Journal articles on the topic 'Names, Personal – Social aspects – Zimbabwe'

Names are entwined with the languages and cultures from which they emanate, providing useful starting points for ethnographic exploration. The study of names can broadly be referred to as onomastics. However, the field is fractured by disciplinary and methodological divisions. Consequently, the study of names has not developed to the extent which might be expected for a phenomenon of such social significance. Furthermore, the emotional aspects of names and naming are largely absent from the literature. Autoethnography may be a useful methodology for bridging disciplinary and methodological divisions, bringing interesting and insightful data to the study of names and naming.

Names are more likely to be considered as cultural tags used to signify some deep-rooted aspects within the culture of a given speech community. In Saudi Arabia, naming is linked with religion, traditions, values, beliefs, and events in people's lives. This paper aims at investigating Saudi female personal names from a sociolinguistic perspective and it suggests that these names are not mere arbitrary tags, but socio-cultural labels that occupy socio-cultural meanings and functions. For this reason, the current study draws on a stratified sample size of 280 Saudi female personal names collected by the researcher qualitatively by means of oral interviews as the tool for data collection. The analysis takes the form of a typology of Saudi female personal names and they were classified into different categories such as names relating to religious backgrounds, Bedouin-bound names, kinship names, family names, circumstantial names, foreign names, etc. As a result, the study will be a valuable contribution to the body of Arabic anthroponomy as it shows how the selection of Saudi female personal names is influenced by the ideology, culture, religion, attitudes, and social values of Saudi communities. The study concludes that that (delete) the spread of foreign names may constitute a threat to the cultural identity of Saudis, an argument that calls for further investigation to either confirm or disconfirm it.

Many Ethnic Community Languages (ECLs) in Tanzania are demographically and socioculturally pressured mainly by Kiswahili and English to a lesser extent. The ECLs which were previously used in elementary education, local administration and religious activities currently do not have any place in any official domain and thus are limited to home and other few immediate domains. Due to this unequal coexistence of the languages, many ECLs are considered endangered, calling for efforts from stakeholders to prevent the death of such a precious cultural heritage. By documenting the social aspects of Asu personal names, this paper is a contribution to such initiatives like The Languages of Tanzania Project aiming at documenting Tanzanian ECLs in every possible area and means. The paper used participant observation, in-depth interview and self-intuition to investigate personal names of a Bantu speaking people called Vaasu (Asu) of Northern Tanzania, considering naming as an important aspect of the society. The paper looked at Asu names within the purview of linguistic anthropology considering names as not being arbitrary labels but sociocultural tags that have sociocultural functions and meanings. By using thematic analysis technique, the paper analysed and discussed the typology of the names including family names, circumstantial names, theophorous names, flora and fauna names, to mention but a few. The paper further examined the changing nature of Asu naming system and practice as dictated by cultural contact mainly with Swahili and Christian/ western culture. The paper eventually recommends for further investigation on issues surrounding naming practices and strategic measures to prevent this important African cultural resource.

AbstractThe present study discusses the attestations of persons of Judean origin in Neo-Babylonian cuneiform tablets (of the period between 550 and 490 bce) as possible evidence of some aspects of the social history of the community of Judeans exiled to Babylonia by Nebuchadnezzar II. Although the number of such attestations is very small, it is nonetheless possible to single out two groups which display different patterns of personal name giving across generations. In one instance, a group of merchants in the city of Sippar (belonging mostly to a single family) uses, in part, distinctly Judean personal names in the first generation of the exile, but abandons them completely in favor of Babylonian theophoric names in the next generation. In another instance, a group of individuals active mostly in Susa and probably belonging to the families of royal officials (as suggested by names and patronymics of the type of Beamtennamen – names expressing a pious wish for the well-being of the king) displays the use of Yahwistic personal names even though the fathers of those individuals bore Babylonian theophoric names. It is suggested that the persistence of Yahwistic – hence distinctly Judean – names among royal officials or their direct offspring, even after the previous generation bore Babylonian names, reflects a considerable measure of tolerance toward ethnically foreign elements in the royal administration (the relevant examples date from the period after the establishment of the Achaemenid empire). In contrast, the progressing adoption of Babylonian names among the Judean merchants in Sippar in the first half of the sixth century bce seems likely to reflect assimilation into the native Babylonian society, fostered by the necessity to pursue commercial dealings with the Ebabbar temple of Šamaš and the social circles centered around the temple, which consisted of conservatively minded upper strata of the native Babylonian society. Editions of the cuneiform tablets discussed in the present study are provided in the Appendix.

This study aims to investigate the cultural content embedded in the 'English World 8' textbook which is adopted by some Jordanian private schools and to highlight the levels of representation assigned to British, World and Arabic cultures. To achieve these goals, the researchers have designed a cultural checklist based on a criterion comprising 19 items representing personal names, places and countries, entertainment, ecology, customs, technology, social behavior, education, history, family, politics, man and woman relationship, communications, transportations, nutrition, sciences, economy, literature and religion. Results show that personal names, places & countries, entertainment and ecology, on the one hand, are the most prevailing cultural aspects in the textbook. On the other hand, religion is not represented at all. Results also reveal that 'English World 8' is heavily loaded with British and World cultures while the Arabic cultural elements are almost lacking.

The purpose of this article is to present the characteristics of a group of anthroponyms in order to point out some directions for studies of Brazilian anthroponymy. This article is based on theoretical assumptions of Onomastics and on the interface between this field of study and Law. The anthroponyms analyzed are civil name, social name, ballot name and parliamentary name. Data were collected from the Superior Electoral Court, the Chamber of Deputies and court decisions from tribunals. Recent Brazilian anthroponymy studies demonstrate that research on personal names relating linguistic and legal aspects is still incipient. This article provides some suggestions that could bridge such a gap by analyzing lexical or grammatical aspects of data originating from legal norms or judicial decisions.

The article considers the theoretical and legal aspects of cyberbullying. The relevance of the research topic is connected with the lack of proper scientific study of this problem and the need to consider cyberbullying as an unlawfully socially dangerous act. Based on the study, the author's definition of cyberbullying is proposed. The results of a population survey on bullying on the Internet are presented. The main forms of cyberbullying are considered. One form of cyberbullying is doxing, which is the public disclosure of personal and confidential data via the Internet. The analysis of the motivation of cyber aggressors was carried out and two types of victims of cyberbullying were identified. The main short-term and long-term psychological and physical consequences of victims of cyberbullying are described. The differences of cyberbullying from the traditional forms of bullying are examined, the emphasis is placed on the presence of witnesses, who are divided into groups in the article, based on the roles they play in the bullying process. The current Russian legislation regarding liability for cyberbullying is analyzed. It is noted that in Russia this action is not considered an independent corpus delicti. Basic preventive measures are proposed that can eliminate or minimize the likelihood of becoming a victim of cyberbullying. Emphasis is placed on the need to complicate the registration procedure on social networks, on forums and other Internet resources by linking the profile to a mobile phone number, public services website account, and also specifying the real username or an officially registered nickname, which will eliminate online anonymity and malicious use of assumed names. The international experience of countering cyberbullying and the possibility of using it to improve domestic legislation in this area are considered.

The article is devoted to clarifying the content of the concept «social success of a teenager». The purpose of the study is to consider the social success of a teenager as a pedagogical phenomenon. During the study, the following methods were applied: theoretical analysis of scientific literature, generalization, synthesis, interpretation, summary. The content of the concepts «achievement» and «success» is analyzed. The structure of the teenager’s social success is revealed: axiological component (values of multiplying socially significant activity in behavior success strategies); epistemological component (a range of social and informational knowledge for successful self-realization in society); praxeological component (production of an adequately normative implementation of the uniqueness of ideas and achievements). The names of researchers considering the essence and content of the definition are given: V.K. Buinova, O.A. Vostrikova, E.V. Deeva, A. Zbutsky, L.N. Kazimirskaya, L.V. Kalinina, L.G. Pak. The psychological and pedagogical aspects of teenagers’ social success formation are revealed: the socializing aspect reveals a better development of social norms and traditions through the prism of success; the gnostic and integration aspect emphasizes the resulting integration of teenagers’ knowledge about society and man obtained from formal, informal and non-formal education; resource and psychological aspect allows you to reveal the personal energy of the mental experience of success and direct to the development of personality; socio-pedagogical aspect reinforces the presence of personalized support for teenagers in the prevention of their victimization in high-risk society; prognostic and acmeological aspect consists in designing trajectories of reaching the top of abilities implementation at each age stage; appraising and productive aspect highlights the effective functioning in society. As a result, the social success of the teenagers is considered as a personal quality, integrating systematic knowledge of the norms of society, an emotional-value attitude to success, focusing on productive social interaction, including new components (axiological, epistemological, praxeological) in the structure of teenagers’ social success in the information and virtual era as a pedagogical phenomenon.

The case study intends to demonstrate how the databases and name statistics of Hungarian historical anthroponymy built over the last decades can be useful in the study of cults of saints. The paper concentrates on given names, since the effect of saints’ cults on personal name giving can mostly be detected by studying the historical changes, and the geographical and social diversity of the given name stock. The comparison of the two cults is motivated by several reasons. First, from a methodological viewpoint, it makes the evaluation of the measure of the impact more precise. Second, the two saints are linked by several aspects of cult history: both of them are Eastern soldier saints, frequently depicted together. However, their Hungarian cults developed differently: while Saint George became the prototype of soldier and knight saints in Hungary (and throughout Europe as well), the veneration of Saint Demetrius remained limited and was confined to the orthodox areas of the country since the early modern period. This difference can also be revealed in the popularity of the two names in Hungary. The name György ‘George’ has been far more frequent than Demeter ‘Demetrius’ from the beginning and is among the 100 most frequent given names of the whole popu-lation today, although its popularity has been decreasing. By contrast, Demeter can be counted as a definitely rare name. Their geographical distribution at the beginning of the 18th century shows the same picture: while the name György was the second most frequent name in the whole population, Demeter was used in the regions habitated mostly by orthodox Romanians and Rusyns.

Lucia Elizabeth Vestris (1797–1856) and Sara Lane (1822–99) were two pioneering women in nineteenth-century theatre history. Both were accomplished singers who made their names initially in comic and breeches roles and, during periods when theatrical management was almost exclusively confined to men, both ran successful theatre companies in London. Despite these parallels in their professional activities, there are substantial disparities in the scrutiny to which their personal lives were subjected and in how their contemporaries and posterity have memorialized them. In this article, Janice Norwood examines a range of portraits and cartoons of the two women, revealing how the images created and reflected the women's public identities, as well as recording changes in aesthetic practice and social attitudes. She argues that the women's iconology was fundamentally shaped by the contemporary discourse of gender difference. Janice Norwood is Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Drama, and Theatre Studies at the University of Hertfordshire. She has published on various aspects of nineteenth-century theatre history and edited a volume on Vestris for the Lives of Shakespearian Actors series (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011).

As the number of male sole parents in the community increases, it is not uncommon for professionals to be faced with requests for counselling and parenting support from men who are single fathers. Issues and challenges that face sole fathers are many and varied, including cultural aspects, gender issues, age and personal factors such as the capacity as a father to be therefor the child.Many issues which need to be addressed when working with single fathers are not dissimilar to those experienced by single mothers. However, there are salient issues which appear unique to the sole father population. These include the lack of support for male sole parents and the father’s self concept. A dilemma that may confront professionals is how to be mindful of the protective needs of children in these families (in order to prevent the emergence of ‘high risk’ concerns), while providing effective and innovative support.Case studies will be drawn upon to illustrate the issues confronting sole fathers, and the kinds of outcomes that may result from providing counselling and support to this target group. (Names and identifying features have been changed to ensure client confidentiality.)

The city as a peculiar form of social organization is interesting for the representatives of many trends of scientific research: economists, sociologists, culturologists, historians, linguists. The subject of our interest is the functioning of the Ukrainian language in the cities of Bukovyna and Galicia at the end of the 19th century — the first half of the 20th century, in the urban environment of the Ukrainian diaspora settlement. Historical and socio-political conditions of the formation of the Ukrainian city koinй as one of the preconditions for the development of Ukrainian literature (particularly in the territory of Western Ukraine) — are still one of largely unexplored problems of Ukrainian linguistics — in both theoretical and practical aspects, which predetermines the relevance of the topic of our study. The aim of this article is the analysis of Ukrainian advertising texts at the end of the 19th century — the first half of the 20th century and identification of such lexical and syntagmatic units that can be classified as elements of the city koine. To perform linguistic analysis we have involved over 80 language units (words, nominative word combinations, word variants) used for the nomination of over 30 items of commodity circulation belonging to the following lexical-semantic groups: names of clothing, footwear and other details of the wardrobe; names of household items of urban dwellers (personal use items). For every word of the aforementioned lexical-semantic groups we have provided illustrating contexts, commentaries concerning the meaning, use, origin, their record in different kinds of dictionaries, sometimes giving information from Polish lexicography, Polish and German electronic corpora. We have analyzed the names of urban life items, documented in the Ukrainian advertisement at the end of the 19thcentury — the first half of the 20th century, that certify that the majority of such names are borrowings adapted on the Ukrainian language background: from German, Polish, French, Italian, Spanish, etc. Mainly Polish and German played an intermediary role in the assimilation of these words. We believe that lexical units and nominative word combinations recorded in the advertising texts of the 19th century — the first half of the 20thcentury, may serve as a basis for the register of lexicographic works of a specialized type, for instance, the Dictionary of Ukrainian Advertisement; the Dictionary of Western Ukrainian Variants of Literary Language of the 19th century — the first half of the 20th century, etc.

Stigmatization is the assignment of negative perceptions to an individual because of a perceived difference from the population at large. Skin conditions are frequently the reason of social rejection with a consequent negative influence on the personal and social life of patients. The aim of the current study was to review the available instruments that can be successfully utilized to measure the stigmatization level among dermatological patients. We performed our search on PubMed up to November 2016 and utilized combinations of key phrases containing such words as stigmatization, skin, dermatology, names of various skin conditions (psoriasis, vitiligo, acne, etc.), measurement. The search found a considerable number of articles – 548. After filtering them through a precise selection process, 58 articles remained. We concentrated only on the methodological aspects to assess stigmatization in various dermatoses. The review ascertained that there exist numerous instruments in the form of questionnaires. They were utilized in various researches in order to assess the stigmatization level in patients with skin problems. We divided them into two main groups: dermatology specific instruments (6 questionnaires) and dermatosis/disease specific ones (8 questionnaires). It is recommended to use dermatology-specific instruments to compare the stigmatization level in various skin conditions. They can be utilized as well as a first line tools to study the feeling of stigmatization in specific skin diseases; however, where it is possible, they should be supplemented with the disease-specific instrument for deeper analysis of both qualities of life and stigmatization.

Fashion is a rather significant mechanism that organizes the life of any society and regulates the social behavior of people. It subordinates not only the choice of clothing, interior, personal hygiene items, gastronomic tastes, musical preferences, but also the way of thinking, the formation of criteria for assessing the phenomena of reality. At the same time, fashion is not only a powerful social regulator, but also a significant cultural phenomenon, the study of which is of particular importance nowadays. In this context, the vocabulary of fashion is interesting, as, on the one hand, it enriches the Russian language due to the abundant borrowing of foreign words, on the other hand, it indicates how actively the Russian language adapts new names for fashion items, and demonstrates how Russian mentality and culture accept this vocabulary. In order to consider the Russian vocabulary in the sphere of fashion in all three aspects, it is important to trace the derivation of the lexical meaning of the denotations of the fashion semantic field in their connection with the historical period and the change in the native speakers way of thinking in different historical times of the country. To this end, it is necessary to turn to the etymology of the basic elements of the Russian wardrobe, identify their coherence with the gender of their owners and trace how this coherence has been changing over time, as well as analyze the ways of grammatical adaptation of borrowed vocabulary in the Russian language, and finally, note the functional specifics of the same lexemes in Russian and other donor languages.

The article is devoted to the research of one of the most relevant aspects of etiquette in network communication–nominations participants of communication use to refer to each other. Based on a broad understanding of speech etiquette in social networks–as a means of harmonization of speech activity in various communication situations, the authors consider users’ nominations in social networks as markers of constructive or destructive verbal behavior in online communities. The research is based on linguistic and stylistic analysis, which allows: (1) describing the linguistic characteristics of nominations as lexical units in terms of word formation, grammar, and semantics; (2) revealing the peculiarities of the pragmatics of using the nominations in network communication taking into account the linguistic parameters of these nominations; (3) characterizing their stylistic properties that correlate with the goals of communication (common interests, problem solving, tips, causticity) and the selected manner of verbal behavior (solidarity, outrageous behavior, verbal aggression). To guarantee representativeness, the authors took the material for the research from resources created for groups with different principles of formation: gender (“Strana mam”), age (“4chan”) and territorial ones (“Yubileyniy Kvartal i Shuvalovsky”). The analysis shows that the users’ nominations in online communities demonstrate the participants’ solidarity within the relatively closed we-communities as the dominant setting of communication. Within each community, there is a focus on live communication, which activates the use of the phatic speech genres of everyday communication: appeal (generalized or personal), request, advice, comment, call, offer, insult, and so on. The variety of nominations from the point of view of the addressee (generalizing and personal), as well as in terms of communicative orientation (contactestablishing and contact-destroying), is determined by the set of situations of communication, frequent in different communities, and by communicants’ value orientations. In “Strana mam”, a women’s forum focused on the preservation of family values, solidarity is manifested in the desire for a more intimate communication; this activates the use of diminutives, language play, and vocabulary with a positive connotation. In the territorial “Yubileyniy Kvartal i Shuvalovsky” group, the value of community is cultivated, and solidarity is manifested in the imitation of respectful, often close to business, communication, which entails frequent generalizing nominations with a positive attributive component and the use of interlocutors’ full names as personal nominations. In the teenage “4chan” community, solidarity is manifested in the intentional outrageous communication (by using nominations with obscene words), which demonstrates an open violation of family, moral, spiritual, and other values.

In the article expression of space imagination with toponyms based on Ukrainian Hetman Danylo Apostol travel journal (1728 year) is considered. The travel journal of the 1728 year belongs to dairy or travelogue which was very popular in European culture in the XVIII century. In the research short characteristics of this type of Cossack chronicle are explained. Toponymic deixis (a part of space) is always used with temporal and personal deixis in the narration. This article shows an attempt to make a complex typology of toponyms and similar topography objects in Ukrainian lands and Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. In the paper «geographical centre» i.e. where hold the biggest number of events of narration were analyzed. An analysis shows that the toponymic deixis centre of narration was in Hetman capital Hlukhiv city. Also, it was given a short explanation of a term horod (город) in this dairy. This research finds grammar categories and lexical tools expressing events and a person’s movement in, between or near towns, villages and other geographical objects. It investigates a category of a forest when it becomes a toponym with own location and characteristics. In this article considered how the author of travel journal marks familiar and far people settlement and in what way writer points well-determined and symbolic spaces. It concluded a strong correlation in detailed description (with name of type and for unknown (for the author or his potential readers) towns. A content analysis demonstrates aspects of using the most common words «Malaya Roseya» and «Ukraina» marking Ukrainian Hatmanate territory. Comparing using names of Cossack state and Ukrainians lands («Malaya Roseya» and «Ukraina») with other dairies of the same epoch and the same social group testify political and ideological views of travelogue‘s author.

Comprehensive studying the experience of state and military structures in preserving and care of military cemeteries and places of memory about the heroic actions of the Red Army outside Russia, is gaining more and more theoretical significance and practical value. The purpose of this article is to summarize the results of the study dedicated to perpetuating the memory of Soviet soldiers who perished when liberating European countries from Nazism during the Great Patriotic War (chronology of events in 1944-1991). There are no special scientific works devoted to this topic that comprehensively consider the activities of the official structures of the Soviet Union abroad. The methodological basis of the research is the modern theory of society cognition, based on the concept of universal connections in its socio-economic, political and cultural life, and the dialectical approach to the analysis of social phenomena. The author analyses various aspects of the problem taking into account the immediate historical situation, reveals objective patterns that determined the goals and content of the process of preserving the memory of fallen Soviet soldiers, he studies the activities of the official structures of the Soviet Union abroad to perpetuate the memory of the Red Army soldiers who perished during the Great Patriotic War when liberating European countries from Nazism. In the course of the study, the author solved a number of tasks: transformation in the order of personal casualty records in the Red Army was investigated; the features of organizing the process of burial of the deceased and creation of military cemeteries in the territory of European states were established, as well as the existing classification of military graves was confirmed; the reasons for the large-scale loss of names of Red Army soldiers who died when liberating European countries from Nazism were determined; the main stages of the process of consolidation and preservation of Soviet military cemeteries in the territory of European countries were determined; the process of creating memorial structures and objects in Central and Eastern Europe was analyzed and its features were established; implementation of commemorative practices which formed in the Soviet times the historical memory about Red Army’s liberation mission in European countries; the author defines the peculiarities of inter-state cooperation on the issues of restoration and preservation of Soviet military graves and monuments in European countries; he defines the classification of the process of perpetuating the memory of Soviet soldiers in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The study performed suggests that it was during the enlargement of the Soviet military cemeteries after the war that a large-scale loss of the names of the fallen Red Army soldiers occurred. The process of creating memorials and arranging military necropolis in the European countries had a systematic character. The Soviet Union used various commemorative practices, with the help of which the historical memory of the Red Army’s liberation mission in Europe was formed.

The wayang story is the traditional story which influences toward the writing of modern Indonesian literature. This study is aimed at describing the adoption of aspects of stories in the wayang stories plays in modern Indonesian novels with a focus on Mangunwijaya and Sindhunata’s novels; i.e. Burung-burung Manyar, Durga Umayi, and Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin. The study uses the receptional, intertextual, and discourse-analysis approaches. Results show the following findings. Character referencing from shadow-wayang stories included naming and characterizing, viz. complete adoption of names and characters of wayang figures, hypogram of simultaneous naming and characterizing, and characterizing with no naming. The hypogramming of novel plots on the shadow wayang plots includes shadow-wayang show plots and shadow-wayang story plots. Every work has its own uniqueness and it is on this uniqueness that lies the values of a fiction work. This can be seen from the development of characterization of the figures and specific and unique plots. The value substances of the wayang story are related to personal, social, and religious life matters leading to perfect lives. Shadow-wayang values in novels are discharged through signification, comparison, symbolization, characters, life principles, and behaviours functioning more as cultural guidances. Keywords: shadow wayang, modern Indonesian novels, hypogram, characterization, plot, values WAYANG DALAM NOVEL INDONESIA MODERN(Tinjauan Novel Mangunwijaya dan Sindhunata) AbstractCerita wayang adalah adalah cerita tradisional yang berpengaruh terhadap penulisan sastra Indonesia modern. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan pemunculan aspek cerita wayang dalam novel Indonesia modern dengan fokus pada novel Mangunwijaya dan Sindhunata, yaitu Burung-burung Manyar, Durga Umayi, dan Anak Bajang Menggiring Angin. Penelitian menggunakan pendekatan resepsi, intertekstual, dan analisis wacana. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan hal-hal sebagai berikut. Perujukan penokohan dari cerita wayang mencakup penamaan dan perwatakan, yaitu pengambilan lengkap nama dan karakter tokoh wayang, hipogram penamaan dengan perwatakan sekaligus, dan perwatakan tanpa disertai penamaan. Hipogram plot novel pada plot wayang mencakup plot pertunjukan wayang dan plot cerita wayang. Tiap karya memiliki keunikannya sendiri dan di situlah antara lain letak nilai sebuah karya fiksi. Hal itu terlihat pada pengembangan karakter tokoh, plot yang khas dan unik. Substansi nilai-nilai cerita wayang berkaitan dengan masalah kehidupan pribadi, sosial, dan religius yang bermuara untuk mencapai kesempurnaan hidup. Nilai-nilai wayang dalam novel disampaikan lewat pembandingan, pelambangan, simbolisasi, karakter, sikap hidup, dan perilaku tokoh yang lebih berfungsi sebagai acuan kultural. Kata Kunci: wayang, novel Indonesia modern, hipogram, penokohan, plot, nilai-nilai

The article is focuses on the study of the issues of participation of women of Ukraine in military formations in the First World War by modern Ukrainian historiography (1991-2016). Based on the topic, the author tried to solve the following research tasks: to identify which aspects of women's military history are within the interest of historians, to analyze the scale, character and level of research of the topic. The author found that the study of women's military history is gaining momentum. Historians are actively searching women's stories in the sources of those times; they are in the process of gathering information. They call military history “personal” because research on the subject is partially based on reports of the press about women volunteers and mainly on participants' personal documents, memoirs and letters. In the letters, women wrote about the way to the front, military life, a little about participation in battles, relations with soldiers; they also left information about each other. At the same time, each of the women had personal experience of war, own motives and results. Therefore, historians concluded that "this experience is quite difficult to summarize ". Modern researchers approach the study of women's stories not only in terms of heroism but trying to understand the causes and consequences of women's actions. The authors mention such main reasons as boredom of everyday life, escape from duties and national impulse. Inspired by the new fashionable views on life, the girls tried to escape from their everyday duties; they wanted to overcome social barriers and to prove that women were capable to cope with any work. The escape to the front was an attempt to change the way of life. Women who came to the front and participated in hostilities had to adapt quickly to difficult conditions and trials; they had to fight and to protect their own lives. The authors also analyze how society perceived the phenomenon of women in the war. Military commanders heroized their actions with the reason to raise the fighting spirit. However, the views of military men varied: the village guys welcomed and supported the girls; on the contrary, the men from the intelligent circle condemned women regarding them as competitors. Civil women believed that the girls had forgotten their traditional duty, they could have been more helpful in hospitals and doing charity. The author of the article also found that the participation of women in the military unit of the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen was better studied. The researchers concluded that the Ukrainian women who lived in the Russian Empire supported the call in 1917 of the Provisional Government and Maria Bochkareva to form women's combat battalions. Women were motivated to go to the front by the same reasons as women in the ranks of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen: failures in love, the desire to escape from violence and humiliation in the family, domestic problems, the desire to avenge the dead relatives and loved ones. In big cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Poltava, the Ukrainian women willingly enrolled in the army. Anyway, the inclusion of women in the combat units of the army of the Russian Empire was found out fragmentary, there are almost no names and characteristics of the activity of the women's battalions. Only a few researchers pay attention to the messages in the then newspapers about escapes and the heroic deeds of girls in the war. These issues require the search of information and detailed study. The author came to the conclusion that most of the questions remain scientifically open requiring the search for information about women in the ranks of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and the army of the Russian Empire for the generalization of information and creation of a coherent picture of the military service of women at the front of the First World War.

Abstract Background Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT) is a language that transcends the verbal realm. This facet of communicating through dance and movement is significant particularly when the population you are working with often communicates in ways that are creative, unique, and not necessarily conventional. This is often the case when working with people who have been diagnosed on the schizophrenia spectrum. Although they fall under the same diagnosis, positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia are embodied in quite different ways; as their names indicate, positive and negative symptoms are dichotomous and fall on opposite ends of a movement spectrum. Methods We will explore the many bodily manifestations of schizophrenia and DMT approaches to best support the specific needs associated with this complex diagnosis. The co-facilitators have each engaged in their own clinical practice and research exploring how DMT interventions can best serve the population in grounding, thought and behavioral organization, ego strengthening, and development of interpersonal relationships. As one can imagine, having a diagnosis of schizophrenia can be isolating and interrupt healthy relationship development due to stigmatization. The co-facilitators have found DMT to be a humanizing factor in this often dehumanized population. The use of creativity with people with schizophrenia allows the psychotherapeutic relationship to focus on personal strengths, individuality, and unconditional acceptance. Results Dance/movement therapists assess patient functioning through non-verbal indicators in everyday behavior, postural and gestural patterns, and qualitative elements that emerge during therapeutic interactions. Oftentimes, their experiences with positive symptomatology affect their ability to relate in a shared reality base with others not experiencing these positive symptoms. Single-session DMT interventions have supported a decrease in psychological distress, and positive and negative symptomatology for people with schizophrenia in an inpatient psychiatric facility (Biondo, 2019). Within a group DMT approach to treatment, dance/movement therapist considers movement and body-based experiences, as natural and effective sources of self-awareness and expression, which can illuminate the interrelationships between the many dimensions of human behavior (Bryl, 2018). This approach integrates movement techniques, creative embodiment, the non-verbal aspects of self-awareness and interpersonal communication and targets core specific features of chronic schizophrenia and negative symptomatology. As such it provides links to outcomes directly related to affective, cognitive, behavioral, and functional processes in the treatment for schizophrenia in residual stages (Bryl, 2018). Discussion Schizophrenia can manifest through many different representations: with positive and/or negative symptoms, and with acute episodes or chronicity. The diagnosis will interrupt healthy ego strength, the ability to relate with others, and the ability to function without supports. Dance/movement therapy is a wonderful approach to working with this population in its many forms, as it addresses the psychological, cognitive, social, and functional levels of participants. Although positive and negative symptoms often manifest quite differently on a movement level, DMT has the ability to support the many needs of those diagnosed with schizophrenia. The many limitations of psychopharmacological interventions for people with schizophrenia are evidence that inclusive, strengths-based, and body-informed therapy options would greatly benefit this population.

<p>One of the prospective results of the ESF project „Linguoculturological and Socio-economic Aspects of Territorial Identity in the Development of the Region of Latgale” (2009–2012) is a linguo- territorial dictionary of Latgale, which would reveal particularity of Latgale’s historical, economic, folkloric, and literary factors in 300 cultural signs and concepts (when referring to selection of entries and the dictionary concept further see Šuplinska 2010). In the developed questionnaire „Latgola is…” (466 units) the word ‘susātivs’ (in Latgalian means ‘a shadow’)was included due to two reasons: 1) as infrequently used word in the cognition of the 21st century user of Latgalian literary language, being ousted by the word ‘āna’, which is closer to the Latvian literary language; 2) as a symbol of dualism/entirety apprehension of a personality activated in the latest literature and music (according to K. G. Jung’s archetype).</p><p>When tracing formation of the concept of ‘susātivs’ the following sources have been reviewed (see the enclosed overview of sources): folkloric collections (S. Uļanovska, P. Smelters, B. Opincāne, et al.), periodical publications of the beginning and middle of the 20th century (most of the examples are found in „Drywa” newspaper (1908–1917) and its annexes) as well as the works of M. Andžāne, K. Nautris, O. Zvīdris, P. Jurciņš, J. Klīdzējs, R. Mūks; publications where the word ‘susātivs’ has been used in the title: modern poetry anthology „Susātivs” (2008) and CD „Bolts susātivs” (lyrics by A. Kūkuojs, music by Sovvaļnīks, 2010).</p><p>The article is aimed at review of the concept of ‘susātivs’ (meaning ‘shadow’ in the Latvian literary language), revealing the conception of its lexical meanings, context and symbolic significance in folklore (mainly in riddles), literature, periodicals and stereotypes prevailing in the society. Semantic and symbolic ambiguity of ‘susātivs’ is demonstrated by Latgalian riddles, under the impact of Christianity’s as symbol of negation used in the early 20th century periodicals, interpretation of spiritual ‘susātivs’ appears in writings of K. Nautris, O. Zvīdrs. Shadow as the genuine (often banned or hidden) part of the personality in their texts is revealed by M. Andžāne, J. Klīdzējs, R. Mūks. White shadow as search of the self is activated in two publications: the modern poetry anthology „Susātivs” and CD „Bolts susātivs”.</p><p>Some analytical psychology insights are worth to be highlighted that to e great extent have influenced the interpretation of the concept of ‘susātivs’ in this article. Firstly, according to the principle of analogy, the individual structure of psyche (consciousness, personal unconsciousness, collective consciousness; Jung 1996: 165) can be perceived as a psyche of ethnos, nation, supposedly of a country or of the world. Secondly, since the shadow includes hidden, suppressed, undesirable (even villainous) sides of personality and at the same time the normal instincts and impulses of creativity (Henderson 1997: 117), then exactly this unconscious side of psyche of Latgalian as a representative of the ethnos has affected the lack of self-esteem and has exacerbated the problems to which explanation in the reality of consciousness is not found anymore, or is not so simply detectable. Thirdly, being aware of the shadow, you can start to use it for revival of integrity and stability of the psyche, but the shadow can not be ignored, denied or suppressed for a long time. Even worse, if one opts for assimilation of it that has often happened to the Latgalian separate religious affiliation or language, or for exerting influence: when the first newspapers started, also new words were started to be mentioned frequently – Latgola and Latgalians. Why the old, real Latvians had to be started to call in other names? What to do! The Courlanders have taken the name of Latvians for them. Latvians from Inflantia were called the „Polish”people. For that reason in order not to fight the Courlanders for the word of Latvians, young journalists from Inflantia started to call themselves Latgalians (Dekters 1970: 12).</p><p>When returning to the texts subject to analysis and understanding of the concept of ‘susātivs’, we should start with the analysis of this lexeme in folklore. It most frequently appears in the riddles and forms a ambiguous understanding of the lexeme: on the one hand, a sense of fatalism has been developed (You cannot escape your shadow by analogy with everybody should carry their own cross, or you cannot escape your fate), on the other hand, the notion of absolute good and absolute evil (obscure, inexplicable) as devil (also shadow). At the same time, several riddles underline that the shadow is a friend who never leaves, even more – one is walking, two will speak – is drawing attention to intuitive understanding of the creator of this riddle with regard to the fact that shadow is a part of the human psyche. Periodicals at the beginning of the 20th century underline the link of lexeme ‘susātivs’ with the human life, which is temporary, according to cognitions of Christianity, it is just a preparation for the real life, therefore exactly the negative, condemnable connotation is gradually pointed out in use of figurative meanings of lexeme ‘susātivs’.</p><p>During 20’s and 30’s of the 20th century the stereotype that ‘shadow’ is something condemnable (e. g., undesirable phenomena of social or economic life are represented by a shadow: life shadows – backwardness, obscurantism, envy (Madsolas J. 1944)), or something that cannot exist separately, dependent entity (e. g., slave, servant, dog), is prevailing in periodicals, gradually also in the reader’s conscience. And this is just the time when not the most complimentary views with regard to Latvians from Latgale are developed and maintained at a national level (including today) that have established a preconceived attitude in Latvians from other regions and created the inferiority complexes in Latvians from Latgale.</p><p>Initially in Latgalian himself his „shadow” was put to shame – different language (the opinion is gradually strengthened and only supported by Soviet times that this is a distorted Latvian literary language, also mixture of Slavic and Latvian language), which may not be Latvian (denial of the designation and introduction of the term Latgalian dialects), underdeveloped agriculture (cheap labour) and comparatively low level of education, certainly, also belonging to another faith and large families as a phenomenon of certain obscurantism. Gradually (most explicitly after K. Ulmanis’ coup in 1934 and unfortunately also after Latvia’s accession to the EU) the shadow was not put to shame in Latgalian himself or in individual from Latgale, but applied to the whole region (after accession to the EU also the other regions quite often are in this status of shadow).</p><p>At the beginning of 20th century, with the growth in numbers of anthropology, psychology and psychoanalytical studies, also the understanding of shadow is affected by the change. In Latgalian literature it was commenced by M. Andžāne in her story „A black man, white shadow” (1947), where the main character Aleksandrs Rynčs demonstrates that it is important not to lose oneself, one’s substance. even if the society, the people do not understand it or it is not topical for the age. From this story comes the designation „white shadow”, which means the true, the deepest substance of an individual, harmony with oneself as a result of adopting and refining one’s own shadow – the inner human being.</p><p>Maybe the Latgalian literature would never had seen the possibility to reduce the negative connotation of shadow, which is historically developed and strengthened in consciousness of the language user, unless there are two strong personalities, theoretically – shadow philosophers J. Klīdzējs and R. Mūks, whose works are known mainly to Latvians from other regions, in the case of R. Mūks, throughout the world. Of course their impact is indirect, at the same time in the works of the 21st century Latgalian authors there is a strong feeling of the reflection of their outlooks.</p><p>Both authors emphasize the importance of respect for the shadow in development of an individual, as well as of the peoples and cultures at large. For the most part it means transformation of fear, feelings, instinctive hunches, ideas into creative energy. Exactly this meaning of shadow as question/ response about the true nature of a human being, society, is activated in two Latgalian publications: the modern poetry anthology „Susātivs” and CD „Bolts susātivs”.</p><p>Strengthening of the shadow as a concept in the Latgalian literature at the beginning of the 21st century is due to the fact that, after going through a long way of transformation and getting rid of the negative connotation, Latgalians are beginning anew to recognize it as an integral part of their nature that allows them to retain their otherness – in language, tradition, attitude towards the world, which is still impressive with its naturalness and emotionality.</p>

Despite the growing number of international social workers who have trained in one country and moved to practice in another, relatively little research explored the personal journeys of this group. Fewer still are the studies sensitive to the impact of culture on these journeys and the cultural adaptation migrating social workers go through. Using mixed methods, this research explores these aspects of the migration of social workers from Zimbabwe to England. Participants highlighted cultural differences in relation to the place of the individual compared to the community and in relation to risk, corporal punishment and domestic violence.

This article examines the localness of commercial names in Finland and focusses specifically on the names of grill food kiosks and products. There are two research objectives: firstly, to determine the number of local names that occur in the material, and secondly, to analyse how these names work as indexes of localness. This article explores the claim by sociolinguist Barbara Johnstone that particular linguistic forms can index meanings along a variety of dimensions and some forms may index locality. Furthermore, these types of linguistic forms can be used in discourses that shape people’s senses of place and the social identities associated with place. Of the 15 names of kiosks, almost all names, a total of 13 names, can be interpreted as manifesting local characteristics. Most of the kiosk names include a local place name. Of the product names, more than half (46 out of 84 names) are to be construed as describing something local. Although most of the local names in the group of product names include a local place name, personal names are also rather common. In addition, local dialect or slang is also visible in the product names. Another type of reference to a region appears in two kiosk names and in some of the product names. These names constitute a special case and demonstrate how local history can be incorporated in names creatively.

Aspects and methods for examining the connection between personal names and ethnicity It is a difficult task to determine the value of proper names in ethnic reconstruction. This can be considered a dubious area of onomastic/linguistic and historical research. Even the explanation of the basic concepts seems to be problematic; still, defining ethnicity and identifying the nature of the connection between ethnicity and language cannot be avoided. It is also important to define the value of the different types of personal names as sources: what can and cannot the research into the etymology of surnames be used for, what are the factors that have an impact on linguistic recon-struction, how can individual names help ethnic reconstruction, etc. After summarizing the back-ground research of name analysis in Hungary, the author presents a multi-level method of ethnic reconstruction based on personal names. The procedure tries to separate the determination of the name’s etymology from that of the ethnic affiliation, placing the examination objectives at separate levels. On the first level, the etymology of the surnames is determined and the linguistic background of the name is explored by considering linguistic aspects only, paying attention to the rules of ety-mological and onomastic research. The author separates two levels of the examination of ethnic reconstruction that are built upon each other. On the one hand, the linguistic features of the indi-vidual names are observed, and then other information on name sociology (e.g. social status, majority population), referring directly or indirectly to ethnic background, is taken into consideration.

This article investigates and reflects on the religious and spiritual aspects inherent in the narratives of adolescent male orphans, affected by HIV and AIDS, poverty and fatherlessness, and more specifically on aspects which tell us about how these boys understand and experience the presence of God within their specific situations. In coming to such an understanding, this article focuses specifically on the various names attributed to God by the coresearchers and investigates the prominence through social construction behind these names and how it influences the coresearchers� experience of God amidst their unique circumstances. With the use of the perspectives of a post-foundational notion of practical theology and narrative therapy and research, these names and their accompanied significance are deconstructed. The aim of the deconstruction process is to unveil dominant discourses that both inform the use of specific references to God and assist the coresearchers in finding meaning in the use of these names. The larger study employed research methods from the qualitative and case study research design, and included interdisciplinary work based on the post-foundational notion of transversality. Disciplines included in the dialogue were pastoral therapy, critical psychology and social work. This article�s reflections can be useful in all the above-mentioned disciplines and gives insight into understanding the significance behind the phenomenon of naming a deity in one�s personal and public language, and the influence such spiritual affirmations have in the psychosocial sphere of the holistic persona.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The larger study (from which this article originates) is an interdisciplinary study, as to conform to the principles of a postfoundational notion of practical theology and as such supports the assumptions underlying this theoretical framework.Keywords: Names for God; Postfoundationalism; Practical Theology; Co-Researchers; HIV and Aids; Poverty; Father Absence

Literature is one of the arenas of discourse where the meaning potential of language can be explored. Interestingly, literary language is more figurative than denotative. One of the functions of language in literary discourse is to represent reality. The reality literature represents varies, depending on the historical time and social events a writer focuses on. Some aspects of global reality captured in current literature include transnational migration, border crossing and how migrants negotiate their identities in new cultures and spaces. For the African writer, the foregoing is a source of inspiration for what has become known as the African migrant novel. Against this background, this paper explores the representation of migrant experiences with particular attention paid to the use of language. An aspect of language explored in this paper is the use of deictic words in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and the deployment of deictic forms, such as pronouns, verbs, and adverbs in order to specify personal and collective identity, physical and psychological displacement and spatiotemporal referencing in the novel. M. A. K. Halliday’s and Roger Fowler’s functional linguistic models are adopted as a theoretical framework within a descriptive and qualitative methodology. This paper notes that the recurrent use of the first-person pronoun in singular form (I) foregrounds the text as a Bildungsroman. It also underscores the process of self-evolution of Darling, the protagonist, from an a priori subject to a self-conscious a posteriori subject. The paper shows that deictic words as deployed in the novel enabled Bulawayo, the author, to create distinct narrative voices, from a personal voice to a collective voice. A guiding assumption of this paper is that it is not enough to say that a narrative has a first, second, or third person narrative speaking voice without pointing to the text to show how it is realised with data drawn from the text. It is on that basis that this research contributes significantly to the multidisciplinary interconnection between the field of linguistics and literature (stylistics) to demonstrate how a writer can engage nouns and pronouns as linguistic resources for the construction of migrant experiences, whether encompassing personal or group identity, nostalgia and memory, dislocation, or hybridity.

