and its relation to domesticity, Gülsüm Baydar (2005, p. 34) stated, that its structure “has largely been the single-family household governed by heterosexual relationships with man as the head of the household and women as the caretaker”. As a result, by getting rid of domesticity one can queer the space.
I am interested in subcultures, in particular, queer counterpublics and how the anonymity factor helps them acquire safe space online to express themselves and in case with ‘Queering the Map’ project, map out numerous queer experiences in order to contribute to queer collective memory. I am also aiming to explore how that poses challenges in the existence of LGBTQ+ community on-line and how ‘Queering the map’ project creates a digital cultural heritage for queer counterpublics. To elaborate, digital cultural heritage would be the form of preservation of natural or cultural her-itage. What I am proposing in this thesis could contribute to the preservation of the heritage for the future generations. My work is built on the literature of memory studies, queer studies, and inspects concepts like digital intimacy, publics and counterpublics, and safe space. In this thesis, I will make an attempt to perform an in-depth critical study of the ‘Queering the Map’ digital mapping project using the theoretical framework mentioned above from the points of analysis of the new media studies and a sociological approach.
In this thesis I investigate ‘Queering the Map’ digital mapping project as a vehicle for understand-ing how queer counterpublics map out their experience in an anonymous digital environment in or-der to gather a media archive of collective queer memory. Through my exploration of this digital mapping project, I hope to contribute to academic debates about user experience, to be exact, online intimate queer counterpublics. It is important to note, that in papers related to this topic, for in-stance, in ‘Queering Expertise: Counterpublics, Social Change, and the Corporeal Dilemmas of LGBTQ Equality’ by McCan (2011) conventional political channels and transgressive enactments of queer identities are usually being discussed, whereas I am aiming to eliminate the focus on iden-tity and in turn to consider collective experience as a starting point in my research. What is more, when examining what has already been done before, I noticed, that a lot of work on this issue is centered around Western countries, while I try to cover queer experience in countries like Russia, where LGBTQ+ community is still very unexplored and undervalued.
With this thesis I am aiming to raise a discussion about the new media object that is reminiscent of the internet before web 2.0 and how this queer and anachronistic digital mapping project rebels against an image- and identity-obsessed social media culture organized by data-driven platforms. My goal is to investigate the opportunities and challenges of social media for queer counterpublics in order to figure out social factors that give shape to the formation of a safe space for the members of the LGBTQ+ community online. My main argument in this paper raises a question whether it is possible to construct a safe digital space for queer counterpublics in the era of social media plat-forms. The research done in this paper might bring to the surface questions of how queer counter-publics are situated and positioned on the internet in the era of web 2.0 and whether they can safely operate within the current media environment. This implies reflection on if project like ‘Queering the Map’ can be an ultimate online space of gathering for queer individuals that do not want to ex-pose their identities or engage in direct communication within the publics of the platform, however, still making a contribution to queer collective memory.
That results in the research question of this paper:
To what extent can queer anachronistic new media objects like Queering the Map act as: – safe spaces for queer counterpublics by affording anonymity
– a digital archive of queer collective memory by locating queer memory within the space of online sphere?
Methodology
To be able to answer those questions, I will need to define what are queer counterpublics, what are spatial and temporal aspects of their existence, and then move onto exploring online spaces of their usage. Further on the examination of the history of queer internet would be done, as well as figuring out how changes to the web affect the composition of queer counterpublics. Moreover, it will be particularly interesting to note how those changes affected queer memory-related practices. For my research design I chose to follow the model of the qualitative one, since it is better for me to under-stand concepts, but not numbers. When choosing such kind of methodology, I thought that it would be the most comfortable to understand and describe meanings and experiences. As for the research
approach, my preference lays in deductive one. With that, I will generalise theoretical framework from general to specific, narrowing down concepts from fields of common knowledge to particular notions. Data that was collected from academic sources will be used to evaluate the research ques-tion. When selecting literature sources, I followed the recommendations of my thesis supervisor, Niels van Doorn, and turned to the basis of queer theory, memory studies, as well as human geogra-phy. In that nature, this research project could be considered as a qualitative ethnographic case study, since it features exploration of queer behaviours in both online and offline spaces, as well as challenges and opportunities members of LGBTQ+ community had to face. To be able to examine what was mentioned above, I focused on the data that several theorists gathered through the analy-sis of queer new media practices and habits.
Chapter 1. What are queer counterpublics?
In this chapter I am aiming to introduce the concept of publics and counterpublics by Michael Warner in order to make sense of queer community and to figure out where it is situated within the society. One can argue, that we are all a part of the public, and depending on our social background, shared interests and common beliefs, attribute to some sort of public sphere. Still, Jürgen Habermas (1989, p. 176) defined the notion of public sphere as a virtual or imaginary community which does not necessarily exist in any identifiable space. In other words, it is a space that is not physical, but a discursive one, where individuals come to discuss matters of interest.
Following Habermas’ (ibid) expertise on public sphere, it can be said, that it stands on the idea of democracy and “power to the people”, meaning that public is the one who gets to decide on actions towards articulating the needs of society with the state. In turn, according to Oxford Dictionary, the notion of publicness can be seen as “the quality, condition, or fact of being public; the condition of being commonly accepted”. This way, publicness implies being ‘out there’ in the world, being present and recognized within certain group of people, that form a public. In similar nature, Michael Warner (2002, p. 88) recognized publicness as the space of coming together that discloses itself in interaction.
What is public?
As the question turned out to be quite complicated, I would pay special attention to the Warner's concept of public. Warner’s (2002, p. 50) concept of a public stands for a concrete audience, a crowd witnessing itself in visible space. The notion of a public implies a circulation of a certain dis-course among people who are involved in the matter, as well as the sense of totality that combines individuals through common features. Interestingly, Warner stressed the main points of a public’s existence as the following: a public is self-organized; a public is a relation among strangers; the ad-dress of public speech is both personal and impersonal; a public is constituted through mere atten-tion; a public is a social space, created by the reflexive circulation of discourse; publics act histori-cally according to the temporality of their circulation. And I fully admire his position, though, I would like to make an emphasis on Northern-Magill's (1991) opinion, who pointed out that publics exist by virtue of their imagining, but since publics are practical fictions, they cannot be pointed to, counted, or looked in the eye. Indeed, one cannot really count the amount of people in publics,
rather, it is an imagined audience of the text. This could bring us back to Warner (2002, p. 62) who stated, that it is not texts themselves that create publics, but the concatenation of texts through time.
