*CFP* LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER AND QUEER STUDIES INTEREST GROUP, HYBRID 71ST ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE

ICA: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Studies Interest Group

The hybrid 71st Annual International Communication Association Conference (ICA) to be held in Denver between 27-31 May 2021.

 

In the process of opening new spaces for discussions of queer sexuality, the internet and digital technologies have facilitated, a process of connectivity that have created important nodes of identification, belonging, and support (Pullen, & Cooper, 2010). These spaces, in different parts of the world, symbolically, have evolved to become collective sites of resistance to sources of oppressive power, encouraging the active exchange of queer ideologies across distant spaces and facilitating the formation of ‘queer counterpublics’ (Soriano, 2014).

The interconnectivity made possible by internet technologies enables the swift exchange of queer ideologies and networks across ways of life in distant spaces, where queer individuals ‘get to experience something of a queer community’ and obtain advice and information about a variety of queer issues (Fraser, 2010). As early as 2010, researchers Earl, Kimport, Prieto, Rush, & Reynoso (2010) found that the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) movement, for instance, almost exclusively used online protest actions. 

Boyd & Marwick (2011) have explicated SNSs as networked publics, where an imagined collective emerges “as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice ... .... for social, cultural and civic purposes, and they help people connect with a world beyond their close friends and family. (p. 39).  A telling example is the LBGT political party Ladlad in the Philippines which over the years developed a wide set of internet-based campaign strategies, including online narratives and discursive spaces in its website (Soriano, 2014).

Besides connectivity, as Taylor, Falconer, & Snowdon (2014) have shown, social networking sites are a ‘space’ that are helpful in providing a smoother transition to ‘coming out’ as queer and that online technology can be used as an effective tool to negotiate this process in different ways. Sobré-Denton (2016) shines a critical lens for grassroots activism through social media community-building emphasizing that SNS can be sites of cultural transmission and intercultural community-building; operating as spheres that facilitate resistance through ‘speaking back’ to certain power structures (Mitra, 2010).But queer or no, social media with its ability to create and encourage conversation also sustains certain gendered patterns of communication. For example, the stalking and trolling of women, especially lesbians, online is real and often unceasing (Ejaz & Imtiaz, 2015.; Chawki & el Shazly, 2013; Chen & Pain, 2017).

Lesbian and gay activism may now circle the globe, but it is vastly understudied (Brown, 2009). Also, much of LGBTQ studies have been characterized by a predominance of US and Western perspectives (Ammaturo, 2016; Von Wahl, 2017). Emphasizing a deeply intersectional lens to the study of queer and transgender issues and digital media and technologies, centered in efforts that delve into topics such as race, disability, and colonialism as co-assembled with gender and sexuality, this panel seeks to examine how transitional LGBTQ education and activism has transformed, both positively and otherwise, with the rise and proliferation of digital platforms in different countries globally. This panel is particularly interested in examining and learning more about:

• How is social media and digital technologies used in the sphere of LGBT activism, education and empowerment. 
• Digital media objects and online spaces as key sites for understanding identity and power, both in the present technological moment and across the history of computing. 
• Social Media and digital cultures that are created or come about for, or by queer and transgender people who experience or have experienced different types of oppression on digital and offline scenarios 
• Cyberqueer spaces are constituted as points of resistance against the dominant assumption of heteronormativity (Soriano, 2014). 
• How are LGBTQ issues framed on social media and what do we learn from that framing? 
• Digital media objects and online spaces as key sites for understanding LGBTQ identity and power, both in the present technological moment and across the history of computing. 
• How do activists use social media to educate and mobilize audiences? 
• How can the potential of social media be further extended for LBGT activism? 
• Digital media objects and online spaces as key sites for understanding LGBTQ identity and power, both in the present technological moment and across the history of computing.

 

Proposals (300 words) to present on this panel must be sent to Dr. Paromita Pain paromita.pain@gmail.com by Nov 1 for consideration.