Study level/applicability The case is suitable for both undergraduate and graduate business students. The suggestions in the teaching note would suit classes of varying sizes and can be organized by teams or for individual work. Subject area The case is suitable for classes discussing a range of topics including business ethics, values-based leadership and entrepreneurship. The case is told from the perspective of a Hispanic, first-generation female CEO in tech – a male-dominated field. As some of its decision points include discussions with other female entrepreneurs in similar positions, this case is also suitable for discussions on gender and minority leader representation. Case overview This case tells the story of a female tech entrepreneur in Baltimore, how her personal values influenced the values of her company and how she successfully applied those values even in the early stages of her venture. It includes a discussion of her former career in the military and her experiences as a first-generation American. Expected learning outcomes The case offers several decision points where students are invited to anticipate and discuss the protagonists’ values and their application of them in her work. It likewise invites students to reflect on their own values and how they influence their business decisions. As the case is based on true events and uses real names, students may also perform research on the real business and its context to extend this case even further. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Social implications Women are chronically underrepresented in leadership positions and some choose to become entrepreneurs because it offers a surer path to CEO roles. Additionally, this case offers some perspective on the different leadership styles of women, such as this protagonist’s choice to allow her personal and corporate values to drive important early decisions for her business. The instructor and students also may wish to focus on aspects of the case related to the protagonist’s ethnicity and her family’s status as recent immigrants to the USA. Ideally, class discussions will consider the protagonist holistically, and her identities as intersectional. Subject code CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

As the single most successful social-networking Website to date, Facebook has caused a shift in both practice and perception of online socialisation, and its relationship to the offline world. While not the first online social networking service, Facebook’s user base dwarfs its nearest competitors. Mark Zuckerberg’s creation boasts more than 750 million users (Facebook). The currently ailing MySpace claimed a ceiling of 100 million users in 2006 (Cashmore). Further, the accuracy of this number has been contested due to a high proportion of fake or inactive accounts. Facebook by contrast, claims 50% of its user base logs in at least once a day (Facebook). The popular and mainstream uptake of Facebook has shifted social use of the Internet from various and fragmented niche groups towards a common hub or portal around which much everyday Internet use is centred. The implications are many, but this paper will focus on the progress what Mimi Marinucci terms the “Facebook effect” (70) and the evolution of lists as a filtering mechanism representing one’s social zones within Facebook. This is in part inspired by the launch of Google’s new social networking service Google+ which includes “circles” as a fundamental design feature for sorting contacts. Circles are an acknowledgement of the shortcomings of a single, unified friends list that defines the Facebook experience. These lists and circles are both manifestations of the same essential concept: our social lives are, in fact, divided into various zones not defined by an online/offline dichotomy, by fantasy role-play, deviant sexual practices, or other marginal or minority interests. What the lists and circles demonstrate is that even very common, mainstream people occupy different roles in everyday life, and that to be effective social tools, social networking sites must grant users control over their various identities and over who knows what about them. Even so, the very nature of computer-based social tools lead to problematic definitions of identities and relationships using discreet terms, in contrast to more fluid, performative constructions of an individual and their relations to others. Building the Monolith In 1995, Sherry Turkle wrote that “the Internet has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern life” (180). Turkle describes the various deliberate acts of personnae creation possible online in contrast to earlier constraints placed upon the “cycling through different identities” (179). In the past, Turkle argues, “lifelong involvement with families and communities kept such cycling through under fairly stringent control” (180). In effect, Turkle was documenting the proliferation of identity games early adopters of Internet technologies played through various means. Much of what Turkle focused on were MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) and MOOs (MUD Object Oriented), explicit play-spaces that encouraged identity-play of various kinds. Her contemporary Howard Rheingold focused on what may be described as the more “true to life” communities of the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) (1–38). In particular, Rheingold explored a community established around the shared experience of parenting, especially of young children. While that community was not explicitly built on the notion of role-play, the parental identity was an important quality of community members. Unlike contemporary social media networks, these early communities were built on discreet platforms. MUDs, MOOs, Bulletin Board Systems, UseNet Groups and other early Internet communication platforms were generally hosted independently of one another, and even had to be dialled into via modem separately in some cases (such as the WELL). The Internet was a truly disparate entity in 1995. The discreetness of each community supported the cordoning off of individual roles or identities between them. Thus, an individual could quite easily be “Pete” a member of the parental WELL group and “Gorak the Destroyer,” a role-player on a fantasy MUD without the two roles ever being associated with each other. As Turkle points out, even within each MUD ample opportunity existed to play multiple characters (183–192). With only a screen name and associated description to identify an individual within the MUD environment, nothing technical existed to connect one player’s multiple identities, even within the same community. As the Internet has matured, however, the tendency has been shifting towards monolithic hubs, a notion of collecting all of “the Internet” together. From a purely technical and operational perspective, this has led to the emergence of the ISP (Internet service provider). Users can make a connection to one point, and then be connected to everything “on the Net” instead of individually dialling into servers and services one at a time as was the case in the early 1980s with companies such as Prodigy, the Source, CompuServe, and America On-Line (AOL). The early information service providers were largely walled gardens. A CompuServe user could only access information on the CompuServe network. Eventually the Internet became the network of choice and services migrated to it. Standards such as HTTP for Web page delivery and SMTP for email became established and dominate the Internet today. Technically, this has made the Internet much easier to use. The services that have developed on this more rationalised and unified platform have also tended toward monolithic, centralised architectures, despite the Internet’s apparent fundamental lack of a hierarchy. As the Internet replaced the closed networks, the wider Web of HTTP pages, forums, mailing lists and other forms of Internet communication and community thrived. Perhaps they required slightly more technological savvy than the carefully designed experience of walled-garden ISPs such as AOL, but these fora and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) rooms still provided the discreet environments within which to role-play. An individual could hold dozens of login names to as many different communities. These various niches could be simply hobby sites and forums where a user would deploy their identity as model train enthusiast, musician, or pet owner. They could also be explicitly about role-play, continuing the tradition of MUDs and MOOs into the new millennium. Pseudo- and polynymity were still very much part of the Internet experience. Even into the early parts of the so-called Web 2.0 explosion of more interactive Websites which allowed for easier dialog between site owner and viewer, a given identity would be very much tied to a single site, blog or even individual comments. There was no “single sign on” to link my thread from a music forum to the comments I made on a videogame blog to my aquarium photos at an image gallery site. Today, Facebook and Google, among others, seek to change all that. The Facebook Effect Working from a psychological background Turkle explored the multiplicity of online identities as a valuable learning, even therapeutic, experience. She assessed the experiences of individuals who were coming to terms with aspects of their own personalities, from simple shyness to exploring their sexuality. In “You Can’t Front on Facebook,” Mimi Marinucci summarizes an analysis of online behaviour by another psychologist, John Suler (67–70). Suler observed an “online disinhibition effect” characterised by users’ tendency to express themselves more openly online than offline (321). Awareness of this effect was drawn (no pun intended) into popular culture by cartoonist Mike Krahulik’s protagonist John Gabriel. Although Krahulik’s summation is straight to the point, Suler offers a more considered explanation. There are six general reasons for the online disinhibition effect: being anonymous, being invisible, the communications being out of sync, the strange sensation that a virtual interlocutor is all in the mind of the user, the general sense that the online world simply is not real and the minimisation of status and authority (321–325). Of the six, the notion of anonymity is most problematic, as briefly explored above in the case of AOL. The role of pseudonymity has been explored in more detail in Ruch, and will be considered with regard to Facebook and Google+ below. The Facebook effect, Marinucci argues, mitigates all six of these issues. Though Marinucci explains the mitigation of each factor individually, her final conclusion is the most compelling reason: “Facebook often facilitates what is best described as an integration of identities, and this integration of identities in turn functions as something of an inhibiting factor” (73). Ruch identifies this phenomenon as the “aggregation of identities” (219). Similarly, Brady Robards observes that “social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook collapse the entire array of social relationships into just one category, that of ‘Friend’” (20). Unlike earlier community sites, Ruch notes “Facebook rejects both the mythical anonymity of the Internet, but also the actual pseudo- or polynonymous potential of the technologies” (219). Essentially, Facebook works to bring the offline social world online, along with all the conventional baggage that accompanies the individual’s real-world social life. Facebook, and now Google+, present a hard, dichotomous approach to online identity: anonymous and authentic. Their socially networked individual is the “real” one, using a person’s given name, and bringing all (or as many as the sites can capture) their contacts from the offline world into the online one, regardless of context. The Facebook experience is one of “friending” everyone one has any social contact with into one homogeneous group. Not only is Facebook avoiding the multiple online identities that interested Turkle, but it is disregarding any multiplicity of identity anywhere, including any online/offline split. David Kirkpatrick reports Mark Zuckerberg’s rejection of this construction of identity is explained by his belief that “You have one identity … having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity” (199). Arguably, Zuckerberg’s calls for accountability through identity continue a perennial concern for anonymity online fuelled by “on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog” style moral panics. Over two decades ago Lindsy Van Gelder recounted the now infamous case of “Joan and Alex” (533) and Julian Dibbell recounted “a rape in cyberspace” (11). More recent anxieties concern the hacking escapades of Anonymous and LulzSec. Zuckerberg’s approach has been criticised by Christopher Poole, the founder of 4Chan—a bastion of Internet anonymity. During his keynote presentation at South by SouthWest 2011 Poole argued that Zuckerberg “equates anonymity with a lack of authenticity, almost a cowardice.” Yet in spite of these objections, Facebook has mainstream appeal. From a social constructivist perspective, this approach to identity would be satisfying the (perceived?) need for a mainstream, context-free, general social space online to cater for the hundreds of millions of people who now use the Internet. There is no specific, pre-defined reason to join Facebook in the way there is a particular reason to join a heavy metal music message board. Facebook is catering to the need to bring “real” social life online generally, with “real” in this case meaning “offline and pre-existing.” Very real risks of missing “real life” social events (engagements, new babies, party invitations etc) that were shared primarily via Facebook became salient to large groups of individuals not consciously concerned with some particular facet of identity performance. The commercial imperatives towards monolithic Internet and identity are obvious. Given that both Facebook and Google+ are in the business of facilitating the sale of advertising, their core business value is the demographic information they can sell to various companies for target advertising. Knowing a user’s individual identity and tastes is extremely important to those in the business of selling consumers what they currently want as well as predicting their future desires. The problem with this is the dawning realisation that even for the average person, role-playing is part of everyday life. We simply aren’t the same person in all contexts. None of the roles we play need to be particularly scandalous for this to be true, but we have different comfort zones with people that are fuelled by context. Suler proposes and Marinucci confirms that inhibition may be just as much part of our authentic self as the uninhibited expression experienced in more anonymous circumstances. Further, different contexts will inform what we inhibit and what we express. It is not as though there is a simple binary between two different groups and two different personal characteristics to oscillate between. The inhibited personnae one occupies at one’s grandmother’s home is a different inhibited self one plays at a job interview or in a heated discussion with faculty members at a university. One is politeness, the second professionalism, the third scholarly—yet they all restrain the individual in different ways. The Importance of Control over Circles Google+ is Google’s latest foray into the social networking arena. Its previous ventures Orkut and Google Buzz did not fare well, both were variously marred by legal issues concerning privacy, security, SPAM and hate groups. Buzz in particular fell afoul of associating Google accounts with users” real life identities, and (as noted earlier), all the baggage that comes with it. “One user blogged about how Buzz automatically added her abusive ex-boyfriend as a follower and exposed her communications with a current partner to him. Other bloggers commented that repressive governments in countries such as China or Iran could use Buzz to expose dissidents” (Novak). Google+ takes a different approach to its predecessors and its main rival, Facebook. Facebook allows for the organisation of “friends” into lists. Individuals can span more than one list. This is an exercise analogous to what Erving Goffman refers to as “audience segregation” (139). According to the site’s own statistics the average Facebook user has 130 friends, we anticipate it would be time-consuming to organise one’s friends according to real life social contexts. Yet without such organisation, Facebook overlooks the social structures and concomitant behaviours inherent in everyday life. Even broad groups offer little assistance. For example, an academic’s “Work People” list may include the Head of Department as well as numerous other lecturers with whom a workspace is shared. There are things one might share with immediate colleagues that should not be shared with the Head of Department. As Goffman states, “when audience segregation fails and an outsider happens upon a performance that was not meant for him, difficult problems in impression management arise” (139). By homogenising “friends” and social contexts users are either inhibited or run the risk of some future awkward encounters. Google+ utilises “circles” as its method for organising contacts. The graphical user interface is intuitive, facilitated by an easy drag and drop function. Use of “circles” already exists in the vocabulary used to describe our social structures. “List” by contrast reduces the subject matter to simple data. The utility of Facebook’s friends lists is hindered by usability issues—an unintuitive and convoluted process that was added to Facebook well after its launch, perhaps a reaction to privacy concerns rather than a genuine attempt to emulate social organisation. For a cogent breakdown of these technical and design problems see Augusto Sellhorn. Organising friends into lists is a function offered by Facebook, but Google+ takes a different approach: organising friends in circles is a central feature; the whole experience is centred around attempting to mirror the social relations of real life. Google’s promotional video explains the centrality of emulating “real life relationships” (Google). Effectively, Facebook and Google+ have adopted two different systemic approaches to dealing with the same issue. Facebook places the burden of organising a homogeneous mass of “friends” into lists on the user as an afterthought of connecting with another user. In contrast, Google+ builds organisation into the act of connecting. Whilst Google+’s approach is more intuitive and designed to facilitate social networking that more accurately reflects how real life social relationships are structured, it suffers from forcing direct correlation between an account and the account holder. That is, use of Google+ mandates bringing online the offline. Google+ operates a real names policy and on the weekend of 23 July 2011 suspended a number of accounts for violation of Google’s Community Standards. A suspension notice posted by Violet Blue reads: “After reviewing your profile, we determined the name you provided violates our Community Standards.” Open Source technologist Kirrily Robert polled 119 Google+ users about their experiences with the real names policy. The results posted to her on blog reveal that users desire pseudonymity, many for reasons of privacy and/or safety rather than the lack of integrity thought by Zuckerberg. boyd argues that Google’s real names policy is an abuse of power and poses danger to those users employing “nicks” for reasons including being a government employment or the victim of stalking, rape or domestic abuse. A comprehensive list of those at risk has been posted to the Geek Feminism Wiki (ironically, the Wiki utilises “Connect”, Facebook’s attempt at a single sign on solution for the Web that connects users’ movements with their Facebook profile). Facebook has a culture of real names stemming from its early adopters drawn from trusted communities, and this culture became a norm for that service (boyd). But as boyd also points out, “[r]eal names are by no means universal on Facebook.” Google+ demands real names, a demand justified by rhetoric of designing a social networking system that is more like real life. “Real”, in this case, is represented by one’s given name—irrespective of the authenticity of one’s pseudonym or the complications and dangers of using one’s given name. Conclusion There is a multiplicity of issues concerning social networks and identities, privacy and safety. This paper has outlined the challenges involved in moving real life to the online environment and the contests in trying to designate zones of social context. Where some earlier research into the social Internet has had a positive (even utopian) feel, the contemporary Internet is increasingly influenced by powerful and competing corporations. As a result, the experience of the Internet is not necessarily as flexible as Turkle or Rheingold might have envisioned. Rather than conducting identity experimentation or exercising multiple personnae, we are increasingly obligated to perform identity as it is defined by the monolithic service providers such as Facebook and Google+. This is not purely an indictment of Facebook or Google’s corporate drive, though they are obviously implicated, but has as much to do with the new social practice of “being online.” So, while there are myriad benefits to participating in this new social context, as Poole noted, the “cost of failure is really high when you’re contributing as yourself.” Areas for further exploration include the implications of Facebook positioning itself as a general-purpose user authentication tool whereby users can log into a wide array of Websites using their Facebook credentials. If Google were to take a similar action the implications would be even more convoluted, given the range of other services Google offers, from GMail to the Google Checkout payment service. While the monolithic centralisation of these services will have obvious benefits, there will be many more subtle problems which must be addressed. References Blue, Violet. “Google Plus Deleting Accounts en Masse: No Clear Answers.” zdnet.com (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/google-plus-deleting-accounts-en-masse-no-clear-answers/56›. boyd, danah. “Real Names Policies Are an Abuse of Power.” zephoria.org (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html›. Cashmore, Pete. “MySpace Hits 100 Million Accounts.” mashable.com (2006). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://mashable.com/2006/08/09/myspace-hits-100-million-accounts›. Dibble, Julian. My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1998. Facebook. “Fact Sheet.” Facebook (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistic›. Geek Feminism Wiki. “Who Is Harmed by a Real Names Policy?” 2011. 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Real_Names%22_policy› Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1959. Google. “The Google+ Project: Explore Circles.” Youtube.com (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocPeAdpe_A8›. Kirkpatrick, David. The Facebook Effect. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Marinucci, Mimi. “You Can’t Front on Facebook.” Facebook and Philosophy. Ed. Dylan Wittkower. Chicago & La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 2010. 65–74. Novak, Peter. “Privacy Commissioner Reviewing Google Buzz.” CBC News: Technology and Science (2010). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2010/02/16/google-buzz-privacy.html›. Poole, Christopher. Keynote presentation. South by SouthWest. Texas, Austin, 2011. Robards, Brady. “Negotiating Identity and Integrity on Social Network Sites for Educators.” International Journal for Educational Integrity 6.2 (2010): 19–23. Robert, Kirrily. “Preliminary Results of My Survey of Suspended Google Accounts.” 2011. 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://infotrope.net/2011/07/25/preliminary-results-of-my-survey-of-suspended-google-accounts/›. Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993. Ruch, Adam. “The Decline of Pseudonymity.” Posthumanity. Eds. Adam Ruch and Ewan Kirkland. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary.net Press, 2010: 211–220. Sellhorn, Augusto. “Facebook Friend Lists Suck When Compared to Google+ Circles.” sellmic.com (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://sellmic.com/blog/2011/07/01/facebook-friend-lists-suck-when-compared-to-googleplus-circles›. Suler, John. “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” CyberPsychology and Behavior 7 (2004): 321–326. Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Van Gelder, Lindsy. “The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover.” Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices Ed. Rob Kling. New York: Academic Press, 1996: 533–46.

Babies and toddlers are amassing huge followings on social media, achieving microcelebrity status, and raking in five figure sums. In East Asia, many of these lucrative “micro­-microcelebrities” rise to fame by inheriting exposure and proximate microcelebrification from their social media Influencer mothers. Through self-branding techniques, Influencer mothers’ portrayals of their young’ children’s lives “as lived” are the canvas on which (baby) products and services are marketed to readers as “advertorials”. In turning to investigate this budding phenomenon, I draw on ethnographic case studies in Singapore to outline the career trajectory of these young children (under 4yo) including their social media presence, branding strategies, and engagement with their followers. The chapter closes with a brief discussion on some ethical considerations of such young children’s labour in the social media age.Influencer MothersTheresa Senft first coined the term “microcelebrity” in her work Camgirls as a burgeoning online trend, wherein people attempt to gain popularity by employing digital media technologies, such as videos, blogs, and social media. She describes microcelebrities as “non-actors as performers” whose narratives take place “without overt manipulation”, and who are “more ‘real’ than television personalities with ‘perfect hair, perfect friends and perfect lives’” (Senft 16), foregrounding their active response to their communities in the ways that maintain open channels of feedback on social media to engage with their following.Influencers – a vernacular industry term albeit inspired by Katz & Lazarsfeld’s notion of “personal influence” that predates Internet culture – are one type of microcelebrity; they are everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a relatively large following on blogs and social media through the textual and visual narration of their personal lives and lifestyles, engage with their following in “digital” and “physical” spaces, and monetize their following by integrating “advertorials” into their blog or social media posts and making physical appearances at events. A pastiche of “advertisement” and “editorial”, advertorials in the Influencer industry are highly personalized, opinion-laden promotions of products/services that Influencers personally experience and endorse for a fee. Influencers in Singapore often brand themselves as having “relatability”, or the ability to persuade their followers to identify with them (Abidin). They do so by make consciously visible the backstage (Goffman) of the usually “inaccessible”, “personal”, and “private” aspects of mundane, everyday life to curate personae that feel “authentic” to fans (Marwick 114), and more accessible than traditional celebrity (Senft 16).Historically, the Influencer industry in Singapore can be traced back to the early beginnings of the “blogshop” industry from the mid-2000s and the “commercial blogging” industry. Influencers are predominantly young women, and market products and services from diverse industries, although the most popular have been fashion, beauty, F&B, travel, and electronics. Most prominent Influencers are contracted to management agencies who broker deals in exchange for commission and assist in the production of their vlogs. Since then, the industry has grown, matured, and expanded so rapidly that Influencers developed emergent models of advertorials, with the earliest cohorts moving into different life stages and monetizing several other aspects of their personal lives such as the “micro-microcelebrity” of their young children. What this paper provides is an important analysis of the genesis and normative practices of micro-microcelebrity commerce in Singapore from its earliest years, and future research trajectories in this field.Micro-Microcelebrity and Proximate MicrocelebrificationI define micro-microcelebrities as the children of Influencers who have themselves become proximate microcelebrities, having derived exposure and fame from their prominent Influencer mothers, usually through a more prolific, deliberate, and commercial form of what Blum-Ross defines as “sharenting”: the act of parents sharing images and stores about their children in digital spaces such as social networking sites and blogs. Marwick (116-117), drawing from Rojek’s work on types of celebrity – distinguishes between two types of microcelebrity: “ascribed microcelebrity” where the online personality is made recognizable through the “production of celebrity media” such as paparazzi shots and user-produced online memes, or “achieved microcelebrity” where users engage in “self-presentation strateg[ies]”, such as fostering the illusion of intimacy with fans, maintaining a persona, and selective disclosure about oneself.Micro-microcelebrities lie somewhere between the two: In a process I term “proximate microcelebrification”, micro-microcelebrities themselves inherit celebrity through the preemptive and continuous exposure from their Influencer mothers, many beginning even during the pre-birth pregnancy stages in the form of ultrasound scans, as a form of “achieved microcelebrity”. Influencer mothers whose “presentational strategies” (cf. Marshall, “Promotion” 45) are successful enough (as will be addressed later) gain traction among followers, who in turn further popularize the micro-microcelebrity by setting up fan accounts, tribute sites, and gossip forums through which fame is heightened in a feedback loop as a model of “ascribed microcelebrity”.Here, however, I refrain from conceptualizing these young stars as “micro-Influencers” for unlike Influencers, these children do not yet curate their self-presentation to command the attention of followers, but instead are used, framed, and appropriated by their mothers for advertorials. In other words, Influencer mothers “curate [micro-microcelebrities’] identities into being” (Leaver, “Birth”). Following this, many aspects of their micro-microcelebrities become rapidly commodified and commercialized, with advertisers clamoring to endorse anything from maternity hospital stays to nappy cream.Although children of mommybloggers have the prospect to become micro-microcelebrities, both groups are conceptually distinct. Friedman (200-201) argues that among mommybloggers arose a tension between those who adopt “the raw authenticity of nonmonetized blogging”, documenting the “unglamorous minutiae” of their daily lives and a “more authentic view of motherhood” and those who use mommyblogs “primarily as a source of extra income rather than as a site for memoir”, focusing on “parent-centered products” (cf. Mom Bloggers Club).In contrast, micro-microcelebrities and their digital presence are deliberately commercial, framed and staged by Influencer mothers in order to maximize their advertorial potential, and are often postured to market even non-baby/parenting products such as fast food and vehicles (see later). Because of the overt commerce, it is unclear if micro-microcelebrity displays constitute “intimate surveillance”, an “almost always well-intentioned surveillance of young people by parents” (Leaver, “Born” 4). Furthermore, children are generally peripheral to mommybloggers whose own parenting narratives take precedence as a way to connect with fellow mothers, while micro-microcelebrities are the primary feature whose everyday lives and digital presence enrapture followers.MethodologyThe analysis presented is informed by my original fieldwork with 125 Influencers and related actors among whom I conducted a mixture of physical and digital personal interviews, participant observation, web archaeology, and archival research between December 2011 and October 2014. However, the material presented here is based on my digital participant observation of publicly accessible and intentionally-public digital presence of the first four highly successful micro-microcelebrities in Singapore: “Baby Dash” (b.2013) is the son of Influencer xiaxue, “#HeYurou” (b.2011) is the niece of Influencer bongqiuqiu, “#BabyElroyE” (b.2014) is the son of Influencer ohsofickle, and “@MereGoRound” (b.2015) is the daughter of Influencer bongqiuqiu.The microcelebrity/social media handles of these children take different forms, following the platform on which their parent/aunt has exposed them on the most. Baby Dash appears in all of xiaxue’s digital platforms under a variety of over 30 indexical, ironic, or humourous hashtags (Leaver, “Birth”) including “#pointylipped”, #pineappledash”, and “#面包脸” (trans. “bread face”); “#HeYurou” appears on bongqiuqiu’s Instagram and Twitter; “#BabyElroyE” appears on ohsofickle’s Instagram and blog, and is the central figure of his mother’s new YouTube channel; and “@MereGoRound” appears on all of bongqiuqiu’s digital platforms but also has her own Instagram account and dedicated YouTube channel. The images reproduced here are screenshot from Influencer mothers’ highly public social media: xiaxue, bongqiuqiu, and ohsofickle boast 593k, 277k, and 124k followers on Instagram and 263k, 41k, and 17k followers on Twitter respectively at the time of writing.Anticipation and Digital EstatesIn an exclusive front-pager (Figure 1) on the day of his induced birth, it was announced that Baby Dash had already received up to SGD25,000 worth of endorsement deals brokered by his Influencer mother, xiaxue. As the first micro-microcelebrity in his cohort (his mother was among the pioneer Influencers), Baby Dash’s Caesarean section was even filmed and posted on xiaxue’s YouTube channel in three parts (Figure 2). xiaxue had announced her pregnancy on her blog while in her second trimester, following which she consistently posted mirror selfies of her baby bump.Figure 1 & 2, screenshot April 2013 from ‹instagram.com/xiaxue›In her successful attempt at generating anticipation, the “bump” itself seemed to garner its own following on Twitter and Instagram, with many followers discussing how the Influencer dressed “it”, and how “it” was evolving over the weeks. One follower even compiled a collage of xiaxue’s “bump” chronologically and gifted it to the Influencer as an art image via Twitter on the day she delivered Baby Dash (Figure 3 & 4). Followers also frequently speculated and bantered about how her baby would look, and mused about how much they were going to adore him. Figure 3 & 4, screenshot March 2013 from ‹twitter.com/xiaxue› While Lupton (42) has conceptualized the sharing of images that precede birth as a “rite of passage”, Influencer mothers who publish sonograms deliberately do so in order to claim digital estates for their to-be micro-microcelebrities in the form of “reserved” social media handles, blog URLs, and unique hashtags for self-branding. For instance, at the 3-month mark of her pregnancy, Influencer bongqiuqiu debuted her baby’s dedicated hashtag, “#MereGoRound” in a birth announcement on her on Instagram account. Shortly after, she started an Instagram account, “@MereGoRound”, for her baby, who amassed over 5.5k followers prior to her birth. Figure 5 & 6, screenshot March 2015 from instagram.com/meregoround and instagram.com/bongqiuqiuThe debut picture features a heavily pregnant belly shot of bongqiuqiu (Figure 5), creating much anticipation for the arrival of a new micro-microcelebrity: in the six months leading up to her birth, various family, friends, and fans shared Instagram images of their gifts and welcome party for @MereGoRound, and followers shared congratulations and fan art on the dedicated Instagram hashtag. During this time, bongqiuqiu also frequently updated followers on her pregnancy progress, not without advertising her (presumably sponsored) gynecologist and hospital stay in her pregnancy diaries (Figure 6) – like Baby Dash, even as a foetus @MereGoRound was accumulating advertorials. Presently at six months old, @MereGoRound boasts almost 40k followers on Instagram on which embedded in the narrative of her growth are sponsored products and services from various advertisers.Non-Baby-Related AdvertorialsPrior to her pregnancy, Influencer bongqiuqiu hopped onto the micro-microcelebrity bandwagon in the wake of Baby Dash’s birth, by using her niece “#HeYurou” in her advertorials. Many Influencers attempt to naturalize their advertorials by composing their post as if recounting a family event. With reference to a child, parent, or partner, they may muse or quip about a product being used or an experience being shared in a bid to mask the distinction between their personal and commercial material. bongqiuqiu frequently posted personal, non-sponsored images engaging in daily mundane activities under the dedicated hashtag “#HeYurou”.However, this was occasionally interspersed with pictures of her niece holding on to various products including storybooks (Figure 8) and shopping bags (Figure 9). At first glance, this might have seemed like any mundane daily update the Influencer often posts. However, a close inspection reveals the caption bearing sponsor hashtags, tags, and campaign information. For instance, one Instagram post shows #HeYurou casually holding on to and staring at a burger in KFC wrapping (Figure 7), but when read in tandem with bongqiuqiu’s other KFC-related posts published over a span of a few months, it becomes clear that #HeYurou was in fact advertising for KFC. Figure 7, 8, 9, screenshot December 2014 from ‹instagram.com/bongqiuqiu›Elsewhere, Baby Dash was incorporated into xiaxue’s car sponsorship with over 20 large decals of one of his viral photos – dubbed “pineapple Dash” among followers – plastered all over her vehicle (Figure 10). Followers who spot the car in public are encouraged to photograph and upload the image using its dedicated hashtag, “#xiaxuecar” as part of the Influencer’s car sponsorship – an engagement scarcely related to her young child. Since then, xiaxue has speculated producing offshoots of “pineapple Dash” products including smartphone casings. Figure 10, screenshot December 2014 from ‹instagram.com/xiaxue›Follower EngagementSponsors regularly organize fan meet-and-greets headlined by micro-microcelebrities in order to attract potential customers. Photo opportunities and the chance to see Baby Dash “in the flesh” frequently front press and promotional material of marketing campaigns. Elsewhere on social media, several Baby Dash fan and tribute accounts have also emerged on Instagram, reposting images and related media of the micro-microcelebrity with overt adoration, no doubt encouraged by xiaxue, who began crowdsourcing captions for Baby Dash’s photos.Influencer ohsofickle postures #BabyElroyE’s follower engagement in a more subtle way. In her YouTube channel that debut in the month of her baby’s birth, ohsofickle produces video diaries of being a young, single, mother who is raising a child (Figure 11). In each episode, #BabyElroyE is the main feature whose daily activities are documented, and while there is some advertising embedded, ohsofickle’s approach on YouTube is much less overt than others as it features much more non-monetized personal content (Figure 12). Her blog serves as a backchannel to her vlogs, in which she recounts her struggles with motherhood and explicitly solicits the advice of mothers. However, owing to her young age (she became an Influencer at 17 and gave birth at 24), many of her followers are teenagers and young women who respond to her solicitations by gushing over #BabyElroyE’s images on Instagram. Figure 11 & 12, screenshot September 2015 from ‹instagram.com/ohsofickle›PrivacyAs noted by Holloway et al. (23), children like micro-microcelebrities will be among the first cohorts to inherit “digital profiles” of their “whole lifetime” as a “work in progress”, from parents who habitually underestimate or discount the privacy and long term effects of publicizing information about their children at the time of posting. This matters in a climate where social media platforms can amend privacy policies without user consent (23), and is even more pressing for micro-microcelebrities whose followers store, republish, and recirculate information in fan networks, resulting in digital footprints with persistence, replicability, scalability, searchability (boyd), and extended longevity in public circulation which can be attributed back to the children indefinitely (Leaver, “Ends”).Despite minimum age restrictions and recent concerns with “digital kidnapping” where users steal images of other young children to be re-posted as their own (Whigham), some social media platforms rarely police the proliferation of accounts set up by parents on behalf of their underage children prominently displaying their legal names and life histories, citing differing jurisdictions in various countries (Facebook; Instagram), while others claim to disable accounts if users report an “incorrect birth date” (cf. Google for YouTube). In Singapore, the Media Development Authority (MDA) which governs all print and digital media has no firm regulations for this but suggests that the age of consent is 16 judging by their recommendation to parents with children aged below 16 to subscribe to Internet filtering services (Media Development Authority, “Regulatory” 1). Moreover, current initiatives have been focused on how parents can impart digital literacy to their children (Media Development Authority, “Empowered”; Media Literacy Council) as opposed to educating parents about the digital footprints they may be unwittingly leaving about their children.The digital lives of micro-microcelebrities pose new layers of concern given their publicness and deliberate publicity, specifically hinged on making visible the usually inaccessible, private aspects of everyday life (Marshall, “Persona” 5).Scholars note that celebrities are individuals for whom speculation of their private lives takes precedence over their actual public role or career (Geraghty 100-101; Turner 8). However, the personae of Influencers and their young children are shaped by ambiguously blurring the boundaries of privacy and publicness in order to bait followers’ attention, such that privacy and publicness are defined by being broadcast, circulated, and publicized (Warner 414). In other words, the publicness of micro-microcelebrities is premised on the extent of the intentional publicity rather than simply being in the public domain (Marwick 223-231, emphasis mine).Among Influencers privacy concerns have aroused awareness but not action – Baby Dash’s Influencer mother admitted in a national radio interview that he has received a death threat via Instagram but feels that her child is unlikely to be actually attacked (Channel News Asia) – because privacy is a commodity that is manipulated and performed to advance their micro-microcelebrities’ careers. As pioneer micro-microcelebrities are all under 2-years-old at present, future research warrants investigating “child-centred definitions” (Third et al.) of the transition in which they come of age, grow an awareness of their digital presence, respond to their Influencer mothers’ actions, and potentially take over their accounts.Young LabourThe Ministry of Manpower (MOM) in Singapore, which regulates the employment of children and young persons, states that children under the age of 13 may not legally work in non-industrial or industrial settings (Ministry of Manpower). However, the same document later ambiguously states underaged children who do work can only do so under strict work limits (Ministry of Manpower). Elsewhere (Chan), it is noted that national labour statistics have thus far only focused on those above the age of 15, thus neglecting a true reflection of underaged labour in Singapore. This is despite the prominence of micro-microcelebrities who are put in front of (video) cameras to build social media content. Additionally, the work of micro-microcelebrities on digital platforms has not yet been formally recognized as labour, and is not regulated by any authority including Influencer management firms, clients, the MDA, and the MOM. Brief snippets from my ethnographic fieldwork with Influencer management agencies in Singapore similarly reveal that micro-microcelebrities’ labour engagements and control of their earnings are entirely at their parents’ discretion.As models and actors, micro-microcelebrities are one form of entertainment workers who if between the ages of 15 days and 18 years in the state of California are required to obtain an Entertainment Work Permit to be gainfully employed, adhering to strict work, schooling, and rest hour quotas (Department of Industrial Relations). Furthermore, the Californian Coogan Law affirms that earnings by these minors are their own property and not their parents’, although they are not old enough to legally control their finances and rely on the state to govern their earnings with a legal guardian (Screen Actors Guild). However, this similarly excludes underaged children and micro-microcelebrities engaged in creative digital ecologies. Future research should look into safeguards and instruments among young child entertainers, especially for micro-micrcocelebrities’ among whom commercial work and personal documentation is not always distinct, and are in fact deliberately intertwined in order to better engage with followers for relatabilityGrowing Up BrandedIn the wake of moral panics over excessive surveillance technologies, children’s safety on the Internet, and data retention concerns, micro-microcelebrities and their Influencer mothers stand out for their deliberately personal and overtly commercial approach towards self-documenting, self-presenting, and self-publicizing from the moment of conception. As these debut micro-microcelebrities grow older and inherit digital publics, personae, and careers, future research should focus on the transition of their ownership, engagement, and reactions to a branded childhood in which babies were postured for an initimate public.ReferencesAbidin, Crystal. “Communicative Intimacies: Influencers and Perceived Interconnectedness.” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, & Technology. Forthcoming, Nov 2015.Aiello, Marianne. “Mommy Blog Banner Ads Get Results.” Healthcare Marketing Advisor 17 Nov. 2010. HealthLeaders Media. 16 Aug. 2015 ‹http://healthleadersmedia.com/content/MAR-259215/Mommy-Blog-Banner-Ads-Get-Results›.Azzarone, Stephanie. “When Consumers Report: Mommy Blogging Your Way to Success.” Playthings 18 Feb. 2009. 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IntroductionAlt, or alternative, accounts are secondary profiles people use in addition to a main account on a social media platform. They are a kind of automediation, a way of representing the self, that deliberately displays a different identity facet, and addresses a different audience, to what someone considers to be their main account. The term “alt” seems to have originated from videogame culture and been incorporated into understandings of social media accounts. A wiki page about alternate accounts on virtual world Second Life calls an alt “an account used by a resident for something other than their usual activity or to do things in privacy” (n.p.).Studying alts gives an insight into practices of managing and contextualising identities on networked platforms that are visible, persistent, editable, associable (Treem and Leonardi), spreadable, searchable (boyd), shareable (Papacharissi "Without"), and personalised (Schmidt). When these features of social media are understood as limitations that lead to context collapse (Marwick and boyd 122; Wesch 23), performative incoherence (Papacharissi Affective 99), and the risk of overexposure, people respond by developing alternative ways to use platforms.Plenty of scholarship on social media identities claims the self is fragmented, multifaceted, and contextual (Marwick 355; Schmidt 369). But the scholarship on multiple account use on single platforms is still emerging. Joanne Orlando writes for The Conversation that teens increasingly have more than one account on Instagram: “finstas” are “fake” or secondary accounts used to post especially candid photos to a smaller audience, thus they are deployed strategically to avoid the social pressure of looking polished and attractive. These accounts are referred to as “fake” because they are often pseudonymous, but the practice of compartmentalising audiences makes the promise that the photos posted are more authentic, spontaneous, and intimate. Kylie Cardell, Kate Douglas, and Emma Maguire (162) argue that while secondary accounts promise a less constructed version of life, speaking back to the dominant genre of aesthetically pleasing Instagram photos, all social media posts are constructed within the context of platform norms and imagined audiences (Litt & Hargittai 1). Still, secondary accounts are important for revealing these norms (Cardell, Douglas & Maguire 163). The secondary account is particularly prevalent on Twitter, a platform that often brings together multiple audiences into a public profile. In 2015, author Emily Reynolds claimed that Twitter alts were “an appealingly safe space compared to main Twitter where abuse, arguments and insincerity are rife” (n.p.).This paper draws on a survey of Twitter users with alts to argue that the strategic use of pseudonyms, profile photos without faces, locked accounts, and smaller audiences are ways to overcome some of the built-in limitations of social media automediality.Identity Is Multiple Chris Poole, founder of anonymous bulletin board 4chan, believes identity is a fluid concept, and designed his platform as a space in which people could connect over interests, not profiles. Positioning 4chan against real-name platforms, he argues:Your identity is prismatic […] we’re all multifaceted people. Google and Facebook would have you believe that you’re a mirror, that there is one reflection that you have, there is one idea of self. But in fact we’re more like diamonds. You can look at people from any angle and see something totally different, but they’re still the same. (n.p.)Claiming that identities are contextual performances stems from longstanding sociological and philosophical work on identity from theorists like Erving Goffman, who in the 1950s proposed a dramaturgical framework of the self to consider interactions as fundamentally social and performative rather than reflecting one core, essential inner self.Social media profiles allow people to use the language of the platform to represent themselves (Marwick 362), meaning identity performances are framed by platform architecture and features, formal and informal rules, and social ties (Schmidt 369). Social media profiles shape how people can engage in how they represent themselves, argue Shelly Farnham and Elizabeth Churchill, who claim that the assumption that a single, unified online identity is sufficient is a problematic trend in platform design. They argue that when facets of their lives are incompatible, people segment those lives into separate areas in order to maintain social norms and boundaries.Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson consider identity multiplicities to be crucial to automediality, which is built on an aesthetic of bricolage and pastiche rather than understanding subjectivity to be the essence of the self. In her work on automediality and online girlhood, Maguire ("Home"; "Self-Branding" 74) argues that an automedial approach attends to how mediation shapes the way selves can be represented online, claiming that the self is brought into being through these mediation practices.This article understands alt accounts as a type of social media practice that Nick Couldry (52) identifies as presencing: sustaining a public presence with media. I investigate presencing through studying alts as a way to manage separate publics, and the tension between public and private, on Twitter by surveying users who have a main and an alt account. Although research into multiple account use is nascent, Alice Marwick lists maintaining multiple accounts as a tactic to mitigate context collapse, alongside other strategies such as using nicknames, only sharing posts when they are appropriate for multiple audiences, and keeping more personal interactions to private messenger and text message.Ben Light argues that while connection is privileged on social media, disconnective practices like editing out, deleting, unfriending, untagging, rejecting follower requests, and in this case, creating alt accounts, are crucial. Disconnecting from some aspects of the social media experience allows people to stay connected on a particular platform, by negotiating the dynamics that do not appeal to them. While the disconnective practice of presencing through an alt has not been studied in detail, research I discuss in the next section focuses on multi-account use to argue that people who have more than one account on a single platform are aware of their audiences, and want control over which people see which posts.Multi-Platform and Multi-Account UseA conference presentation by Frederic Stutzman and Woodrow Hartzog calls maintaining multiple profiles on a single platform a strategy for boundary regulation, through which access is selectively granted to specific people. Stutzman and Hartzog interviewed 20 people with multiple profiles to determine four main motives for this kind of boundary regulation: privacy, identity management, utility (using one profile for a distinct purpose, like managing a restaurant page), and propriety (conforming to social norms around appropriate disclosure).Writing about multiple profiles on Reddit, Alex Leavitt argues that temporary or “throwaway” accounts give people the chance to disclose sensitive or off-topic information. For example, some women use throwaways when posting to a bra sizing subreddit, so men don’t exploit their main account for sexual purposes. Throwaways are a boundary management technique Leavitt considers beneficial for Redditors, and urges platform designers to consider implementing alternatives to single accounts.Jessa Lingel and Adam Golub also call for platforms to allow for multiple accounts, suggesting Facebook should let users link their profiles at a metadata level and be able to switch between them. They argue that this would be especially beneficial for those who take on specific personas, such as drag queens. In their study of drag queens with more than one Facebook profile, Lingel and Golub suggest that drag queens need to maintain boundaries between fans and friends, but creating a separate business page for their identity as a performer was inadequate for the kind of nuanced personal communication they engaged in with their fans. Drag queens considered this kind of communication relationship maintenance, not self-branding. This demonstrates that drag queens on Facebook are attentive to their audience, which is a common feature of users posting to social media: they have an idea, no matter how accurate, of who they are posting to.Eden Litt and Eszter Hargittai (1) call this perception the imagined audience, which serves as a guide for how to present the self and what to post about when an audience is unknown or not physically present. People in their study would either claim they were posting to no-one in particular, or that they had an audience in mind, whether this was personal ties (close friends, family, specific individuals like a best friend), communal ties (people interested in cleaning tips, local art community, people in Portland), professional ties (colleagues, clients, my radio show audience), and phantasmal ties (people with whom someone has an imaginary relationship, like famous people, brands, animals, and the dead).Based on these studies of boundary regulation, throwaway accounts, separate Facebook pages for fans and friends, and imagined audiences on social media, I designed a short survey that would prompt respondents to reflect on their own practices of negotiating platform limitations through their alt account.Asking Twitter about AltsTo research alts, I asked my own Twitter followers to tell me about theirs. I’ve been tweeting from @emvdn since 2010, and I have roughly 5,500 followers, mostly Melbourne academics, writers, and professionals. This method of asking my own Twitter followers questions builds on a study by Alice Marwick and danah boyd, in which they investigated context collapse on social media by tweeting questions like “who do you tweet to?” and monitoring the replies.I sent out a tweet with a link to the survey on 31 January 2018, and left it open for responses until I submitted this draft article on 18 February 2018:I’m writing about alt (alternative/secondary) accounts on social media. If you have an alt account, on Twitter or elsewhere, could you tell me about it, in survey form? (van der Nagel)The tweet was retweeted 161 times, spreading the survey to other accounts and contexts, and I received a total of 326 responses to the survey. For a full list of survey questions, see Appendix. I asked people to choose one alt (if they had more than one), and answer questions about it, including what prompted them to start the account, how they named it, who the audience is for their main and their alt, and how similar they perceived their main and alt to be. I also asked whether they would like to remain anonymous or be quoted under a pseudonym, which I have followed in this article.Of course, by posting the Twitter survey to my own followers, I am necessarily asking a specific group of people whose alt practices might not be indicative of broader trends. Just like any research done on Twitter, this research attracted a particular group: the results of this survey give a snapshot of the followers of a 29 year old female Melbourne academic, and the wider networks it was retweeted into.Although I asked anyone with more than one account on the same platform to fill out the survey, I’ll be focusing on pseudonymous alts here. Not everyone is pseudonymous on their alt: 61 per cent of respondents said they use a pseudonym, and half (51 per cent) said theirs was locked, or unavailable to the public. Some people have an alt in order to distinguish themselves from their professional account, some are connecting with those who share a specific interest, and others deliberately created an alt to harass and troll others on Twitter. But I regard pseudonymous alts as especially important to this article, as they evidence particular understandings of social media.Asking how people named their alt gave me an insight into how they framed it: as another facet of their identity: “I chose something close, but not too close to my main twitter handle,” or directed towards one particular subject they use the alt for: “I wanted a personal account which would be about all sorts, and one just for women’s sport” (Danielle Warby). Some changed the name of their account often, to further hide the account away: “I have renamed it several times, usually referencing in jokes with friends.”Many alt usernames express that the account is an alternative to a main one: people often said their alt username was their main username with a prefix or suffix like “alt,” “locked,” “NSFW” (Not Safe For Work, adult content), “priv” (short for “private”), or “2”, so if their main account was @emvdn, their alt account might be @emvdn_alt. Some used a username or nickname from another part of their life, used a pop culture reference, or wanted a completely random username, so they used a username generator or simply mashed the keyboard to get a string of random characters. Others used their real name for their alt account: “It’s my name. The point wasn’t to hide, it was to separate/segment conversiations [sic]” (knitmeapony).When asked who their audience was for their main and their alt, most people spoke of a smaller, more intimate audience of close friends or trusted accounts. On Twitter, people with locked accounts must approve followers before they can see their tweets, so it’s likely they are thinking of a specific group. One person said their alt was “locked behind a trust-wall (like a paywall, but you need to pay with a life-long friendship).” A few people said their audience for their alt was just one person: themselves. While their main account was for friends, or just “anyone who wants to follow me” (Brisbane blogger), their alt would simply be for them alone, to privately post and reflect.Asking how similar the main and alt account was led people reflecting on how they used multiple accounts to manage their multifaceted identity. “My alt account is just me unfiltered,” said one anonymous respondent, and another called their accounts “two sides of the same coin. Both me, just public and private versions.” One respondent said, “I would communicate differently in the boardroom from the bedroom. And I guess my alt is more like a private bedroom party, so it doesn’t matter if my bra comes off.”Many people signalled their awareness or experience of harassment when asked about benefits or drawbacks of alt accounts: people started theirs to avoid being harassed, bullied, piled-on, or judged. While an alt account gave people a private, safe channel in which to reach close friends and share intimate parts of their life, they also spoke about difficulties with maintaining more than one account, and potential awkwardness if someone requested to follow them that they did not want to connect with.It seemed that asking about benefits and drawbacks of alts led to articulations of labour—keeping accounts separate, and deciding on who to allow into this private space—but fears about social media more generally also surfaced. Although creating an alt meant people were consciously taking steps to compartmentalise their identity, this did not make them feel completely impervious to harassment, context collapse, and overexposure. “Some dingus will screencap and create drama,” was one potential drawback of having an alt: just because confessions and intimate or sexual photos were shared privately doesn’t mean they will stay private. People were keen to acknowledge that alts involved ongoing labour and platform negotiations.Multiple Identity Facets; Multiple AccountsWhen I released the survey, I was expecting most people to discuss their alt, locked, private account, which existed in contrast to their main, unlocked, professional one. Some people did just that, like Sarah:I worked in the media and needed a place to put my thoughts ABOUT my job/the media that I didn’t want my boss reading – not necessarily negative, just private thoughts I wanted to write somewhere.Wanting to maintain a public presence while still having an intimate space for personal self-disclosure was a common theme, which showed an awareness of imagined audiences, and a desire to disconnect from certain audiences, particularly colleagues and family members. Some didn’t necessarily want an intimate alt, but a targeted one: there were accounts for dog photos, weight loss journeys, fandoms, pregnancies, fetishes, a positive academic advice account using a Barbie doll called @barbie_phd, and one for cataloguing laundromats around London. It also seemed alts were contagious: people regularly admitted they began theirs because a friend had one. “Friends were using alts and it looked like a cool world;” “my friends seemed to be having a good time with it, and I wanted to try something they were interested in;” “wanted to be part of the ‘little twitter’ community.”Fluidities I wasn’t expecting also emerged. One respondent considered both of their accounts to be primary:it’s not clear for me which of my accounts is the “alt”. i had my non-professional one first, but i don’t consider either of them secondary, though the professional one is much more active.Along with those that changed the name of their alt often, L said they “initially kept private to only me to rant, record very private thoughts etc., have since extended it to 3 followers.” Platforms encourage continuous, active, engaged participation with ever-expanding networks of followers and friends. As José van Dijck (12) argues, platforms privilege connections, even as they stress human connectedness and downplay the automated connectivity from which they profit. Twitter’s homepage urges people to “follow your interests. Hear what people are talking about. Join the conversation. See what’s happening in the world right now,” and encourages people to keep adding more connections by featuring a recommendation panel that displays suggestions next to the main feed for “who to follow”, and links to import contacts from Gmail and other address books. In this instance, L’s three followers is an act of resistance, a disconnective practice that only links L with the very specific people they want to be an audience for their private thoughts, not to the extended networks of people L knows.ConclusionThis article has provided further evidence that on social media platforms, people don’t just have one account with their real name that faithfully expresses their one true identity. Even among those with alts, practices vary immensely, with some people using their alt as a quieter, more private space, and others creating a public identity and stream of posts catering to a niche audience.When users understand social media’s visibility, persistence, editability, association, spreadability, searchability, shareability, and personalisation as limitations, they seek ways to compartmentalise their identity facets so they can have access to the conversations, contexts, and audiences they want.There is scope for future research in this area on how alts are created, perceived, and managed, and how they relate to the broader social media landscape and its emphasis on real names, expanding networks, and increasingly sophisticated connections between people, platforms, and data. 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Appendix: List of Survey QuestionsDemographic informationAll the questions in this survey are optional, so feel free to skip any if you’re not comfortable sharing.How old are you?What is your gender identity?What is your main occupation?What is your city and country of residence?Which social media platforms do you use? Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Tumblr, YouTube, Tencent QQ, WeChat, KakaoTalk, Renren, other?Which social media platforms do you have an alt account on? Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Snapchat, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, YouTube, Tencent QQ, WeChat, KakaoTalk, Renren, other?Your alt accountThis section asks you to pick one of your alt accounts - for example, your locked account on Twitter separate from your main account, a throwaway on Reddit, or a close-friends-only Facebook account - and tell me about it.Which platform is your alt account on?Is your alt locked (unavailable to the public)? Yes/NoWhat prompted you to start your alt account?Do you use a pseudonym on your alt? Yes/NoDo you use a photo of yourself as the profile image? Yes/NoDo you share photos of yourself on your alt? Yes/NoCan you tell me about how you named your alt?Which account do you use more often? My main/my alt/I use them about the sameWhich has a bigger audience? My main/my alt/They’re about the sameWho is the audience for your main account? Who is the audience for your alt account? What topics would you post about on your alt that you’d never post about on your main? How similar do you think your main and alt accounts are? What are the benefits of having an alt?What are the drawbacks of having an alt? Thank you!If I quote you in my research project, what name/pseudonym would you like me to use? My name/pseudonym is___________ OR I would like to remain anonymous and be assigned a participant number