It is evident that relatedness to publics enables self-organization and participation. In his analysis of publics Warner (2002, p. 54) documents that they have to be understood as mediated by cultural forms and can be identified as an audience of existing discourse. Moreover, he noted, that publics commence with the moment of attention, and cease to exist when attention is no longer predicated (Warner, 2002, p. 61). As the understanding of the notion of publics turned out to be quite compli-cated, I would agree with Warner’s (2002, p. 61) idea that they are virtual entities that can be under-stood within the conceptual framework of civil society by having a free, voluntary, and active membership.
What are counterpublics?
Furthermore, when theorizing publics, Warner (2002, p. 81) established, that if some individuals have organized themselves as publics, and because they differ markedly in one way or another from the premises that allow the dominant culture to understand itself as a public, they have come to be called counterpublics. In turn, Nancy Fraser (1992, p. 123) explained counterpublics as a space where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counter discourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs. That is certainly true, as accord-ing to Warner (2002, p. 86), a counterpublic maintains at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of its subordinate status. Moreover, further in her analysis Fraser (in McLean, 2014, p. 11) suggests that counterpublics serve two purposes: as spaces of safety and reorganizing, and as training spaces for protest activities to be directed towards the broader public.
It is rather interesting to note Warner’s (2002, p. 87-88) statement about counterpublics, which are ‘counter’ to the extent that they try to supply different ways of imagining stranger-sociability and its reflexivity; whereas as publics, they remain oriented to stranger-circulation in a way that is not just strategic, but also constitutive of membership and its affects. It is worth elaborating here on the no-tion of stranger-sociability concept, which implies approaching undetermined audience on the basis of paying attention. Stranger-sociability mediates a difference from dominant publics (Warner, 2002, p. 88) and has means of being sociable, friendly to a completely unknown person and devel-oping a connection with an individual one may have no particular interest in. For counterpublics to engage in stranger sociability is a way to contribute to their community and give back, even if it
only entails expressing care and sympathy that are directed to no one in particular. Notably, Deem (2002, p. 1) explained the sign of counter public practice as the change or disruption of prevailing norms of sociability via the indecorous behavior.
In their work on queer digital storytellers Vivienne and Burgess (2012, p. 366) described Warner’s idea of the counterpublic as a conceptual space in which marginalized people may constitute them-selves as a smaller public, differentiated from and in opposition to the world at large. This is a vital component of survival for the members of the LGBTQ+ community, as by distancing themselves from the mass they manage advantageous position in the environment that is safer for them. More-over, Warner (2002, p. 81) recognized counterpublics as ideological in the way that they provide a sense of active belonging that masks or compensates for the real powerlessness of human agents in capitalist society. It is important to underline that sense of belonging is the crucial factor in the functioning of the LGBTQ+ community, since those are marginalized and oppressed groups of peo-ple who lack in social sympathy as a whole. Once losing a biological family through the process of being not accepted, queer individuals in turn need to acquire new family, the one that they choose and construct themselves.
Quite astonishingly, Warner (2002, p. 80) observed, that counterpublic is a scene in which a domi-nated group aspires to re-create itself as a public and, in doing so, finds itself in conflict not only with the dominant social group, but also with the norms that constitute the dominant culture as a public. The representation of that can be seen in the lesbian community, where femme lesbians are an object of interest of butches, who, nevertheless, revile femmes for their ability to pass in the het-eronormative society. Being a marginalized minority, lesbian community still tries to mimic patriar-chal dynamics in a wish to if not be ‘normal’, then to be able to ‘pass’ within the masses. In that na-ture, the purpose of the queer counterpublics can be seen as being able to resist heteronormative agenda and to direct social gaze towards problematic issues.
Queer counterpublics are a specific form of public, which like other publics revolve around the cir- culation and engagement with texts and discourses. They are also a special form of public, since their function is centered around being private and intimate, thus forming an intimate public. How-ever, it is not always the case, because many queer counterpublics are explicitly political and an-tiprivacy, whereas according to Berlant and Warner (1998, p. 553), for publics intimate life is the endlessly cited elsewhere of political public discourse. They are outwardly oriented, not necessarily
intimate, although they might address intimacy as an object in struggles. In her work on female's representation in culture, Lauren Berlant (2008, p. viii) noted, that intimate publics are seen as a space of mediation in which the personal is refracted through the general. In similar nature, it can be said, that intimate publics provide an environment in which one can make a contribution to the col-lective by sharing the personal. To make sense of the notion of intimate publics an extensive discus-sion on intimacy should take place.
I was rather impressed by Berlant and Warner’s (1998, p. 547) observation in their ‘Sex in Public’ article, that there is nothing more public than privacy. In fact, according to Berlant and Warner (1998, p. 553) intimacy is itself publicly mediated. Intimacy is an imagined and constructed prac-tice, reminiscing the concept of publics and counterpublics by not being fixated as concrete object. It is widely understood as a fantasy zone of an imagined privacy for heterosexual coupling and manifestation of a ‘good life’, that is presumed to be a getaway from politics and capitalism. Het-eronormativity represents the sense of rightness (Berlant and Warner, 1998, p. 554), this ‘right' way of living, that is embedded in every aspect of today's life. In this nature, heteronormativity could be seen as a pre constructed narrative, that constitutes heterosexual way of existence as the only legit-imate one.
What is intimacy?
Interestingly, it seems that intimacy is usually widely understood not as feeling, but rather as being in a space, where one can be at peace and privacy with himself or herself, or with a partner. Howev-er, to gain intimacy it is not a must get away or retire. The crucial moment in understanding intima-cy is the fact that it is a pre constructed feeling, established by humans for making sense of them-selves and other reasons. Hence, intimacy can be experienced at any point in time and at any place. Basically, a ‘heteronormative intimacy’ is based on such factors of life as “marriage and family law, in the architecture of the domestic, in the zoning of work and politics” (Berlant and Warner, 1998, p. 562). In contrast, queer culture has almost no referencing to various institutions for its counter intimacies (Berlant and Warner, 1998, p. 562). To elaborate, queer people rarely have a physical space to express or perform intimacy, since the heteronormative environment does not work for them. Even showing up to a bar together can cause a great danger for same-sex couple. That is why members of LGBTQ+ community historically preoccupied public spaces like as restrooms, bath-houses and such in order to acquire an intimate connection whilst staying in a public space.