The concept of “softening the news” or “tabloidization” refers to the adaption of tabloid standards by elite media, as a result of competitive pressures and with the aim of attracting the attention of the mass audience (e.g., Magin, 2019). Reinemann et al. (2012) distinguish three important dimensions: topic dimension: According to this dimension, “soft news” can be distinguished from “hard news” by their political relevance; one can either determine the level of political relevance (Reinemann et al., 2012) or – as most studies do (e.g., Steiner, 2016) – distinguish between topics that can be classified as either hard (e.g., politics) or soft (e.g., crime, sports, lifestyle). focus dimension: Soft news in this respect reports on issues in a rather episodic and less thematic way which means that the news coverage focuses more on the event itself instead of framing the event in a more general context (Iyengar, 1991; see also Entman, 1993). Furthermore, soft news rather focuses on individual rather than societal consequences. style dimension: According to this dimensions, soft news can be distinguished from hard news by the way of presentation. Soft news is presented inter alia in a more emotional, subjective or narrative way. News softening therefore represents a multi-dimensional concept (Esser, 1999; Reinemann et al., 2012) in which the different dimensions and indicators form a continuum. On this basis one can assess the degree of overall news softening. The concept thereby incorporates various other concepts of communication science (e.g., framing, subjective/objective reporting, etc.) that can thus be also attributed to distinct research traditions. Particularly in the style dimension, many different indicators are analysed – although the studies often differ as to which indicators are used. Field of application/theoretical foundation: Since soft news journalism is often seen as a threat to normative standards for quality media, the research on soft news and tabloidization trends is often part of studies on media performance. So far, studies on news softening and tabloidization focus on the comparison of (elite and popular) newspapers (e.g., Lefkowitz, 2018) or (public service and commercial) TV newscasts (e.g., Donsbach & Büttner, 2005). More recent studies also take online media into account (e.g., Karlsson, 2016) or compare social media platforms such as Facebook with offline and/or online media (e.g., Lischka & Werning, 2017; Magin et al., in press). References/combination with other methods of data collection: Content analyses can be combined with survey data from/ interviews with journalists (e.g., Leidenberger, 2015; Lischka & Werning, 2017; Lischka, 2018) or with experiments on the effect of soft news on the audience (e.g., trust in the news, information processing: see Bernhard, 2012 or Grabe et al., 2003 as examples, although these studies do not combine the results on the effects with content analyses). Example studies: Indicator Name of variable(s) Study Topic Dimension: Political relevance Political relevance Reinemann et al., 2012 topic Thema (kategorisiert) [topic (categorized)] Steiner, 2016 Focus Dimension: Episodic framing Episodic – thematic framing Reinemann et al., 2012 Individual framing Individual – societal relevance Reinemann et al., 2012 Style Dimension: 1. Emotional reporting (incl. affective wording, visual presentation of emotions) Emotional – unemotional reporting Reinemann et al., 2012 2. Personal reporting Personal – impersonal reporting Reinemann et al., 2012 3. Colloquial/ loose language Umgangssprache, Lockerheit der Sprache [colloquial, loose language] Steiner, 2016 4. Narrative presentation Nachrichtenpyramide vs. Narration [news pyramid vs. narration] Donsbach & Büttner, 2005 5. Emphasis on conflicts Konflikthaltigkeit [conflicts] Donsbach & Büttner, 2005 Topic Dimension With respect to the topic dimension, soft and hard news can be determined either by the extent to which the political relevance is made clear within the article (e.g., Reinemann et al., 2012) or by the distinction between topics (e.g., Steiner, 2016). Most studies use the latter option with politics (and sometimes economics as well) being considered hard news and topics such as sports and celebrity news being considered soft news. Topic Dimension, Indicator 1: political relevance (Reinemann et al., 2012) Information on Reinemann et al., 2012 Authors: Carsten Reinemann, James Stanyer, Sebastian Scherr, Guido Legnante Research question: This study is a meta-analysis that wants to find out 1) how different studies define news softening and 2) which dimensions and indicators are most often used to measure news softening. As a result, the paper suggests three important dimensions (topic, focus, style) and concrete indicators and operationalizations to measure these dimensions. Object of analysis: 24 studies Info about variable “Four aspects are distinguished that indicate the degree of political relevance of a news item: (1) societal actors, (2) decision-making authorities, (3) policy plan and (4) actors concerned. For each of those aspects the presence (1) or non-presence (0) is coded.” (Reinemann et al. 2012, p. 237) “Two or more societal actors that disagree on a societal issue (e.g., two parties, a party and an NGO, voters and politicians, employers and trade unions). Decision-making authorities (legislative, executive, judiciary) that are or could be involved in the generally binding decision about that societal issue. The substance of a planned or realized decision, measure, programme that relates to the issue. The persons or groups concerned by the planned or realized decisions, measures, programmes.” (Reinemann et al., 2012, p. 237) Variable name: political relevance Level of analysis: article Values: 0) not present; 1) present Level of measurement: nominal Reliability: Variable was not tested within this study. Codebook (in the appendix of the paper, p. 237-238) available under: DOI: 10.1177/1464884911427803 Topic Dimension, Indicator 2: topic (Steiner, 2016) Information on Steiner, 2016 Authors: Miriam Steiner Research question: The study investigates the news softening of German public service and commercial political news on TV and on Facebook. Object of analysis: ARD Tagesschau (TV); ZDF heute (TV); Sat.1 Nachrichten (TV); RTL Aktuell (TV); ARD Tagesschau (Facebook); ZDF heute (Facebook); Sat.1 Nachrichten (Facebook); RTL Aktuell (Facebook) Time frame of analysis: artificial week in 2014 (April, 10 – October, 10) Info about the variable Variable name: Thema (kategorisiert)/ Ressort [Topic (categorized)/ (newspaper) section] Level of analysis: article Values (in German): 101-247) Politik [politics]; 310-399) Wirtschaft [economics] ? defined as “hard news” 900) Unfall/Katastrophe [accident, catastrophe]; 1000-1010) Kriminalität [crime]; 1100) human interest; 1200) Sport [sports] ? defined as “soft news” Level of measurement: nominal Reliability: one coder; intra-coder-reliability: 0.81 (Krippendorff’s Alpha), 83.3% (Holsti) Codebook attached (in German) Focus Dimension According to this dimension, hard and soft news can be distinguished by the framing of the article. Reinemann et al. (2012) hereby differentiate between 1) episodic (soft) vs. thematic (hard) framing and 2) individual (soft) vs. societal (hard) framing. Focus Dimension, Indicator 1: episodic vs. thematic framing (Reinemann et al., 2012: for information about the study, see above) “Here, the focus of a news item as related to the accentuation of episodes or themes is coded. Episodically focused news items present an issue by offering a specific example, case study, or event oriented report, e.g., covering unemployment by presenting a story on the plight of a particular unemployed person […]” (Reinemann et al. 2012, p. 238) Variable name: episodic – thematic framing Level of analysis: article Values: 0) pure or predominant episodic framing; 1) mixed episodic and thematic framing; 2) pure or predominant thematic framing Level of measurement: ordinal Reliability: Variable was not tested within this study. Codebook (in the appendix of the paper, p. 237-238) available under: DOI: 10.1177/1464884911427803 Focus Dimension, Indicator 2: individual vs. societal framing (Reinemann et al., 2012: for information about the study, see above) “Here, the focus of a news item as related to the accentuation of personal or societal relevance is coded. Individually focused news stress [sic!] the personal, private meaning or consequences of the incidents, developments, decisions etc. reported about for members of society. […]” (Reinemann et al. 2012, p. 237) Variable name: individual – societal relevance Level of analysis: article Values: 0) pure or predominant focus on individual relevance/ consequences; 1) mixed attention to individual and societal relevance/ consequences; 2) pure or predominant focus on societal relevance/ consequences Level of measurement: ordinal Reliability: Variable was not tested within this study. Codebook (in the appendix of the paper, p. 237-238) available under: DOI: 10.1177/1464884911427803 Style Dimension This dimension is about how news is presented. Studies thereon analyse different indicators with 1) emotional reporting being most frequently used. Besides, studies refer to 2) personal reporting (i.e., the presence of the journalist’s point of view), colloquial/ loose language, 3) narrative presentation or 4) emphasis on conflicts as indicators of a soft news style. Style Dimension, Indicator 1: emotional reporting Most studies measure emotional reporting with the help of only one variable (usually a multi-level scale) (e.g., Reinemann et al., 2012). Alternatively, one can further distinguish (Magin & Stark, 2015) between verbal style (linguistic features such as strong adjectives and superlatives or emotional metaphors) and visual style (showing emotions in pictures) (e.g., Leidenberger, 2015). Style Dimension, Indicator 1: emotional reporting (Reinemann et al., 2012: for information about the study, see above) “Here, the journalistic style of a news item as related to the emotional presentation of information is coded. […] Emotional news items use verbal, visual or auditive means that potentially arouse or amplify emotions among audience members. This can be done, for example, (a) by dramatizing events, i.e. presenting them as exceptional, exciting, or thrilling; (b) by affective wording and speech, e.g. superlatives, strong adjectives, present tense in the description of past events, pronounced accentuation; (c) by reporting on or visually presenting explicit expressions of emotions (e.g., hurt, anger, fear, distress, joy) […]” (Reinemann et al. 2012, p. 238) Variable name: emotional – unemotional reporting Level of analysis: article Values: 0) purely or predominantly emotional; 1) mix of emotional and unemotional elements; 2) purely or predominantly unemotional Level of measurement: ordinal Reliability: Variable was not tested within this study. Codebook (in the appendix of the paper, p. 237-238) available under: DOI: 10.1177/1464884911427803 Style Dimension, Indicator 2: personal reporting (Reinemann et al., 2012: for information about the study, see above) “Here, the journalistic style of a news item as related to the explicit appearance of journalists’ personal points of view is concerned. It is coded whether a news item includes explicit statements of the reporting [sic!] journalists’ personal impressions, interpretations, points of view or opinions. […]” (Reinemann et al. 2012, p. 238) Variable name: personal – impersonal reporting Level of analysis: article Values: 0) purely or predominantly personal; 1) mix of personal and impersonal elements; 2) purely or predominantly impersonal Level of measurement: ordinal Reliability: Variable was not tested within this study. Codebook (in the appendix of the paper, p. 237-238) available under: DOI: 10.1177/1464884911427803 Style Dimension, Indicator 3: colloquial/ loose language (Steiner, 2016: for information about the study, see above) The variable measures the degree of colloquial language on a 3-point-scale, ranging from 0 (not colloquial at all) to 2 (very colloquial). Variable name: Umgangssprache/ Lockerheit der Sprache [colloquial/ loose language] Level of analysis: article Values: 0) gar nicht umgangssprachlich; 1) wenig umgangssprachlich; 2) stark umgangssprachlich Level of measurement: ordinal Reliability: one coder; intra-coder-reliability: 0.72 (Krippendorff’s Alpha), 88.9% (Holsti, nominal) Codebook attached (in German) Style Dimension, Indicator 4: narrative presentation (Donsbach & Büttner, 2005) Information on Donsbach & Büttner, 2005 Author: Wolfang Donsbach, Katrin Büttner Research question/ Research interest: The study examines the presentation of political news coverage in the most important public service and commercial main German newscasts in 1983, 1990 and 1998 with the aim of revealing changes in the presentation of politics and the extent to which there are convergent trends (? tabloidization). Object of analysis: news on national politics within four German newscasts: 1) Tagesschau (ARD), ZDF heute, Sat.1 Blick/18.30, RTL Aktuell (in 1983: only Tagesschau and ZDF heute) Time frame of analysis: for each year, every second day within the last four weeks before election day was analysed: 1) February 7, 1983 to March 6, 1983 (March 6, 1983 = election day); November 5, 1990 to December 2, 1990 (December 2, 1990 = election day); August 31, 1998 to September 27, 1998 (September 27, 1998 = election day) Info about variable: news pyramid vs. narration This variable is used to measure whether news is presented in terms of the “inverted news pyramid” (that is, answering the important W-questions at the beginning) or whether the journalist tells a story. This variable is measured on a 5-point-scale ranging from -2) (news pyramid) to 2) narration. Variable names: Nachrichtenpyramide vs. Narration [news pyramid vs. narration] Level of analysis: article Values: -2) Nachrichtenpyramide; -1); 0) neither/nor; 1); 2) narration Level of measurement: ordinal Reliability: four coders, reliability: N.A. Codebook (in German) available under: http://donsbach.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Codebuch_TV-Nachrichten.pdf Style Dimension, Indicator 5: emphasis on conflicts (Donsbach & Büttner, 2005: for information about the study, see above) The variable measures whether conflicts are mentioned or not (=9). The variable also distinguishes between implicit (=1; conflict is apparent, but not openly addressed) and explicit (=2; conflict is openly addressed) conflicts. Variable names: Konflikthaltigkeit [conflicts] Level of analysis: article Values: 1) impliziter Konflikt; 2) expliziter Konflikt; 9) kein Konflikt Level of measurement: nominal Reliability: four coders, reliability: N.A. Codebook (in German) available under: http://donsbach.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Codebuch_TV-Nachrichten.pdf References Bernhard, U. (2012). Infotainment in der Zeitung: Der Einfluss unterhaltungsorientierter Gestaltungsmittel auf die Wahrnehmung und Verarbeitung politischer Informationen [Infotainment in the newspaper: The influence of entertainment-oriented style elements on the perception and processing of political information]. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Donsbach, W., & Büttner, K. (2005). Boulevardisierungstrend in deutschen Fernsehnachrichten [Tabloidization trend in German TV news]. Publizistik, 50(1), 21–38. Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58. Esser, F. (1999). `Tabloidization’ of news: A comparative analysis of Anglo-American and German press journalism. European Journal of Communication, 14(3), 291-324. Grabe, M. E., Lang, A., & Zhao, X. (2003). News content and form: Implications for memory and audience evaluations. Communication Research, 30(4), 387-413. Iyengar, S. (1991). Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Karlsson, M. B. (2016). Goodbye politics, hello lifestyle. Changing news topics in tabloid, quality and local newspaper websites in the U.K. and Sweden from 2002 to 2012. Observatorio, 10(4), 150-165. Lefkowitz, J. (2018). “Tabloidization” or dual-convergence: Quoted speech in tabloid and “quality” British newspapers 1970–2010. Journalism Studies, 19(3), 353-375. Leidenberger, J. (2015). Boulevardisierung von Fernsehnachrichten: Eine Inhaltsanalyse deutscher und französischer Hauptnachrichtensendungen [Tabloidization of TV news: A content analysis comparing German and French main newscasts]. Wiesbaden: VS. Lischka, J. A. (2018). Logics in social media news making: How social media editors marry the Facebook logic with journalistic standards. Journalism. Advanced online publication. DOI: 10.1177/1464884918788472 Lischka, J. A., & Werning, M. (2017). Wie Facebook den Regionaljournalismus verändert: Publikums- und Algorithmusorientierung bei der Facebook-Themenselektion von Regionalzeitungen [How Facebook alters regional journalism: Audience and algorithm orientation in the Facebook topic selection of regional newspapers]. kommunikation@gesellschaft, 18. Magin, M. (2019). Attention, please! Structural influences on tabloidization of campaign coverage in German and Austrian elite newspapers (1949–2009). Journalism, 20(12), 1704–1724. Magin, M., & Stark, B. (2015). Explaining National Differences of Tabloidisation Between Germany and Austria. Journalism Studies, 16(4), 577–595. Magin, M., Steiner, M., Häuptli, A., Stark, B., & Udris, L. (in press). Is Facebook driving tabloidization? In M. Conboy & S. A. Eldridge II (Eds.), Global Tabloid: Culture and Technology. Routledge. Reinemann, C., Stanyer, J., Scherr, S., & Legnante, G. (2012). Hard and soft news: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings. Journalism, 13(2), 221–239. Steiner, M. (2016). Boulevardisierung goes Facebook? Ein inhaltsanalytischer Vergleich politischer Nachrichten von tagesschau, heute, RTL Aktuell und Sat.1 Nachrichten im Fernsehen und auf Facebook [Tabloidization goes Facebook? A Comparative Content Analysis of the News Quality of Tagesschau, heute, RTL Aktuell und Sat.1 on TV and on Facebook]. In L. Leißner, H. Bause & L. Hagemeyer (Eds.), Politische Kommunikation – neue Phänomene, neue Perspektiven, neue Methoden (pp. 27-46). Berlin: Frank & Timme.

Connections In Small Pieces Loosely Joined, David Weinberger identifies some of the obvious changes which the Web has brought to human relations. Social connections, he argues, used to be exclusively defined and constrained by the physics and physicality of the “real” world, or by geographical and material facts: it’s … true that we generally have to travel longer to get to places that are farther away; that to be heard at the back of the theater, you have to speak louder; that when a couple moves apart, their relationship changes; that if I give you something, I no longer have it. (xi) The Web, however, is a place (or many places) where the boundaries of space, time, and presence are being reworked. Further, since we built this virtual world ourselves and are constantly involved in its evolution, the Web can tell us much about who we are and how we relate to others. In Weinberger’s view, it demonstrates that “we are creatures who care about ourselves and the world we share with others”, and that “we live within a context of meaning” beyond what we had previously cared to imagine (xi-xii). Before the establishment of computer-mediated communication (CMC), we already had multiple means of connecting people commonly separated by space (Gitelman and Pingree). Yet the Web has allowed us to see each other whilst separated by great distances, to share stories, images and other media online, to co-construct or “produse” (Bruns) content and, importantly, to do so within groups, rather than merely between individuals (Weinberger 108). This optimistic evaluation of the Web and social relations is a response to some of the more cautious public voices that have accompanied recent technological developments. In the 1990s, Jan van Dijk raised concerns about what he anticipated as wide-reaching social consequences in the new “age of networks” (2). The network society, as van Dijk described it, was defined by new interconnections (chiefly via the World Wide Web), increased media convergence and narrowcasting, a spread of both social and media networks and the decline of traditional communities and forms of communication. Modern-day communities now consisted both of “organic” (physical) and “virtual” communities, with mediated communication seemingly beginning to replace, or at least supplement, face-to-face interaction (24). Recently, we have found ourselves on the verge of even more “interconnectedness” as the future seems determined by ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) and a new technological and cultural development known as the “Internet of Things” (Greenfield). Ubicomp refers to the integration of information technology into everyday objects and processes, to such an extent that the end-users are often unaware of the technology. According to Greenfield, ubicomp has significant potential to alter not only our relationship with technology, but the very fabric of our existence: A mobile phone … can be switched off or left at home. A computer … can be shut down, unplugged, walked away from. But the technology we're discussing here–ambient, ubiquitous, capable of insinuating itself into all the apertures everyday life affords it–will form our environment in a way neither of those technologies can. (6) Greenfield's ideas are neither hypothesis, nor hyperbole. Ubicomp is already a reality. Dodson notes, Ubicomp isn't just part of our ... future. Its devices and services are already here. Think of the use of prepaid smart cards for use of public transport or the tags displayed in our cars to help regulate congestion charge pricing or the way in which corporations track and move goods around the world. (7) The Internet of Things advances the ubicomp notion of objects embedded with the capacity to receive and transmit data and anticipates a move towards a society in which every device is “on” and in some way connected to the Internet; in other words, objects become networked. Information contained within and transmitted among networked objects becomes a “digital overlay” (Valhouli 2) over the physical world. Valhouli explains that objects, as well as geographical sites, become part of the Internet of Things in two ways. Information may become associated with a specific location using GPS coordinates or a street address. Alternatively, embedding sensors and transmitters into objects enables them to be addressed by Internet protocols, and to sense and react to their environments, as well as communicate with users or with other objects. (2) The Internet of Things is not a theoretical paradigm. It is a framework for describing contemporary technological processes, in which communication moves beyond the established realm of human interaction, to enable a whole range of potential communications: “person-to-device (e.g. scheduling, remote control, or status update), device-to-device, or device-to-grid” (Valhouli 2). Are these newer forms of communication in any sense meaningful? Currently, ubicomp's applications are largely functional, used in transport, security, and stock control. Yet, the possibilities afforded by the technology can be employed to enhance “connectedness” and “togetherness” in the broadest social sense. Most forms of technology have at least some social impact; this is particularly true of communication technology. How can that impact be made explicit? Here, we discuss one such potential application of ubicomp with reference to a new UK research project: TOTeM–Tales of Things and Electronic Memory. TOTeM aims to draw on personal narratives, digital media, and tagging to create an “Internet” of people, things, and object memories via Web 2.0 and mobile technologies. Communicating through Objects The TOTeM project, began in August 2009 and funded by Research Councils UK's Digital Economy Programme, is concerned with eliciting the memory and value of “old” artefacts, which are generally excluded from the discourse of the Internet of Things, which focuses on new and future objects produced with embedded sensors and transmitters. We focus instead on existing artefacts that hold significant personal resonance, not because they are particularly expensive or useful, but because they contain or “evoke” (Turkle) memories of people, places, times, events, or ideas. Objects across a mantelpiece can become conduits between events that happened in the past and people who will occupy the future (Miller 30). TOTeM will draw on user-generated content and innovative tagging technology to study the personal relationships between people and objects, and between people through objects. Our hypothesis is that the stories that are connected to particular objects can become binding ties between individuals, as they provide insights into personal histories and values that are usually not shared, not because they are somehow too personal or uninteresting, but because there is currently little systematic context for sharing them. Even in families, where objects routinely pass down through generations, the stories associated with these objects are generally either reduced to a vague anecdote or lost entirely. Beyond families, there are some objects whose stories are deemed culturally-significant: monuments, the possessions of historical figures, religious artefacts, and archaeological finds. The current value system which defines an object’s cultural significance appears to replicate Bourdieu's assessment of the hierarchies which define aesthetic concepts such as taste. In both cases, the popular, everyday, or otherwise mundane is deemed to possess less cultural capital than that which is less accessible or otherwise associated with the social elites. As a result, objects whose histories are well-known are mostly found in museums, untouchable and unused, whereas objects which are within reach, all around us, tend to travel from owner to owner without anyone considering what histories they might contain. TOTeM’s aim is to provide both a context and a mechanism for enabling individuals and community groups to share object-related stories and memories through digital media, via a custom-built platform of “tales of things”. Participants will be able to use real-life objects as conduits for memory, by producing “tales” about the object's personal significance, told through digital video, photographs, audio, or a mixture of media. These tales will be hosted on the TOTeM project's website. Through specifically-developed TOTeM technology, each object tale will generate a unique physical tag, initially in the form of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and QR (Quick Response) codes. TOTeM participants will be able to attach these tags/codes to their objects. When scanned with a mobile phone equipped with free TOTeM software or an RFID tag reader, each tag will access the individual object's tale online, playing the media files telling that object’s story on the mobile phone or computer. The object's user-created tale will be persistently accessible via both the Internet and 3G (third generation) mobile phones. The market share of 3G and 4G mobile networks is expanding, with some analysts predicting that they will account for 30% of the global mobile phone market by 2014 (Kawamoto). As the market for mobile phones with fast data transfer rates keeps growing, TOTeM will become accessible to an ever-growing number of mobile, as well as Internet, users. The TOTeM platform will serve two primary functions. It will become an archive for object memories and thus grow to become an “archaeology for the future”. We hope that future generations will be able to return to this repository and learn about the things that are meaningful to groups and individuals right now. The platform will also serve as an arena for contemporary communication. As the project develops, object memories will be directly accessible through tagged artefacts, as well as through browsing and keyword searches on the project website. Participants will be able to communicate via the TOTeM platform. On a practical level, the platform can bring together people who already share an interest in certain objects, times, or places (e.g. collectors, amateur historians, genealogists, as well as academics). In addition, we hope that the novelty of TOTeM’s approach to objects may encourage some of those individuals for whom non-participation in the digital world is not a question of access but one of apathy and perceived irrelevance (Ofcom 3). Tales of Things: Pilots Since the beginning of this research project, we have begun to construct the TOTeM platform and develop the associated tagging technology. While the TOTeM platform is being built, we have also used this time to conduct a pilot “tale-telling” phase, with the aim of exploring how people might choose to communicate object stories and how this might make them feel. In this initial phase, we focus on eliciting and constructing object tales, without the use of the TOTeM platform or the tagging technology, which will be tested in a future trial. Following Thomson and Holland’s autoethnographic approach, in the first instance, the TOTeM team and advisors shared their own tales with each other (some of these can be viewed on the TOTeM Website). Each of us chose an object that was personally significant to us, digitally recorded our object memories, and uploaded videos to a YouTube channel for discussion amongst the group. Team members in Edinburgh subsequently involved a group of undergraduate students in the pilot. Here, we offer some initial reflections on what we have learned from recording and sharing these early TOTeM tales. The objects the TOTeM team and advisors chose independently from each other included a birth tag, a box of slides, a tile, a block of surf wax, a sweet jar from Japan, a mobile phone, a concert ticket, a wrist band, a cricket bat, a watch, an iPhone, a piece of the Berlin Wall, an antique pocket sundial, and a daughter’s childhood toy. The sheer variety of the objects we selected as being personally significant was intriguing, as were the varying reasons for choosing the objects. Even there was some overlap in object choice, for instance between the mobile and the iPhone, the two items (one (relatively) old, one new) told conspicuously different stories. The mobile held the memory of a lost friend via an old text message; the iPhone was valued not only for its practical uses, but because it symbolised the incarnation of two childhood sci-fi fantasies: a James Bond-inspired tracking device (GPS) and the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. While the memories and stories linked to these objects were in many ways idiosyncratic, some patterns have emerged even at this early stage. Stories broadly differed in terms of whether they related to an individual’s personal experience (e.g. memorable moments or times in one’s life) or to their connection with other people. They could also relate to the memory of particular events, from football matches, concerts and festivals on a relatively local basis, to globally significant milestones, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. In many cases, objects had been kept as tokens and reminders of particularly “colourful” and happy times. One student presented a wooden stick which he had picked up from a beach on his first parent-free “lads’ holiday”. Engraved on the stick were the names of the friends who had accompanied him on this memorable trip. Objects could also mark the beginning or end of a personal life stretch: for one student, his Dub Child vinyl record symbolised the moment he discovered and began to understand experimental music; it also constituted a reminder of the influence his brother had had on his musical taste. At other times, objects were significant because they served as mementos for people who had been “lost” in one way or another, either because they had moved to different places, or because they had gone missing or passed away. With some, there was a sense that the very nature of the object enabled the act of holding on to a memory in a particular way. The aforementioned mobile phone, though usually out of use, was actively recharged for the purposes of remembering. Similarly, an unused wind-up watch was kept going to simultaneously keep alive the memory of its former owner. It is commonly understood that the sharing of insights into one’s personal life provides one way of building and maintaining social relationships (Greene et al.). Self-disclosure, as it is known in psychological terms, carries some negative connotations, such as making oneself vulnerable to the judgement of others or giving away “too much too soon”. Often its achievement is dependent on timing and context. We were surprised by the extent to which some of us chose to disclose quite sensitive information with full knowledge of eventually making these stories public online. At the same time, as both researchers and, in a sense, as an audience, we found it a humbling experience to be allowed into people’s and objects’ meaningful pasts and presents. It is obvious that the invitation to talk about meaningful objects also results in stories about things and people we deeply care about. We have yet to see what shape the TOTeM platform will take as more people share their stories and learn about those of others. We don’t know whether it will be taken up as a fully-fledged communication platform or merely as an archive for object memories, whether people will continue to share what seem like deep insights into personal life stories, or if they choose to make more subversive (no less meaningful) contributions. Likewise, it is yet to be seen how the linking of objects with personal stories through tagging could impact people’s relationships with both the objects and the stories they contain. To us, this initial trial phase, while small in scale, has re-emphasised the potential of sharing object memories in the emerging network of symbolic meaning (Weinberger’s “context of meaning”). Seemingly everyday objects did turn out to contain stories behind them, personal stories which people were willing to share. Returning to Weinberger’s quote with which we began this article, TOTeM will enable the traces of material experiences and relationships to become persistently accessible: giving something away would no longer mean entirely not having it, as the narrative of the object’s significance would persist, and can be added to by future participants. Indeed, TOTeM would enable participants to “give away” more than just the object, while retaining access to the tale which would augment the object. Greenfield ends his discussion of the potential of ubicomp by listing multiple experiences which he does not believe would benefit from any technological augmentation: Going for a long run in the warm gentle rain, gratefully and carefully easing my body into the swelter of a hot springs, listening to the first snowfall of winter, savouring the texture of my wife’s lips … these are all things that require little or no added value by virtue of being networked, relational, correlated to my other activities. They’re already perfect, just as they stand. (258) It is a resonant set of images, and most people would be able to produce a similar list of meaningful personal experiences. Yet, as we have already suggested, technology and meaning need not be mutually exclusive. Indeed, as the discussion of TOTeM begins to illustrate, the use of new technologies in new contexts can augment the commercial applications of ubiquoutous computing with meaningful human communication. At the time of writing, the TOTeM platform is in the later stages of development. We envisage the website taking shape and its content becoming more and more meaningful over time. However, some initial object memories should be available from April 2010, and the TOTeM platform and mobile tagging applications will be fully operational in the summer of 2010. Our progress can be followed on www.youtotem.com and http://twitter.com/talesofthings. TOTeM looks forward to receiving “tales of things” from across the world. References Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge, 1984.Bruns, Axel. “The Future is User-Led: The Path towards Widespread Produsage.” fibreculture 11 (2008). 20 Mar. 2010 ‹http://www.journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_bruns_print.html›. Dodson, Sean. “Forward: A Tale of Two Cities.” Rob van Kranenburg. The Internet of Things: A Critique of Ambient Technology and the All-Seeing Network of RFID. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, Network Notebooks 02, 2008. 5-9. 20 Mar. 2010 ‹http://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/notebook2_theinternetofthings.pdf›. Gitelman, Lisa, and Geoffrey B. Pingree. Eds. New Media: 1740-1915. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Greene, Kathryn, Valerian Derlega, and Alicia Mathews. “Self-Disclosure in Personal Relationships.” Ed. Anita L. Vangelisti and Daniel Perlman. Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. 409-28. Greenfield, Adam. Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2006. Kawamoto, Dawn. “Report: 3G and 4G Market Share on the Rise.” CNET News 2009. 20 Mar. 2010 ‹http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10199185-94.html›. Kwint, Marius, Christopher Breward, and Jeremy Aynsley. Material Memories: Design and Evocation. Oxford: Berg, 1999. Miller, Daniel. The Comfort of Things. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008. Ofcom. ”Accessing the Internet at Home”. 2009. 20 Mar. 2010 ‹http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/telecoms/reports/bbresearch/bbathome.pdf›. Thomson, Rachel, and Janet Holland. “‘Thanks for the Memory’: Memory Books as a Methodological Resource in Biographical Research.” Qualitative Research 5.2 (2005): 201-19. Turkle, Sherry. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Valhouli, Constantine A. The Internet of Things: Networked Objects and Smart Devices. The Hammersmith Group Research Report, 2010. 20 Mar. 2010 ‹http://thehammersmithgroup.com/images/reports/networked_objects.pdf›. Van Dijk, Jan. The Network Society: Social Aspects of New Media. London: SAGE, 1999. Weinberger, David. Small Pieces Loosely Joined: How the Web Shows Us Who We Really Are. Oxford: Perseus Press, 2002.