It is important to highlight, that when contextualizing queer counterpublics, Berlant and Warner made an attempt to unpack the notion of queer intimacy. They (1998, p. 558) described it as kinds of intimacy that bear no necessary relation to domestic space, to kinship, to the couple form, to property, or to the nation. This kind of intimacy for queer community correlates with the queer world making, as it implies the lack of all the mentioned above. To elaborate, members of the LGBTQ+ community resist homonormativity, that constitute coupling and kids even within homo-sexual individuals. Furthermore, queer people often do not have a luxury of strong family connec-tions (or do not have them at all) or property due to their underprivileged positioning in the society.
Here I would like to turn to the expertise about intimacy of other authors. This way, Attwood et al. (2003, p. 249) claim, that intimacy is mediated – it requires a medium through which intimate rela-tions can be established between the subject and the other. Such mediums can be both physical and online spaces that allow development of intimacy through connecting people inside their environ-ments. I would certainly agree with Zelizer (2009), who established, that in the search for intimacy, there is always a certain level of exposure that implies vulnerability, since one is supposed to share a piece of information that is personal and not intended for a public eye. In turn, in their discussion on intimate practices on social media, Dobson et al (2018, p. 4) stated, that producing intimacy can be understood as part of subjectification processes that evolve around the hierarchical ordering of relationships and psychic concerns, in order to make sense of ourselves and others. This way, the production of intimacy is a necessary component of any individual's social life who wants to be in-volved in publics or counterpublics. In his analysis of virtual intimacies McGlotten (2013, p. 17) theorized intimacy as something that is not itself a form of affect, but rather – proximity and con-nection. So, the intimacies by default are the things that can be felt and imagined, but not seen and touched. For queer counterpublics the very feeling of intimacy is crucial, since for them to have a sense of belonging to a community or being a part of the group of those who are alike is vital for their existence within the wider publics.
Other components of queer existence that should be discussed are spatial and temporal dimensions, where queer people position themselves in, such as geographical location, history, and memory. None of the publics can exist without having a link to a certain time frame, or a place where events occur. Same with the LGBTQ+ community, its existence depends on the physical location and point in time. So, what the spatial and temporal aspects of queer counterpublics are? Those would include
concepts like visibility and memory, because they are constituted within space and time and require both of the aspects to be present.
What is queer?
In his work “In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives” published in 2005, Judith Halberstam made an impact on gender studies and queer culture by proposing that time and space can stand apart from heterosexual way of life. When discussing queer temporalities, Halber-stam (2005, p. 2) noted, that queer subcultures produce alternative temporalities by allowing their participants to believe that their futures can be imagined according to logics that lay outside of those paradigmatic markers of life experience, such as birth, marriage, reproduction, and death. Ba-sically, members of the LGBTQ+ community historically could not have some of the things that heteronormative people had, including rights to get into same sex marriage, or to adopt a child and form a family that way. Hence, queer people had to produce their own spaces and histories, in order to be able to exist. In this thesis, as for spatial aspects of queer counterpublics I will be concentrat-ing on safe spaces for the members of the LGBTQ+ community. As for the temporal aspects, my interest will lay in exploring queer memory.
It shall be noted, that both of the concepts I will be touching upon are important factors in the func-tioning of LGBTQ+ community. Because of the fact, that members of the community are margin-alised, they are often much more prone to violation than others, since they do not have privilege of law being on their side. With that the need of safe spaces for gatherings and communal exchange comes in for queer counterpublics to be able to thrive, as they are not a rare target for attack. Mem-ory is another significant part of queer counterpublics world making, because it is not only about special moments that one lived through, but also important parts of the history like riot at Stonewall in 1969 that is now perceived in the West as the beginning of a movement towards equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community. A lot of queer history is dependent on the documentation of personal memory using diaries and journals or collection of materials which were conducted through re-search that involved observations of participants. In order to elaborate on the notions of queer memory and safe space and what it means for queer counterpublics, a further exploration of con-cepts of space and memory should be provided.
Space is something that does not have any meaning or context by default, those things are given to the space by people who constructed it. First of all, it is worth drawing on the notion of space.
Lashkari (2018, p. 3) recognized space as not only a container in which events occur but as some-thing that shapes and affects what happens and how it happens. Furthermore, as it was established by Benjamin Forest (2002), identities, meanings, and relations are the ones who produce material and symbolic aspects of space. In that nature, according to his expertise, space is also produced through the presence of those identities. Jon Binnie (1997 in Oswin, 2008, p. 90) argued that spaces do not have a pre-existing sexual identity and are not naturally “straight”, but they have produced this way and “heterosexualized”. This way, any space can carry the pre constructed notion that was brought to it by certain publics. Such means that spaces are neutral by default and that their mean-ings may change depending on the audience that engages with them. It needs to be noted that gay space and queer space have a bit of a distinction between them, since gay space implies presence of homosexuals exclusively, whereas queer space in that sense is more inclusive and allows any mem-ber of LGBTQ+ community.
It is evident that there needs to be a further elaboration made on the meaning of the ‘queer space’ concept in this context. Oswin (2008) observed, that queer space can be defined as a space that of-fers a radical alternative to heterosexual space. Similarly, Cottrill (2006) defined queer space as space that questions the sexuality, gender, race, and class divisions from political, geographical, so-cial and historical perspectives. To elaborate, queer spaces represent the possibility of alternative anti-capitalist ways of living (Nash, 2011) in favor of more communal needs and desires (Lashkari, 2018, p. 13). Thus, it can be concluded, that queer space focuses on the collective, rather than per-sonal and on the sharing, rather than consuming.
Queering the space
From this point definition on what does the concept of queering the space means should be done. Queering the space can be interpreted as giving a new meaning, new purpose to the place. By space here I mean both physical locations that are situated in real life, like material objects and premises, as well as the digital areas of new media user's habituation, such as chat rooms, online maps, blogs etc. Queering the space is in a way a means of conceptualizing the space and bringing new contexts to it. According to Cockayne et al. (2017), to queer space is to emphasize the complexities of differ-ence and normativity in living with technologies, where technologies might both proliferate and regulate socio-spatial experience. Thus, it shall be underlined, that as Brown and Knopp (2008, p. 42) established, queering the space is in disrupting the heteronormativity of space.
If we look at a gay space as political space, a platform which gives voice to queers (Lashkari, 2018, p. 11), it can be said that queering the space is a political act, since it is in fact means reclaiming the space through bringing to it the before unknown meanings. Moreover, it constitutes the form of ac-tivism that is centered around questioning the means of spaces in order to propose the joint exis-tence of both heteronormative and homonormative parts of society. What is more, according to Nash (2013, p. 205) queer spaces are not just spaces developed for gays and lesbians in opposition to heterosexual space, but alternative spaces for both heteronormativity and homonormativity. This way, space is pre-constructed and is given a meaning and memories by those who shape the infor-mation agenda.
In the great words of Marshall McLuhan, “medium is a message”. And if the medium is controlled by people, then so is the message. Since historically power and control are the tools that are at dis-posal of white cis men, the media environment is also shaped by the heteronormative society, ex-cluding the queer narrative and queer experience from the agenda. Such created a need for queer counterpublics to be able to gather in their own spaces that were safe and comforting for their in-habitants. Therefore, it needs to be explained what is a safe space for marginalized minorities and groups of people that are usually eliminated from the societal perception of the ‘norm’.
Queer counterpublics historically experienced some troubles in reclaiming their own space both in relation to private property, and a platform for expressing queer way of life. Due to economic ob-stacles that LGBTQ+ community faces, it was pretty hard to afford a home of their interest, that is why the emergence of gay neighborhoods rose at some point in time and took place in mostly west-ern countries. The struggle was also in the fact that queer individuals needed space that would fea-ture those who are alike. Moreover, and most importantly, those people needed a safe environment within which they would not be objects of humiliation and violation. RTI International (Center for Justice, Safety and Resilience) released a report in March 2017, which said, that numerous studies suggest that LGBTQ+ persons are more likely to be victims of various forms of violence and vic-timization, including physical and sexual assault, harassment, bullying, and hate crimes (McKay, 2017, p. 3). Hence, their need in the construction of safe spaces in inevitable.
Safe spaces
This helps me to recognize the necessity in unpacking the concept of safe space in relation to queer people.A safe space is a space where you can safely recollect memories, share experiences from the
past or remember someone who is gone. The one where an individual can be free from aggression or judgment and still be able to express raw feelings. Brown and Knopp (2008, p. 50) described physical safe space as such: a safe space for queer folks, one that was popular with straights, who were welcome but expected to behave respectfully. Thus, the safety factor of any space, whether it is real or digital, implies the presence of like-minded people in it, who can produce emotional sup-port and to embrace a certain point of view that is typical for those group. Another function of a safe space is the ability to provide boundaries between members of the group and its outsiders. Be-ing able to articulate an opinion and identity authentically can also be considered an aspect of safe space. Moving further on to the discussion, the elaboration on the spatial and temporal aspect of queer counterpublics that is memory should be performed.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the fact that publics and counterpublics are highly dis-cursive, as well as spatial and temporal. Basically, the existence of those publics and counterpublics depend on circulation of texts and conversations around them, since according to Warner (2002, p. 413), a public is a space of discourse organized by nothing than discourse itself. In short, the audi-ence of the text or a discussion could be called its publics. What comes to spatial and temporal as-pects, they constitute a framework of publics' and counterpublics' existence. Because when anything happens, it happens in a certain place and, at some point, in time. However, here I would like to fo-cus on the memory concept that lays within spatial and temporal dimensions.
It should be outlined that memory is essentially a recollection of an event that happened in a specif-ic point in time and took place at some location. For queer counterpublspecif-ics memory is an ephemeral component of their presence and usually plays the only part in recollection of histories. This is the way it is because it is rather difficult to construct an archive that is authentic and is as true as possi-ble, since members of the LGBTQ+ community are sometimes not out of the closet, which means that they might be not comfortable sharing private stories or “their” details for building a strong database. Moreover, the lack of outness and physical visibility of queer people (visible signs of someone’s non heteronormative identity) can also be tied to codes and symbols that members of the community used overtime. As such, just because wider publics could not understand certain refer-ences and language of queer counterpublics does not mean that last ones do not have their history.
For those individuals history constitutes recollection of feelings and emotions that were particularly significant, rather than dates and dry facts. This way, as Watts (2018, p. 107) stated, queer archival
material integrates emotion and personal narrative into the objects of memory. Through the creation of an archive it is possible to reconstruct histories, however, queer archives differ from the tradi-tional ones. Since queer is something that is different from normal, the perception of almost any concept in queer world making will be slightly distorted. What comes to queer time, it is not chronological and is rather close to the Tom Boellstorff’s (in Watts, 2018, p. 108) concept of coin-cidental time, which attends to moments, and is not based in logics of accumulation or duration. Thus, considering queer time and memory, what is the most important is the meaning behind events and experience that LGBTQ+ community has. The focus here lies on the personal value that memo-ry holds and not on the specific time stamps. Moreover, some stories are not meant to be shared be-cause they can include traumatic triggers. Here I would certainly agree with Watts (2018, p. 110), that with the development of queer memory, people have the ability to claim their existence, their history, and their role in a community.
Mediated memory
Moving further on into the discussion, I would like to introduce the concept of mediated memory, since it is vital for understanding the case study of this thesis and why the topic of is central to the queer history. Mediated memory can be considered a tool for translation of a message. The memory here acts as a medium for the transmission of information, as well as the way of communication and the expression of the fact of presence. For example, when graffiti artists leave their tags on the space of the city, that being walls, bridges and other surfaces, they have an intention of making sense of themselves within the city. Tagging space using graffiti as a technology of orientation in space is the way how artists appropriate the space and reclaim it. This technique also acts as a form of communication between artists and publics of his or her art, and between the artists themselves. Such correlates with a concept of co-presence (Hjorth, 2012), since via tagging artists can create an illusion of being present in the space of the city, even if they are not physically there. That, in turn, produces bond which unites citizens and artists, and gives a sense of connection to both human in-dividuals and urban objects. To elaborate on the notion of co-presence, Lam (2013, p. 183) stated, that the concept is situated in the fact that people who are geographically apart can still feel present with one another.
In order to unpack the concept of mediated memory, I would have to turn to van Dijck’s (2007, p. 1) expertise, which states, that memory and media have both been referred to metaphorically as reser-voirs, holding our experiences and knowledge for future use. Dobson et al. (2018, p. 76) also made
an observation that a collection of mediated objects may serve as an archive of intimate, co-created memories, and a prompt in recalling everyday events and relationships. It can also be layered into personal, intimate, historical records of one’s self (Sauter 2013). According to van Dijk (2007, p. 1), mediated memories are the items, that mediate not only remembrances of things past, but also me-diate relationships between individuals and groups of any kind, and they are made by media tech-nologies. Moreover, van Dijk (2007, p. 1) established, that in the society mediated memories are cherished as a formative part of autobiographical and cultural identities. Therefore, it can be con-cluded, that “mediated memories are the activities and objects we produce and appropriate by means of media technologies, for creating and re-creating a sense of past, present, and future of our-selves in relation to others” (van Dijck, 2007, p 21). Such connects to queer counterpublics and their circulation of discursive materials as a part of their existence, as mediated memories facilitate the distribution of the message and with that help the discourse alive.