This article uses a case study of a Melbourne-based youth media project called Youthworx to explore the processes at stake in cultural engagement for marginalised young people. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2008 and 2010, I identify some ways in which the city is implicated in promoting or preventing access to socially valued spaces of creativity and intended social mobility. The ethnographic material presented here has both empirical and theoretical value. It reveals the important relationships between the experience of place, creativity, and social life, demonstrating potentialities and limits of creativity-focused development interventions for marginalised youth. The articulation of these relationships and processes taking place within a particular city setting has theoretical implications. It opens up an opportunity to consider "suburbs" as enacted by specific forms of access, contingencies, and opportunities for a particular demographic, rather than treating "suburbs" as abstract, analytical constructs. Finally, my empirically grounded discussion draws attention to cultural and social consequences that inhabiting certain social worlds and acts of travelling "to and beyond" them have for young people. Youthworx is a community-based youth media initiative employing pathway-based semi-formal creative practices to re-engage young people who have a history of drug or alcohol abuse or juvenile justice, who have been long disconnected from mainstream education, or who are homeless. The focus on media production allows it to tap into, and in fact leverage, popular creativity, tacit knowledge, and familiar media-based activities that young people bring to bear on their media training and work in this context. Underpinned by social and creative industry policy, Youthworx brings together social service agency The Salvation Army (TSA), educational provider Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE (NMIT), youth community media organisation SYN Media, and researchers at Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University. Its day-to-day operation is run by contractual, part-time media facilitators, social workers (as part of TSA’s in-kind support), as well as media industry experts who provide casual media training. Youthworx is characterised by the diversity of its young demographic. One can differentiate between at least two groups of participants: those who join Youthworx because of the social opportunities, and those who put more value on its skill-development, or vocational creative industries orientation. This social organisation is, however, far from static. Over the two years of research (2008-2010) we observed evolving ideas about the identity of the program, its key social functions, and how they can be best served. This had proceeded with the construction of what the Youthworx staff term "a community of safe belonging" to a more "serious" media work environment, exemplified by the establishment of a social enterprise (Youthworx Productions) in 2010 that offers paid traineeships to the most capable and determined young creators. To accommodate the diversity of literacy levels, needs, and aspirations of its young participants, the project offers a tailored media education program with a mix of diversionary, educational, and commercial objectives. One-on-one media training sessions, accredited courses in Creative Industries (Media), and industry training within Youthworx Productions are provided to help young people develop a range of skills transferable into a variety of personal, social and professional contexts. Its creative studio, where learning occurs, is located in a former jeans factory warehouse in the heart of an industrial area of Melbourne’s northern inner-city suburb of Brunswick. Young people are referred to Youthworx by a range of social agencies, and they travel to Brunswick from across Melbourne. Some participants are known to spend over three hours commuting from outer suburbs such as Frankston or even regional towns such as King Lake. Unlike community-based creative programs reliant on established community structures within local suburbs (for example, ICE in Western Sydney), Youthworx moved into Tinning Street in Brunswick because its industry partner—The Salvation Army—had existing youth service infrastructure there. The program, however, was not tapping into an existing media “community of practice” (Lane and Wenger); it had to forge its own culture of media participation. In the early days of the program, there were necessary material resources and professional expertise (teachers/social workers/a creative venue), but it took a long while, and a high level of dedication, passion, and practical optimism on the part of the project managers and teaching staff, for young people to genuinely engage in media training and production. Now, Youthworx’s creative space is a “practised place” in de Certeau’s sense. As “the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers” (De Certeau 117), so is the Youthworx space produced by practices of media learning and making by professional creative practitioners and young amateur creators (Raffo; for ideas on institutionalised co-creative practice see Spurgeon et al.). The Brunswick location is where our extensive ethnographic research has taken place, including regular participant observation and qualitative interviews with staff and young participants. The ethnographers frequently travelled with young people to other locations within Melbourne, accompanying them on their trips to youth community radio station SYN Media in the CBD, where they produce a weekly radio show, as well as to film shoots and public social events around the city. As an access learning program for marginalised youth from around Melbourne, Youthworx provides an interesting example to explore how the concerns of material and cultural capital, geographic and cultural distance intersect and shape processes of creative participation and social inclusion. I draw on our ethnographic material to illustrate how these metonymic relationships play out in the ways young participants “travel distance” (Dewson et. al.) on the project and across the city, both figuratively and literally. The idea of “distance travelled” is adapted here from evaluation literature (for other relevant references see Dowmunt et al.; Hayes and Edwards; Holdsworth et al.), and builds on the argument made previously (Podkalicka and Staley 5), to encompass both the geographical mobility and cultural transformation that young people are supported to undergo as an intended outcome of their involvement in Youthworx. This paper also takes inspiration from ethnographic approaches that study a productive and transformative relationship between material culture, spatial geography and processes of identity formation (see Miller). What happens to Youthworx young participants as they travel in a trivial, and at first sight perhaps inconsequential, way between the suburbs they live in, the Youthworx Brunswick location and the city is both experientially real and meaningful. “Suburban space” is then a cultural site that simultaneously refers to concrete, literal places as well as “a state of mind”—that is, identification and connections that are generative of a sense of identity and belonging (Ferber et al.). Youthworx is an intermediary point on these young people’s travels, rather than the final destination (Podkalicka and Staley 5). It provides access to various forms of new spatial, social, and creative experiences and modes of expression. Creating opportunities for highly disenfranchised young people to access and develop new social and creative experiences is an important aspect of Youthworx’s developmental agenda, and is played out at both philosophical and practical levels. On the one hand, a strength-based approach to youth work assumes respect for young people’s potential and knowledges—unlike public discourses that deny them agency due to an assumed lack of life experience (e.g., Poletti). In addition to the material provision of "food and shelter" typical of traditional social work, attention is paid the higher levels of the Maslow hierarchy of human needs, with creativity, self-esteem, and social connectedness at the top of the scale (see also Podkalicka and Campbell; Podkalicka and Thomas). Former Manager of The Salvation Army’s Brunswick Youth Services (BYS)—one of Youthworx’s partners—Craig Campbell argues: Things like truth and beauty are a higher order of dreams for these kids. And by truth I don’t mean the simple lies that can be told to get them out of trouble [but] is there a greater truth to life than a grinding existence in the impoverished neighbourhood, is there something like beauty and aesthetics that wakes us up in the morning and calls a larger life out of us? Most of those kids only faintly dream of such a thing, and this dream is rapidly being extinguished under the weight of drugs and alcohol, abusive family systems, savage interaction with law and justice system, and education as a toxic environment and experience. (Campbell) Campbell's articulate reflection captures the way the Youthworx project has been conceived. It is also a pertinent example of the many reflections on experience and practice at Youthworx that were recorded in my fieldwork, which illustrate the way these kinds of social projects can be understood, interpreted and evaluated. The following personal narrative and contextual description introduce some of the important issues at stake. (The names and other personal details of young people have been changed.) Nineteen-year-old Dave is temporarily staying in an inner-city refuge. Normally, however, like most Youthworx participants, he lives in Broadmeadows, a far northern suburb of Melbourne. To get to Brunswick, where he does his accredited media course three days a week, he either catches a train or waits for a mini-bus to drive him there. The early-morning pick-up for about ten young people is organised by the program’s partner—The Salvation Army. At the Youthworx creative studio, located in the heart of Brunswick, right next to railway tracks, young people produce an array of media products: live and pre-recorded radio programs, digital storytelling, mini-documentaries, and original music. Once at Youthworx, they share the local neighbourhood with other artists who have adapted warehouses into art workshops, studios and galleries. The suburb of Brunswick is well-known for its multicultural profile, a combination of industrial and residential estates, high rates of tertiary students due to its proximity to universities, and its place in the recent history of urban gentrification. However, Youthworx participants don’t seek out or engage with the existing, physically proximate creative base, even within the same street. On a couple of occasions, the opposite has been the case: Youthworx students have been involved in acts of vandalism of local residents’ property, including nearby parked cars. Their connections to the Brunswick neighbourhood remain poor, often reflecting their low social capital as a result of unstable residential situations, isolation, and fraught relationships with family. From Brunswick, they often travel to the city on their own, wander around, sit on the steps of Flinders Street train station—an inner-city hub and popular meeting place for locals and tourists alike. Youthworx plays an important role in these young people’s lives, as an important access point to not only creative digital media-based experiences and skill development, but also to greater and basic geographical mobility and experiences within the city. As one of the students commented: They are giving us chances that we wouldn’t usually get. Every day you’re getting to a place, where it’s pretty damn easy to get into; that’s what’s good about it. There are so many places where you have to do so much to get there and half the time, some people don’t even have the bloody bus ticket to get a [job] interview. But [at Youthworx/BYS], they will pick you up and drive you around if you need it. They are friends. It is reportedly a common practice for many young people at Youthworx and BYS to catch a train or a tram (rather than bus) without paying for a ticket. However, to be caught dodging a fare a few times has legal consequences and young people often face court as a result. The program responds by offering its young participants tickets for public transport, ready for pick-up after afternoon activities, or, if possible, "driving them around"—as some young people told me. The program’s social workers revealed that girls are particularly afraid to travel on their own, especially when catching trains to the outer northern suburbs, for fear of being harassed or attacked. These supported travels are as practical and necessary as they are meaningful for young people’s identity formation, and as such are recognised and built into the project’s design, co-ordination and delivery. At the most basic level, The Salvation Army’s social workers pick young people up from the Broadmeadows area in the mornings. Youthworx creative practitioners assist young people to make trips to SYN Media in the city. For most participants, this is either the first or sporadic experience of travelling to the city, something they enjoy very much but are also somewhat daunted by. Additionally, as part of the curriculum, Youthworx staff make a point of taking young people to inner-city movie theatres or public media events. The following vignette from the fieldwork highlights another important connection between physical journey and creative expression. There is an excitement in Dave’s voice when he talks about his favourite pastime: hanging out around the city. “Why would you walk around the streets?” a curious female friend interjects. Dave replies: “No, it’s not the streets, man. It’s just Federation Square, everywhere … There is just all these young wannabe criminals and shit. People don’t know what goes on; and I want to do a doco on the city, a little doco of the people there, because I know a lot of it.” Dave’s interest in exploring the city may be interpreted as a rather common, mundane routine shared by mildly adventurous adolescents of all walks. And yet, there is much more at stake in his account, and for Youthworx young participants more generally. As mentioned before, for many of these young people, it is the first opportunity to travel to the city. This experience then is crucial in a sense of self-exploration and self-discovery. As they overcome their fear of venturing out into the city on their own, they also learn that they have knowledge which others might lack. This moment of realisation is significant and empowering, and they want to communicate this knowledge to others. Youthworx assists them in learning how to translate this knowledge in a creative and constructive way, through an expression that weaves between the free individual and the social voice constructed to enable a dialogue or understanding (Podkalicka; Podkalicka and Campbell; Podkalicka and Thomas; also Soep and Chavez). For an effective communication to occur, a crafted social voice requires skills and a critical awareness of oneself and an audience, which is very different from the modes of expression that these young people might have accessed previously. Youthworx's young participants draw heavily on their life experiences, geographical locations, the suburbs they come from, and places they visit in the city: their cultural productions often reference their homes, music clubs and hang-out venues, inner city streets, Federation Square, and Youthworx’s immediate physical surroundings, with graffiti-covered narrow alleys and railway tracks. The frequent depiction of Youthworx in young people’s creative outputs is often a token of appreciation of the creative, educational and social opportunities it has offered them. Social and professional connections they make there are found to be very valuable. The existing creative industries literature emphasises the importance of social networks to existing communities of interest and practice for human capacity building. Value is argued to lie not only in specific content produced, but in participatory processes that establish a link between personal growth, individual skills and social and professional networks (Hearn and Bridgestock). In a similar vein, Carlo Raffo uses Granovetter’s concept of “weak ties” to suggest that access to “social relations that go beyond the immediate locality and hence their immediate experiences” can provide marginalised young people with “pathways for authentic and informal learning that go beyond the structuring influences of class, gender and ethnicity and into new and emerging economic experiences” (Raffo 11). But higher levels of confidence or social skills are required to make the most of vocational or professional opportunities beyond the supportive context of Youthworx. Connections between Youthworx participants and other creative practitioners within the creative locality of Brunswick have been absent thus far. Transitions into mainstream education and employment have also proven challenging for this group of heavily marginalised youth. As we found during our ongoing fieldwork, even the most talented students find it hard to get into mainstream education courses, or to get or keep jobs. The project serves as a social basis for young people to develop self-agency and determination so they can start engaging with new opportunities and social networks outside the program (Raffo 15). Indeed, the creative practitioners at Youthworx are key facilitators of connections between young people and the external world. They act as positive role models socially, and illustrate what is possible professionally in terms of media excellence and employment (see also Raffo). There are indications that this very supportive, gradual process of social learning is starting to bear fruit for individual students and the Youthworx community as a whole as they grow more confident with themselves, in interactions with others, and the media work they do. Media projects such as Youthworx are examples of what Leadbeater and Wong call “disruptive innovation,” as they provide new ways of learning for those alienated by formal education. The use of digital hands-on media production makes educational processes relevant and engaging for young people. However, as I demonstrate in this paper, there are tangible, material barriers to releasing creativity, or enhancing self-discovery and sociality. There are, as Leadbeater and Wong observe, persistent links between cultural environment, socio-economic status, corresponding attitudes to learning and educational success in the developed world. In the UK, for example, only small percent of those from the lowest socio-economic background go to university (Leadbeater and Wong 10). Youthworx provides an opportunity and motivation for young people to break a cycle of individual self-destructive behaviour (e.g. getting locked up every 6 months), intergenerational reliance on welfare, or entrenched negative attitudes to learning. At the basic level, it encourages and often insists that young people get up in the morning, with social workers often reporting to have to “knock at people’s houses and get them ready.” The involvement in Youthworx is often an important reason to start delineating between day and night, week and weekend. A couple of students commented: I slept a lot. Yeah, I was always sleeping during the day and out at night; I could have still been doing nothing with my life [were it not for Youthworx]. Now people ask if I want to go out during the week, and I just can’t be bothered. I just want to sleep and then go to [Youthworx] and then weekends are when you go out. It also offers a concrete means to begin exploring the city beyond the constraints of their local suburbs. This literal, geographical mobility is interlocked with potential for a changed perception of opportunities, individual transformation and, consequently, social mobility. Dave, as we have seen, is attracted to the idea of exploring the city but also has creative aspirations, and contemplates professional prospects in the creative industries. It is important to note that the participants are resilient in their negotiation between the suburban, Youthworx and inner city worlds they can inhabit. Accessing learning, despite previous negative schooling experiences, is for many of them very important, and reaffirming of life they aspire to. An opportunity to pursue dreams, creative forms of expression, social networks and education is a vital part of human existence. These aspects of social inclusion are recognised in the current articulation of social policy reconceptualised beyond material, economic equality. Creative industry policy, on the other hand, is concerned with fostering creative outputs and skills to generate engagement and employment opportunities in the knowledge-based economies for wide sections of the population. The value is located in human capacity building, involving basic social as well as vocational skills, and links to social networks. The Youthworx project merges these two policy frameworks of the social and creative to test in practice new collaborative approaches to youth development. The spatial and cultural practices of young people described here serve a basis for proposing a theoretical framework that can help understand the term "suburb" in an intrinsically relational, grounded way. The relationships at stake in cultural and social participation for marginalised young people lead me to suggest that the concept of ‘suburb’ takes on two tightly interwoven meanings. The first refers symbolically to a particular locale for popular creativity (Burgess) or even marginal creativity by a group of young people living at the periphery of the social system. The second meaning refers to the interlocked forms of material and cultural capital (and distance), as theorised in Bourdieu’s work (e.g., Bourdieu). It includes physical, spatial conditions and relations, as well as cultural resources and possibilities made available to young participants by the project (e.g., the instituted, supported travel across the city, or the employment of creative practitioners), and interlinked with everyday dispositions, practices, and status of young people (e.g., taste). This empirically-grounded discussion allows to theorise ‘suburbs’ as perceived and socially enacted by concrete, relational forms of access, contingencies, and opportunities for a particular demographic, rather than analytically pre-conceived, designated spaces within an urban system. The ethnographic material reveals that cultural participation for marginalised youth requires an integrated approach, with a parallel focus on material and creative opportunities made available within creative sites such as Youthworx or even the Brunswick creative area. The important material constraints exemplified in this paper concern socio-economic background, cultural disadvantage and geographical isolation and point to the limits of the creative industries-based interventions to address social inclusion if carried out in isolation. They tap into the very basis of risks for this specific demographic of marginalised youth or "youth at risk." The paper suggests that the productive emphasis on the role of media and communication for (youth) development needs to be contextualised and considered along with the actual realities of everyday existence that often limit young people’s educational and vocational prospects (see Bentley et al.; Leadbeater and Wong). On the other hand, an exclusive focus on material support risks cancelling out the possibilities for positive life transitions, such as those triggered by constructive, non-reductionist engagement with “beauty, aesthetics” (Campbell) and creativity. By exploring how participation in Youthworx engenders both the physical mobility between suburbs and the city, and identity transformation, we are able to gain insights into the nature of social exclusion, its meanings for the youth involved and the project managers and staff. Thinking about Youthworx not just as a hub of creative production but as a cultural site—“a space within a practiced place of identity” (De Certeau 117) in the suburb of Brunswick—opens up a discussion that combines the policy language of opportunity and necessity with concrete creative and material possibilities. Social inclusion objectives aimed at positive youth transitions need to be considered in the light of the connection—or disconnection—between the Youthworx Brunswick site itself, young participants’ suburbs, and, by extension, the trajectory between the inner city and other spaces that young people travel through and inhabit. Acknowledgment I would like to thank all the young participants, staff and industry partners involved in the Youthworx project. I also acknowledge the comments of anonymous peer reviewer which helped to strengthen the argument by foregrounding the value of the empirical material. The paper draws on the larger project funded by the Centre of Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation. Youthworx research team includes: Prof Denise Meredyth (CI); Prof Julian Thomas (CI); Ass/Prof David MacKenzie (CI); Ass/Prof Ellie Rennie; Chris Wilson (PhD candidate), and Jon Staley (Youthworx Manager and PhD candidate). References Bentley, Tom, and Kate Oakley. “The Real Deal: What Young People Think about Government, Politics and Social Exclusion.” Demos. 12 Jan. 2011 ‹http://www.demos.co.uk/files/theRealdeal.pdf›. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1987. Burgess, Jean. “Hearing Ordinary Voices: Cultural Studies, Vernacular Creativity and Digital Storytelling.” Continuum 20.2 (2006): 201–14. Campbell, Craig. Personal Interview. Melbourne, 2009. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984. Dewson, Sara, Judith Eccles, Nii Djan Tackey and Annabel Jackson. “Guide to Measuring Soft Outcomes and Distance Travelled.” The Institute for Employment Studies. 12 Jan. 2011‹http:// www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/distance.pdf›. Dowmunt, Tom, Mark Dunford, and N. van Hemert. Inclusion through Media. London: Open Mute, 2007. Ferber, Sarah, Chris Healy, and Chris McAuliffe. Beasts of Suburbia: Reinterpreting Cultures in Australian Suburbs. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 1994. Hayes, Alan, Matthew Gray, and Ben Edwards. “Social Inclusion: Origins, Concepts and Key Themes.” Australian Institute of Family Studies, prepared for the Social Inclusion Unit, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 2008.12 Jan. 2011 ‹http://www.socialinclusion.gov.au/Documents/AIFS_SI_concepts_report_20April09.pdf›. Hearn, Gregory, and Ruth Bridgstock. “Education for the Creative Economy: Innovation, Transdisciplinarity, and Networks. Education in the Creative Economy: Knowledge and Learning in the Age of Innovation. Ed. Daniel Araya and Michael Peters. New York: Peter Lang, 2010. 93–116. Holdsworth, Roger, Murray Lake, Kathleen Stacey, and John Safford. “Doing Positive Things: You Have to Go Out and Do It: Outcomes for Participants in Youth Development Programs.” Australian Youth Research Centre. 12 Jan. 2011 ‹http://www.dest.gov.au/NR/rdonlyres/5385FE14-A74C-4B24-98EA-D31EEA8447B2/21803/doing_positive_things1.pdf›. Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. Leadbeater, Charles, and Annika Wong. “Learning from the Extremes.” CISCO. 12 Jan. 2011 ‹http://www.socialinclusion.gov.au/Documents/AIFS_SI_concepts_report_20April09.pdf›. Miller, Daniel. Stuff. Cambridge: Polity, 2010. Podkalicka, Aneta. “Young Listening: An Ethnography of Youthworx Media's Radio Project." Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 23.4 (2009): 561–72. ———, and Jon Staley. “Youthworx Media: Creative Media Engagement for ‘at Risk’ Young People.” 3CM 5 (2009). ———, and Julian Thomas. “The Skilled Social Voice: An Experiment in Creative Economy and Communication Rights.’’ International Communication Gazette 72.4–5 (2010): 395–406. ———, and Craig Campbell. “Understanding Digital Storytelling: Beyond the Politics of Voice in Youth Participation Programs.” seminar.net: Media Technology and Lifelong Learning 6.2 (2010). ‹http://www.seminar.net/index.php/home/75-current-issue/150-understanding-digital-storytelling-individual-voice-and-community-building-in-youth-media-programs›. Poletti, Anna. Intimate Ephemera: Reading Young Lives in Australian Zine Culture. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008. Raffo, Carlo. "Mentoring Disenfranchised Young People: An Action Research Project on the Development of 'Weak Ties' and Social Capital Enhancement." Education and Industry in Partnership 6.3 (2000): 22–42. Soep, Elizabeth, and Vivian Chavez. Drop That Knowledge: Youth Radio Stories. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Spurgeon, Christina, Jean Burgess, Helen Klaebe, Kelly McWilliam, Jo Tacchi, and Mimi Tsai. “Co-Creative Media: Theorising Digital Storytelling as a Platform for Researching and Developing Participatory Culture.” 2009 ANZC Conference Proceedings. 2009. 16 Nov. 2010 ‹http://eprints.qut.edu.au/25811/2/25811.pdf›.

Resilience is an interdisciplinary concept that has been interrogated and investigated in a number of fields of research and practice including psychology, climate change, trauma studies, education and disaster planning. This paper considers its position within critical disability studies, popular understandings of disability and the emergence of a disability culture. Patrick Martin-Breen and J. Marty Anderies offer a colloquial definition of resilience as: Bouncing back after stress, enduring greater stress, and being less disturbed by a given amount of stress. … To be resilient is to withstand a large disturbance without, in the end, changing, disintegrating, or becoming permanently damaged; to return to normal quickly; and to distort less in the face of such stresses. (1182) Conversely, Glenn E. Richardson argues that resiliency is a ‘metatheory’ that can best be described as ‘growth or adaptation through disruption rather than to just recover or bounce back’ (1184). He argues that resiliency theory has progressed through several stages, from the recognition of characteristics of resilient individuals to an appreciation of the support structures required beyond the level of the individual. In her memoir Resilience, Ann Deveson describes resilience as a concept that people think they understand until they are called upon to define it. Deveson offers many definitions and examples of resilience throughout her book, beginning with stories about disability, people with disability and their experiences of changing levels of social inclusion and exclusion (632). She paints an evocative picture of a young mother whose five year old son has cerebral palsy giving evidence before a Royal Commission into Human Relationships during a period of significant social change involving the deinstitutionalisation of people with disabilities: A few years earlier, this child with cerebral palsy would have been placed in an institution. His mother might not even have seen him. Now she had care of her child but the pendulum had swung in the opposite direction. (632) During the 1980s a number of large institutions caring for people with developmental impairments and psychiatric illnesses were closed in favour of community care (Clear 652). Although giving an appearance of endorsing equality of disabled people in the community, the ‘hidden agenda’ of this initiative was to cut public expenditure on social services (Ellis 163). As a result, an undue burden fell to women who became primary carers with little support such as the woman Deveson remembers. She questions where this young mother mustered such ‘magnificent resilience’ when she had such little support: When he was born, she had been discharged from the hospital with her baby, a feeding formula and a tiny pink plate for the child’s cleft palate. The only advice she received was to come back later to have the plate refitted. Her general practitioner prescribed her sedatives for depression, and she and her husband found their own way to the Royal Blind society by asking a blind man they saw outside a supermarket. She had only learned accidentally from one of the nurses that her baby was blind. ‘He’s mentally retarded too,’ the nurse had added, almost as an afterthought. (632) Thus Deveson’s consideration of resilience includes both an individual’s response to what could be described as tragedy and the importance of social support and the drive to demand it. Despite her child’s impairment and the lack of community resources made available to her family to cope, this young woman was leading public discussion about the plight of people with disabilities and their families in the hopes the government would intervene to help improve the situation (Deveson 632). Indeed, when it comes to the experience of disability, resilience is implied and generally understood to mean an attribute of the individual. However, as resilience theory has progressed, resilience can no longer be considered as existing exclusively within the domain of an individual’s personal qualities. Environmental support structures are vital in fostering resilience (Wilkes). Despite resiliency theory moving on from the level of the individual, popular discourses of resiliency as an individual’s attribute continue to dominate disability. As such, some critical disability commentators have redefined resilience as a response to a disabling social world. My aim in this paper is to explore this discourse by engaging with ideas about disability and resilience that emerge in popular culture. Despite the changing social position of people with disabilities in the community, notions of resilience are often invoked to describe the experience of people with disability and attributes of successful (often considered ‘inspiring’) people with disability. I begin by offering a definition of resilience as it is bound up in notions of inspiration and usually applied to people with disabilities. The second part of the paper explores disability as a cultural signifier to comment on the ways in which disability offers cultural meanings that may work to reassure nondisabled people of their privileged position. Finally, the paper considers interpretations of disability as a personal tragedy before exploring the emergence of a disability culture that recognises the social and cultural oppression experienced by people with disabilities and reworks definitions of resilience as a response to that oppression. Defining Resilience: Good Outcomes in Spite of Serious Threats Disability is often invoked in stories about resilience. Gillian King, Elizabeth Brown, and Linda Smith argue that a clear link exists between resilience and feeling that life is meaningful. They argue that the experiences of people with disabilities can offer a template for how to develop resilience and cope with life changes (King, Brown and Smith 633). According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online, resilience is ‘the action or an act of rebounding or springing back’ (653). King et al add that several concepts are associated with resilience such as hardiness, a sense of coherence and learned optimism (633). Deveson, resilience ‘has come to mean an ability to confront adversity and still find hope and meaning in life’. She comments that it conjures up notions of heroism, endurance and determination (632). Each of these characteristics we might describe as inspirational. It is telling that both Deveson and King et al use people with disabilities as signifiers of resilience in practice. However, Katherine Runswick-Cole and Dan Goodley argue that this definition of resilience has not necessarily been useful to people with disabilities and instead recommend a definition of resilience that Deveson only alludes to. For Runswick-Cole and Goodley resilience can be located in social processes. They argue that a thorough investigation of resilience in the lives of people with disabilities considers the broader social and cultural restrictions placed on top of impairments rather than simply individualising resilience as a character trait of people who can ‘overcome the odds’: An exploration of resilience in the lives of disabled people must, then, focus on what resources are available and who is accessing those resources. Crucially, in seeking to build resilience in the lives of disabled people, this can never simply be a matter of building individual capacity or family support, it must also be a case of challenging social, attitudinal and structural barriers which increase adversity in the lives of disabled people. (634) This is an alternative approach to disability that sees ‘the problem’ located in social structures and inaccessible environments. This so-called social model of disability is based on principles of empowerment and argues that able-bodied mainstream society disables people who have impairments through an inaccessible built environment and the perpetuation of stereotypes and prejudicial attitudes. Disability Dustbins and Inspirational Cripples Arthur Frank, sociologist and author of The Wounded Storyteller, explains that ‘the human body, for all its resilience, is fragile; breakdown is built into it. Bodily predictability, if not the exception, should be regarded as exceptional; contingency ought to be accepted as normative’ (634). Frank argues that we do not want to admit that our bodies are unpredictable and could ‘break down’ at any moment. Those bodies that do break down therefore become representatives of many of the things [the able-bodied, normal world] most fear-tragedy, loss, dark and the unknown. Involuntarily we walk- or more often sit- in the valley of the shadow of death. Contact with us throws up in people's faces the fact of sickness and death in the world … A deformed and paralysed body attacks everyone's sense of well-being and invincibility. (Hunt 186) People with disabilities therefore become loaded cultural signifiers, as Tom Shakespeare argues in Cultural Representations of Disabled People: Dustbins for Disavowal: ‘it is non-disabled people’s embodiment which is the issue: disabled people remind non-disabled people of their own vulnerability’ (139). As a result, people with disabilities are culturally othered. Several disability theorists have argued that this makes the non-disabled feel better about themselves and their tenuous privileged position (Barnes; Ellis; Kumari Campbell; Oliver, Goggin and Newell; Shakespeare). Disability, as a concept, is both everywhere and nowhere. Generally considered a medical experience or personal tragedy, the discipline of critical disability studies has emerged to question why disability is considered an inherently negative experience and if there is more to disability than a body that has something wrong with it. Fiona Kumari Campbell suggests ableism – ‘the network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect, species typical and therefore essential and fully human’ – is repeatedly performed in our culture. This cultural project is difficult to sustain because by their very nature all bodies are out of control. People with disability are an acute reminder of the temporariness of an able bodied ontology (650). In order to maintain this division and network of beliefs, the idea that disability is a personal tragedy rather than a set of social relations designed to exclude some bodies but not others is culturally reproduced through stereotypes such as the idea that people with disabilities who achieve both ordinary and extraordinary things are sources of inspiration. Resilience as a personal quality is implicated in this stereotype. In a powerful Ramp Up blog that was republished on the ABC’s Drum and the influential popular culture/mummy blogging site website Mamamia, Stella Young takes issues with the media’s framing of disability as inspirational: We all learn how to use the bodies we're born with, or learn to use them in an adjusted state, whether those bodies are considered disabled or not. So that image of the kid drawing a picture with the pencil held in her mouth instead of her hand? That's just the best way for her, in her body, to do it. For her, it's normal. I can't help but wonder whether the source of this strange assumption that living our lives takes some particular kind of courage is the news media, an incredibly powerful tool in shaping the way we think about disability. Most journalists seem utterly incapable of writing or talking about a person with a disability without using phrases like "overcoming disability", "brave", "suffers from", "defying the odds", "wheelchair bound" or, my personal favourite, "inspirational". If we even begin to question the way we're labelled, we slide immediately to the other end of the scale and become "bitter" and "ungrateful". We fail to be what people expect. (610) These phrases, that Young claims the media rely on to isolate people with disabilities, are synonyms for the qualities Deveson attributes to resilient individuals (632). As Beth Haller notes, although disabled activists and academics attempt to progress important political work, the news media continue to frame people with disability as courageous and inspirational simply for living their lives (216). By comparison, disability theorist Irving Zola describes rejecting his leg braces (symbolic of his professional status) electing instead to use a wheelchair: If we lived in a less healthiest, capitalist, and hierarchal society, which spent less time finding ways to exclude and disenfranchise people and more time finding ways to include and enhance the potentialities of everyone, then there wouldn’t have been so much for me to overcome. (654) Harilyn Russo agrees, and in her memoir Don’t Call Me Inspirational highlights the socially created barriers put in her way and the ways these are ignored in favour of individualising social disablement as something inspirational people ‘overcome’: I’ll tell you why I am inspirational: I put up with the barriers, the barricades, the bullshit you put between us to avoid confronting something—probably yourself—and still pay the rent on time and savor dark chocolate. Now that takes real courage. (651) Throughout her book, Russo seeks to ‘overcome disability prejudice’ rather than ‘overcome disability’. Russo establishes herself and her experiences as normal and every day while articulating the tedium she finds in being pigeon holed as inspirational. These authors are constructing a new way of thinking about disability. Michael Oliver first described this as the ‘social model of disability’ in 1981. He sought to overturn the pathologisation of disability by giving people ‘a way of applying the idea that it was society not people with impairments that should be the target for professional intervention and practice’ (Runswick-Cole and Goodley 634). Resilience: A Key Concept Fiona Kumari Campbell questions whether resilience is a useful concept in the context of disability and reflects on its use to obscure “the ‘real’ problem, namely disability oppression” (649). She interrogates traditional definitions of resilience as they draw on notions of good outcomes in spite of risk factors or experiences of severe trauma and calls for an understanding of the interactive and dynamic features of resilience as opposed to ‘individualised psychological attributes’. Thus, individualised notions of resilience as they are implicated in the cultural stories of inspirational people with disabilities are embedded within the ableist relations that Kumari Campbell seeks to expose. In Empowerment, Self-Advocacy and Resilience, Dan Goodley argues that resilience is a key concept that has repeatedly emerged throughout his research into disability and self-advocacy. He draws on the reflections of people with disabilities to offer a re-definition of resilience as a response to a disabling society that includes five interrelated aspects (648). First is resilience as contextual, which recognises resilience as the result of the contexts in which it emerges, including through relationships with others and the experience of disabling and enabling environments. Secondly, resilience complicates preconceived notions about people with disabilities such as the view that they are passive. Goodley’s third feature of resilience is optimism. He notes resistance toward oppression as a key characteristic of optimistic resilience. Goodley again considers the importance of interpersonal relationships and group identity when he argues that the fourth feature of resilience relies on people with disabilities forming relationships with each other and group identities to question their oppression. Finally, Goodley argues ‘resilience is indicative of disablement’ and suggests that people with disability must be resilient in everyday life because we live in a disabling society. Kumari Campbell posits that individualised notions of resilience are a ‘cop out’ designed to ‘distract and defuse the reality of people labouring under very difficult circumstances of which the solution is better access to quality services’. She is hopeful, like Goodley, that resilience can be redefined as a political project, and encourages people with disabilities to develop a critical consciousness and find a new sense of community through art, humour and peer support. Therefore, according to Kumari Campbell and Goodley, resilience can be redefined as a response to social disablement rather than bodily impairment. Disability Culture: Acts of Resilience in a Disabling Society Russo and Zola’s work is part of a disability culture that has emerged in response to narrow ways of understanding disability. Steven Brown emphasises the importance of experience and personal identity in his definition of disability culture: People with disabilities have forged a group identity. We share a common history of oppression and a common bond of resilience. We generate art, music, literature, and other expressions of our lives and our culture, infused from our experience of disability. Most importantly, we are proud of ourselves as people with disabilities. We claim our disabilities with pride as part of our identity. (520) Brown’s definition of disability culture therefore draws on all five of Goodley’s features of resilience. Disability culture is contextual, complicating, optimistic, interpersonal and indicative of disablement. The forging of a group identity reveals the resilience of disability culture as contextual and interpersonal. The creation of art, music, literature and other cultural artefacts reveals resilience as optimistic. The notion that people with disabilities are proud of their identity complicates traditional understandings of disability as a personal tragedy. Brown’s emphasis on the common history of the oppression of people with disabilities, as it initiated the whole disability culture movement, is ‘indicative of disablement’. The bonds of resilience that create the disability cultural movement are a result of the social oppression of people with disabilities (Gill; Martin; Brown; Goodley). Conclusion Whereas people with disabilities going about their every day lives have often been considered inspirational and as possessing resilient qualities, a new disability culture is emerging that repositions the resilience of people with disabilities as a political response to social oppression. Drawing on Runswick-Cole and Goodley’s argument that individualising qualities of resilience in inspirational people with disabilities has not benefitted people with disabilities, this paper sought to reveal the importance of resilience as a response to social oppression. People with disabilities in their formation of a disability cultural movement are reworking and redefining resilience as a response to oppression. Throughout this paper I have drawn on the reflections of a number of people with disabilities to illustrate the emergence of a disability culture as it has begun the work of redefining resilience as a political project that “‘outs’ the problems that disabled people face and names and prioritises the concerns” (Kumari Campbell 649). As Goodley argues, people with disabilities have developed a politics of resilience ‘in the face of a disabling world’. References Barnes, Colin. “Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People.” 1992. Brown, Steven. “What Is Disability Culture?” Disability Studies Quarterly 22.2 (2002). Clear, Mike. Promises, Promises: Disability and Terms of Inclusion. Leichhardt: Federation Press, 2000. Deveson, Ann. Resilience. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2003. Ellis, Katie. Disabling Diversity: The Social Construction of Disability in 1990s Australian National Cinema. Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag, 2008. Frank, Arthur. The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995. Gill, Carol. “A Psychological View of Disability Culture.” Disability Studies Quarterly (Fall 1995). ———. "Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid." Sydney: University of New South Wales, 2005. Goodley, Dan. “Empowerment, Self-Advocacy and Resilience.” Journal of Intellectual Disabilities 9.4 (2005): 333-343. Haller, Beth. Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media. Louisville, KY: Avocado Press, 2010. Hunt, Paul. “A Critical Condition.” Stigma: The Experience of Disability. Ed. Paul Hunt. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1966. King, Gillian, Elizabeth Brown, and Linda Smith. “Resilience: Learning from People with Disabilities and the Turning Points in Their Lives.” Health Psychology. Ed. Barbara, Tinsley. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Kumari Campbell, Fiona. Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2009. ———. “Out of the Shadows: Resilience and Living with Ableism Seminar.” The University of Dundee, 13 Sep. 2010. Martin-Breen, Patrick, and J. Marty Anderies. “Resilience: A Literature Review.” The Rockefeller Foundation, 2011. Martin, Douglas. Disability Culture: Eager to Bite the Hands That Would Feed Them. New York Times, 1997. Oliver, Mike. “Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice.” Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Macmillian, 1996. Oxford English Dictionary. “resilience, n.” Oxford University Press. Richardson, G. E. “The Metatheory of Resilience and Resiliency,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 58.3. (2002): 307-321. Rousso, Harilyn. "Don’t Call Me Inspirational: A Disabled Feminist Talks Back." Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2013. Runswick-Cole, Katherine, and Dan Goodley. “Resilience: A Disability Studies and Community Psychology Approach.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 7. 2 (2013): 67-78. Shakespeare, Tom. “Cultural Representation of Disabled People: Dustbins for Disavowal?” Disability & Society 9.3 (1994): 283-299. Wilkes, Glenda. “Introduction – A Second Generation of Resilience Research.” Journal of Clinical Psychology 58.3 (2002): 229-232. Young, Stella. “We’re Not Here for Your Inspiration.” Ramp Up 2012. Zola, Irving. Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living with a Disability. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1982.

Human history has witnessed varied surveillance and counter-surveillance activities from time immemorial. Human beings could not surveille others effectively and accurately without the technology of their era. Technology is a tool that can empower both people and governments. The outcomes are different based on the users’ intentions and aims. 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu noted that ‘If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can win numerous (literally, "a hundred") battles without jeopardy’. His words still ring true. To be a good surveiller and counter-surveiller it is essential to know both sides, and in order to be good at these activities access to technology is vital. There is no doubt that knowledge is power, and without technology to access the information, it is impossible to be powerful. As we become more expert at technology, we will learn what makes surveillance and counter-surveillance more effective, and will be more powerful.“Surveillance” is one of the most important aspects of living in the convergent media environment. This essay illustrates government surveillance and counter-surveillance during the Iranian Green Movement (2009) on social and mobile media. The Green Movement refers to a non-violent movement that arose after the disputed presidential election on June 2009. After that Iran was facing its most serious political crisis since the 1979 revolution. Claims of vote fraud triggered massive street protests. Many took to the streets with “Green” signs, chanting slogans such as ‘the government lied’, and ‘where is my vote?’ There is no doubt that social and mobile media has played an important role in Iran’s contemporary politics. According to Internet World Stats (IWS) Internet users in 2009 account for approximately 48.5 per cent of the population of Iran. In 2009, Iran had 30.2 million mobile phone users (Freedom House), and 72 cellular subscriptions for every 100 people (World Bank). Today, while Iran has the 19th-largest population in the world, its blogosphere holds the third spot in terms of number of users, just behind the United States and China (Beth Elson et al.). In this essay the use of social and mobile media (technology) is not debated, but the extent of this use, and who, why and how it is used, is clearly scrutinised.Visibility and Surveillance There have been different kinds of surveillance for a very long time. However, all types of surveillance are based on the notion of “visibility”. Previous studies show that visibility is not a new term (Foucault Discipline). The new things in the new era, are its scale, scope and complicated ways to watch others without being watched, which are not limited to a specific time, space and group, and are completely different from previous instruments for watching (Andrejevic). As Meikle and Young (146) have mentioned ‘networked digital media bring with them a new kind of visibility’, based on different kinds of technology. Internet surveillance has important implications in politics to control, protect, and influence (Marx Ethics; Castells; Fuchs Critique). Surveillance has been improved during its long history, and evolved from very simple spying and watching to complicated methods of “iSpy” (Andrejevic). To understand the importance of visibility and its relationship with surveillance, it is essential to study visibility in conjunction with the notion of “panopticon” and its contradictory functions. Foucault uses Bentham's notion of panopticon that carries within itself visibility and transparency to control others. “Gaze” is a central term in Bentham’s view. ‘Bentham thinks of a visibility organised entirely around a dominating, overseeing gaze’ (Foucault Eye). Moreover, Thomson (Visibility 11) notes that we are living in the age of ‘normalizing the power of the gaze’ and it is clear that the influential gaze is based on powerful means to see others.Lyon (Surveillance 2) explains that ‘surveillance is any collection and processing of personal data, whether identifiable or not, for the purpose of influencing or managing those whose data have been granted…’. He mentions that today the most important means of surveillance reside in computer power which allows collected data to be sorted, matched, retrieved, processed, marketed and circulated.Nowadays, the Internet has become ubiquitous in many parts of the world. So, the changes in people’s interactions have influenced their lives. Fuchs (Introduction 15) argues that ‘information technology enables surveillance at a distance…in real time over networks at high transmission speed’. Therefore, visibility touches different aspects of people’s lives and living in a “glasshouse” has caused a lot of fear and anxiety about privacy.Iran’s Green Movement is one of many cases for studying surveillance and counter-surveillance technologies in social and mobile media. Government Surveillance on Social and Mobile Media in Iran, 2009 In 2009 the Iranian government controlled technology that allowed them to monitor, track, and limit access to the Internet, social media and mobiles communication, which has resulted in the surveillance of Green Movement’s activists. The Iranian government had improved its technical capabilities to monitor the people’s behavior on the Internet long before the 2009 election. The election led to an increase in online surveillance. Using social media the Iranian government became even more powerful than it was before the election. Social media was a significant factor in strengthening the government’s power. In the months after the election the virtual atmosphere became considerably more repressive. The intensified filtering of the Internet and implementation of more advanced surveillance systems strengthened the government’s position after the election. The Open Net Initiative revealed that the Internet censorship system in Iran is one of the most comprehensive and sophisticated censorship systems in the world. It emphasized that ‘Advances in domestic technical capacity have contributed to the implementation of a centralized filtering strategy and a reduced reliance on Western technologies’.On the other hand, the authorities attempted to block all access to political blogs (Jaras), either through cyber-security methods or through threats (Tusa). The Centre for Investigating Organized Cyber Crimes, which was founded in 2007 partly ‘to investigate and confront social and economic offenses on the Internet’ (Cyber Police), became increasingly important over the course of 2009 as the government combated the opposition’s online activities (Beth Elson et al. 16). Training of "senior Internet lieutenants" to confront Iran's "virtual enemies online" was another attempt that the Intelligence minister announced following the protests (Iran Media Program).In 2009 the Iranian government enacted the Computer Crime Law (Jaras). According to this law the Committee in Charge of Determining Unauthorized Websites is legally empowered to identify sites that carry forbidden content and report that information to TCI and other major ISPs for blocking (Freedom House). In the late fall of 2009, the government started sending threatening and warning text messages to protesters about their presence in the protests (BBC). Attacking, blocking, hacking and hijacking of the domain names of some opposition websites such as Jaras and Kaleme besides a number of non-Iranian sites such as Twitter were among the other attempts of the Iranian Cyber Army (Jaras).It is also said that the police and security forces arrested dissidents identified through photos and videos posted on the social media that many imagined had empowered them. Furthermore, the online photos of the active protesters were posted on different websites, asking people to identify them (Valizadeh).In late June 2009 the Iranian government was intentionally permitting Internet traffic to and from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter so that it could use a sophisticated practice called Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to collect information about users. It was reportedly also applying the same technology to monitor mobile phone communications (Beth Elson et al. 15).On the other hand, to cut communication between Iranians inside and outside the country, Iran slowed down the Internet dramatically (Jaras). Iran also blocked access to Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter and many blogs before, during and after the protests. Moreover, in 2009, text message services were shut down for over 40 days, and mobile phone subscribers could not send or receive text messages regardless of their mobile carriers. Subsequently it was disrupted on a temporary basis immediately before and during key protests days.It was later discovered that the Nokia Siemens Network provided the government with surveillance technologies (Wagner; Iran Media Program). The Iranian government built a complicated system that enabled it to monitor, track and intercept what was said on mobile phones. Nokia Siemens Network confirmed it supplied Iran with the technology needed to monitor, control, and read local telephone calls [...] The product allowed authorities to monitor any communications across a network, including voice calls, text messaging, instant messages, and web traffic (Cellan-Jones). Media sources also reported that two Chinese companies, Huawei and ZTE, provided surveillance technologies to the government. The Nic Payamak and Saman Payamak websites, that provide mass text messaging services, also reported that operator Hamrah Aval commonly blocked texts with words such as meeting, location, rally, gathering, election and parliament (Iran Media Program). Visibility and Counter-Surveillance The panopticon is not limited to the watchers. Similarly, new kinds of panopticon and visibility are not confined to government surveillance. Foucault points out that ‘the seeing machine was once a sort of dark room into which individuals spied; it has become a transparent building in which the exercise of power may be supervised by society as a whole’ (Discipline 207). What is important is Foucault's recognition that transparency, not only of those who are being observed but also of those who are observing, is central to the notion of the panopticon (Allen) and ‘any member of society will have the right to come and see with his own eyes how schools, hospitals, factories, and prisons function’ (Foucault, Discipline 207). Counter-surveillance is the process of detecting and mitigating hostile surveillance (Burton). Therefore, while the Internet is a surveillance instrument that enables governments to watch people, it also improves the capacity to counter-surveille, and draws public attention to governments’ injustice. As Castells (185) notes the Internet could be used by citizens to watch their government as an instrument of control, information, participation, and even decision-making, from the bottom up.With regards to the role of citizens in counter-surveillance we can draw on Jay Rosen’s view of Internet users as ‘the people formerly known as the audience’. In counter-surveillance it can be said that passive citizens (formerly the audience) have turned into active citizens. And this change was becoming impossible without mobile and social media platforms. These new techniques and technologies have empowered people and given them the opportunity to have new identities. When Thompson wrote ‘the exercise of power in modern societies remains in many ways shrouded in secrecy and hidden from the public gaze’ (Media 125), perhaps he could not imagine that one day people can gaze at the politicians, security forces and the police through the use of the Internet and mobile devices.Furthermore, while access to mobile media allows people to hold authorities accountable for their uses and abuses of power (Breen 183), social media can be used as a means of representation, organization of collective action, mobilization, and drawing attention to police brutality and reasons for political action (Gerbaudo).There is no doubt that having creativity and using alternative platforms are important aspects in counter-surveillance. For example, images of Lt. Pike “Pepper Spray Cop” from the University of California became the symbol of the senselessness of police brutality during the Occupy Movement (Shaw). Iranians’ Counter-Surveillance on Social and Mobile Media, 2009 Iran’s Green movement (2009) triggered a lot of discussions about the role of technology in social movements. In this regard, there are two notable attitudes about the role of technology: techno-optimistic (Shriky and Castells) and techno-pessimistic (Morozov and Gladwell) views should be taken into account. While techno-optimists overrated the role of social media, techno-pessimists underestimated its role. However, there is no doubt that technology has played a great role as a counter-surveillance tool amongst Iranian people in Iran’s contemporary politics.Apart from the academic discussions between techno-optimists and techno-pessimists, there have been numerous debates about the role of new technologies in Iran during the Green Movement. This subject has received interest from different corners of the world, including Western countries, Iranian authorities, opposition groups, and also some NGOs. However, its role as a means of counter-surveillance has not received adequate attention.As the tools of counter-surveillance are more or less the tools of surveillance, protesters learned from the government to use the same techniques to challenge authority on social media.Establishing new websites (such as JARAS, RASA, Kalemeh, and Iran green voice) or strengthening some previous ones (such as Saham, Emrooz, Norooz), also activating different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts to broadcast the voice of the Iranian Green Movement and neutralize the government’s propaganda were the most important ways to empower supporters of Iran’s Green Movement in counter-surveillance.‘Reporters Without Borders issued a statement, saying that ‘the new media, and particularly social networks, have given populations collaborative tools with which they can change the social order’. It is also mentioned that despite efforts by the Iranian government to prevent any reporting of the protests and due to considerable pressure placed on foreign journalists inside Iran, social media played a significant role in sending the messages and images of the movement to the outside world (Axworthy). However, at that moment, many thought that Twitter performed a liberating role for Iranian dissenters. For example, Western media heralded the Green Movement in Iran as a “Twitter revolution” fuelled by information and communication technologies (ICTs) and social media tools (Carrieri et al. 4). “The Revolution Will Be Twittered” was the first in a series of blog posts published by Andrew Sullivan a few hours after the news of the protests was released.According to the researcher’s observation the numbers of Twitter users inside Iran who tweeted was very limited in 2009 and social media was most useful in the dissemination of information, especially from those inside Iran to outsiders. Mobile phones were mostly influential as an instrument firstly used for producing contents (images and videos) and secondly for the organisation of protests. There were many photos and videos that were filmed by very simple mobile cell phones, uploaded by ordinary people onto YouTube and other platforms. The links were shared many times on Twitter and Facebook and released by mainstream media. The most frequently circulated story from the Iranian protests was a video of Neda Agha-Sultan. Her final moments were captured by some bystanders with mobile phone cameras and rapidly spread across the global media and the Internet. It showed that the camera-phone had provided citizens with a powerful means, allowing for the creation and instant sharing of persuasive personalised eyewitness records with mobile and globalised target populations (Anden-Papadopoulos).Protesters used another technique, DDOS (distributed denial of service attacks), for political protest in cyber space. Anonymous people used DDOS to overload a website with fake requests, making it unavailable for users and disrupting the sites set as targets (McMillan) in effect, shutting down the site. DDOS is an important counter-surveillance activity by grassroots activists or hackers. It was a cyber protest that knocked the main Iranian governmental websites off-line and caused crowdsourcing and false trafficking. Amongst them were Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's supreme leader’s websites and those which belong to or are close to the government or security forces, including news agencies (Fars, IRNA, Press TV…), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, the Police, and the Ministry of the Interior.Moreover, as authorities uploaded the pictures of protesters onto different platforms to find and arrest them, in some cities people started to put the pictures, phone numbers and addresses of members of security forces and plain clothes police officers who attacked them during the protests and asked people to identify and report the others. They also wanted people to send information about suspects who infringed human rights. Conclusion To sum up, visibility, surveillance and counter-surveillance are not new phenomena. What is new is the technology, which increased their complexity. As Foucault (Discipline 200) mentioned ‘visibility is a trap’, so being visible would be the weakness of those who are being surveilled in the power struggle. In the convergent era, in order to be more powerful, both surveillance and counter-surveillance activities aim for more visibility. Although both attempt to use the same means (technology) to trap the other side, the differences are in their subjects, objects, goals and results.While in surveillance, visibility of the many by the few is mostly for the purpose of control and influence in undemocratic ways, in counter-surveillance, the visibility of the few by the many is mostly through democratic ways to secure more accountability and transparency from the governments.As mentioned in the case of Iran’s Green Movement, the scale and scope of visibility are different in surveillance and counter-surveillance. The importance of what Shaw wrote about Sydney occupy counter-surveillance, applies to other places, such as Iran. She has stressed that ‘protesters and police engaged in a dance of technology and surveillance with one another. Both had access to technology, but there were uncertainties about the extent of technology and its proficient use…’In Iran (2009), both sides (government and activists) used technology and benefited from digital networked platforms, but their levels of access and domains of influence were different, which was because the sources of power, information and wealth were divided asymmetrically between them. Creativity was important for both sides to make others more visible, and make themselves invisible. Also, sharing information to make the other side visible played an important role in these two areas. References Alen, David. “The Trouble with Transparency: The Challenge of Doing Journalism Ethics in a Surveillance Society.” Journalism Studies 9.3 (2008): 323-40. 8 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616700801997224#.UqRFSuIZsqN›. 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Introduction This article is a study in anxiety with regard to social online spaces (SOS) conceived of as dark. There are two possible ways to define ‘dark’ in this context. The first is that communication is dark because it either has limited distribution, is not open to all users (closed groups are a case example) or hidden. The second definition, linked as a result of the first, is the way that communication via these means is interpreted and understood. Dark social spaces disrupt the accepted top-down flow by the ‘gazing elite’ (data aggregators including social media), but anxious users might need to strain to notice what is out there, and this in turn destabilises one’s reception of the scene. In an environment where surveillance technologies are proliferating, this article examines contemporary, dark, interconnected, and interactive communications for the entangled affordances that might be brought to bear. A provocation is that resistance through counterveillance or “sousveillance” is one possibility. An alternative (or addition) is retreating to or building ‘dark’ spaces that are less surveilled and (perhaps counterintuitively) less fearful. This article considers critically the notion of dark social online spaces via four broad socio-technical concerns connected to the big social media services that have helped increase a tendency for fearful anxiety produced by surveillance and the perceived implications for personal privacy. It also shines light on the aspect of darkness where some users are spurred to actively seek alternative, dark social online spaces. Since the 1970s, public-key cryptosystems typically preserved security for websites, emails, and sensitive health, government, and military data, but this is now reduced (Williams). We have seen such systems exploited via cyberattacks and misappropriated data acquired by affiliations such as Facebook-Cambridge Analytica for targeted political advertising during the 2016 US elections. Via the notion of “parasitic strategies”, such events can be described as news/information hacks “whose attack vectors target a system’s weak points with the help of specific strategies” (von Nordheim and Kleinen-von Königslöw, 88). In accord with Wilson and Serisier’s arguments (178), emerging technologies facilitate rapid data sharing, collection, storage, and processing wherein subsequent “outcomes are unpredictable”. This would also include the effect of acquiescence. In regard to our digital devices, for some, being watched overtly—through cameras encased in toys, computers, and closed-circuit television (CCTV) to digital street ads that determine the resonance of human emotions in public places including bus stops, malls, and train stations—is becoming normalised (McStay, Emotional AI). It might appear that consumers immersed within this Internet of Things (IoT) are themselves comfortable interacting with devices that record sound and capture images for easy analysis and distribution across the communications networks. A counter-claim is that mainstream social media corporations have cultivated a sense of digital resignation “produced when people desire to control the information digital entities have about them but feel unable to do so” (Draper and Turow, 1824). Careful consumers’ trust in mainstream media is waning, with readers observing a strong presence of big media players in the industry and are carefully picking their publications and public intellectuals to follow (Mahmood, 6). A number now also avoid the mainstream internet in favour of alternate dark sites. This is done by users with “varying backgrounds, motivations and participation behaviours that may be idiosyncratic (as they are rooted in the respective person’s biography and circumstance)” (Quandt, 42). By way of connection with dark internet studies via Biddle et al. (1; see also Lasica), the “darknet” is a collection of networks and technologies used to share digital content … not a separate physical network but an application and protocol layer riding on existing networks. Examples of darknets are peer-to-peer file sharing, CD and DVD copying, and key or password sharing on email and newsgroups. As we note from the quote above, the “dark web” uses existing public and private networks that facilitate communication via the Internet. Gehl (1220; see also Gehl and McKelvey) has detailed that this includes “hidden sites that end in ‘.onion’ or ‘.i2p’ or other Top-Level Domain names only available through modified browsers or special software. Accessing I2P sites requires a special routing program ... . Accessing .onion sites requires Tor [The Onion Router]”. For some, this gives rise to social anxiety, read here as stemming from that which is not known, and an exaggerated sense of danger, which makes fight or flight seem the only options. This is often justified or exacerbated by the changing media and communication landscape and depicted in popular documentaries such as The Social Dilemma or The Great Hack, which affect public opinion on the unknown aspects of internet spaces and the uses of personal data. The question for this article remains whether the fear of the dark is justified. Consider that most often one will choose to make one’s intimate bedroom space dark in order to have a good night’s rest. We might pleasurably escape into a cinema’s darkness for the stories told therein, or walk along a beach at night enjoying unseen breezes. Most do not avoid these experiences, choosing to actively seek them out. Drawing this thread, then, is the case made here that agency can also be found in the dark by resisting socio-political structural harms. 1. Digital Futures and Anxiety of the Dark Fear of the darkI have a constant fear that something's always nearFear of the darkFear of the darkI have a phobia that someone's always there In the lyrics to the song “Fear of the Dark” (1992) by British heavy metal group Iron Maiden is a sense that that which is unknown and unseen causes fear and anxiety. Holding a fear of the dark is not unusual and varies in degree for adults as it does for children (Fellous and Arbib). Such anxiety connected to the dark does not always concern darkness itself. It can also be a concern for the possible or imagined dangers that are concealed by the darkness itself as a result of cognitive-emotional interactions (McDonald, 16). Extending this claim is this article’s non-binary assertion that while for some technology and what it can do is frequently misunderstood and shunned as a result, for others who embrace the possibilities and actively take it on it is learning by attentively partaking. Mistakes, solecism, and frustrations are part of the process. Such conceptual theorising falls along a continuum of thinking. Global interconnectivity of communications networks has certainly led to consequent concerns (Turkle Alone Together). Much focus for anxiety has been on the impact upon social and individual inner lives, levels of media concentration, and power over and commercialisation of the internet. Of specific note is that increasing commercial media influence—such as Facebook and its acquisition of WhatsApp, Oculus VR, Instagram, CRTL-labs (translating movements and neural impulses into digital signals), LiveRail (video advertising technology), Chainspace (Blockchain)—regularly changes the overall dynamics of the online environment (Turow and Kavanaugh). This provocation was born out recently when Facebook disrupted the delivery of news to Australian audiences via its service. Mainstream social online spaces (SOS) are platforms which provide more than the delivery of media alone and have been conceptualised predominantly in a binary light. On the one hand, they can be depicted as tools for the common good of society through notional widespread access and as places for civic participation and discussion, identity expression, education, and community formation (Turkle; Bruns; Cinque and Brown; Jenkins). This end of the continuum of thinking about SOS seems set hard against the view that SOS are operating as businesses with strategies that manipulate consumers to generate revenue through advertising, data, venture capital for advanced research and development, and company profit, on the other hand. In between the two polar ends of this continuum are the range of other possibilities, the shades of grey, that add contemporary nuance to understanding SOS in regard to what they facilitate, what the various implications might be, and for whom. By way of a brief summary, anxiety of the dark is steeped in the practices of privacy-invasive social media giants such as Facebook and its ancillary companies. Second are the advertising technology companies, surveillance contractors, and intelligence agencies that collect and monitor our actions and related data; as well as the increased ease of use and interoperability brought about by Web 2.0 that has seen a disconnection between technological infrastructure and social connection that acts to limit user permissions and online affordances. Third are concerns for the negative effects associated with depressed mental health and wellbeing caused by “psychologically damaging social networks”, through sleep loss, anxiety, poor body image, real world relationships, and the fear of missing out (FOMO; Royal Society for Public Health (UK) and the Young Health Movement). Here the harms are both individual and societal. Fourth is the intended acceleration toward post-quantum IoT (Fernández-Caramés), as quantum computing’s digital components are continually being miniaturised. This is coupled with advances in electrical battery capacity and interconnected telecommunications infrastructures. The result of such is that the ontogenetic capacity of the powerfully advanced network/s affords supralevel surveillance. What this means is that through devices and the services that they provide, individuals’ data is commodified (Neff and Nafus; Nissenbaum and Patterson). Personal data is enmeshed in ‘things’ requiring that the decisions that are both overt, subtle, and/or hidden (dark) are scrutinised for the various ways they shape social norms and create consequences for public discourse, cultural production, and the fabric of society (Gillespie). Data and personal information are retrievable from devices, sharable in SOS, and potentially exposed across networks. For these reasons, some have chosen to go dark by being “off the grid”, judiciously selecting their means of communications and their ‘friends’ carefully. 2. Is There Room for Privacy Any More When Everyone in SOS Is Watching? An interesting turn comes through counterarguments against overarching institutional surveillance that underscore the uses of technologies to watch the watchers. This involves a practice of counter-surveillance whereby technologies are tools of resistance to go ‘dark’ and are used by political activists in protest situations for both communication and avoiding surveillance. This is not new and has long existed in an increasingly dispersed media landscape (Cinque, Changing Media Landscapes). For example, counter-surveillance video footage has been accessed and made available via live-streaming channels, with commentary in SOS augmenting networking possibilities for niche interest groups or micropublics (Wilson and Serisier, 178). A further example is the Wordpress site Fitwatch, appealing for an end to what the site claims are issues associated with police surveillance (fitwatch.org.uk and endpolicesurveillance.wordpress.com). Users of these sites are called to post police officers’ identity numbers and photographs in an attempt to identify “cops” that might act to “misuse” UK Anti-terrorism legislation against activists during legitimate protests. Others that might be interested in doing their own “monitoring” are invited to reach out to identified personal email addresses or other private (dark) messaging software and application services such as Telegram (freeware and cross-platform). In their work on surveillance, Mann and Ferenbok (18) propose that there is an increase in “complex constructs between power and the practices of seeing, looking, and watching/sensing in a networked culture mediated by mobile/portable/wearable computing devices and technologies”. By way of critical definition, Mann and Ferenbok (25) clarify that “where the viewer is in a position of power over the subject, this is considered surveillance, but where the viewer is in a lower position of power, this is considered sousveillance”. It is the aspect of sousveillance that is empowering to those using dark SOS. One might consider that not all surveillance is “bad” nor institutionalised. It is neither overtly nor formally regulated—as yet. Like most technologies, many of the surveillant technologies are value-neutral until applied towards specific uses, according to Mann and Ferenbok (18). But this is part of the ‘grey area’ for understanding the impact of dark SOS in regard to which actors or what nations are developing tools for surveillance, where access and control lies, and with what effects into the future. 3. Big Brother Watches, So What Are the Alternatives: Whither the Gazing Elite in Dark SOS? By way of conceptual genealogy, consideration of contemporary perceptions of surveillance in a visually networked society (Cinque, Changing Media Landscapes) might be usefully explored through a revisitation of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, applied here as a metaphor for contemporary surveillance. Arguably, this is a foundational theoretical model for integrated methods of social control (Foucault, Surveiller et Punir, 192-211), realised in the “panopticon” (prison) in 1787 by Jeremy Bentham (Bentham and Božovič, 29-95) during a period of social reformation aimed at the improvement of the individual. Like the power for social control over the incarcerated in a panopticon, police power, in order that it be effectively exercised, “had to be given the instrument of permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent surveillance, capable of making all visible … like a faceless gaze that transformed the whole social body into a field of perception” (Foucault, Surveiller et Punir, 213–4). In grappling with the impact of SOS for the individual and the collective in post-digital times, we can trace out these early ruminations on the complex documentary organisation through state-controlled apparatuses (such as inspectors and paid observers including “secret agents”) via Foucault (Surveiller et Punir, 214; Subject and Power, 326-7) for comparison to commercial operators like Facebook. Today, artificial intelligence (AI), facial recognition technology (FRT), and closed-circuit television (CCTV) for video surveillance are used for social control of appropriate behaviours. Exemplified by governments and the private sector is the use of combined technologies to maintain social order, from ensuring citizens cross the street only on green lights, to putting rubbish in the correct recycling bin or be publicly shamed, to making cashless payments in stores. The actions see advantages for individual and collective safety, sustainability, and convenience, but also register forms of behaviour and attitudes with predictive capacities. This gives rise to suspicions about a permanent account of individuals’ behaviour over time. Returning to Foucault (Surveiller et Punir, 135), the impact of this finds a dissociation of power from the individual, whereby they become unwittingly impelled into pre-existing social structures, leading to a ‘normalisation’ and acceptance of such systems. If we are talking about the dark, anxiety is key for a Ministry of SOS. Following Foucault again (Subject and Power, 326-7), there is the potential for a crawling, creeping governance that was once distinct but is itself increasingly hidden and growing. A blanket call for some form of ongoing scrutiny of such proliferating powers might be warranted, but with it comes regulation that, while offering certain rights and protections, is not without consequences. For their part, a number of SOS platforms had little to no moderation for explicit content prior to December 2018, and in terms of power, notwithstanding important anxiety connected to arguments that children and the vulnerable need protections from those that would seek to take advantage, this was a crucial aspect of community building and self-expression that resulted in this freedom of expression. In unearthing the extent that individuals are empowered arising from the capacity to post sexual self-images, Tiidenberg ("Bringing Sexy Back") considered that through dark SOS (read here as unregulated) some users could work in opposition to the mainstream consumer culture that provides select and limited representations of bodies and their sexualities. This links directly to Mondin’s exploration of the abundance of queer and feminist pornography on dark SOS as a “counterpolitics of visibility” (288). This work resulted in a reasoned claim that the technological structure of dark SOS created a highly political and affective social space that users valued. What also needs to be underscored is that many users also believed that such a space could not be replicated on other mainstream SOS because of the differences in architecture and social norms. Cho (47) worked with this theory to claim that dark SOS are modern-day examples in a history of queer individuals having to rely on “underground economies of expression and relation”. Discussions such as these complicate what dark SOS might now become in the face of ‘adult’ content moderation and emerging tracking technologies to close sites or locate individuals that transgress social norms. Further, broader questions are raised about how content moderation fits in with the public space conceptualisations of SOS more generally. Increasingly, “there is an app for that” where being able to identify the poster of an image or an author of an unknown text is seen as crucial. While there is presently no standard approach, models for combining instance-based and profile-based features such as SVM for determining authorship attribution are in development, with the result that potentially far less content will remain hidden in the future (Bacciu et al.). 4. There’s Nothing New under the Sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9) For some, “[the] high hopes regarding the positive impact of the Internet and digital participation in civic society have faded” (Schwarzenegger, 99). My participant observation over some years in various SOS, however, finds that critical concern has always existed. Views move along the spectrum of thinking from deep scepticisms (Stoll, Silicon Snake Oil) to wondrous techo-utopian promises (Negroponte, Being Digital). Indeed, concerns about the (then) new technologies of wireless broadcasting can be compared with today’s anxiety over the possible effects of the internet and SOS. Inglis (7) recalls, here, too, were fears that humanity was tampering with some dangerous force; might wireless wave be causing thunderstorms, droughts, floods? Sterility or strokes? Such anxieties soon evaporated; but a sense of mystery might stay longer with evangelists for broadcasting than with a laity who soon took wireless for granted and settled down to enjoy the products of a process they need not understand. As the analogy above makes clear, just as audiences came to use ‘the wireless’ and later the internet regularly, it is reasonable to argue that dark SOS will also gain widespread understanding and find greater acceptance. Dark social spaces are simply the recent development of internet connectivity and communication more broadly. The dark SOS afford choice to be connected beyond mainstream offerings, which some users avoid for their perceived manipulation of content and user both. As part of the wider array of dark web services, the resilience of dark social spaces is reinforced by the proliferation of users as opposed to decentralised replication. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) can be used for anonymity in parallel to TOR access, but they guarantee only anonymity to the client. A VPN cannot guarantee anonymity to the server or the internet service provider (ISP). While users may use pseudonyms rather than actual names as seen on Facebook and other SOS, users continue to take to the virtual spaces they inhabit their off-line, ‘real’ foibles, problems, and idiosyncrasies (Chenault). To varying degrees, however, people also take their best intentions to their interactions in the dark. The hyper-efficient tools now deployed can intensify this, which is the great advantage attracting some users. In balance, however, in regard to online information access and dissemination, critical examination of what is in the public’s interest, and whether content should be regulated or controlled versus allowing a free flow of information where users self-regulate their online behaviour, is fraught. O’Loughlin (604) was one of the first to claim that there will be voluntary loss through negative liberty or freedom from (freedom from unwanted information or influence) and an increase in positive liberty or freedom to (freedom to read or say anything); hence, freedom from surveillance and interference is a kind of negative liberty, consistent with both libertarianism and liberalism. Conclusion The early adopters of initial iterations of SOS were hopeful and liberal (utopian) in their beliefs about universality and ‘free’ spaces of open communication between like-minded others. 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In July 2005, while European heads of state attended memorials to mark the ten year anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide and court trials continued in The Hague at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Bosnian-American artist Aida Sehovic presented the aftermath of this genocide on a day-to-day level through her art installation in memory of the victims of Srebrenica. Drawing on the Bosnian tradition of coming together for coffee, this installation, ‘Što te Nema?’ (Why are you not here?), comprised a collection of tiny white porcelain cups (‘fildzans’ in Bosnian) arranged in the geographic shape of Srebrenica in the lobby of the United Nations building in New York. It was to represent Europe’s worst mass killing since the Second World War, which took place in July 1995 in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men and boys were killed when Bosnian Serb troops overran the internationally protected enclave (The Guardian). The cups were gathered from Bosnian families in the United States of America and Bosnia & Herzegovina, and in particular from members of ‘Zene Srebrenice’ (‘the women of Srebrenica’). Each of the 1,705 cups represented one exhumed, identified and re-buried victim of the Srebrenica genocide (1,705 at July 2005). The cups were filled either with coffee or, in the case of victims not yet 18 and therefore not old enough at the time of their death to have participated in the coffee tradition, with sugar cubes. The names and birth dates of the victims were recited on an audio loop. Genocide is the methodical destruction of the existence of a people. It is noted through the ‘UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’ that genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity throughout history (UNHCHR). Tribunals, such as the ICTY, with their focus on justice, are formal and responsibility-based modes of responding to genocide. Society seeks justice, but raising awareness around genocide through the telling and hearing of the individual story is also required. Responding to genocide and communicating its existence through artistic expression has been a valuable way of bearing witness to such a horrendous and immense crime against humanity. Art can address the gaps in healing and understanding that cannot be addressed through tribunals. From Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, to the children’s pictures triggered by the Rwandan genocide, to the ‘War Rugs’ of Afghanistan and to vast installations such as Peter Eisenman’s recently opened Holocaust memorial in Berlin; art has proved a powerful medium for representing such atrocities and attempting to find healing after genocide. Artworks such as Sehovic’s ‘Što te Nema?’ give insight into the personal experience of genocide while challenging indifference and maintaining memory. For the affected communities, this addresses the impact on individuals; the human cost and the loss of everyday experiences. As Srebrenica survivor Emir Suljagic comments, “when you tell someone that 10,000 people died, they cannot understand or imagine that. What I want to say is that these people were peasants, car mechanics or masons. That they had daughters, mothers, that they leave someone behind; that a lot of people are hurt by this person’s death” (qtd. in Vulliamy). ‘Što te Nema?’ transmits this personal dimension of genocide by using an everyday situation of showing hospitality with family and friends, which is familiar and practised in most cultural experiences, juxtaposed with the loss of a family member who is missing as a result of genocide. This transmits the notion of genocide into the sphere of common experience, attachment and emotion. It acts as an invitation to explore the impact of genocide beyond the impersonal statistics and the aloof legalese of the courtroom drama. Beyond providing a representation of the facts or emotions around genocide, art provides a way of responding to a crime, which, by its nature, is generally difficult to comprehend. Art can offer a mode of giving testimony and providing catharsis about events which are not easily approached or discussed. As Sehovic says of ‘Što te Nema?’ (it) is a way of healing for Bosnians, coming to terms with this terrible thing that happened to us … it is building a bridge of understanding where Bosnian people are coming from, because it is very hard to talk about these things (qtd. in Vermont Quarterly Magazine). For its receiver, genocide art, with all its capacity to arouse our emotions and empathy, transmits something that we cannot see or engage with in the factual reporting of genocide or in a political analysis of the topic. Through art, it is possible to encounter genocide at an individual, personal level. As Mödersheim points out, we seem to need symbolic expressions to help us understand, and deal with the complex nature of events so horrific that reason and emotion fail to grasp their magnitude. To the intellect, many aspects of these experiences are unfathomable, and yet to keep our humanity we need to understand them … where words and explanations fail, we look for images (Mödersheim 18). An artist’s responses to genocide can vary from the need of survivors to create actual depictions of the atrocities, to more abstract portrayals of the emotional response to acts of genocide. Art that is created by survivors or witnesses to the genocide demonstrates a documentation and testament to what has occurred – a symbolic act of transmitting the personal experience of genocide. Artistic responses to genocide by those, such as Sehovic, who did not witness the event first hand, express how genocide “remains deeply felt to the point where we could not say it has ended” (Morris 329). Such art represents the continuation and global repercussions of genocide. The question of what ‘genocide art’ means to the neutral or removed viewer or society is also significant. Art is often associated with pleasure. Issues of mass killing and war are often not the types of topics one wishes to view on a trip to an art gallery. However, art has a more crucial function as a social reflector. It is often the reaction of non-acceptance of such artworks which indicates how society wishes to consider questions of genocide or of war in general. For example, Rayner Hoff’s 1932 war memorial ‘The Crucifixion of Civilisation 1914’ was rejected for display because it was considered too confronting and controversial in its depiction of a naked, tortured female victim of war in a Christ-like pose. As Picasso commented, “painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy” (qtd. in Mödersheim 15). In discussing the art that emerged from the Sierra Leone Civil War, Ross notes, “as our stomachs and hearts turn over at such sights, we get a small taste of what the artists felt. Even as we look at the images and experience the horror, disgust and anger that comes with knowing that they really happened, we realise that if these images are to be understood as reports from the field, serving the same function as photojournalism, it means that we have been sheltered from this type of reporting from our own news sources” (Ross 39). Here, art can address the often cursory acknowledgment given to ‘events which happen in faraway places’ and lend an insight into the personal. As Adorno notes, “history in artworks is not something made, and history alone frees the work from being merely something posited or manufactured” (133). Here we see the indivisibility of the genocide (the ‘history’) from the artwork – that what is seen is not mere ‘depiction’ but art’s ability to turn the anonymous statistics or the unknown genocide into the realisation of a brutal annihilation of individual human beings – to bring history to life as it were. What the viewer does after viewing such art is perhaps immaterial; the important thing is that they now know. But why is it important to know and important to remember? It has been argued that genocides which occurred in places like Srebrenica and Rwanda happened because the international community did not know or refused to recognise the events to the point of initially declining to apply the term ‘genocide’ to Srebrenica and settling for the more sanitised term ‘ethnic cleansing’ (Bringa 196). It would be nave and even condescending to argue that ‘Što te Nema?’ or any of the myriad other artistic responses to genocide have the possibility of undoing a genocide such as that which took place in Srebrenica, or even the hope of preventing another genocide. However, it is in transporting genocide into the personal realm that the message is transmitted and ignorance to the event can no longer be claimed. The concept of genocide can be too horrendous and vast to take in; art, whilst making it no less horrific, transmits the message to and confronts the viewer at a more direct and personal level. Such art provokes and provides a starting point for comment and debate. Art also stands as a lasting memorial to those who have lost their lives as a result of genocide and as a reminder to humanity that to ignore, underestimate or forget genocide makes possible its recurrence. References Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory. Trans. by Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Bringa, Tone. “Averted Gaze: Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992-1995.” Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide. Ed: Alexander Hinton Laban. London: University of California Press, 2002. 194-225. Kohn, Rachael. “War Memorials, Sublime & Scandalous.” Radio National 14 August 2005. 12 December 2005 http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/ark/stories/s1433477.htm>. Mödersheim, Sabine. “Art and War.” Representations of Violence: Art about the Sierra Leone Civil War. Ed. Chris Corcoran, Abu-Hassan Koroma, P.K. Muana. Chicago, 2004. 15-20. Morris, Daniel. “Jewish Artists in New York: The Holocaust Years.” American Jewish History 90.3 (September 2002): 329-331. Ross, Mariama. “Bearing Witness.” Representations of Violence: Art about the Sierra Leone Civil War. Ed. Chris Corcoran, Abu-Hassan Koroma, P.K. Muana. Chicago, 2004. 37-40. The Guardian. “Massacre at Srebrenica: Interactive Guide.” May 2005. 5 November 2005 http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/0,5860,474564,00.html>. United Nations. “International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.” 10 January 2006 http://www.un.org/icty/>. UNHCHR. “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” 1951. 3 January 2006 http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm>. Vermont Quarterly Magazine. “Cups of Memory.” Winter 2005. 1 December 2005 http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/vq/vqwinter05/aidasehovic.html>. Vulliamy, Ed. “Srebrenica Ten Years On.” June 2005. 10 February 2006 http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-yugoslavia/srebrenica_2651.jsp>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hawkes, Martine. "Transmitting Genocide: Genocide and Art." M/C Journal 9.1 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/09-hawkes.php>. APA Style Hawkes, M. (Mar. 2006) "Transmitting Genocide: Genocide and Art," M/C Journal, 9(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/09-hawkes.php>.