A collection of mediated memories would be nothing, but an archive of the collective memory that relates to certain publics. Prior to this it should be said that queer collective memory is the primary reservoir that represents queer history. With that further elaboration on the concept of collective memory shall be provided. Pierre Nora (in van Dijck, 2007, p. 15) regards collective memory as a giant storehouse, archive, or library. Since memories are narratives as well as artifacts (van Dijck, 2007, page 168), one can assume, that digital archive of memories, full of various digital artifacts, can be seen as a representation of collective memory.
Personal cultural memory emphasizes the value of items as “mediators” between individuals and collectivity, while concurrently signifying tensions between private and public (van Dijck, 2007, page 1). This way, pins on the map of Queering the Map project can be seen as mediators. They could also be considered what van Dijck (2007, p. 39) calls it technologies of self, that are in and of themselves social and cultural tools; they are means of reflection and self-representation as well as of communication. That is certainly true, while technologies of self thus are also technologies of sharing (van Dijck, 2007, page 43). Individuals root their memories in cultural objects and activities that once give meaning to their own experience and attribute historical or political significance to the larger events of which they are part (van Dijck, 2007, page 23).
The main point of recollecting a memory and sharing it with others, thus, contributing to the collec-tive, is to locate oneself in the history of the group that one engages in. For queer counterpublics
such possibility is the way how they can be both remembered as the members of the community, but also how they intervene with each other, bringing something of their own to collective memory bank. By choosing to talk about how Alzheimer patients recall experiences in order to connect with their community, I am aiming to unpack how sharing memories can affect not only the personal, but become a means of communication within particular publics.
For queer counterpublics, engaging with the collective memory of historical events or personal ex-periences is almost the only way to locate themselves within the community. Sharing of personal experience of a LGBTQ+ community member can be helpful to the other members, as it may evoke the sense of relatedness and furthermore, achieve the sense of belonging. Sense of belonging is a vital quality inside of any community, especially margins and minorities, since they are more sup-pressed than a regular public. But why do memories matter?
Humans have a vested interest in surviving, and therefore they invest in creating and preserving prints of themselves – their thoughts, appearances, voices, feelings, and ideas. They want these im-ages to be truthful or ideal, realistic or endearing, but most of all, they want to be remembered (van Dijck, 2007, page 51). According to Grasseni (2004), memory work is a vital source of data. What is more, Andrews et al. (2006 in Brown and Knopp, p. 53) noted, that memory is a vital data we have to queer the historical geography. With that said, it could be concluded, that memory is the only important source, through which one can learn about queer history and queer geography. It also needs to be underlined, that memory products like archives, albums and historical records are all digitised at this point, so to be able to reach out to queer annals one should go online. Further-more, it is worth going into detail about the aspects of queer existence in the digital world, in order to figure out which spaces they occupy and how do they function within them.
Chapter 2. Formation of queer counterpublics online, and their internet usage In this chapter I would like to discuss the formation of queer community online and why digital spaces and documenting memories within them hold a special value to their existence. Since urban space is heteronormatively structured and performed (Valentine 1993; Hubbard 1998, 2001; Brick-ell 2000; Podmore 2001, 2006), it became vital for LGBTQ+ community to find sights of queer- ness, and when they struggle to do so in the physical world, they moved online in order to form spaces for them to thrive and express themselves in. According to the J. Prinsloo et al (p. 145 in McLean, 2014, p. 10) statement, the internet makes available the space for a marginalized group to establish a counter public and to engage in debate and develop arguments to counter the mainstream public sphere. In previous chapter it has already been brought up that intimacy is virtual by default, because it represents an imagined feeling, and a rather abstract concept. With that there needs to be an elaboration of the meaning of virtual intimacies online and what role it plays for queer counter-publics.
It is evident that media have become infrastructures of intimacy and connections are now formed not only with other people, but with devices, apps and platforms (Paasonen in press in Attwood et al., 2003, p. 250). As McGlotten (2013, p. 7) observed, digital scholars have noted the cultural atti-tudes towards virtual intimacy being seen as diminished and dangerous corruption[s] of the real thing. Furthermore, McGlotten (2013, p. 7 in Dobson et al., 2018, p. 4) suggested that virtual inti-macies are often publicly viewed as failed intiinti-macies that disrupt the flow of a good life lived right, there is, a life that involves coupling and kids, or at least, coupling and consumption. I fully dis-agree with the statement more, as it illustrates the same anxieties about photography destroying pic-torial art, and the writing process kills the ability to memorize information.
Is intimacy online possible?
Research to date demonstrates that intimate relationships formed online can indeed be similar in meaning, intimacy, and stability to conventional offline relationships and online contact can also enrich existing offline relationships (Lomonowska et al. 2016, p. 142). Therefore, the virtual inti-macy simply cannot erase the real, as it is located in another paradigm and acts for quite different purpose. On the example of LGBTQ+ community, a member of one can experience troubles getting intimate in public places like cafes and cinemas, since those places are flooded with
heteronorma-tivity and can be not friendly at all for queer people. Hjorth and Arnold (2013, p. 125) noted, that in this case virtual reality may constitute a new socio-technical institutionalization of public intimacy and act as a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community to thrive in. In turn, McGlotten (2013, pp. 10-11) theorizes virtual intimacy as forms of connection and belonging that are not necessarily identarian and that do not fit neatly into our beliefs about how we might belong to a couple, a fami-ly, or nation. In other words, virtual intimacy is supposed to create bridges with complete strangers that do not necessarily have the intention of developing romantic relationships, but rather to create a private space with the help of digital practices. It is certainly true, that within the process of sharing personal information via publishing it online even if remaining private, one’s intimacy becomes public (Miguel, 2016, p. 3). This way, while being online, one is constantly exposed to publics through sharing personal data with an acquired audience, even if that audience is strictly mediated by the user herself. Prior to this it is worth going in to discussion about what are safe digital spaces and which part they take in the queer counterpublics formation.