Introduction Darkness is often characterised as something that warrants heightened caution and scrutiny – signifying increased danger and risk. Within settler-colonial settings such as Australia, cautionary and negative connotations of darkness are projected upon Black people and their bodies, forming part of continuing colonial regimes of power (Moreton-Robinson). Negative stereotypes of “dark” continues to racialise all Indigenous peoples. In Australia, Indigenous peoples are both Indigenous and Black regardless of skin colour, and this plays out in a range of ways, some of which will be highlighted within this article. This article demonstrates that for Indigenous peoples, associations of fear and danger are built into the structural mechanisms that shape and maintain colonial understandings of Indigenous peoples and their bodies. It is this embodied form of darkness, and its negative connotations, and responses that we explore further. Figure 1: Megan Cope’s ‘I’m not afraid of the Dark’ t-shirt (Fredericks and Heemsbergen 2021) Responding to the anxieties and fears of settlers that often surround Indigenous peoples, Quandamooka artist and member of the art collective ProppaNow, Megan Cope, has produced a range of t-shirts, one of which declares “I’m not afraid of the Dark” (fig. 1). The wording ‘reflects White Australia’s fear of blackness’ (Dark + Dangerous). Exploring race relations through the theme of “darkness”, we begin by discussing how negative connotations of darkness are represented through everyday lexicons and how efforts to shift prejudicial and racist language are often met with defensiveness and resistance. We then consider how fears towards the dark translate into everyday practices, reinforced by media representations. The article considers how stereotype, conjecture, and prejudice is inflicted upon Indigenous people and reflects white settler fears and anxieties, rooting colonialism in everyday language, action, and norms. The Language of Fear Indigenous people and others with dark skin tones are often presented as having a proclivity towards threatening, aggressive, deceitful, and negative behaviours. This works to inform how Indigenous peoples are “known” and responded to by hegemonic (predominantly white) populations. Negative connotations of Indigenous people are a means of reinforcing and legitimising the falsity that European knowledge systems, norms, and social structures are superior whilst denying the contextual colonial circumstances that have led to white dominance. In Australia, such denial corresponds to the refusal to engage with the unceded sovereignty of Aboriginal peoples or acknowledge Indigenous resistance. Language is integral to the ways in which dominant populations come to “know” and present the so-called “Other”. Such language is reflected in digital media, which both produce and maintain white anxieties towards race and ethnicity. When part of mainstream vernacular, racialised language – and the value judgments associated with it – often remains in what Moreton-Robinson describes as “invisible regimes of power” (75). Everyday social structures, actions, and habits of thought veil oppressive and discriminatory attitudes that exist under the guise of “normality”. Colonisation and the dominance of Eurocentric ways of knowing, being, and doing has fixated itself on creating a normality that associates Indigeneity and darkness with negative and threatening connotations. In doing so, it reinforces power balances that presents an image of white superiority built on the invalidation of Indigeneity and Blackness. White fears and anxieties towards race made explicit through social and digital media are also manifest via subtle but equally pervasive everyday action (Carlson and Frazer; Matamoros-Fernández). Confronting and negotiating such fears becomes a daily reality for many Indigenous people. During the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, which extended to Australia and were linked to deaths in custody and police violence, African American poet Saul Williams reminded his followers of the power of language in constructing racialised fears (saulwilliams). In an Instagram post, Williams draws back the veil of an uncontested normality to ask that we take personal responsibility over the words we use. He writes: here’s a tip: Take the words DARK or BLACK in connection to bad, evil, ominous or scary events out of your vocabulary. We learn the stock market crashed on Black Monday, we read headlines that purport “Dark Days Ahead”. There’s “dark” or “black” humour which implies an undertone of evil, and then there are people like me who grow up with dark skin having to make sense of the English/American lexicon and its history of “fair complexions” – where “fair” can mean “light; blond.” OR “in accordance with rules or standards; legitimate.” We may not be fully responsible for the duplicitous evolution of language and subtle morphing of inherited beliefs into description yet we are in full command of the words we choose even as they reveal the questions we’ve left unasked. Like the work of Moreton-Robinson and other scholars, Williams implores his followers to take a reflexive position to consider the questions often left unasked. In doing so, he calls for the transcendence of anonymity and engagement with the realities of colonisation – no matter how ugly, confronting, and complicit one may be in its continuation. In the Australian context this means confronting how terms such as “dark”, “darkie”, or “darky” were historically used as derogatory and offensive slurs for Aboriginal peoples. Such language continues to be used today and can be found in the comment sections of social media, online news platforms, and other online forums (Carlson “Love and Hate”). Taking the move to execute personal accountability can be difficult. It can destabilise and reframe the ways in which we understand and interact with the world (Rose 22). For some, however, exposing racism and seemingly mundane aspects of society is taken as a personal attack which is often met with reactionary responses where one remains closed to new insights (Whittaker). This feeds into fears and anxieties pertaining to the perceived loss of power. These fears and anxieties continue to surface through conversations and calls for action on issues such as changing the date of Australia Day, the racialised reporting of news (McQuire), removing of plaques and statues known to be racist, and requests to change placenames and the names of products. For example, in 2020, Australian cheese producer Saputo Dairy Australia changed the name of it is popular brand “Coon” to “Cheer Tasty”. The decision followed a lengthy campaign led by Dr Stephen Hagan who called for the rebranding based on the Coon brand having racist connotations (ABC). The term has its racist origins in the United States and has long been used as a slur against people with dark skin, liking them to racoons and their tendency to steal and deceive. The term “Coon” is used in Australia by settlers as a racist term for referring to Aboriginal peoples. Claims that the name change is example of political correctness gone astray fail to acknowledge and empathise with the lived experience of being treated as if one is dirty, lazy, deceitful, or untrustworthy. Other brand names have also historically utilised racist wording along with imagery in their advertising (Conor). Pear’s soap for example is well-known for its historical use of racist words and imagery to legitimise white rule over Indigenous colonies, including in Australia (Jackson). Like most racial epithets, the power of language lies in how the words reflect and translate into actions that dehumanise others. The words we use matter. The everyday “ordinary” world, including online, is deeply politicised (Carlson and Frazer “They Got Filters”) and comes to reflect attitudes and power imbalances that encourage white people to internalise the falsity that they are superior and should have control over Black people (Conor). Decisions to make social change, such as that made by Saputo Dairy Australia, can manifest into further white anxieties via their ability to force the confrontation of the circumstances that continue to contribute to one’s own prosperity. In other words, to unveil the realities of colonialism and ask the questions that are too often left in the dark. Lived Experiences of Darkness Colonial anxieties and fears are driven by the fact that Black populations in many areas of the world are often characterised as criminals, perpetrators, threats, or nuisances, but are rarely seen as victims. In Australia, the repeated lack of police response and receptivity to concerns of Indigenous peoples expressed during the Black Lives Matter campaign saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets to protest. Protestors at the same time called for the end of police brutality towards Indigenous peoples and for an end to Indigenous deaths in custody. The protests were backed by a heavy online presence that sought to mobilise people in hope of lifting the veil that shrouds issues relating to systemic racism. There have been over 450 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to die in custody since the end of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991 (The Guardian). The tragedy of the Indigenous experience gains little attention internationally. The negative implications of being the object of white fear and anxiety are felt by Indigenous and other Black communities daily. The “safety signals” (Daniella Emanuel) adopted by white peoples in response to often irrational perceptions of threat signify how Indigenous and other Black peoples and communities are seen and valued by the hegemony. Memes played out in social media depicting “Karens” – a term that corresponds to caricaturised white women (but equally applicable to men) who exhibit behaviours of entitlement – have increasing been used in media to expose the prevalence of irrational racial fears (also see Wong). Police are commonly called on Indigenous people and other Black people for simply being within spaces such as shopping malls, street corners, parks, or other spaces in which they are considered not to belong (Mohdin). Digital media are also commonly envisioned as a space that is not natural or normal for Indigenous peoples, a notion that maintains narratives of so-called Indigenous primitivity (Carlson and Frazer). Media connotations of darkness as threatening are associated with, and strategically manipulated by, the images that accompany stories about Indigenous peoples and other Black peoples. Digital technologies play significant roles in producing and disseminating the images shown in the media. Moreover, they have a “role in mediating and amplifying old and new forms of abuse, hate, and discrimination” (Matamoros-Fernández and Farkas). Daniels demonstrates how social media sites can be spaces “where race and racism play out in interesting, sometimes disturbing, ways” (702), shaping ongoing colonial fears and anxieties over Black peoples. Prominent footballer Adam Goodes, for example, faced a string of attacks after he publicly condemned racism when he was called an “Ape” by a spectator during a game celebrating Indigenous contributions to the sport (Coram and Hallinan). This was followed by a barrage of personal attacks, criticisms, and booing that spread over the remaining years of his football career. When Goodes performed a traditional war dance as a form of celebration during a game in 2015, many turned to social media to express their outrage over his “confrontational” and “aggressive” behaviour (Robinson). Goodes’s affirmation of his Indigeneity was seen by many as a threat to their own positionality and white sensibility. Social media were therefore used as a mechanism to control settler narratives and maintain colonial power structures by framing the conversation through a white lens (Carlson and Frazer “They Got Filters”). Indigenous peoples in other highly visible fields have faced similar backlash. In 1993, Elaine George was the first Aboriginal person to feature on the cover of Vogue magazine, a decision considered “risky” at the time (Singer). The editor of Vogue later revealed that the cover was criticised by some who believed George’s skin tone was made to appear lighter than it actually was and that it had been digitally altered. The failure to accept a lighter skin colour as “Aboriginal” exposes a neglect to accept ethnicity and Blackness in all its diversity (Carlson and Frazer “They Got Filters”; Carlson “Love and Hate”). Where Adam Goodes was criticised for his overt expression of Blackness, George was critisised for not being “black enough”. It was not until seventeen years later that another Aboriginal model, Samantha Harris, was featured on the cover of Vogue (Marks). While George inspired and pathed the way for those to come, Harris experienced similar discrimination within the industry and amongst the public (Carson and Ky). Singer Jessica Mauboy (in Hornery) also explains how her identity was managed by others. She recalls, I was pretty young when I first received recognition, and for years I felt as though I couldn't show my true identity. What I was saying in public was very dictated by other people who could not handle my sense of culture and identity. They felt they had to take it off my hands. Mauboy’s experience not only demonstrates how Blackness continues to be seen as something to “handle”, but also how power imbalances play out. Scholar Chelsea Watego offers numerous examples of how this occurs in different ways and arenas, for example through relationships between people and within workplaces. Bargallie’s scholarly work also provides an understanding of how Indigenous people experience racism within the Australian public service, and how it is maintained through the structures and systems of power. The media often represents communities with large Indigenous populations as being separatist and not contributing to wider society and problematic (McQuire). Violence, and the threat of violence, is often presented in media as being normalised. Recently there have been calls for an increased police presence in Alice Springs, NT, and other remotes communities due to ongoing threats of “tribal payback” and acts of “lawlessness” (Sky News Australia; Hildebrand). Goldberg uses the phrase “Super/Vision” to describe the ways that Black men and women in Black neighbourhoods are continuously and erroneously supervised and surveilled by police using apparatus such as helicopters and floodlights. Simone Browne demonstrates how contemporary surveillance practices are rooted in anti-black domination and are operationalised through a white gaze. Browne uses the term “racializing surveillance” to describe a ”technology of social control where surveillance practices, policies, and performances concern the production of norms pertaining to race and exercise a ‘power to define what is in or out of place’” (16). The outcome is often discriminatory treatment to those negatively racialised by such surveillance. Narratives that associate Indigenous peoples with darkness and danger fuel colonial fears and uphold the invisible regimes of power by instilling the perception that acts of surveillance and the restrictions imposed on Indigenous peoples’ autonomy are not only necessary but justified. Such myths fail to contextualise the historic colonial factors that drive segregation and enable a forgetting that negates personal accountability and complicity in maintaining colonial power imbalances (Riggs and Augoustinos). Inayatullah and Blaney (165) write that the “myth we construct calls attention to a darker, tragic side of our ethical engagement: the role of colonialism in constituting us as modern actors.” They call for personal accountability whereby one confronts the notion that we are both products and producers of a modernity rooted in a colonialism that maintains the misguided notion of white supremacy (Wolfe; Mignolo; Moreton-Robinson). When Indigenous and other Black peoples enter spaces that white populations don’t traditionally associate as being “natural” or “fitting” for them (whether residential, social, educational, a workplace, online, or otherwise), alienation, discrimination, and criminalisation often occurs (Bargallie; Mohdin; Linhares). Structural barriers are erected, prohibiting career or social advancement while making the space feel unwelcoming (Fredericks; Bargallie). In workplaces, Indigenous employees become the subject of hyper-surveillance through the supervision process (Bargallie), continuing to make them difficult work environments. This is despite businesses and organisations seeking to increase their Indigenous staff numbers, expressing their need to change, and implementing cultural competency training (Fredericks and Bargallie). As Barnwell correctly highlights, confronting white fears and anxieties must be the responsibility of white peoples. When feelings of shock or discomfort arise when in the company of Indigenous peoples, one must reflexively engage with the reasons behind this “fear of the dark” and consider that perhaps it is they who are self-segregating. Mohdin suggests that spaces highly populated by Black peoples are best thought of not as “black spaces” or “black communities”, but rather spaces where white peoples do not want to be. They stand as reminders of a failed colonial regime that sought to deny and dehumanise Indigenous peoples and cultures, as well as the continuation of Black resistance and sovereignty. Conclusion In working towards improving relationships between Black and white populations, the truths of colonisation, and its continuing pervasiveness in local and global settings must first be confronted. In this article we have discussed the association of darkness with instinctual fears and negative responses to the unknown. White populations need to reflexively engage and critique how they think, act, present, address racism, and respond to Indigenous peoples (Bargallie; Moreton-Robinson; Whittaker), cultivating a “decolonising consciousness” (Bradfield) to develop new habits of thinking and relating. To overcome fears of the dark, we must confront that which remains unknown, and the questions left unasked. This means exposing racism and power imbalances, developing meaningful relationships with Indigenous peoples, addressing structural change, and implementing alternative ways of knowing and doing. Only then may we begin to embody Megan Cope’s message, “I’m not afraid of the Dark”. Acknowledgements We thank Dr Debbie Bargallie for her feedback on our article, which strengthened the work. References ABC News. 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IntroductionThis article explores the work of lists in mediating the materiality and complexity of everyday life. In contemporary cultural contexts the endless proliferation of listing forms and practices takes on a “self-reflexivity” that signals their functional and productive role in negotiating the everyday. Grocery lists, to do lists, and other fragmentary notes work as personal tools for ordering and managing daily needs and activities. But what do these fragments tell us about the work of lists? Do they “merely” describe or provide analytical insight into the everyday? To address these questions we explore the issues and anxieties raised by everyday consumption drawing on theories of everyday life. These concerns, which are examined in detail in the second part of the paper, lie at the heart of French writer Georges Perec’s interest in the “infra-ordinary”—that which resides within the everyday. In the parts of his writing that he designated in retrospect as “sociological,” Perec takes the form and function of lists as a starting point for a range of literary experiments that work as tools of discovery and invention capable in their seeming banality of both mapping and disrupting everyday life. Les Choses (Things) and Je Me Souviens (I Remember), for example, take the form of endless and repetitious lists of things, places, people, and memories, collections of fragments that aim to achieve a new kind of sociology of everyday life. While this project may be contentious in terms of its “representativeness,” as a discursive method or mode of ethnographic practice (Becker) it points to the generative power of lists as both of the everyday and as an analytical tool of discovery for understanding the everyday. Perec’s sociology of the everyday is not, we argue, articulated as a form of a cohesive or generalizable characterisation of social institutions, but rather emerges as an “invent-ory” of the rich texture and disjunctures that populated his everyday spaces, personal encounters, and memories. Lists and the EverydayTo see lists as tools of common use, to paraphrase Spufford (2), is to place the list squarely within the realm of the everyday. A particular feature of the everyday—its “special quality,” as Highmore puts it—is that it is characterised by “the unnoticed, the inconspicuous, the unobtrusive” (Highmore 1). The everyday is enigmatic, elusive, difficult to grasp, and important because of this. In Maurice Blanchot’s famous formulation, “whatever its other aspects, the everyday has this essential trait: it allows no hold. It escapes” (14). Its pervasiveness renders it as platitude, but, as Blanchot adds, “this banality is also what is most important, if it brings us back to existence in its very spontaneity and as it is lived” (13). This tension poses special challenges for critics of the everyday who must register it as a part of, as inhering in, “manifold lived experience” without it “dissolving” into “statistics, properties, data” when it is “made the object of study” (Sheringham 360). In short, as Fran Martin (2) points out, “even though it surrounds us completely and takes up the vast majority of our time, the everyday is extremely difficult to pin down.” It is a predicament that is made all the more difficult in light of the complicated entanglement of the everyday and consumer capitalism (Jagose; Lury; Schor and Holt). This close relationship between consumer objects—things—and everyday life (along with other historical factors), has profoundly shifted critical understanding of the processes of subject formation and identity performance. One influential formulation of these transformations, associated most strongly with the work of Giddens and Beck, is captured in the notion of “reflexive modernity.” This refers to the understanding that, increasingly, at a broader societal level, “the very idea of controllability, certainty or security” is being challenged (Beck, World Risk Society 2)—developments that impact directly on how self-identity is formed (Giddens), reformed and performed (Hall). Faced with such upheavals, it is suggested that the individual increasingly “must produce, stage and cobble together their biographies themselves” (Beck, “Reinvention” 13), they must self-reflexively “invent” themselves. As Slater puts it, individuals, by force of circumstance, are required to “choose, construct, interpret, negotiate, display who they are to be seen as” (84) using a wide array of resources, both material and symbolic. Consumerism, it is widely argued, proffers its goods as solutions to these problems of identity (Slater 85). For instance, Adam Arvidsson notes how goods are used in the construction of “social relations, shared emotions, personal identity or forms of community” (18). This is particularly the case in relation to lifestyle consumption, which for Chaney (11) functions as a response to the loss of meaning in modern life following the sorts of larger societal upheavals described by Giddens and Beck and others. The general implication of lifestyle consumption across its various forms is that “‘every choice’ […] all acts of purchase or consumption, […] ‘are decisions not only about how to act but who to be’” (Warde in Slater 85). It is here that we can place the contemporary work of lists and the proliferation of list forms and practices. Lists figure in vital ways within this context of consumer-based everyday life. At a general level, lists assist us in making sense of the activities, objects, and experiences that feed and constitute daily life. In this sense, the list is a crucial mediating device, a means of organising things and bringing the mundanities and the exigencies of the everyday under control:The list categorises the ongoing chores of everyday life: organising and managing shopping, work, laundry, meetings, parking fines, and body management. (Crewe 33)In relation to lifestyle consumption, lists and inventories constitute one key way in which “we attempt to organise and order consumption” (Crewe 29). In this sense, lists are, for Louise Crewe, important “scripting devices that help us to manage the mundanity and weighty materiality of consumption” (Crewe 29). The use of the phrase “scripting device” is important here insofar as it suggests a double-movement in which lists simultaneously serve as “devices for regulating and disciplining the consuming body” (that is, lists as “prompts” that encourage us to follow the “script” of consumer culture) and work productively to “narrate practice and desire” (part of the “scripting” of self-identity and performance) (Crewe 30).In developing and illustrating these ideas, Crewe draws on Bill Keaggy’s found shopping lists project. Originally a blog, and subsequently a book entitled Milk Eggs Vodka, Keaggy gathers (and offers humorous commentary on) a wide array of discarded shopping lists that range from the mundane, to the bizarre, to the profound, each, in their own way, surprisingly rich and revealing of the scribes who penned them. Individually, the lists relay, through object names, places, actions, and prompts, the mundane landscape of everyday consumption. For example: Zip lockIceBeerFruit (Keaggy 42) SunglassesShoesBeer$Food (Keaggy 205)Keaggy’s collection comes to life, however, through his own careful organisation of these personal fragments into meaningful categories delineated by various playful and humorous characteristics. This listing of lists performs a certain transformation that works only in accumulation, in the book’s organisation, and through Keaggy’s humorous annotations. That is, Keaggy’s deliberate organisation of the lists into categories that highlight certain features over others, and his own annotations, introduces an element of invention and play, and delivers up many unexpected insights into their anonymous compilers’ lives. This dual process of utilising the list form as a creative and a critical tool for understanding the everyday also lies at the heart of Georges Perec’s literary and sociological project. Georges Perec: Towards an Invent-ory of Everyday LifeThe work of the French experimental writer Georges Perec is particularly instructive in understanding the generative potential of the act of listing. Perec was especially attuned to the effectiveness and significance of lists in revealing what is important in the mundane and quotidian—what he calls the “infra-ordinary” or “endotic” (as opposed to the “extraordinary” and “exotic”). As shall be detailed below, Perec’s creative recuperation of the list form as a textual device and critical tool leads us to a fuller appreciation of how, in Crewe’s words, “the most mundane, ordinary, invisible, and seemingly uninteresting things can be as significant and revealing as the most dramatic” (44).Across Perec’s diverse literary output, lists figure repeatedly in ways that speak directly to their ability to shed light on the inner workings of the everyday—their ability to make the familiar strange (Highmore 12)—and to reveal the entangled interactions between everyday consumption and personal identity. It is in this second sense that lists operate in his novel Things: A Story of the Sixties (Les Choses, 1965), a book that the French philosopher Alain Badiou (20, note 1) describes as a “rigorous literary version of the Marxist theme of alienation—especially the prevalence of things over existence.” Things tells of the endeavours of Sylvie and Jérôme, a young Parisian couple who, in Bourdieu’s terms, attempt to improve their social position in part through the cultural capital resources they see as invested in consumer objects, in the “things” that they acquire and desire. Perec’s telling of this narrative is heavily populated with lists of these semiotically loaded objects of consumer desire, taste, and distinction. The book opens, for example, with a descriptive listing of the kinds of decorative elements that visitors would encounter in the entrance hall of an idealised, imagined Paris apartment the couple longed for:Your eye, first of all, would glide over the grey fitted carpet in the narrow, long and high-ceilinged corridor. Its walls would be cupboards, in light-coloured wood, with fittings of gleaming brass. Three prints, depicting, respectively, the Derby winner Thunderbird, a paddle-steamer named Ville-de-Montereau, and a Stephenson locomotive, would lead to a leather curtain hanging on thick, black, grainy wooden rings which would slide back at the merest touch. (Perec, Things 21) This (and other detailed) listing of idealised objects—which, as the book progresses, are set in stark opposition to their present lived reality—tells the reader a great deal about the two protagonists’ wants and desires (“they both possessed, alas, but a single passion, the passion for a higher standard of living, and it exhausted them”—Perec, Things 35), and wider collective identification with these desires. Indeed, such identifications clearly had wide social resonance in France (and elsewhere) with Things collecting the Prix Renaudot. The ability of lists to speak to collective social (not just individual) experience was also explored by Perec in Je me souviens (1978), a book modelled on a project by Joe Brainard and which comprised a series of personal recollections of largely unremarkable events, which, nevertheless, at the time, had gained some form of purchase within the collective psyche of the French people—in Perec’s words, a random list of “little fragments of the everyday, things which, in such and such a year, everyone more or less the same age has seen, or lived, or share, and which have subsequently disappeared or been forgotten” (cited in Adair 178). For example:(item 57) I remember that Christian Jacque divorced Renée Faure in order to marry Martine Carol.(item 247) I remember that De Gaulle had a brother named Paul who was director of the Foire de Paris. (cited in Adair 179)Both these texts are component parts in a larger project of Perec’s to develop “an anthropology of everyday life” (Perec, “Notes” 142 note §). Howard Becker has offered a challenging, though also somewhat ambivalent, critique of Perec’s “sociological” method in these and other texts, contrasting Perec’s descriptive ethnography with the work that social scientists do. Becker takes aim at the way Perec’s detailed listing of objects, people, events, and memories eschews narrative and sociological design, referring to Perec’s method as “proto-ethnography,” or “detailed ‘raw description’” (73). Yet Becker is also drawn in by the end products of that method: “As you read Perec’s descriptions, you increasingly succumb to the feeling (at least I do, and I think others do as well) that this is important, though you can’t say how” (71). Ultimately, his criticism decries Perec’s failure to impose an explicit order on his lists and fragments, perhaps missing the significance of the way they are always bounded and underpinned by a conceptual principle: “It does not seem to have the kind of cohesion, at least not obviously, that social scientists like to ascribe to a culture, a similarity or interlocking or affinity of the parts to one another…” (74). That is, Perec’s lists stand as fragments, but fragments that do add up to something, as Becker admits: “The whole is more than the parts” (69). This ambivalence points to the analytical potential Perec found within those fragments, the “raw description,” that can only be understood through the end product. It could be argued that his lists defy the very possibility of presenting the everyday as a cohesive whole, and promote instead the everyday in its rich texture, as repetition and disjuncture. This project presents itself, in short, as a sociology of the everyday, whilst subverting the functionalist traditions of sociological observation and classification (Boyne). As Perec asks of the habitual, “How are we to speak of [...] ‘common things,’ how to track them down rather, flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they remain mired, how to give them a meaning, a tongue [...]?” (Perec, “Approaches” 210). Lists (alongside other forms of description) play a vital role in this project and provide a partial answer to the above questions, and this is why Perec’s lists actively seek out the banal or quotidian. In addition to the examples cited above, fascination with enumeration of this kind is most strikingly realised in his essay, “Attempt at an Inventory of the Liquid and Solid Foodstuffs Ingurgitated by Me in the Course of the Year Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Four” (Реrес, “Attempt” 244-249), and his later radio broadcast, “An Attempt at а Description of Things Seen at Mabillon Junction on 19 Мау 1978” (Bellos 640). At very least, Perec’s experiments serve as testimony to his ability to transform the trivial into the poetic—list-making as “invent-ory”. Importantly, however, Perec makes the shift from the inventory as a pragmatic listing form, “presenting a simple series of units,” “collected by a conceptual principle” (Belknap 2, 3), to a more transformative or analytical discursive practice. In all the above cases, Perec’s “accumulation is used in conjunction with other forms, devices, and intentions” (Bellos 670), such as, for instance, in the deployment of the list (the “invent-ory”) as an effective lever with which to pry open for inspection the seemingly inscrutable inner workings of everyday spaces, things, memories, in order that they might “speak of what is [and] of what we are” (Perec, “Approaches” 210).In this way, Perec’s use of lists (and various forms of categorisation) can be understood as a critique of the very possibility of stable method applied to classificatory ordering systems. In its place he promotes a set of practices that are oriented towards, and appropriate to, investigations of the everyday, rather than establishing scientific universals. At points in his work Perec expresses discomfort or even anxiety in taking the act of classification as a “method.” He begins his essay “Think/Classify,” for instance, by lamenting the “discursive deficiency” of his own use of classification in grasping the everyday, which at the same time calls “the thinkable and the classifiable into question” (189). And, yet, the act of listing, situated as it is for Perec firmly within the material contexts of particular activities and spaces, ultimately offers a productive means by which to understand, and negotiate, the everyday.ConclusionIn this paper we have examined the everyday work of lists and the functions that they serve in mediating the materiality and complexity of everyday life. In the first section of the paper, following Crewe, we explored the dual function of lists as scripting devices in simultaneously “disciplining” us as consumers as well and as a means of controlling the everyday in ways that also feed our sense of self-identity. In this sense lists are complex devices. Perec was especially attuned to the layers of complexity that attend our engagement with lists. In particular, as we explored in the second part of the paper, Perec saw lists as a critical and productive tool (an invent-ory) and used them to scrutinise common things in the hope that they might “speak of what is [and] of what we are” (Perec, “Approaches” 210). Lists remain, in this sense, an accessible discursive technology often surprising for their subtle revelations about the everyday even while they maintain adherence to an inherently recognisable form.In setting out the importance of his own “project,” and the need to question the habitual, Perec provides a set of instructions (his “pedagogic strategy”—Adair 177), presented as an approach (if not a method), and which signals his desire to critique the traditions of social science as a method of material and social ordering and analysis. Perec’s appropriation of this approach, this discursive technology, also works as a provocation, as a “project” that others might adopt. He prompts his readers to “make an inventory of your pockets, your bag. Ask yourself about the provenance, the use, what will become of each of the objects you take out” (Perec, “Approaches” 210). This is a challenge that was built upon in different ways by a number of writers inspired by the esprit of Perec’s approach to the everyday, associated also with “a wider cultural shift from systems and structures to practices and performances” (Sherringham 292). Sherringham, for instance, traces the “redirection of ethnographic scrutiny from the far to the near” in the work of Augé, Ernaux, Maspero and Réda amongst others (292-359). Perec’s lists thus serve as a series of provocations which still hold critical purchase, and the full implications of which are still to be realised.ReferencesAdair, Gilbert. “The Eleventh Day: Perec and the Infra-ordinary.” The Review of Contemporary Fiction XXIX.1 (2009): 176-88.Arvidsson, Adam. Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture. London: Routledge, 2006.Badiou, Alain. The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings. Trans. Gregory Elliott. London: Verso, 2012.Beck, Ulrich. “The Reinvention of Politics: Towards a Theory of Reflexive Modernization.” Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Eds. Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash. Cambridge: Polity, 1994. 1-55.---. World Risk Society. Malden, MA: Polity, 1999.Becker, Howard. “Georges Perec’s Experiments in Social Description.” Ethnography 2.1 (2001): 63-76.Bellos, David. Georges Perec: A Life in Words. London: Harvill, 1999.Blanchot, Maurice. “Everyday Speech.” Trans. Susan Hanson. Yale French Studies 73 (1987): 12-20.Boyne, Roy. “Classification.” Theory, Culture and Society 23.2-3 (2006): 21-30.Chaney, David. Lifestyles. London: Routledge, 1996.Crewe, Louise. “Life Itemised: Lists, Loss, Unexpected Significance, and the Enduring Geographies of Discard.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 (2011): 27-46. Hall, Stuart. “The Question of Cultural Identity.” Modernity and Its Futures. Ed. Stuart Hall and Tony McGrew. Cambridge: Polity, 1992. 274-316.Highmore, Ben. Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2002.Jagose, Annamarie. “The Invention of Lifestyle.” Interpreting Everyday Culture. Ed. Fran Martin. London: Hodder Arnold, 2003. 109-23.Keaggy, Bill. Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found. Cincinnati: How Books, 2007. Lury, Celia. Consumer Culture. Oxford: Polity Press, 1996. Martin, Fran. “Introduction.” Interpreting Everyday Culture. Ed. Fran Martin. London: Hodder Arnold, 2003. 1-10.Perec, Georges. “Approaches to What?” Species of Spaces. 209-11.---. “Attempt at an Inventory of the Liquid and Solid Foodstuffs Ingurgitated by Me in the Course of the Year Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Four.” Species of Spaces. 244-49.---. “Notes on What I’m Looking For.” Species of Spaces. 141-43.---. Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. Ed. and trans. John Sturrock. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1997.---. Things: A Story of the Sixties. Trans. David Bellos. London: Harvill, 1990.---. “Think/Classify.” Species of Spaces. 188-205.Schor, Juliet and Holt, Douglas B., eds. The Consumer Society Reader. New York: The New Press, 2011.Slater, Don. Consumer Culture and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity, 1997.

At the end of the episode “Crowd Pleasers,” from her television series Nigella Feasts, we see British food writer and television cook Nigella Lawson in her nightgown opening her fridge in the dark. The fridge light reveals the remnant dishes of chili con carne that she prepared earlier on in the programme. She scoops up a dollop of soured cream and chili onto a spoon and shovels it into her mouth, nods approvingly and then picks up the entire chili dish. She eats another mouthful, utters a satisfied “umm” sound, closes the fridge door and walks away, taking the dish of chili with her. This recurring scenario at the end of Nigella’s programmes is paradoxically constructed as a private moment to be witnessed by many viewers. It resembles acts of secret eating, personal food habits and offers a glimpse of the performed self, adding to Nigella’s persona. Throughout Nigella’s programmes there is a conscious tension between the private and public. This tension is confounded by Nigella’s acknowledgement of, and direct address to, the viewers, characterised by the knowing look she gives to the camera when she tastes her food, licks her fingers as she cooks, or reveals her secret chocolate stash in her store cupboard; the overt performance of supposedly surreptitious gestures. Through her look-back at the camera Nigella performs both sin and confession, communicating her guilty-pleasure as she self-consciously reveals this pleasure to the viewers. At the start of her performance Table Occasions (2000), solo artist Bobby Baker explains that there are strict rules that she must follow, the most important being that she must not walk on the floor. Baker then hosts a dinner party (for imaginary guests), balancing on top of the table and chairs wearing high-heeled shoes. When the ‘meal’ is finished Baker breaks her rule; she gets down from the table and walks freely across the performance space, giving the audience a knowing look of mock-surprise, as if everyone was seduced into believing in the compulsory nature of her rule (Table Occasions).In this performance Baker confesses her anxiety and discomfort in the act of playing the host. By breaking rules of common etiquette as well as her own abstract rules, she performatively constructs her “sins” and her “confessions.” Baker’s look-back at the audience reveals her self-conscious “confessing self.” Confessing the SelfAs a practitioner-researcher working in the field of autobiography, developing from artists such as Baker, my practice attempts to articulate the impact that popular cultural performances of food may have upon current notions of food, identity and the self. I seek to use food as a vehicle for investigating and revealing multiple versions of self. The “confessing subject” in contemporary performance practice has been discussed extensively by Deirdre Heddon, particularly as a means of “questioning the subject of confession” (Daily 230). This paper is concerned with acts of disclosure (and confession) that occur through food in popular culture and performance practice. My particular focus will be my durational performance work If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a cake, commissioned by the Alsager Arts Centre Gallery, as part of the Curating Knowledge Residency Programme initiated by gallery curator Jane Linden. I will explore strategies of performative disclosure through food in both live and mediated contexts, in order to investigate Heddon’s distinction between “confessional performance art” and “the gamut of currently available mass-mediated confessional opportunities” (Daily 232). My aim is to explore a current cultural relationship between food, confession and autobiography through the lens of performance. My concern lies in the performance of self and the ways in which the self is disclosed through food and I use Nigella’s and Baker’s performances, as confessional/autobiographical material, to develop my argument. Although operating in different mediums, Baker (as performance artist), and Nigella (as media personality), both use food to perform the self and employ autobiographical strategies to reveal aspects of their personal domestic lives to their audience.It is necessary to acknowledge that Nigella is first and foremost a commodity and her programmes function as part mediation of her cooking brand, along with her cookbooks and cookware. Intentionality aside, I am interested in the ways in which Nigella engages her viewers, which is culturally indicative of the wider phenomenon of the celebrity chef and strategies of performative disclosure operating through food. My argument rests on the premise that Nigella’s strategies are similar to those used by Baker resulting in a slippage in Nigella’s position between Heddon’s opposing categories. Nigella not only adopts a confessional, intimate and personal mode of address but also uses it to construct her persona, lifestyle and perform a version of her autobiography. Gabrielle Helms, in analysing reality TV programmes such as Big Brother, observes that Through the use of direct camera address, the confession creates the sense of immediacy and urgency needed to establish a special ‘live’ relationship between speaker and audience, one that remains unattainable in written confession (53).Nigella also establishes a “live” relationship with her audience through her personal and direct camera address. Yet Nigella’s programmes are only reflective of her supposed actual domestic life. We witness fragmented images of her pampering in her bedroom, carefully choosing vegetables from a market stall and taking her children to school. The seamless flow of these constructed “life” images perform a mock-autobiography of Nigella’s life. Baker’s practice is rooted in the domestic and through her use of food in performance she communicates her ‘everyday’ experiences as a wife, mother and artist. Baker’s work belongs to a field of resistant arts practice through which she discloses her often painful and difficult relationship to femininity and the domestic. Baker has stated “food is like my own language” (Iball 75), and it is a highly visceral, visual language that she uses to communicate her autobiographical material. Lucy Baldwin describes that Baker’s “taboos collect around the visceral qualities of food: its proximity to the body and to emotions, and its ability to represent what we would rather forget” (37). Baker often uses foods in ways that invoke the internal body. In Drawing on a Mother’s Experience, she narrates personal stories of motherhood whilst marking foodstuffs onto a sheet to map out her memories and experiences. In Baker’s final moment she rolls herself up in the sheet, The foodstuffs begin to bleed through the second skin of the sheet. Gradually, this seepage takes on the appearance of internal organs-a mapping of capillaries and veins, a tacit revelation of interior matters (Baldwyn 51). The blending of both food and memories marked onto Baker’s body discloses a fluid, unstable identity. As Claire MacDonald states Baker “allows the self to operate as a site where the meanings of identity can be contested” (191). By nature, autobiographical performance problematises notions of identity and self and there is always a tension between the real and the fictional. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson have stated that:Autobiographical acts[…]cannot be understood as individualist acts of a sovereign subject, whole and entire unto itself. And the representation produced cannot be taken as a guarantee of a ‘true self’, authentic, coherent, and fixed (11). Baker’s construction of “self” is multi-faceted, sitting in between the fictional and the “real.” Using food, Baker layers together the pieces of “Bobby,” past and present, onto her live body and unites her “self” with her other “selves” in an intimate and ‘real’ shared experience with a live audience; the weaving of a complex, engaging and moving autobiography. My interest is to further explore how food can be used to disclose and contest identity. Food ExposuresFood is inherent in social and public events, in meal times and celebrations, yet food is also kept behind closed doors and inside domestic kitchens constituting the stuff of private lives. Crossing the realms of private and public, food has become a vehicle for spectacle and entertainment in media culture and is used to reveal identities, subjectivities and personal histories. Cooking programmes belong to the hybrid reality TV genre, frequently termed “infotainment.” Signe Hansen has usefully observed that “when we watch shows like Big Brother, Survivor or Temptation Island, our position as consumers is exactly that of watching Jamie Oliver [or] Nigella Lawson” (55). Helms has also argued that reality TV shows “focus on auto/biographical performance,” and asks, “are the lives represented on these shows, and the ways they are represented, reflections of contemporary understandings of self and identity?” (46). In this vein, I propose that the lives represented in food media such as Nigella’s are also constructed through the autobiographical, and Nigella’s particular relationship with food furthers a trend of self-disclosure that capitulates into abject voyeurism. Television chefs each have their own unique, “hypertrophied personality” (Govan and Rebellato 36). Nigella’s persona is characterised through her personal and casual address, which bridges the gap between “food expert” (performer) and “novice” (viewer) previously circumscribed by food experts like Delia Smith. Hansen fittingly observes that “the experience of befriending, of coming to ‘know,’ the person behind the persona is one of the particularities of today’s media climate” (55). Nigella allows us to “know” her better by revealing her greed, laziness, messiness and lack of self-control. She reveals her personal relationship to recipes, such as those originating from her grandmother, or cooking utensils that hold sentimental value, like her mother’s wooden spoon. The glimpses of self that Nigella exposes through food are framed as confession and privilege her viewers with “inside knowledge.” Although the fictional/real tension prevails, it is the performance of autobiography that is significant here. The mock-autobiographical address entices viewers and transforms what is essentially an advertisement into a particular practice of visual engagement, one that is founded upon the pleasures of witnessing and consuming disclosures. In the case of reality TV an element of guilty pleasure remains on the part of the viewer, who is learning about someone’s private life without having to reciprocate[…]By observing others from a position of omniscience, viewers can live vicariously and can engage without having to take responsibility[…]they can move between attraction and revulsion without consequences for themselves (Helms 55).Both Nigella and Baker embody “attraction and revulsion” to different ends—in Kitchen show (1991), Baker performs thirteen actions that each result in a “mark” being left on her body. Baker’s sixth action is opening a fresh tub of margarine, confessing her delight in the “satisfying nipple peak in the centre.” Baker then subverts her desire, smearing the margarine onto her face, crossing between “attraction” and “revulsion.” Baker’s marks “defamiliarize the ordinary and everyday to provoke new […] disturbing insights” (Blumberg 197).In contrast to the sanitised aesthetic trope of cooking programmes, in which ingredients are pre-prepared and separated into glass bowls, “the hallucination of hygiene” (Govan and Rebellato 37), Nigella gets her hands dirty and heightens moments when her body comes into contact with food. In her “Comfort Food” episode from Nigella Bites, she aggressively pierces the insides of the lemon declaring, “I quite like this ritual disembowelling of the lemon.” Her fingertips often disappear into her mouth as she licks and tastes the food that she “disembowels.” Using Kristeva’s theory of abjection, Emma Govan and Dan Rebellato acknowledge the precariousness of the boundaries of the body, stating that “the passages into and out of the body are always dangerous sites for the self” (33). Nigella crosses the boundaries of etiquette and hygiene and exposes an open, wanting body that is both “repulsive” and “attractive”. Her persona is also characterised through the trope of consumer seduction, in terms of her adopting a flirtatious manner and playful aligning of cooking acts with sexual pleasure. She seductively describes the “wonderful primrose emulsion” colour of the lemon sauce, which matches her own yellow T-shirt, thus presenting her self as food, becoming both desirable and consumable. However, Nigella’s sexualised gluttony borders on the grotesque; risotto made, Nigella confesses that, “in theory, this would be enough supper for two, in practice, I rather feel, one”. She eats it immediately, standing in the kitchen eagerly taking in large spoonfuls whilst glancing knowingly at the camera. Bakhtin’s notion of the “grotesque body,” Bob Ashley, Joanne Hollows, Steve Jones and Ben Taylor point out “is frequently associated with food. It is a devouring body, a body in the process of over-indulging, eating, drinking, vomiting and defecating” (43) and Nigella renders her own body grotesque. However, in contrast to Baker, the grotesque in this context functions to seduce a consumer audience and perpetuate the voyeuristic gaze. Nigella is part of a culture in which the abject (improper) body and taboo eating habits are fetishised through media constructions of self. Self DisclosuresElspeth Probyn draws attention to the trend of media food disclosures, “listen carefully to the new generation of television chefs, and one will hear them tiptoeing along a fine line that threatens to collapse into terrifying public intimacy” (20). This rather unnerving concern resonates with Heddon’s observation of a current “cultural omnipresence of autobiography” (Autobiography 161). Heddon suggests that “if we were confessing animals in the 1970s, we have by now surely mutated into monsters” (Autobiography 160) and questions the implications for performance, asking if “a resistant autobiographical practice is even any longer a possibility?” (Autobiography 161). Heddon posits Irene Gammel’s term “confessional interventions” as a potential self-conscious, subversion strategy that autobiographical performance practice can adopt. For Heddon, Baker “refuses the voyeuristic gaze” by only confessing “the mundane” and never allowing us access to one true version of self,Baker’s ‘secrets’ are not only moments of refusal, or moments of ‘privacy in public’, they also perform spaces in which I, in the role of spectator, can bring myself into (the) ‘play’ as I fill in her gaps with my own stories. Who then is the confessing subject here? (Autobiography 164).In my practice I am seeking to use autobiography to “strategically play with the mode of confession” (Autobiography 163) and pass comment on the ways that food functions in popular culture as a vehicle for disclosure, and perpetuates the voyeuristic gaze. My interventionist strategy then, is to investigate how notions of the self can be represented through performative acts of disclosure, in which versions of the self are manipulated, revisited and retold. All performance is citational and I would argue that a deliberate, self-conscious acknowledgement of that citation is a useful means to problematise the mock confessional, whilst maintaining an autobiographical mode of address. Heddon has also acknowledged that,In the performance of autobiography, the always already fictional nature of the autobiographical mode is made explicit. Such an acceptance and revelation of the constructed nature of the autobiography is vital in its connection to the constructed nature of ‘identity’ and the ‘self’ (Glory 2).This strategy is evident in both Nigella’s and Baker’s performances if we return once again to their knowing look-back at the audience/camera. Their looks re-play their own citational context and communicate a “knowingness” that they are ‘playing’ themselves, and in doing so they refuse the very possibility of an ‘autobiography’. If I Knew You Were Coming I’d Have Baked a CakeMy performance work investigated how cakes and baking could be used to create and perform a version of my autobiography. The work existed both as a performative durational process and an artwork that communicated through predominantly non-verbal means. Using cake decorating techniques I designed a large cake sculpture consisting of a number of cakes that were representative of significant occasions, relationships and memories throughout my life. The sculpture was baked, decorated and assembled over five days in the gallery and spectators were invited to witness each stage of my process. The sculpture featured cakes from my past, such as memorable birthday cakes. Other cakes were newly created to represent memories in which there was no cake present to that occasion, such as saying farewell to my family home. All of the cakes were used in new ways to disclose a version of my autobiography. The work simultaneously constituted and represented a number of autobiographical processes. Firstly, prior to the project I underwent cake decorating tuition over a period of ten weeks and the performance acted as documentation of this learning process; secondly, through the act of baking and decorating I engaged in processes of revisiting and remembering personal experiences; and finally the cake sculpture became a living autobiography of my durational time in the gallery and the physical experience of creating the artwork. As a keen baker my interest in cakes has developed into my artistic practice. Here I want to briefly propose the significance of cakes (in British culture) as mediators and markers of identities and relationships. Cakes are used to signify and commemorate occasions and social rituals. Cakes function as rewards and treats, and they mark the pivotal moment of a meal or end of a celebration. Cakes are shared between friends and they are present in the personal and particular experience of those individuals. A cake is not just a cake; as a symbol a cake can hold associations, memories and feelings and act as mediators for social interaction. Probyn raises an idea introduced by Nigella that “baking equates with the ‘ability to be part of life’” (5) and from my own experiences I can recall how cakes somehow enabled me to feel part of life, as a child baking in the kitchen, thinking, doing, creating, making decisions and mistakes, that impacted upon my relationships and connection to time and place. My performance investigated how cakes could be used to perform versions of self and here, I will unpick the strategies of performative disclosure (as a means of “confessional intervention”) that were used to construct multiple representations of the self and explore the dialogic relationship between them. In doing so I will disclose my own intentions, experiences and discoveries in order to problematise my role as both subject and creator of the work. Baking My AutobiographyProgramme notes were displayed at the entrance to the gallery and provided a map of the space outlining the function of each room. These notes were written as if addressing the spectators directly and contextualised the work through confessing my deliberate re-appropriation of Nigella’s “domestic goddess” persona: Hello, my name is Jenny and I want to be a Domestic Goddess. Welcome to my world of cakes and baking. Here in the gallery I am attempting to bake my autobiography. I have designed a large cake-sculpture that I will be baking and creating during the week. Every part of my cake has been individually constructed using memories and experiences from my past. Each area of the gallery is devoted to a particular part of my process… The entrance to the gallery opened up into a small corridor space that I titled “The Domestic Goddess Hall of Fame.” Hanging on the wall in chronological order were five portrait photographs of historical British female food personalities including, Mrs Beeton, Fanny Craddock, Delia Smith and Nigella Lawson. The fifth and last photograph was of me. I deliberately wrote “myself” into a visual narrative of significant female cooks, with their own cooking styles. From the outset I attempted to situate my autobiography within a culture of self-referentiality (see fig. 1). Figure 1. Image: Rory Francis. “The Domestic Goddess Hall of Fame”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. The other areas in the gallery included a kitchen where I baked the cakes; a cake cooling room, where the finished cakes cooled, assisted by portable fans; a cake decorating corner where I conducted the sugar craft and exhibited an array of equipment and materials; and a display room, in which the finished cakes were arranged into the final sculpture. The audience were invited to participate in various activities, such as licking the bowl, assisting me with simple baking tasks and receiving a decorating demonstration. On the final day the finished cake sculpture was cut-up and offered to the audience who shared in the communal eating of my-life-in-cake (see fig. 2 and fig.3).Figure 2. Image: Anonymous Audience Member. Performer: Jenny Lawson. “The Cake Cooling Room and The Sugar Craft Corner”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. Figure 3. Image: Anonymous Audience Member. Performer: Jenny Lawson.” The Kitchen”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. The isolating and displaying of each process revealed the mechanics behind both the artwork and the experiences of cake decorating. Yet the unveiling of these processes in the citational space of a gallery was intended to point up the construction of “personal” domestic space. Although I welcomed the audience into “my kitchen” and lived and breathed the duration of the project, there was no mistaking that this space was a gallery and bore no “real” resemblance to my (domestic) self or my autobiography, in the same way that Nigella’s domestic mise-en-scene, constitutes both her kitchen and her studio. In keeping with Heddon’s advocated “confessional intervention” the spectators were not presented with a clear autobiographical narrative. Rather, the cakes were used alongside structuring devices to present a collection of experiences that could be revisited, manipulated and retold; devices I devised in accordance with Daniel Schachter’s notion that,Memories are records of how we have experienced events, not replicas of the events themselves […] we construct our autobiographies from fragments of experience that change over time (qtd. in Smith and Watson 9). The durational nature of the project meant that audience members witnessed my cakes at varying stages of development and on the first morning there were no completed cakes present in the display room. However, three diagrammatic drawings were displayed on the walls depicting different versions of what the final sculpture may look like; technical drawings of top and side projections and a more personal mapping of fragmented stories and memories (see fig. 4). Figure 4. Image: Rory Francis. Performer: Jenny Lawson. “Side Projection Scale 1:4.5”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. Twenty-two nametags were carefully positioned on the display table indicating where the finished cakes would eventually be placed. The names of each cake were indicative of an event or memory such as, “The Big Pink Sofa” or “Failed Mother’s Day” and performatively framed each cake within a personal narrative. Each cake had its own song, which the audience could play out loud on an Ipod at any point during the process, whether they were looking at the finished cake or just its nametag and a blank space. The songs were designed to locate my memories within a shared cultural frame of reference that although specific to my memory, would evoke associations personal to the viewers allowing the possibility of other self-narratives to arise from the work. The audience were also invited to take part in the continual documenting of my process. A plasma TV screen in the corner of the gallery that I titled “Cake Moments,” displayed a continual loop of photographs of past cakes from my life. The audience were instructed to take photographs of any interesting “cake moments” they encountered during their stay and at the end of each day these were added to the display. Like the cake sculpture, this collection of photographs built up over the five days. Many visitors chose to photograph themselves interacting in some way with the cakes and baking materials, thus becoming part of my autobiography. The photographs looped in random order and blurred together personal life shots with the constructed shots from the gallery, fictionalising the audience participation and potentially disrupting any singular notion of self (see fig. 5).These interactive features performatively disclosed fragments of personal memory and served to involve the audience in the self-conscious authoring of my autobiography. Whatever the stage of the process, the audience were encouraged to fill in the gaps with their own self-narratives. To return to Heddon’s question, “Who then is the confessing subject here?” (164). I find a possible answer lies inside my cakes. The UndisclosableMy memories, like a cake, were beaten and mixed together and like the icing, bled into each other to create a fluid yet fragmented autobiography. The finished cake sculpture combined an array of colours, textures, tastes, shapes and images. Some cakes were inscribed with photographs, personal texts, quirky features (a tower of custard cream biscuits) and disturbing details (a red gash cutting through a cake’s surface or a deliberately burnt black “Failed Mother’s Day” heart) (see fig. 6) Figure 5. Image: Anonymous Audience Member. Performer: Jenny Lawson. “Cake Sculpture”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. As an artistic tool I found the layered form of a cake enabled me to represent multiple versions of memories and disclose complex feelings (albeit highly subjective) through a visually expressive and creative art form. In keeping with Bakhtinian dialogism, in which the self is only constructed through the interrelationship with the other, I performatively disclosed a version of my autobiography that was not located somewhere inside me, but somewhere in between both mine and the audience’s subjectivities. As Michael Holquist has expounded from Bakhtin:In order to see ourselves, we must appropriate the vision of others[…]the Bakhtinian just-so story of subjectivity is the tale of how I get my self from the other: it is only the other’s categories that will let me be an object for my own perception. (28)This inter-relationship between “self” and “other” was epitomised through the act of communal ingestion and the spirit of event-ness that comes with the territory of food. Once cut up, dismembered and eaten the cakes revealed all, in the same way that my process had exposed in its duration and excess the mess, my exhaustion, the remnants of congealed icing and the smudges and stains on my aprons. Yet in concealing nothing, the work inherently refused to disclose. Once the cakes passed through the mouth of the “other” they gave way to that “other”, that “self”, revealing only cake and sugar. The mouth machine is central to the articulation of different orders that go beyond the division of public and private: the tongue sticks out, draws in food, objects and people. In eating we constantly take in and spit out things, people, selves. (Probyn 21)In giving my cakes and “myself” to the spectators, I relinquished ownership of both my cakes and the artwork. I looked on as my cakes were eaten and destroyed, redirecting the voyeuristic gaze towards the audience and the private, personal, undisclosable experience of ingestion (see fig. 7)I started out baking myself, but I ended up baking you, and then together we ate each other. Figure 6. Image: Anonymous Audience Member. Performer: Jenny Lawson. “Cake and Sugar”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. ReferencesAshley, Bob, Joanne Hollows, Steve Jones, and Ben Taylor, eds. Food and Cultural Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.Baldwyn, Lucy. “Blending In: The Immaterial Art of Bobby Baker’s Culinary Events.” The Drama Review 40.4 (1996): 37–55.Blumberg, Marcia. “Domestic Place as Contestatory Space: The Kitchen as Catalyst and Crucible.” New Theatre Quarterly 55.33 (1998): 195–201. Govan, Emma, and Dan Rebellato. “Foodscares!” Performance Research: On Cooking 4.1 (1999): 31–40. Hansen, Signe. “Society of the Appetite: Celebrity Chefs Deliver Consumers.” Food Culture & Society 11.1 (2008): 50–67. Heddon, Deirdre. Autobiography and Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.––– . “Daily Life 5 Box Story.” Bobby Baker: Redeeming Features of Daily Life. Ed. Michele Barrett. Oxon: Routledge, 2007.––– . “Glory Box: Tim Miller's Autobiography of the Future.” New Theatre Quarterly 19.3 (2003): 243–256.Helms, Gabrielle. “Reality TV Has Spoken: Auto/Biography Matters.” Tracing the Autobiographical. Eds. Marlene Kadar, Linda Warley, Jeanne Perreault and Susanna Egan. Canada: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2005.Holquist, Michael. Bakhtin and His World. London: Routledge, 1990.Iball, Helen. “Melting Moments: Bodies Upstaged by the Foodie Gaze.” Performance Research: On Cooking 4.1 (1999): 70–81.Kitchen Show. Dir. Bobby Baker & Paloa Balon Brown. Videocassette, 1991.MacDonald, Claire. “Assumed Identities: Feminism, Autobiography and Performance Art.” The Uses of Autobiography. Ed. Julia Swindells. London: Taylor and Francis, 1995.Nigella Bites. Dir. Dominic Cyriax. DVD. Pabulum and Flashback Television. Channel Four Television Corporation, 2002.Nigella Feasts. Dir. Dominic Cyriax. DVD. North Pacific Ltd/Pabulum Productions Ltd., 2006. Probyn, Elspeth. Carnal Appetites: Food Sex Identities. London: Routledge, 2000.Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. “Introduction: Mapping Women’s Self-Representation at Visual/Textual Interfaces.” Interfaces: Women/Autobiography/Image/Performance. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002.Table Occasions. Dir. Bobby Baker and Paloa Balon Brown, Videocassette, 2000.

For those seeking a diversion from the drudgery of work there are a number of websites offering to take you away. Consider the case of wasteaminute.com. On the site there is everything from flash video games, soft-core pornography and animated nudity, to puzzles and parlour games like poker. In addition, the site offers links to video clips grouped in categories such as “funny,” “accidents,” or “strange.” With its bright yellow bubble letters and elementary design, wasteaminute will never win any Webby awards. It is also unlikely to be part of a lucrative initial public offering for its owner, a web marketing company based in Lexington, Kentucky. The internet ratings company Alexa gives wasteaminute a ranking of 5,880,401 when it comes to the most popular sites online over the last three months, quite some way behind sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Windows Live.Wasteaminute is not unique. There exists a group of websites, a micro-genre of sorts, that go out of their way to offer momentary escape from the more serious work at hand, with a similar menu of offerings. These include sites with names such as ishouldbeworking.com, i-am-bored.com, boredatwork.com, and drivenbyboredom.com. These web destinations represent only the most overtly named time-wasting opportunities. Video sharing sites like YouTube or France’s DailyMotion, personalised home pages like iGoogle, and the range of applications available on mobile devices offer similar opportunities for escape. Wasteaminute inspired me to think about the relationship between digital media technologies and waste. In one sense, the site’s offerings remind us of the Internet’s capacity to re-purpose old media forms from earlier phases in the digital revolution, like the retro video game PacMan, or from aspects of print culture, like crosswords (Bolter and Grusin; Straw). For my purposes, though, wasteaminute permits the opportunity to meditate, albeit briefly, on the ways media facilitate wasting time at work, particularly for those working in white- and no-collar work environments. In contemporary work environments work activity and wasteful activity exist on the same platform. With a click of a mouse or a keyboard shortcut, work and diversion can be easily interchanged on the screen, an experience of computing I know intimately from first-hand experience. The blurring of lines between work and waste has accompanied the extension of the ‘working day,’ a concept once tethered to the standardised work-week associated with modernity. Now people working in a range of professions take work out of the office and find themselves working in cafes, on public transportation, and at times once reserved for leisure, like weekends (Basso). In response to the indeterminate nature of when and where we are at work, the mainstream media routinely report about the wasteful use of computer technology for non-work purposes. Stories such as a recent one in the Washington Post which claimed that increased employee use of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter led to decreased productivity at work have become quite common in traditional media outlets (Casciato). Media technologies have always offered the prospect of making office work more efficient or the means for management to exercise control over employees. However, those same technologies have also served as the platforms on which one can engage in dilatory acts, stealing time from behind the boss’s back. I suggest stealing time at work may well be a “tactic,” in the sense used by Michel de Certeau, as a means to resist the rules and regulations that structure work and the working life. However, I also consider it to be a tactic in a different sense: websites and other digital applications offer users the means to take time back, in the form of ‘quick hits,’ providing immediate visual or narrative pleasures, or through interfaces which make the time-wasting look like work (Wagman). Reading sites like wasteaminute as examples of ‘office entertainment,’ reminds us of the importance of workers as audiences for web content. An analysis of a few case studies also reveals how the forms of address of these sites themselves recognise and capitalise on an understanding of the rhythms of the working day, as well as those elements of contemporary office culture characterised by interruption, monotony and surveillance. Work, Media, Waste A mass of literature documents the transformations of work brought on by industrialisation and urbanisation. A recent biography of Franz Kafka outlines the rigors imposed upon the writer while working as an insurance agent: his first contract stipulated that “no employee has the right to keep any objects other than those belonging to the office under lock in the desk and files assigned for its use” (Murray 66). Siegfried Kracauer’s collection of writings on salaried workers in Germany in the 1930s argues that mass entertainment offers distractions that inhibit social change. Such restrictions and inducements are exemplary of the attempts to make work succumb to managerial regimes which are intended to maximise productivity and minimise waste, and to establish a division between ‘company time’ and ‘free time’. One does not have to be an industrial sociologist to know the efforts of Frederick W. Taylor, and the disciplines of “scientific management” in the early twentieth century which were based on the idea of making work more efficient, or of the workplace sociology scholarship from the 1950s that drew attention to the ways that office work can be monotonous or de-personalising (Friedmann; Mills; Whyte). Historian JoAnne Yates has documented the ways those transformations, and what she calls an accompanying “philosophy of system and efficiency,” have been made possible through information and communication technologies, from the typewriter to carbon paper (107). Yates evokes the work of James Carey in identifying these developments, for example, the locating of workers in orderly locations such as offices, as spatial in nature. The changing meaning of work, particularly white-collar or bureaucratic labour in an age of precarious employment and neo-liberal economic regimes, and aggressive administrative “auditing technologies,” has subjected employees to more strenuous regimes of surveillance to ensure employee compliance and to protect against waste of company resources (Power). As Andrew Ross notes, after a deep period of self-criticism over the drudgery of work in North American settings in the 1960s, the subsequent years saw a re-thinking of the meaning of work, one that gradually traded greater work flexibility and self-management for more assertive forms of workplace control (9). As Ross notes, this too has changed, an after-effect of “the shareholder revolution,” which forced companies to deliver short-term profitability to its investors at any social cost. With so much at stake, Ross explains, the freedom of employees assumed a lower priority within corporate cultures, and “the introduction of information technologies in the workplace of the new capitalism resulted in the intensified surveillance of employees” (12). Others, like Dale Bradley, have drawn attention to the ways that the design of the office itself has always concerned itself with the bureaucratic and disciplinary control of bodies in space (77). The move away from physical workspaces such as ‘the pen’ to the cubicle and now from the cubicle to the virtual office is for Bradley a move from “construction” to “connection.” This spatial shift in the way in which control over employees is exercised is symbolic of the liquid forms in which bodies are now “integrated with flows of money, culture, knowledge, and power” in the post-industrial global economies of the twenty-first century. As Christena Nippert-Eng points out, receiving office space was seen as a marker of trust, since it provided employees with a sense of privacy to carry out affairs—both of a professional or of a personal matter—out of earshot of others. Privacy means a lot of things, she points out, including “a relative lack of accountability for our immediate whereabouts and actions” (163). Yet those same modalities of control which characterise communication technologies in workspaces may also serve as the platforms for people to waste time while working. In other words, wasteful practices utilize the same technology that is used to regulate and manage time spent in the workplace. The telephone has permitted efficient communication between units in an office building or between the office and outside, but ‘personal business’ can also be conducted on the same line. Radio stations offer ‘easy listening’ formats, providing unobtrusive music so as not to disturb work settings. However, they can easily be tuned to other stations for breaking news, live sports events, or other matters having to do with the outside world. Photocopiers and fax machines facilitate the reproduction and dissemination of communication regardless of whether it is it work or non-work related. The same, of course, is true for computerised applications. Companies may encourage their employees to use Facebook or Twitter to reach out to potential clients or customers, but those same applications may be used for personal social networking as well. Since the activities of work and play can now be found on the same platform, employers routinely remind their employees that their surfing activities, along with their e-mails and company documents, will be recorded on the company server, itself subject to auditing and review whenever the company sees fit. Employees must be careful to practice image management, in order to ensure that contradictory evidence does not appear online when they call in sick to the office. Over time the dynamics of e-mail and Internet etiquette have changed in response to such developments. Those most aware of the distractive and professionally destructive features of downloading a funny or comedic e-mail attachment have come to adopt the acronym “NSFW” (Not Safe for Work). Even those of us who don’t worry about those things are well aware that the cache and “history” function of web browsers threaten to reveal the extent to which our time online is spent in unproductive ways. Many companies and public institutions, for example libraries, have taken things one step further by filtering out access to websites that may be peripheral to the primary work at hand.At the same time contemporary workplace settings have sought to mix both work and play, or better yet to use play in the service of work, to make “work” more enjoyable for its workers. Professional development seminars, team-building exercises, company softball games, or group outings are examples intended to build morale and loyalty to the company among workers. Some companies offer their employees access to gyms, to game rooms, and to big screen TVs, in return for long and arduous—indeed, punishing—hours of time at the office (Dyer-Witheford and Sherman; Ross). In this manner, acts of not working are reconfigured as a form of work, or at least as a productive experience for the company at large. Such perks are offered with an assumption of personal self-discipline, a feature of what Nippert-Eng characterises as the “discretionary workplace” (154). Of course, this also comes with an expectation that workers will stay close to the office, and to their work. As Sarah Sharma recently argued in this journal, such thinking is part of the way that late capitalism constructs “innovative ways to control people’s time and regulate their movement in space.” At the same time, however, there are plenty of moments of gentle resistance, in which the same machines of control and depersonalisation can be customised, and where individual expressions find their own platforms. A photo essay by Anna McCarthy in the Journal of Visual Culture records the inspirational messages and other personalised objects with which workers adorn their computers and work stations. McCarthy’s photographs represent the way people express themselves in relation to their work, making it a “place where workplace politics and power relations play out, often quite visibly” (McCarthy 214). Screen SecretsIf McCarthy’s photo essay illustrates the overt ways in which people bring personal expression or gentle resistance to anodyne workplaces, there are also a series of other ‘screen acts’ that create opportunities to waste time in ways that are disguised as work. During the Olympics and US college basketball playoffs, both American broadcast networks CBS and NBC offered a “boss button,” a graphic link that a user could immediately click “if the boss was coming by” that transformed the screen to something was associated with the culture of work, such as a spreadsheet. Other purveyors of networked time-wasting make use of the spreadsheet to mask distraction. The website cantyouseeimbored turns a spreadsheet into a game of “Breakout!” while other sites, like Spreadtweet, convert your Twitter updates into the form of a spreadsheet. Such boss buttons and screen interfaces that mimic work are the presentday avatars of the “panic button,” a graphic image found at the bottom of websites back in the days of Web 1.0. A click of the panic button transported users away from an offending website and towards something more legitimate, like Yahoo! Even if it is unlikely that boss keys actually convince one’s superiors that one is really working—clicking to a spreadsheet only makes sense for a worker who might be expected to be working on those kinds of documents—they are an index of how notions of personal space and privacy play out in the digitalised workplace. David Kiely, an employee at an Australian investment bank, experienced this first hand when he opened an e-mail attachment sent to him by his co-workers featuring a scantily-clad model (Cuneo and Barrett). Unfortunately for Kiely, at the time he opened the attachment his computer screen was visible in the background of a network television interview with another of the bank’s employees. Kiely’s inauspicious click (which made his the subject of an investigation by his employees) continues to circulate on the Internet, and it spawned a number of articles highlighting the precarious nature of work in a digitalised environment where what might seem to be private can suddenly become very public, and thus able to be disseminated without restraint. At the same time, the public appetite for Kiely’s story indicates that not working at work, and using the Internet to do it, represents a mode of media consumption that is familiar to many of us, even if it is only the servers on the company computer that can account for how much time we spend doing it. Community attitudes towards time spent unproductively online reminds us that waste carries with it a range of negative signifiers. We talk about wasting time in terms of theft, “stealing time,” or even more dramatically as “killing time.” The popular construction of television as the “boob tube” distinguishes it from more ‘productive’ activities, like spending time with family, or exercise, or involvement in one’s community. The message is simple: life is too short to be “wasted” on such ephemera. If this kind of language is less familiar in the digital age, the discourse of ‘distraction’ is more prevalent. Yet, instead of judging distraction a negative symptom of the digital age, perhaps we should reinterpret wasting time as the worker’s attempt to assert some agency in an increasingly controlled workplace. ReferencesBasso, Pietro. Modern Times, Ancient Hours: Working Lives in the Twenty-First Century. London: Verso, 2003. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.Bradley, Dale. “Dimensions Vary: Technology, Space, and Power in the 20th Century Office”. Topia 11 (2004): 67-82.Casciato, Paul. “Facebook and Other Social Media Cost UK Billions”. Washington Post, 5 Aug. 2010. 11 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/05/AR2010080503951.html›.Cuneo, Clementine, and David Barrett. “Was Banker Set Up Over Saucy Miranda”. The Daily Telegraph 4 Feb. 2010. 21 May 2010 ‹http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/sydney-confidential/was-banker-set-up-over-saucy-miranda/story-e6frewz0-1225826576571›.De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Vol. 1. Berkeley: U of California P. 1988.Dyer-Witheford, Nick, and Zena Sharman. "The Political Economy of Canada's Video and Computer Game Industry”. Canadian Journal of Communication 30.2 (2005). 1 May 2010 ‹http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/1575/1728›.Friedmann, Georges. Industrial Society. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1955.Kracauer, Siegfried. The Salaried Masses. London: Verso, 1998.McCarthy, Anna. Ambient Television. Durham: Duke UP, 2001. ———. “Geekospheres: Visual Culture and Material Culture at Work”. Journal of Visual Culture 3 (2004): 213-21.Mills, C. Wright. White Collar. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1951. Murray, Nicholas. Kafka: A Biography. New Haven: Yale UP, 2004.Newman, Michael. “Ze Frank and the Poetics of Web Video”. First Monday 13.5 (2008). 1 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2102/1962›.Nippert-Eng, Christena. Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries through Everyday Life. Chicago: U. of Chicago P, 1996.Power, Michael. The Audit Society. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Ross, Andrew. No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2004. Sharma, Sarah. “The Great American Staycation and the Risk of Stillness”. M/C Journal 12.1 (2009). 11 May 2010 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/122›. Straw, Will. “Embedded Memories”. Residual Media Ed. Charles Acland. U. of Minnesota P., 2007. 3-15.Whyte, William. The Organisation Man. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957. Wagman, Ira. “Log On, Goof Off, Look Up: Facebook and the Rhythms of Canadian Internet Use”. How Canadians Communicate III: Contexts for Popular Culture. Eds. Bart Beaty, Derek, Gloria Filax Briton, and Rebecca Sullivan. Athabasca: Athabasca UP 2009. 55-77. ‹http://www2.carleton.ca/jc/ccms/wp-content/ccms-files/02_Beaty_et_al-How_Canadians_Communicate.pdf›Yates, JoAnne. “Business Use of Information Technology during the Industrial Age”. A Nation Transformed by Information. Eds. Alfred D. Chandler & James W. Cortada. Oxford: Oxford UP., 2000. 107-36.

As people spend increasing time interacting with others online, computer-mediated correspondence is rapidly becoming a common form of everyday communication. Computer-mediated communication ranges from text to voice to video, through a variety of technologies (e.g., e-mail, Web pages, listservs, chat). Real-time online 'conversation' occurs in group chat rooms and one-to-one instant messages, between people who may or may not know each other outside the cyber environment. Because of its emerging popularity, Internet chat has become a distinct form of discourse with characteristics unique to the medium. As people spend increasing time interacting with others online, computer-mediated correspondence is rapidly becoming a common form of everyday communication. Computer-mediated communication ranges from text to voice to video, through a variety of technologies (e.g., e-mail, Web pages, listservs, chat). Real-time online 'conversation' occurs in group chat rooms and one-to-one instant messages, between people who may or may not know each other outside the cyber environment. Because of its emerging popularity, Internet chat has become a distinct form of discourse with characteristics unique to the medium. The purpose of this study is to apply research findings investigating Internet communication between strangers to the online chats of 'familiars', people who already know each other. Although some people may become familiars through prolonged cyberspace encounters without face-to-face contact (Parks and Floyd; Walther), this study investigates only the chats of people who had an existing face-to-face relationship prior to chatting online. The genesis of this project came from our personal experience as friends who later became Internet chatters because of geographical distance. Because our communications often detailed professional matters, we would save our discussions as text files as an efficient method of record-keeping. We noticed at times, while sending instant messages, the need to make special accommodations to reconcile misunderstandings and effectively deal with interruptions. To get ourselves 'back on track' in those instances, we had to 'talk about the talk' (i.e., metacommunicate) in order to make sense of how seemingly straightforward communication had gone astray. Continued instant message sending resulted in more observations suggesting that our online chats were qualitatively different from our face-to-face conversations. In the following paragraphs, three examples from our transcripts are analysed and discussed in relation to findings from research in computer-mediated communication: (a) meaning negotiation through metacommunication and shared history; (b) disinhibition and reconstruction of self; and (c) rule establishment. Note that, in these examples, "DRCSC" and "Wickmansa" are the respective online screen names of the co-authors. Example One: Meaning Negotiation through Metacommunication and Shared History The first example illustrates difficulty understanding the essence of a sent message without cues typically available in face-to-face contact. It is important to note that the following exchanges were preceded by dialogue concerning a stressful situation where Wickmansa had responded "I can see why [there is a problem]". Beginning in line 35 below, DRCSC jokingly attempts to parallel Wickmansa's "I can see why" with "I can see why there is panic disorder". However, given the sober nature of the conversation up to that point, line 35's intended meaning is uncertain for Wickmansa (i.e., could be serious; could be sarcastic). The three lines subsequent to 35 represent deliberate attempts at meaning negotiation. February 4, 2000 The breakdown in communication between lines 35 and 36 required management and repair. To regain mutual understanding, we attempted to make sense of this misalignment in 37 and 38 and bring it back on track. Each line's query served two purposes: (a) to clarify the 'speaker's' previous statement; and (b) to request clarification about the other's meaning. Continuing the above dialogue, lines 39 through 48 below seem to work toward realignment through metacommunication. February 4, 2000 cont. It is noteworthy that in line 42, DRCSC strengthened the realignment by introducing a metaphor that invoked a shared deli counter experience (i.e., meaning negotiation through shared history). Wickmansa let DRCSC know that the reference was understood by building on the metaphor in line 44. In this way, shared history not only provided an efficient way to anchor meaning but also expedited realignment. Referencing shared history may be a distinct way familiars, unlike strangers, display social competence by demonstrating familiarity with both topic and person when negotiating meaning during Internet chat. The act of 'going meta' in lines 37-48 above seemed to renegotiate the initial misfires of 35 and 36, moving the conversation toward collaborative understanding. Moreover, it may be that part of the necessity for familiars to repair any perceived miscommunication is tied to consequences that do not exist for strangers over the Internet. Although strangers have the opportunity to reestablish 'anonymity' by creating a new screen name and/or persona (Kiesler, Siegal, and McGuire; Myers; Turkle), familiars are bound to the 'reality' of the Internet experience in later face-to-face contact. Consequently, familiars have a greater investment in the outcomes negotiated while chatting online. Example Two: Disinhibition and Reconstruction of Self As suggested by previous research, perceived anonymity between online strangers increases disinhibition and playfulness. This can lead to the formation of multiple 'selves' within a single individual that may bear little resemblance to the corporeal self (Balsamo; Turkle; Waskul, Douglass, and Edgely). Although it is impossible for familiars to realistically 'reinvent' who they are, we, as familiars, found ourselves enacting a version of anonymity by accentuating contextually favorable aspects of our personalities. This is to say that despite the seemingly restrictive nature of text-only media, chatting online provided a new forum to lightheartedly reveal, for example, humour. Thus, a witty and clever side that might not have been otherwise readily apparent was now 'viewable'. To illustrate, the following lines are extracted from a tangential discussion about the Internet service provider America Online. February 3, 2000 In response to Wickmansa's 178 above, DRCSC playfully interjected cleverness in line 179. Wickmansa's reply "LOL" in 180 could demonstrate his understanding of DRCSC's play on "-OL" words by embedding a similar intentionality within his response. However, without contextual cues normally available in face-to-face interaction, whether Wickmansa 'really' picked up on intentionality, competency, and playfulness -- or was merely using a common chat abbreviation -- was not certain to DRCSC. Note that "LOL" stands for 'laughing out loud' and is among the most common Internet chat expressions (Grossman). To better understand (i.e, negotiate meaning), DRCSC responded in line 181 by: (a) clarifying her previous position; and (b) indirectly requesting clarification from Wickmansa. In this way, regaining equilibrium paralleled the accommodations described in example one, despite different end goals. Continued cleverness may have been evidenced again in lines 182 and 183, albeit unintentionally, with a collaborative "poet, know it" follow-up, representative of the playful context which had been co-constructed. Example Three: Rule Establishment Internet chatters create and conform to norms and rules exclusive to the medium (Hayashibara; Postmes, Spears, and Lea; Rintel and Pittam), such as abbreviating common phrases, ignoring capitalisation, spelling phonetically, and using typed symbols to transform elements from the typist's behind-the-keyboard experience into the co-constructed 'cyber' reality. The chats below illustrate the co-creation of a rule as a way to efficiently convey an abrupt interruption in the external environment. April 10, 2000 April 11, 2000 The April 10 example began with metacommunication that suggested the need for a shorthand way to signify 'interruption -- do not send instant messages now'. This led to our creating a way to do so with the "/" symbol in lines 230-250. The rule's effectiveness was evidenced immediately by its usage in lines 251-253. Rule application again was seen on April 11 when DRCSC opened the chat with "/?" In effect, she parsimoniously asked 'Are you available for online chat?' with two key strokes. The "/" became a regular chat feature after it was established, exemplifying an idiosyncratic rule created by familiars for Internet chat. As familiars chatting online, we found ourselves using metacommunication and shared history to realign after a conversational breakdown, accentuating contextually favorable aspects of our personalities, and following global Internet chat norms while creating idiosyncratic rules to accommodate for missing sensory cues. Moreover, distinct from strangers, familiars may have a greater need to display social competence due to real-world consequences. Further research is recommended to investigate the generalisablility of our experience as familiars and to explore other characteristics unique to Internet chat. Moreover, it would be interesting to see if: (a) familiars' online chats are patterned with the same idiosyncratic features as their face-to-face and telephone interactions; or (b) the chat patterns of familiars who know each other in 'real life' contain significant differences from persons who know each other only through regular online encounters. References Balsamo, Ann. "The Virtual Body in Cyberspace." Research in Philosophy and Technology 13 (1993): 119. Baym, Nancy. "The Performance of Humor in Computer-Mediated Communication." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 1.2 (1995). 14 Aug. 2000 <http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol1/issue2/baym.php>. Grossman, Steve. "Chatter's Jargon Dictionary." 14 Aug. 2000 <http://www.stevegrossman.com/jargpge.htm#Dictionary>. Danet, Brenda, Lucia Ruedenberg-Wright, and Yehudit Rosenbaum-Tamari. "Hmmm ... Where's That Smoke Coming From: Writing, Play and Performance on Internet Relay Chat." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 2.4 (1997). 14 Aug. 2000 <http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol2/issue4/danet.php>. Hayashibara, Kammie Nobue. "Adolescent Communication on the Internet: Investigation of a Teenage Chat Room." Masters Abstracts International 37.01 (1998): 0009. Holland, Norman M. "The Internet Regression." 14 Aug. 2000 <http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/rmy/holland.php>. Kiesler, Sara, Jane Siegal, and Timothy W. McGuire. "Social Psychological Aspects of Computer-Mediated Communication." American Psychologist 39 (1984): 1123-34. Myers, David. "'Anonymity Is Part of the Magic': Individual Manipulation of Computer-Mediated Communication Contexts." Qualitative Sociology 10.3 (1987): 251-66. Parks, Malcolm R., and Kory Floyd. "Making Friends in Cyberspace." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 2.4 (1997). 14 Aug. 2000 <http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol2/issue4/index.php>. Postmes, Tom, Russell Spears, and Martin Lea. "The Formation of Group Norms in Computer-Mediated Communication." Human Communication Research 26 (in press). Rintel, E. Sean, and Jeffrey Pittam. "Strangers in a Strange Land: Interaction Management on Internet Relay Chat." Human Communication Research 23.4 (1997): 507-34. Spears, Russell, and Martin Lea. "Panacea or Panopticon? The Hidden Power in Computer-Mediated Communication." Communication Research 21.4 (1994): 427-59. Sproull, Lee, and Sara Kiesler. Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1991. Thomas, Jim. "Introduction: A Debate About the Ethics of Fair Practices for Collecting Social Science Data in Cyberspace." The Information Society 12.2 (1996): 107-17. Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Walther, Joseph. "Computer-Mediated Communication: Impersonal, Interpersonal and Hyperpersonal Interaction." Communication Research 23.1 (1996): 3-43. Walther, Joseph, Jeffrey Anderson, and David Park. "Interpersonal Effects in Computer-Mediated Interaction." Communication Research 21.4 (1994): 460-87. Waskul, Dennis, Mark Douglass, and Charles Edgley. "Cybersex: Outercourse and the Enselfment of the Body." Symbolic Interaction 24.4 (in press). Witmer, Diane. "Practicing Safe Computing: Why People Engage in Risky Computer-Mediated Communication." Network and Netplay: Virtual Groups on the Internet. Ed. Fay Sudweeks, Margaret L. McLaughlin, and Sheizaf Rafaeli, Menlo Park, CA: AAAI/MIT P, 1998. 127-46. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Cynthia Campbell, Scott A. Wickman. "Familiars in a Strange Land: A Case Study of Friends Chatting Online." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.4 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/friends.php>. Chicago style: Cynthia Campbell, Scott A. Wickman, "Familiars in a Strange Land: A Case Study of Friends Chatting Online," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 4 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/friends.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Cynthia Campbell, Scott A. Wickman. (2000) Familiars in a strange land: a case study of friends chatting online. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(4). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/friends.php> ([your date of access]).