Given the fact that nowadays queer experience is not fixed to a concrete physical location and can be produced anywhere, including the digital spaces, it is necessary here to explore the notion of a ‘safe space’ that is produced online by queer individuals for themselves. Those could be chat rooms, dating apps and other online places of gathering for LGBTQ+ counterpublics. According to Black- well et al. (2016, p. 3), as a stigmatized minority group, LGBTQ+ individuals may lack social con- tact with others like them; in such situations, online spaces hold particular value. What is more, Pullen et al. (2010) noted, that online tools create additional opportunities for LGBT individuals to disclose sexual or gender identities, to mobilize political ideologies, and to construct safe spaces. Interestingly, Rios (in Fischer et al., 2018) summed up the notion of an online safe space this way:
A place where you can read the comments, a space online where you don’t want to hide but instead you feel more motivated than ever to be seen. A space where you trust in someone’s good faith even though you know maybe nothing about them.
Indeed, as van Doorn (2010, p. 18) stated, digital spaces can offer a risk-free environment where people can engage in the intimate relationships, they desire but are afraid to initiate in the real world. However, according to Miles’ (2017, p. 1597) opinion, the internet does not unproblemati-cally constitute a site for community. As Larry Gross (2007 in Miles, 2017, p. 1597) points out: on-line communities, like their material world counterparts, can be ghettos as well as liberated zones.
That is very much true in case with queer counterpublics, since their experience of being left out on societal margins translates to digital spaces too. By forming groups and searching for places of gathering in the physical world, members of the LBTQ+ community learned to find similar spaces online. In that sense, they created their own ‘online ghettos’ in the form of IRC, forums and other media channels. Queer internet represents resistance to the commodification of a normative im-agery, be that homonormative or trans-normative. It is rather curious to think of the possibility of queer internet being called an underground one, where certain subcultures gathered online in order to form communities and spaces for expression, that wide publics usually do not understand or re-late to.
McLean (2014, p. 9) can possibly be right by stating, that digital spaces make it possible for voices to be heard and viewed publicly - voices which may not have been present in the public sphere prior to the existence of social networking sites. Due to the fact, that it is usually the case with queer community and that they need their voices to be heard, digital spaces made this possible for them with the usage of different applications and platforms. What is more, LGBTQ+ community can uti-lize the internet despite being geographically dispersed, to engage in creating safe spaces and plan-ning agitational activities to contest heteronormativity and associated homophobia (Prinsloo et al., 2012).
It would be valuable to note, that since cyberqueer spaces are counterpublics (De Ridder, 2013, p. 6), then research on cyberqueer spaces is valuable, as it deals with rival publics that offer resistance to heteronormativity (ibid, p. 6). Wakeford (2001, p. 405) defined cyberqueer as an act of resistance to discourses that focus on the form of cyberspace at the expense of the methods of representation that operate within it and states that cyberspace is a multifaceted, multilayered, and very segmented place and that this is as true for queer spaces as for electronic online places which are not primarily defined as queer. According to Wakeford (in Mowlabocus, 2010, p. 11), cyberspace possesses a multifaceted, multilayered nature, could just as easily be applied to discussions of gay pride march-es, lesbian social spacmarch-es, bars, nightclubs, health centrmarch-es, or cruising grounds. Thus, all of these sites represent and articulate multiple relations of power, relations that serve to constitute space as subjectively experienced and never fixed or natural (Mowlabocus, 2010, p. 11). It can be concluded, that cyberqueer spaces are indeed a reflection of a real-life queer culture, and their media engage-ment mirrors practices in the physical world.
In order to make sense of current new media objects, it is important to contextualize new media as part of broader media evolutions in which they are often remediations of older media (Bolter and Grusin 1999) and media archetypes (Sawhney 2004 in Hjorth, 2011). There is a lot of nostalgia to-wards an old web and old times in general, even in fashion every twenty years it makes a cycle and eventually repeats itself. So, according to that nature, we are still living in times of an old web, that was much freer and, in a way, transparent, yet being able not to expose a user identity. It surely could be said, that the old internet was a safe space in itself, because things like tracking location and capturing data were impossible at the time.
The Good Old (Gold?) Internet
It is important to highlight, that the old web, that took part in the late 90s and the early 00s, also known as the golden age of the queer internet – was text based, anonymous, and basically repre-sented a forum, a message board. As Richardson et al. (2002, p. 118) observed, the first gay and lesbian online services were based on plain text posted in electronic arenas such as newsgroups and bulletin boards. Moreover, Richardson et al. (2002, p. 123) recognized, that around the middle of 1990s a lot of the services were free to the Internet subscribers and not commercially organised. That kind of web was particularly appealing to queer counterpublics because of its impermanence and anonymity. Early queer internet offered anonymity and ephemerality in a sense that shared con-tent was text based, without any mention of the users' identity. As for ephemerality factor, the main attraction of the web of that era to queer counterpublics was the fact that information was not sup-posed to be stored and conversations that members of the LBTQ+ community engaged in would not last and eventually disappear into nothing.
For the purpose of examining how queer counterpublics translate their presence in the digital world the way how queer people perceive sense of community online should be explored. We all under-stand the notions of such concepts as community and public spaces variously from the point of hav-ing drastically different needs and preferences. This is certainly true that identifyhav-ing the malleability of the term community is central to any understanding of digital cultures that operate outside of the mainstream (Mowlabocus, 2010, p. 11). For instance, queer people might have another outlook on community, since while being often rejected by their relatives, they construct their own family with-in the members of LGBTQ+ community. To elaborate, Mowlabocus (2010, p. 11) stated, that unlike heteronormative configurations, queer articulations of community are flexible, transient and in
some sense always virtual. Furthermore, according to Mowlabocus (ibid), they also highlight the unstable and shifting nature of all space, including that occupied by community.
From that point, the usage of digital technologies of queer people stand aside from the heteronorma-tive one. Sadar (1995, p. 787) pointed out, that real communities are shaped by a sense of belonging to a place, a geographical location, by shared values, by common struggles. However, it should be noted, that virtual communities’ existence is based on the same notions, as digital interaction is also not tied to a specific location, whereas it is indeed centered around shared experiences and con-cerns. Gross (2003, p. 226) argued that gay and lesbian youth are using networked communications in order to bridge the queer diaspora and connect with others.
To be able to figure out the peculiar properties of LGBTQ+ community’s internet usage, I firstly need to discuss their modes of interactions within the physical world. The formation of the LGBTQ+ community offline first and foremost depends on the connection of its members to knowledge about homosexuality and other forms of queerness. When talking about the concept of queer space and how he understands it, Shaka McGlotten (2013, p. 13) stated:
Queer spaces, I learned, were spaces where normal rules of social intercourse were suspended, especially those defined by heteronormative ideals that permitted dis-couraged homosex and emphasized sexual propriety. There were also spaces whose properties were creatively reworked to accommodate sexual pleasures—bathrooms became sites for impromptu late afternoon collective jerk off sessions, and after the bars closed, parks became landscapes of whispered conversations and half-seen figures.
When the gays go online
In other words, it can be said, that virtual intimacies encounter and rework historical antecedents particular to queer, especially gay male, sociality: chiefly cruising and hooking up (McGlotten, 2013, p. 13). With such, it could be pointed out, that for the gay male members of the LGBTQ+ community primary function include engagement in anonymous conversations in chat rooms with a purpose of a ‘one-night stand’ or acquiring permanent significant other. Their needs are reflected in such apps as Grindr, Gaydar, Hornet etc. Concerning lesbian part of queer counterpublics, Sarah Hoagland (1988, p. 290) described lesbians’ modes of interactions as engaging [with one another]
and networking. Thus, it can be concluded that both feminists and lesbians gather in order to pro-voke social changes and this is translated to the digital world.
For feminists, move to the online was a way to remediate cultural memory and archive history of the community. What is more, as Alison Piepmeier (2009, p. 14) noted prior to feminist media pro-ducers, zine creators don’t necessarily view blogs as a replacement for zines but, instead, as a sup-plement, a format that’s doing something slightly different. Feminist aims in the digital spaces are: evaluating the relevance of feminist issues as well as implementing and defending feminist and gender issues in the mainstream public, making women visible, and deconstructing binary gender concepts and enabling subject positioning beyond female and male (Zobl and Drüeke, 2014, p. 174). Putting it simply, the wish of gay people to be invisible in the public eye and to be able to en-gage in romantic encounters comes from the bigger percentage of violence towards them than, for example, lesbians. Because of the fact that members of lesbian community are a bit less often tar-geted for physical violence, but are much less seen in the society being marginalized from two points at the same time, their needs lay in acquiring recognition of their rights and creating spaces for discussion and further change.
It should be underlined, that Fraser (inMcLean, 2014, p. 11) suggested, that counterpublics serve two purposes: as spaces of safety and reorganizing, and as training spaces for protest activities to be directed towards the broader public. As such, queer counterpublics indeed transformed those goals onto their internet usage by encountering with other in anonymous chat rooms or gathering on fo-rums considering feminist and queer agenda. Interestingly, McLean (2014, p. 9) stated, that digital space makes it possible for voices to be heard and viewed publicly – voices which may not have been present in the public sphere prior to the existence of social networking sites.
Prior to this it would be worth examining why queer counterpublics moved online and how they made use of the various digital technologies. In short, gay people engaged with new media in order to continue their search for a sexual partner and translate practices of casual hookups onto the virtu-al world. As for lesbians and their internet usage, the digitvirtu-al world provided a space for education and identity exploration, as well as safe havens for encountering other members of the community. Last but not least, feminist media usage also differs from all the above, even despite the fact that feminist circle includes some people from the lesbian community. This way, feminists use new
me-dia in a way as a tool for DIY activism, as a platform for discourse and social changes in the agen-da.
In their research on Joburg Pride McLean (2014, p. 12) concluded, that the degree of organizing and recognizing the divergent needs of the LGBTIAQ community would not have been as rich if it were not for the digital space and what it offered in way of communication and organizing. That is cer-tainly true in the current agenda, since indeed with the help of a certain new media tool it is so much easier to spread the word. Nowadays pretty much anyone can be a blogger on Instagram and reach out to an extent wide audience. Due to that fact it became a lot easier for people as media users to engage in queer discourse. In that nature, the internet provides a platform for queer coun-terpublics with a purpose of being able to discuss some urgent matters or participate in activism for the LGBTQ+ community.
With that it is notable to discuss how gay and lesbian internet usage differs and which opportunities and challenges it brings to those counterpublics. McLean curiously observed (2014, p. 8), that the internet forms a kind of ‘cyber-shelter’ in that lesbians and lesbian groups are predominantly unable to maintain physical spaces due to fear of stigma, violence, and persecution – the internet makes it possible for lesbians who cannot make connections offline to do so online. Moreover, the internet makes possible access to information that marginalized people, such as lesbian people, would not normally have access to, and provide a space for learning from shared experience (Davis, 2010).
In the study on the usage of technology by gay men, Mowlabocus (2010, p. 2) made an observation, that gay male digital culture can be seen as being an embodied – and erotic – experience due to the practices of cruising and casual encounters in the real life. Which in turn permits him (2010, p 6) to formulate the idea that gay men’s digital spaces have historically provided an environment in which offline intimacies can be facilitated. In turn, McLelland (2001, p. 210) argued that the Internet pro-vides a safer and more private method of communicating with other men than other mediums used for that purpose. Further in his research Mowlabocus (2010, p. 13) concluded, that gay male culture relies on the body of the user as a point of reference within its digital interactions and virtual spaces.
As for the feminist media, Zobl and Drüeke (2012, p. 21) pointed out, that it offers participatory forums for debate and the exchange of politically, socially and culturally engaged ideas by those who are marginalised within mainstream political debates, for example, FBomb feminist blog. What
is more, according to Zobl and Drüeke (2012, p. 136), the feminist blogosphere can be seen as a loose affiliation of blogs dedicated to discussing feminism and gender in equality, which has be-come an important space for women to connect with likeminded women, speak their thoughts on feminism, and organize feminist events. Likewise, the authors (2012, p. 138) noted, that technologi-cal advances such as the internet have provided new spaces for feminist activism within popular culture.
The Great Anonymous
It is worth discussing the anonymity aspect as vital and valuable in the safe functioning of queer counterpublics online. From that point it should be noted that by staying anonymous members of the LGBTQ+ community can avoid the possibility of being outed, bullied or violated. So, for them the ability to hide behind a certain nickname can mean protecting their lives from dangerous indi-viduals. Anonymity may impact participation (Bernstein et al., 2011, p. 51), because by not having an exposed identity an individual can experience much less anxiety towards the fact that his activity can be somehow judges or negatively affected. When it comes to controversial topics, people’s en-gagement with it might be a subject to anxiety. For instance, if one is answering the questions on the social poll that touches on an uncomfortable issue, he or she might experience pressure to en-close his or her identity in order not to receive a judgement from society. Or, perhaps, if one wants to help a non-profit organization that deals with drug addiction, while working at the place where it can cause problems due to corporate culture, that person might want to stay anonymous for the pur-pose of not having destructive consequences in the future.
It should be noted, that prior to Jessup et al. (1990) expertise, anonymity can also have positive out-comes: groups working anonymously and with critical confederates produce more ideas. In their work on how Internet empowers marginalized users, Mehra et al. (2004) made a statement, that the anonymity of the internet can explain the rise in uptake among the LGBTIAQ community, as indi-viduals may feel safer using the internet anonymously. When writing about the disappearance of gay neighborhoods, Usher and Morrison (2010, p. 271) noted, that early studies of queer Internet usage focused on the Internet as a safe haven, where users could hide behind the anonymity of cy-berspace. The anonymity factor helps users of cyber platforms to keep "their" identities from being revealed, however still allowing to share a vulnerable experience.
Suprisingly, in the gaming culture anonymity is the key communication factor of the community and is exactly what keeps gamers together. That can be seen on the example of Netflix series ‘How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)’. In the scene where two main characters are chatting with each other, both of them first dial a message, but then erase it shortly after. Instead of sharing a heartbreaking news with his best friend, Lenny logs back into the gaming process and types in the chat window that his mom wants to adopt a child when he dies. Such is the illustration of how anonymity plays the crucial role in the authentic and transparent communication while being online. This way, a group of complete strangers can be perceived as a closer social circle more than actual friends and family. As a result, Ren et al. (2012) concluded, that anonymity may foster stronger communal identity, as opposed to bond-based attachment with individuals.
This way, it can be said, that anonymity factor encourages people to work towards a collective goal, rather than having concerns about how they are presented individually. When it comes to opportuni-ties of anonymity online, that includes being able to acquire safe space for queer counterpublics, since it provides a distancing layer between queer user and the digital environment that one is in. Moreover, it allows the option of being out of the capitalist radar, as while massive corporations cannot gather one’s data, he or she is free of being forced a marketed narrative that is profitable for the company. From that point it would be worth further elaborating on how capitalism affected queer media usage in the next chapter of this thesis.
Chapter 3. How platformization of the web affected queer digital media usage The topic of the queer Internet usage is quite ambiguous and very double-sided and it surely re-quires a further explanation why it is so. To perform an extensive elaboration on that it is worthy to discuss opportunities and challenges of queer counterpublics online. In order to do that a history of queer internet usage should be provided. On the one hand, throughout times various digital spaces performed a function of identity exploration, that is vital for any individual, but more so for the members of the marginalized minority, since they usually do not have an ability to relate to some-one of their nature and to engage in discussions where they can establish an understanding of some-one's sexuality and gender. Those digital spaces were chat rooms, forums, message boards and others, that made possible connecting with queer people and figuring out pressing issues of being non het-erosexual.
From that point it will be useful to turn to the Elisabeth Friedman’s expertise on the queer digital media usage in Latin America. As Friedman (2017, p. 16) rightfully noted, since the late 1990s the internet has increasingly become the primary communications conduit of feminist and queer coun-terpublics. What is more, according to the author (2017, p. 17), the internet provides a space where people cannot be heard in wider publics come together to explore who they are. It is truthfully so, as the web allows certain counterpublics to come together in a space that is virtual, but still intimate enough to form personal connections and relations. With that it is evident that interactivity and reach of the internet helps communities dispersed in time and space to articulate alternative dis-courses. In similar nature, Zobl and Drüeke (2014, p. 89) stated, that the internet can be seen as a scene of writing, art, protest, organizing and creativity, with isolated individuals finding new groups and support for queer media users.
The exploration of gay and queer men’s use of new media started in 1997 with Shaw’s examination of Internet Relay Chat, that was text based and was employed for gay men communication. He con-cluded, that “relationships formed within the exterior gay community lead the users to the interior CMC gay community, where they, in turn, develop new relationships which are nurtured and devel-oped outside the bounds of CMC” (Mowlabocus, 2010, p. 7). In turn, Campbell (2004, p. 57) incor-porated the notion of IRC being a ‘virtual gay bar’ and with that he erased the line between the real and digital world regarding gay male offline and online culture. In other words, digital spaces act as
a continuation of physical world in a sense that the internet provided them with a platform where queer people could meet new acquittances and transfer the connections from virtual to the real world. Since Grindr (an Internet application for mobile phones) may well be accessed by a man while in a bar, in order to assess the compatibility of other gay men nearby (Mowlabocus, 2010, p. 15), the app can be seen as a convenient extension of reality that helps to queer users to navigate in LGBTQ+ friendly environments.
Throughout the exploration of queer digital technologies, it could be concluded, that gay male in-teractions that are present on the internet are primarily based either on textual communication or on the exchange of photos and images (most often than not – erotic ones). With his study on IRC Campbell (2004, p. 57) noted, that spaces as such are neither maintained nor moderated by private companies, they involve communal effort and are also moderated by a group of interactants who volunteer their time to do so. Thus, those spaces evolve around economic independence in a sense that they do not have sponsors and instead function on the basis of participation. On the other hand, when examining Gaydar, Mowlabocus (2004, p. 14) focused on the visual aspect of online commu-nication that implied the app operating according to a far more homonormative definition of male beauty than those found in the channels discussed by Campbell. Moreover, Gaydar has a multimil-lion-pound turnover, which makes it a company that profits on the ads to their users and by that holds a different purpose and value. According to Zobl and Drüeke (2014, p. 12), in comparison to Gaydar, IRC can be perceived through the lens of alternative economies that focus on the exchange of knowledge and information, the spread of emancipatory concepts and activism, and they envision social change.
Queer Technologies and Queer Histories
When talking about weblogs, their rise in 1997 and how at that time web started to change pro-foundly, Rak (2005, p. 171) pointed out, that a new type of blogging emerged with the invention of software, which made it very easy to publish dated entries. Furthermore, she (2005, p. 171) noted, that the newer blogs became less centered on the explication of web links and reflections about cur-rent events, and more about recounting individual experience and observations each day. She also notes that due to the popularity of blogging it eventually became corporate. The same goes with al-most all the new media objects and platforms, since with the rise of the web marketing strategists figured out how to make profit off of it.