IntroductionLike other forms of embodiment, pregnancy has increasingly become subject to representation and interpretation via digital technologies. Pregnancy and the unborn entity were largely private, and few people beyond the pregnant women herself had access to the foetus growing within her (Duden). Now pregnant and foetal bodies have become open to public portrayal and display (Lupton The Social Worlds of the Unborn). A plethora of online materials – websites depicting the unborn entity from the moment of conception, amateur YouTube videos of births, social media postings of ultrasounds and self-taken photos (‘selfies’) showing changes in pregnant bellies, and so on – now ensure the documentation of pregnant and unborn bodies in extensive detail, rendering them open to other people’s scrutiny. Other recent digital technologies directed at pregnancy include mobile software applications, or ‘apps’. In this article, we draw on our study involving a critical discourse analysis of a corpus of pregnancy-related apps offered in the two major app stores. In so doing, we discuss the ways in which pregnancy-related apps portray pregnant and unborn bodies. We place a particular focus on the ludification and gamification strategies employed to position pregnancy as a playful, creative and fulfilling experience that is frequently focused on consumption. As we will demonstrate, these strategies have wider implications for concepts of pregnant and foetal embodiment and subjectivity.It is important here to make a distinction between ludification and gamification. Ludification is a broader term than gamification. It is used in the academic literature on gaming (sometimes referred to as ‘ludology’) to refer to elements of games reaching into other aspects of life beyond leisure pursuits (Frissen et al. Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures; Raessens). Frissen et al. (Frissen et al. "Homo Ludens 2.0: Play, Media and Identity") for example, claim that even serious pursuits such as work, politics, education and warfare have been subjected to ludification. They note that digital technologies in general tend to incorporate ludic dimensions. Gamification has been described as ‘the use of game design elements in non-game contexts’ (Deterding et al. 9). The term originated in the digital media industry to describe the incorporation of features into digital technologies that not explicitly designed as games, such as competition, badges, rewards and fun that engaged and motivated users to make them more enjoyable to use. Gamification is now often used in literatures on marketing strategies, persuasive computing or behaviour modification. It is an important element of ‘nudge’, an approach to behaviour change that involves persuasion over coercion (Jones, Pykett and Whitehead). Gamification thus differs from ludification in that the former involves applying ludic principles for reasons other than the pleasures of enjoying the game for their own sake, often to achieve objectives set by actors and agencies other than the gamer. Indeed, this is why gamification software has been described by Bogost (Bogost) as ‘exploitationware’. Analysing Pregnancy AppsMobile apps have become an important medium in contemporary digital technology use. As of May 2015, 1.5 million apps were available to download on Google Play while 1.4 million were available in the Apple App Store (Statista). Apps related to pregnancy are a popular item in app stores, frequently appearing on the Apple App Store’s list of most-downloaded apps. Google Play’s figures show that many apps directed at pregnant women have been downloaded hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of times. For example, ‘Pregnancy +’, ‘I’m Expecting - Pregnancy App’ and ‘What to Expect - Pregnancy Tracker’ have each been downloaded between one and five million times, while ‘My Pregnancy Today’ has received between five and ten million downloads. Pregnancy games for young girls are also popular. Google Play figures show that the ‘Pregnant Emergency Doctor’ game, for example, has received between one and five million downloads. Research has found that pregnant women commonly download pregnancy-related apps and find them useful sources of information and support (Hearn, Miller and Fletcher; Rodger et al.; Kraschnewski et al.; Declercq et al.; Derbyshire and Dancey; O'Higgins et al.). We conducted a comprehensive analysis of all pregnancy-related smartphone apps in the two major app stores, Apple App Store and Google Play, in late June 2015. Android and Apple’s iOS have a combined market share of 91 percent of apps installed on mobile phones (Seneviratne et al.). A search for all pregnancy-related apps offered in these stores used key terms such as pregnancy, childbirth, conception, foetus/fetus and baby. After eliminating apps listed in these searches that were clearly not human pregnancy-related, 665 apps on Google Play and 1,141 on the Apple App Store remained for inclusion in our study. (Many of these apps were shared across the stores.)We carried out a critical discourse analysis of these apps, looking closely at the app descriptions offered in the two stores. We adopted the perspective that sees apps, like any other form of media, as sociocultural artefacts that both draw on and reproduce shared norms, ideals, knowledges and beliefs (Lupton "Quantified Sex: A Critical Analysis of Sexual and Reproductive Self-Tracking Using Apps"; Millington "Smartphone Apps and the Mobile Privatization of Health and Fitness"; Lupton "Apps as Artefacts: Towards a Critical Perspective on Mobile Health and Medical Apps"). In undertaking our analysis of the app descriptions in our corpus, attention was paid to the title of each app, the textual accounts of its content and use and the images that were employed, such as the logo of the app and the screenshots that were used to illustrate its content and style. Our focus in this article is on the apps that we considered as including elements of entertainment. Pregnancy-related game apps were by far the largest category of the apps in our corpus. These included games for young girls and expectant fathers as well as apps for ultrasound manipulation, pregnancy pranks, foetal sex prediction, choosing baby names, and quizzes. Less obviously, many other apps included in our analysis offered some elements of gamification and ludification, and these were considered in our analysis. ‘Pregnant Adventures’: App Games for GirlsOne of the major genres of apps that we identified was games directed at young girls. These apps invited users to shop for clothes, dress up, give a new hair style, ‘make-over’ and otherwise beautify a pregnant woman. These activities were directed at the goal of improving the physical attractiveness and therefore (it was suggested) the confidence of the woman, who was presented as struggling with coming to terms with changes in her body during pregnancy. Other apps for this target group involved the player assuming the role of a doctor in conducting medical treatments for injured pregnant women or assisting the birth of her baby.Many of these games represented the pregnant woman visually as looking like an archetypal Barbie doll, with a wardrobe to match. One app (‘Barbara Pregnancy Shopping’) even uses the name ‘Barbara’ and the screenshots show a woman similar in appearance to the doll. Its description urges players to use the game to ‘cheer up’ an ‘unconfident’ Barbara by taking her on a ‘shopping spree’ for new, glamorous clothes ‘to make Barbara feel beautiful throughout her pregnancy’. Players may find ‘sparkly accessories’ as well for Barbara and help her find a new hairstyle so that she ‘can be her fashionable self again’ and ‘feel prepared to welcome her baby!’. Likewise, the game ‘Pregnant Mommy Makeover Spa’ involves players selecting clothes, applying beauty treatments and makeup and adding accessories to give a makeover to ‘Pregnant Princess’ Leila. The ‘Celebrity Mommy’s Newborn Baby Doctor’ game combines the drawcard of ‘celebrity’ with ‘mommy’. Players are invited to ‘join the celebrities in their pregnancy adventure!’ and ‘take care of Celebrity Mom during her pregnancy!’.An app by the same developer of ‘Barbara Pregnancy Shopping’ also offers ‘Barbara’s Caesarean Birth’. The app description claims that: ‘Of course her poor health doesn’t allow Barbara to give birth to her baby herself.’ It is up to players to ‘make everything perfect’ for Barbara’s caesarean birth. The screenshots show Barbara’s pregnant abdomen being slit open, retracted and a rosy, totally clean infant extracted from the incision, complete with blonde hair. Players then sew up the wound. A final screenshot displays an image of a smiling Barbara standing holding her sleeping, swaddled baby, with the words ‘You win’.Similar games involve princesses, mermaids, fairies and even monster and vampire pregnant women giving birth either vaginally or by caesarean. Despite their preternatural status, the monster and vampire women conform to the same aesthetic as the other pregnant women in these games: usually with long hair and pretty, made-up faces, wearing fashionable clothing even on the operating table. Their newborn infants are similarly uniform in their appearance as they emerge from the uterus. They are white-skinned, clean and cherubic (described in ‘Mommy’s Newborn Baby Princess’ as ‘the cutest baby you probably want’), a far cry from the squalling, squashed-faced infants smeared in birth fluids produced by the real birth process.In these pregnancy games for girls, the pain and intense bodily effort of birthing and the messiness produced by the blood and other body fluids inherent to the process of labour and birth are completely missing. The fact that caesarean birth is a major abdominal surgery requiring weeks of recovery is obviated in these games. Apart from the monsters and vampires, who may have green- or blue-hued skin, nearly all other pregnant women are portrayed as white-skinned, young, wearing makeup and slim, conforming to conventional stereotypical notions of female beauty. In these apps, the labouring women remain glamorous, usually smiling, calm and unsullied by the visceral nature of birth.‘Track Your Pregnancy Day by Day’: Self-Monitoring and Gamified PregnancyElements of gamification were evident in a large number of the apps in our corpus, including many apps that invite pregnant users to engage in self-tracking of their bodies and that of their foetuses. Users are asked to customise the apps to document their changing bodies and track their foetus’ development as part of reproducing the discourse of the miraculous nature of pregnancy and promoting the pleasures of self-tracking and self-transformation from pregnant woman to mother. When using the ‘Pregnancy+’ app, for example, users can choose to construct a ‘Personal Dashboard’ that includes details of their pregnancy. They can input their photograph, first name and their expected date of delivery so that that each daily update begins with ‘Hello [name of user], you are [ ] weeks and [ ] days pregnant’ with the users’ photograph attached to the message. The woman’s weight gain over time and a foetal kick counter are also included in this app. It provides various ways for users to mark the passage of time, observe the ways in which their foetuses change and move week by week and monitor changes in their bodies. According to the app description for ‘My Pregnancy Today’, using such features allows a pregnant woman to: ‘Track your pregnancy day by day.’ Other apps encourage women to track such aspects of physical activity, vitamin and fluid intake, diet, mood and symptoms. The capacity to visually document the pregnant user’s body is also a feature of several apps. The ‘Baby Bump Pregnancy’, ‘WebMD Pregnancy’, ‘I’m Expecting’,’iPregnant’ and ‘My Pregnancy Today’ apps, for example, all offer an album feature for pregnant bump photos taken by the user of herself (described as a ‘bumpie’ in the blurb for ‘My Pregnancy Today’). ‘Baby Buddy’ encourages women to create a pregnant avatar of themselves (looking glamorous, well-dressed and happy). Some apps even advise users on how they should feel. As a screenshot from ‘Pregnancy Tracker Week by Week’ claims: ‘Victoria, your baby is growing in your body. You should be the happiest woman in the world.’Just as pregnancy games for little girls portrayal pregnancy as a commodified and asetheticised experience, the apps directed at pregnant women themselves tend to shy away from discomforting fleshly realities of pregnant and birthing embodiment. Pregnancy is represented as an enjoyable and fashionable state of embodiment: albeit one that requires constant self-surveillance and vigilance.‘Hello Mommy!’: The Personalisation and Aestheticisation of the FoetusA dominant feature of pregnancy-related apps is the representation of the foetus as already a communicative person in its own right. For example, the ‘Pregnancy Tickers – Widget’ app features the image of a foetus (looking far more like an infant, with a full head of wavy hair and open eyes) holding a pencil and marking a tally on the walls of the uterus. The app is designed to provide various icons showing the progress of the user’s pregnancy each day on her mobile device. The ‘Hi Mommy’ app features a cartoon-like pink and cuddly foetus looking very baby-like addressing its mother from the womb, as in the following message that appears on the user’s smartphone: ‘Hi Mommy! When will I see you for the first time?’ Several pregnancy-tracking apps also allow women to input the name that they have chosen for their expected baby, to receive customised notifications of its progress (‘Justin is nine weeks and two days old today’).Many apps also incorporate images of foetuses that represent them as wondrous entities, adopting the visual style of 1960s foetal photography pioneer Lennart Nilsson, or what Stormer (Stormer) has referred to as ‘prenatal sublimity’. The ‘Pregnancy+’ app features such images. Users can choose to view foetal development week-by-week as a colourful computerised animation or 2D and 3D ultrasound scans that have been digitally manipulated to render them aesthetically appealing. These images replicate the softly pink, glowing portrayals of miraculous unborn life typical of Nilsson’s style.Other apps adopt a more contemporary aesthetic and allow parents to store and manipulate images of their foetal ultrasounds and then share them via social media. The ‘Pimp My Ultrasound’ app, for example, invites prospective parents to manipulate images of their foetal ultrasounds by adding in novelty features to the foetal image such as baseball caps, jewellery, credit cards and musical instruments. The ‘Hello Mom’ app creates a ‘fetal album’ of ultrasounds taken of the user’s foetus, while the ‘Ultrasound Viewer’ app lets users manipulate their 3/4 D foetal ultrasound images: ‘Have fun viewing it from every angle, rotating, panning and zooming to see your babies [sic] features and share with your family and friends via Facebook and Twitter! … Once uploaded, you can customise your scan with a background colour and skin colour of your choice’.DiscussionPregnancy, like any other form of embodiment, is performative. Pregnant women are expected to conform to norms and assumptions about their physical appearance and deportment of their bodies that expect them to remain well-groomed, fit and physically attractive without appearing overly sexual (Longhurst "(Ad)Dressing Pregnant Bodies in New Zealand: Clothing, Fashion, Subjectivities and Spatialities"; Longhurst "'Corporeographies’ of Pregnancy: ‘Bikini Babes'"; Nash; Littler). Simultaneously they must negotiate the burden of bodily management in the interests of risk regulation. They are expected to protect their vulnerable unborn from potential dangers by stringently disciplining their bodies and policing to what substances they allow entry (Lupton The Social Worlds of the Unborn; Lupton "'Precious Cargo': Risk and Reproductive Citizenship"). Pregnancy self-tracking apps enact the soft politics of algorithmic authority, encouraging people to conform to expectations of self-responsibility and self-management by devoting attention to monitoring their bodies and acting on the data that they generate (Whitson; Millington "Amusing Ourselves to Life: Fitness Consumerism and the Birth of Bio-Games"; Lupton The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-Tracking).Many commentators have remarked on the sexism inherent in digital games (e.g. Dickerman, Christensen and Kerl-McClain; Thornham). Very little research has been conducted specifically on the gendered nature of app games. However our analysis suggests that, at least in relation to the pregnant woman, reductionist heteronormative, cisgendered, patronising and paternalistic stereotypes abound. In the games for girls, pregnant women are ideally young, heterosexual, partnered, attractive, slim and well-groomed, before, during and after birth. In self-tracking apps, pregnant women are portrayed as ideally self-responsible, enthused about their pregnancy and foetus to the point that they are counting the days until the birth and enthusiastic about collecting and sharing details about themselves and their unborn (often via social media).Ambivalence about pregnancy, the foetus or impending motherhood, and lack of interest in monitoring the pregnancy or sharing details of it with others are not accommodated, acknowledged or expected by these apps. Acknowledgement of the possibility of pregnant women who are not overtly positive about their pregnancy or lack interest in it or who identify as transgender or lesbian or who are sole mothers is distinctly absent.Common practices we noted in apps – such as giving foetuses names before birth and representing them as verbally communicating with their mothers from inside the womb – underpin a growing intensification around the notion of the unborn entity as already an infant and social actor in its own right. These practices have significant implications for political agendas around the treatment of pregnant women in terms of their protection or otherwise of their unborn, and for debates about women’s reproductive rights and access to abortion (Lupton The Social Worlds of the Unborn; Taylor The Public Life of the Fetal Sonogram: Technology, Consumption and the Politics of Reproduction). Further, the gamification and ludification of pregnancy serve to further commodify the experience of pregnancy and childbirth, contributing to an already highly commercialised environment in which expectant parents, and particularly mothers, are invited to purchase many goods and services related to pregnancy and early parenthood (Taylor "Of Sonograms and Baby Prams: Prenatal Diagnosis, Pregnancy, and Consumption"; Kroløkke; Thomson et al.; Taylor The Public Life of the Fetal Sonogram: Technology, Consumption and the Politics of Reproduction; Thomas).In the games for girls we examined, the pregnant woman herself was a commodity, a selling point for the app. The foetus was also frequently commodified in its representation as an aestheticised entity and the employment of its image (either as an ultrasound or other visual representations) or identity to market apps such as the girls’ games, apps for manipulating ultrasound images, games for predicting the foetus’ sex and choosing its name, and prank apps using fake ultrasounds purporting to reveal a foetus inside a person’s body. As the pregnant user engages in apps, she becomes a commodity in yet another way: the generator of personal data that are marketable in themselves. In this era of the digital data knowledge economy, the personal information about people gathered from their online interactions and content creation has become highly profitable for third parties (Andrejevic; van Dijck). Given that pregnant women are usually in the market for many new goods and services, their personal data is a key target for data mining companies, who harvest it to sell to advertisers (Marwick).To conclude, our analysis suggests that gamification and ludification strategies directed at pregnancy and childbirth can serve to obfuscate the societal pressures that expect and seek to motivate pregnant women to maintain physical fitness and attractiveness, simultaneously ensuring that they protect their foetuses from all possible risks. In achieving both ends, women are encouraged to engage in intense self-monitoring and regulation of their bodies. These apps also reproduce concepts of the unborn entity as a precious and beautiful already-human. These types of portrayals have important implications for how young girls learn about pregnancy and childbirth, for pregnant women’s experiences and for concepts of foetal personhood that in turn may influence women’s reproductive rights and abortion politics.ReferencesAndrejevic, Mark. Infoglut: How Too Much Information Is Changing the Way We Think and Know. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.Bogost, Ian. "Why Gamification Is Bullshit." The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications. Eds. Steffen Walz and Sebastian Deterding. Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2015. 65-80. Print.Declercq, E.R., et al. Listening to Mothers III: Pregnancy and Birth. New York: Childbirth Connection, 2013. Print.Derbyshire, Emma, and Darren Dancey. "Smartphone Medical Applications for Women's Health: What Is the Evidence-Base and Feedback?" International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications (2013).Deterding, Sebastian, et al. "From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness: Defining Gamification." Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments. ACM, 2011. Dickerman, Charles, Jeff Christensen, and Stella Beatríz Kerl-McClain. "Big Breasts and Bad Guys: Depictions of Gender and Race in Video Games." Journal of Creativity in Mental Health 3.1 (2008): 20-29. Duden, Barbara. Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn. Trans. Lee Hoinacki. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Frissen, Valerie, et al. "Homo Ludens 2.0: Play, Media and Identity." Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures. Eds. Valerie Frissen et al. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2015. 9-50. ———, eds. Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015. Hearn, Lydia, Margaret Miller, and Anna Fletcher. "Online Healthy Lifestyle Support in the Perinatal Period: What Do Women Want and Do They Use It?" Australian Journal of Primary Health 19.4 (2013): 313-18. Jones, Rhys, Jessica Pykett, and Mark Whitehead. "Big Society's Little Nudges: The Changing Politics of Health Care in an Age of Austerity." Political Insight 1.3 (2010): 85-87. Kraschnewski, L. Jennifer, et al. "Paging “Dr. Google”: Does Technology Fill the Gap Created by the Prenatal Care Visit Structure? Qualitative Focus Group Study with Pregnant Women." Journal of Medical Internet Research. 16.6 (2014): e147. Kroløkke, Charlotte. "On a Trip to the Womb: Biotourist Metaphors in Fetal Ultrasound Imaging." Women's Studies in Communication 33.2 (2010): 138-53. Littler, Jo. "The Rise of the 'Yummy Mummy': Popular Conservatism and the Neoliberal Maternal in Contemporary British Culture." Communication, Culture & Critique 6.2 (2013): 227-43. Longhurst, Robyn. "(Ad)Dressing Pregnant Bodies in New Zealand: Clothing, Fashion, Subjectivities and Spatialities." Gender, Place & Culture 12.4 (2005): 433-46. ———. "'Corporeographies’ of Pregnancy: ‘Bikini Babes'." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18.4 (2000): 453-72. Lupton, Deborah. "Apps as Artefacts: Towards a Critical Perspective on Mobile Health and Medical Apps." Societies 4.4 (2014): 606-22. ———. "'Precious Cargo': Risk and Reproductive Citizenship." Critical Public Health 22.3 (2012): 329-40. ———. The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-Tracking. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016. ———. "Quantified Sex: A Critical Analysis of Sexual and Reproductive Self-Tracking Using Apps." Culture, Health & Sexuality 17.4 (2015): 440-53. ———. The Social Worlds of the Unborn. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 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Seneviratne, Suranga, et al. "Your Installed Apps Reveal Your Gender and More!" Mobile Computing and Communications Review 18.3 (2015): 55-61. Statista. "Number of Apps Available in Leading App Stores as of May 2015." 2015. Stormer, Nathan. "Looking in Wonder: Prenatal Sublimity and the Commonplace 'Life'." Signs 33.3 (2008): 647-73. Taylor, Janelle. "Of Sonograms and Baby Prams: Prenatal Diagnosis, Pregnancy, and Consumption." Feminist Studies 26.2 (2000): 391-418. ———. The Public Life of the Fetal Sonogram: Technology, Consumption and the Politics of Reproduction. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008. Thomas, Gareth M. "Picture Perfect: ‘4d’ Ultrasound and the Commoditisation of the Private Prenatal Clinic." Journal of Consumer Culture. Online first, 2015. Thomson, Rachel, et al. Making Modern Mothers. Bristol: Policy Press, 2011. Thornham, Helen. “'It's a Boy Thing'.” Feminist Media Studies 8.2 (2008): 127-42. Van Dijck, José. 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Morning report (MR) is a valued educational experience in internal medicine training programs. Many senior residents and faculty have not received formal training in how to effectively facilitate MR. Faculty at the University of Toronto were surveyed to provide insights into what they felt were key elements for the successful facilitation of MR. These insights fell within 5 major categories: planning and preparation, the case, running the show, wrapping up and closing the loop.Résumé Le rapport du matin (RM) est un outil pédagogique précieux dans les programmes de formation en médecine interne. Nombre de résidents séniors et de membres du corps enseignant n’ont toutefois jamais reçu de formation officielle sur la façon de faciliter l’élaboration du RM. Nous avons sondé les membres du corps enseignant de l’université de Toronto pour avoir un aperçu de ce qu’ils percevaient comme étant des éléments-clés susceptibles d’améliorer grandement l’élaboration du RM. Les réponses reçues se répartissent en cinq principales catégories: la planification et la préparation du RM, les caractéristiques du cas évalué, l’importance et la façon de prendre en main le processus, le résumé des informations et l’art de « boucler la boucle». Morning report (MR) has long been an integral and valued part of Internal Medicine training programs in North America.1,2 Some residents recognize MR as the most important educational activity during their training.3 Medical students, residents and faculty typically attend MR. Although the structure and function of MR can vary across institutions, it usually involves a case-based discussion facilitated by a faculty member, chief medical resident (CMR), or other senior resident. The facilitator discusses pertinent aspects of one or more clinical cases to teach medical knowledge, clinical reasoning and other important aspects of physician competencies, such as communication and collaboration skills. 4 Residents have expressed a preference for an interactive teaching session led by an individual with extensive medical knowledge and excellent clinical acumen.5Despite trainees’ perceptions about the core educational function of MR and their preference for skilled facilitators, most residents and many faculty have never received any formal training on how to conduct an effective MR. This, coupled with a lack of resources in the literature, may contribute to feelings of trepidation about assuming the role of facilitator.6 Based on this need, we were invited by the organizing group of residents at the 2015 Canadian CMR Conference, held in Toronto, Canada, to lead a seminar to introduce CMRs to the principles of effective MR facilitation. The conference was attended by over 70 current and future CMRs. In preparation for this seminar, we reviewed available literature and found that practical guidelines on how to facilitate a successful MR were generally lacking. To help us to provide guidance and to capture broad opinions and experiences, we recruited a sample of 24 faculty at the University of Toronto, including many award-winning teachers whose experience in leading MR ranges from 3 to over 30 years. We asked them to provide insights into what they felt were key elements of facilitating a successful MR. While not a systematic collection of data, their insights taken together represent a broad experience base. Given the relative lack of evidence-based literature describing how to facilitate MR, we decided to disseminate a refined summary of the shared wisdom we uncovered in hopes that it would benefit other CMRs and junior faculty as they take on this challenging role.The insights provided fall within 5 main themes (Table 1) which are discussed below, followed by a brief discussion about future directions for MR:1) Planning and preparation2) The case3) Running the show4) Wrapping up5) Closing the LoopTable 1. Experience-Based Tips to Running an Effective Morning ReportPLANNING AND PREPARATION:1) Ensure audiovisual aids are present and working before starting. 2) Start and end on time. 3) Encourage all faculty to attend and participate. 4) Know the audience (including names).THE CASE:5) The case can be undifferentiated or one for which the diagnosis and even response to treatment is known. 6) There are pros and cons to the facilitator knowing details of the case in advance. 7) If details of the case are not known to the facilitator, determine with the person presenting if the discussion should be focused on diagnosis, management or other pertinent issues. 8) Cases need not be limited to inpatients and can include ambulatory cases and case simulations.RUNNING THE SHOW:9) Establish a respectful learning climate. 10) Personal anecdotes and reflections on past cases can engage the audience. 11) Ensure time is spent discuss learning issues valuable to all present. 12) Facilitate and engage in discussion rather than deliver a lecture. 13) Use a mix of pattern recognition (heuristics) and analytical reasoning strategies. 14) Start with a question that has an obvious answer if dealing with a quiet audience. 15) Promote volunteerism for answers as much as possible, but direct a question to a specific person if no one volunteers. 16) Begin by engaging the most junior learners and advance to involve senior learners. 17) Encourage resource stewardship and evidence-based medicine. 18) Acknowledge areas of uncertainty and don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know”. 19) Teaching “scripts” or the use of a systematic approach to developing a differential diagnosis can be used when discussing less familiar topics. 20) Highlight the variability in clinical approach amongst "the experts" in the room.WRAPPING-UP:21) Ensure there is time to summarize “take home points”. 22) Provide learners with the opportunity to summarize what they have learned.CLOSING THE LOOP23) Reinforcement of learning can include a distribution of a relevant paper or providing a summary of learning points via email or blog. 24) Maintain a case log to ensure a balanced curriculum. 25) Provide feedback to the case presenter and facilitator.Planning and Preparation It is important for the organizer and facilitator (these may or may not be the same person) to be diligent when preparing for MR. The person in charge of organizing MR should ensure that all necessary audiovisual equipment is in working order, which may be as simple as ensuring there is a whiteboard and working marker. To optimize housestaff attendance, the sessions and facilitators should be scheduled in a regular and predictable way. The lure of a light breakfast should not be underestimated and may add to the social aspect of this event. Sessions should begin and finish on time (or even slightly early). Ideally, deferring pages for all but critical clinical issues should occur. Having faculty regularly attend MR as audience participants, and not just as facilitators, improves the attendance of learners who see through role-modelling the importance of continuing medical education and lifelong learning. Faculty presence also raises the level of discussion around grey areas of diagnosis and management, providing trainees with a spectrum of opinions and approaches to clinical medicine, specifically role-modelling how faculty approach clinical uncertainty. The organizer must also ensure that someone, usually a trainee, is responsible for bringing the details of one or more clinical cases to be discussed.The facilitator should ensure they know the names and year of training of the housestaff in attendance. It is helpful if the organizer can provide a list (ideally with pictures) of those who will be in attendance for the facilitator to reference. Over time, this helps to develop a sense of community within the group. It also allows the facilitator to engage all participants and with the goals of first posing level-specific questions to the more junior learners and ending with the most senior learners.The Case The selected clinical case can be either a new patient seen in consultation in the past 24 hours or a patient that has been in hospital for some time and for whom results of investigations and response to treatment are known. Ideally, the majority of the cases selected should not involve particularly rare medical issues and should mirror the clinical case mix of patients being cared for by the trainees. Trainees will benefit more from discussions about common clinical problems rather. However, to highlight issues of diagnostic reasoning, it can be beneficial to occasionally discussing uncommon case including typical presentations of rare diseases or unusual presentations of common problems.The faculty surveyed expressed differing opinions when asked if they thought the details of the case should be known to the facilitator in advance. Knowing the details of the case in advance can ensure the facilitator is comfortable with the content area and allows them to focus on aspects of the case that they think will have the highest learning impact for trainees. However, when the case is not known to the facilitator, the audience will be more likely to garner insight into the clinical reasoning process of the facilitator. The opportunity to learn about the cognitive process that an “expert” uses when generating a differential diagnosis and formulating plans for investigation and management is potentially much more valuable than the discussion of content that could be read in a textbook or electronically. When the details of a case are not known, the discussion is more spontaneous and the lines of discussion are more reflective of the thoughts of the trainees, rather than the facilitator. The discussion can be guided by the case itself and the trainees’ questions and answers. A mixed approach to case discussion will provide the variety that the participants value.Although traditionally MR has focused on the diagnosis or management of one or more clinical cases from the inpatient service, its format is flexible enough to provide opportunity for discussion or for other important aspects of patient care. MR can also address ambulatory cases,7 include the presence of a real patient for the purposes of highlighting history-taking and clinical findings and also incorporate discussion of simulated cases, such as code blue scenarios. The discussion can also be enriched by the health professionals from other disciplines including, pharmacists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, nurses, and social workers. The case can also be selected to allow the discussion to be focused on other specific elements of management, such as resource utilization and “choosing wisely,”8 quality and safety, bioethics, and evidence-based medicine.9Running the Show In developing their skills in facilitation, many of the faculty surveyed discussed that they continuously build on the facilitation skills that they have learned over time, the basic principles of which are described elsewhere.10,11 Through feedback and reflection, they adapt to a style that reflects how they believe the MR should be conducted.The facilitator must establish a respectful climate at MR that is conducive to learning. He or she must ensure that the session is collegial and enforce that the goal of the session is learning, rather than showmanship. The environment should encourage interaction and permit people to ask questions. Trainees should feel comfortable enough to answer questions and test hypotheses, even if answers are incorrect. However, the facilitator must ensure that the correct information is conveyed to the group and that incorrect answers are explored as key teaching points. Humour can put people at ease. Self-deprecating humour can be non-threatening and freely employed if it is within the facilitator’s comfort zone. However, humour should never come at the expense of a trainee. Personal anecdotes and reflections on past cases can engage the audience, relax the atmosphere and vividly impart key facts and clinical wisdom.It is important for the facilitator to be respectful of time. Trainees often report that too much time is spent on reviewing the history and physical examination and on the development of an exhaustive differential diagnosis while less time is spent on investigation and management issues, which senior trainees find most valuable. There need not be a fixed formula related to how much time to spend on specific components of the case. A skilled facilitator will expand and abbreviate aspects of the case discussion based on the specific case presented. Some cases represent excellent opportunities to review evidence-based physical examination, some may highlight issues of resource stewardship related to investigation and some are particularly well-suited to discussion of evidence-based management.The facilitator should facilitate a clinical discussion, rather than deliver a didactic talk. He or she should coach the audience to identify key historical facts or findings on physical examination to allow everyone to fully participate in the case formulation and clinical reasoning that will follow. Demonstrating a mix of pattern recognition and heuristics (e.g., “Quick – what do you think the diagnosis is?”) and analytical reasoning strategies will help trainees learn to employ and recognize the strengths and limitations of each.In the face of a quiet audience, questions that have obvious answers should be posed first. The facilitator should promote volunteerism as much as possible; however, addressing specific members of the audience prevents silence and can help ensure everyone is engaged in the discussion. Sensitivity to the level of trainee is important. A facilitator should avoid potential embarrassment of a trainee by allowing a more junior learner to come up with the answer to a question that the more senior trainee could not answer. In other words, there should be an inviolate sequence wherein, for any given topic, the facilitator starts with trainees at an appropriate level for the questions and moves upward sequentially by level of training. This allows participants to relax and set their focus on learning, rather than avoiding eye contact and fearing embarrassment.A skilled facilitator should not allow any one person to dominate the discussion and should also refrain from asking multiple questions to the same participant. However, it can be valuable to challenge a respondent or the group to elaborate on their answers, as this can uncover gaps in knowledge and understanding and provide additional opportunities for learning.It is important to ensure that the discussion is of interest to trainees at all levels. If faculty are present, their opinions should be sought throughout the case. It is helpful to highlight the variability in approach amongst “the experts” in the room. Judicious use and justification of investigations should be encouraged to promote learning about resource stewardship and evidence-based medicine principles should be incorporated, when relevant.Many facilitators are anxious about how to handle situations where they don’t know the answer to a particular clinical problem. In these cases, a demonstration of the clinical reasoning process and a focus on an approach to clinical problems can be helpful. Some of the most useful discussions centre on how to deal with uncertainty and on how to find answers to clinical questions in real-time using available resources. The facilitator should not hesitate to say “I don’t know,” as this demonstrates that nobody has infinite knowledge and role-models the necessity of recognizing one’s limitations. Teaching scripts relating to specific topics or the use of an etiologic or body systems-based approach to developing a differential diagnosis are helpful teaching approaches6.Wrapping Up Sufficient time should be dedicated to recapitulation and repetition of one to 3 key take home messages. This serves to reinforce the important points that were discussed and to ensure that participants walk away with key messages to facilitate learning. Having a few members of the audience identify what they have learned is often beneficial as the facilitator may not identify the same issues as the trainees.Closing the Loop Further reinforcement can occur if a summary of the take home points, or a relevant paper, is circulated by email or posted to a blog.12 This must be done in a manner that protects patient confidentiality. Updates on previously presented diagnostic dilemmas will enhance learning. Finally, the organizer of MR can keep a log of cases that have been presented to avoid excessive repetition of topics and ensure a balanced curriculum.A process for the person presenting the case to be provided with feedback about their presentation skills by the facilitator or peers should be implemented. It is also important for the facilitator to receive feedback about their teaching and the session overall. Feedback will help faculty refine their facilitation skills, especially if coupled with faculty development initiatives to improve teaching skills.13 It may also be important for novice clinician teachers who need to build a teaching portfolio as part of their academic review and promotion process. 14 If it is clear the faculty utilize the feedback, it serves to role-model self-reflection and promote a culture of frequent formative feedback.The Future of MR MR has a long tradition and can be an evolving teaching format capable of meeting current educational needs. For example, with the implementation of competency-based medical education (CBME) into residency training programs, the competencies being developed for Internal Medicine trainees can provide a framework to organize aspects of learning experiences, including MR. 15 Issues of advocacy and stewardship may be highlighted as explicit learning points of cases, as MR allows for discussion of authentic core clinical tasks and problems, avoiding the reduction of competencies to endless lists taught without the necessary context needed for deeper learning.16 There are also challenges to implementing and sustaining a successful MR in today's current training climate. Issues such as duty-hour restrictions, increased volume and acuity of patients, and pressure to discharge patients early in the day17–19 have prompted some to modify the traditional MR. An “afternoon report” allows for attention to clinical duties early in the day and preserves teaching for later in the day. MR should continue to evolve to meet current education and healthcare delivery needs, and these innovations should be described in the literature and studied.Although these tips have been generated from shared experiences at a single centre, we believe they will be useful to facilitators in many other settings, as they represent the experiences of many facilitators with many cumulative years of experience. This article is intended to stimulate others to reflect upon and discuss what they have found to be the key elements to facilitating a successful MR.Acknowledgements We would like to thank our colleagues who contributed tips and whose teaching has influenced the careers of countless trainees: Dr. Ahmed Bayoumi, Dr. Isaac Bogoch, Dr. Mark Cheung, Dr. Allan Detsky, Dr. Irfan Dhalla, Dr. Vera Dounaevskaia, Dr. Trevor Jamieson, Dr. Lauren Lapointe Shaw, Dr. Jerome A. Leis, Dr. Don Livingstone, Dr. Julia Lowe, Dr. Ophyr Mourad, Dr. Valerie Palda, Dr. Joel Ray, Dr. Donald Redelmeier, Dr. Steve Shadowitz, Dr. Rob Sargeant.References1. Parrino TA, Villanueva AG. The principles and practice of MR. JAMA 1986;256(6):730–33.2. Amin Z, Guajardo J, Wisniewski W, Bordage G, Tekian A, Niederman LG. MR: focus and methods over the past three decades. Acad Med 2000;75(10):S1–S5.3. Gross CP, Donnelly GB, Reisman AB, Sepkowitz KA, Callahan MA. Resident expectations of MR: a multi-institutional study. Arch Int Med 1999;159(16):1910–14.4. McNeill M, Ali SK, Banks DE, Mansi IA. MR: can an established medical education tradition be validated? J Grad Med Educ 2013;5(3):374–84.5. Ways M, Kroenke K, Umali J, Buchwald D. MR: A survey of resident attitudes. Arch Int Med 1995;155(13):1433–37.6. Sacher AG, Detsky AS. Taking the stress out of MR: an analytic approach to the differential diagnosis. J Gen Intern Med 2009;24(6):747–51.7. Wenderoth S, Pelzman F, Demopoulos B. Ambulatory MR. J Grad Med Educ 2002;17(3):207–209.8. Kane GC, Holumzer C, Sorokin R. Utilization management MR: Purpose, planning and early experience in a university hospital residency program. Sem Med Pract 2001;4(1):27–36.9. Banks DE, Runhua Shi M. Decreased hospital length of stay associated with presentation of cases at MR with librarian support. J Med Libr Assoc 2007;95(4):381–87.10. Azer SA. Challenges facing PBL tutors: 12 tips for successful group facilitation. Med Teach 2005;27(8):676–81.11. Skeff KM. Enhancing teaching effectiveness and vitality in the ambulatory setting. J Gen Intern Med 1988;3(1):S26–S33.12. Bogoch II, Frost DW, Bridge S, Lee TC, Gold WL, Pansiko DM, Cavalcanti R. MR blog: a web-based tool to enhance case-based learning. Teach Learn Med 2012;24(3):238–41.13. Boerboom TB, Stalmeijer RE, Dolmans DH, Jaarsma DA. How feedback can foster professional growth of teachers in the clinical workplace: A review of the literature. Stud Educ Eval 2015;46:47–52.14. Fleming VM, Schindler N, Martin GJ, DaRosa DA. Separate and equitable promotion tracks for clinician-educators. JAMA 2005;294(9):1101–1104.15. Frank JR, Snell LS, Ten Cate O, Holmboe ES, Carraccio C, Swing SR, Harris, KA. Competency-based medical education: theory to practice. Med Teach, 2010;32(8):638–45.16. Hawkins RE, Welcher CM, Holmboe ES, Kirk LM, Norcini JJ, Simons KB, Skochelak SE. Implementation of competency‐based medical education: are we addressing the concerns and challenges? Med Educ. 2015;49(11):1086–1102.17. Arora VM, Georgitis E, Siddique J, Vekhter B, Woodruff JN, Humphrey HJ, Meltzer DO. Association of workload of on-call medical interns with on-call sleep duration, shift duration, and participation in educational activities. JAMA 2008;300(10):1146–53.18. Horwitz LI, Krumholz HM, Huot SJ, Green ML. Internal medicine residents' clinical and didactic experiences after work hour regulation: a survey of chief residents. J Gen Int Med 2006;21(9):961–65.19. Khanna S, Sier D, Boyle J, Zeitz K. Discharge timeliness and its impact on hospital crowding and emergency department flow performance. Emerg Med Aus 2016;28(2):164–70.

Print culture, as the call for this issue suggests, has dominated the world for 500 years, but also suggests that print’s hegemony may now be under threat from new communications technologies. There are a number of perspectives from which to view the ‘threats’ to which print culture is subject, the longer term effects this will have and, particularly, on what it will mean to be human in the future of print culture. I’d like to address this issue by turning my attention to one dimension of this question that seems essentially absent from the discourses which surround it. I’d like to step back and put this question in the context of the structural relations of print as a cultural technology. My questions concern what these structural relations and their effects are, the limits of this print model of textuality, and what would constitute an ‘outside’ to the print system of texts. The point of this is to expose the ‘naturalised’ elements of this cultural formation, to show that there is as yet no radical break from print culture, and to consider the nature of the current pressures on print culture. The primary infrastructure of the print system concerns the structure of its texts, the structure of its modes of subject formation, and the structural relations between them. We should note how deeply embedded these structural relations are in terms of the idea of the human, of the idea of being human. Walter Ong (117-38), for example, has shown us how the print form is deeply embedded within culture and affects us at deeper levels than just the external manifestations of the medium. The conventions of print greatly influence and structure the ways in which it is possible to think – for Ong, the dominant communicational culture affects and determines the possibilities of thought and expression, and the relationships between individuals and texts structures the ways in which we view the world. This is what Ong calls “a psychological breakthrough of the first order”. For Ong, the achievement of alphabetic letterpress printing was that it “embedded the word itself deeply in the manufacturing process and made it a kind of commodity”. It was, he says, the first assembly line, and from this we have the mass distribution of texts, mass literacy through mass schooling, religion, etc. (Extended examinations of the function of religion in the construction of a print model can be pursued in both Aries and Luke.) Firstly, we must note that a model of textuality is not a natural thing; it is a technology. A textual model provides an infrastructure which determines and articulates the possibilities of relationships between those elements of the textual infrastructure – texts, subjects, and their relationships. As a consequence, the model also largely determines the possibilities for reading and writing within the textual system. The print-based system of texts has always presented an infrastructure that consists of a two-dimensional surface to which it sutures a subject in a face-to-face relationship – the requirement is for a certain kind of text, a certain kind of subject, and a certain kind of relationship between them in a highly prescribed and circumscribed textual infrastructure. This model of textuality is assumed as the natural mode of textuality, and consequently the referent for all textuality. What is obscured in the naturalisation of the print model of textuality are the technological dimensions of textuality: that all textual models are technologies. This print model has become so naturalised that it disappears. These structural relations of print do not change with the advent of the desktop personal computer, nor screen culture generally, as these are already cast within the infrastructure of the print model. Even three-dimensionality on the two-dimensional screen is always-already simulacra, constituted by continual changes on a surface which give only the appearance of three-dimensionality. The screen and keyboard therefore mark a continuity with the pre-existing social relations of print-based technology and its system of texts, and inscribe these textual relations in the model of the desktop personal computer. The essential “face-to-face” relation, where the subject is always placed “in front of”, also largely determines this subject. This mode of positionality is the condition of this subject. Its possibilities for “knowing” and “understanding”, if not wholly determined, are strongly influenced by this positionality. When Heidegger says that the meaning of the term understanding is intended to go back to its usage in ordinary language, he is referring to understanding (verstehen) in these terms: In German we say that someone can vorstehen something – literally stand in front or ahead of it, that is, stand at its head, administer, manage, preside over it. This is equivalent to saying that he versteht sich darauf, understands in the sense of being skilled or expert at it, has the know how of it. (Heidegger, “Age” 129-30) Such a subject, in that she or he is always placed “in front of” the text, surface, screen, page, is always the subject of the print age. This is the sense in which the desktop personal computer is still a Book. Accounts of computing per se initiating a radically new textuality, then, should proceed with caution. There is a new textual environment, to be sure, yet assertions of its radicality would seem firstly to refer to changes in degree rather than changes in kind. For Heidegger, the very essence of ‘man’ changes in the representationalist paradigm in that ‘man becomes subject’. He points out that the word sub-iectum names ‘that-which-lies-before’, and which ‘as ground, gathers everything onto itself’ (Heidegger, “Age” 128). When man becomes primary, then ‘man becomes that being upon which all that is is grounded as regards the manner of its Being and its truth’. It is only possible for man to become this relational centre when ‘the comprehension of what is as a whole changes’ (Heidegger, “Age” 128). In terms of this change, Heidegger says, we are asking after the ‘essence of the modern age’ which concerns the ‘modern world picture (Weltbild)’. World picture … does not mean a picture of the world but the world conceived and grasped as picture. … Whenever we have the world picture, an essential decision takes place regarding what is, in its entirety. The Being of whatever is, is sought and found in the representedness of the latter. He further points out that The world picture does not change from an earlier medieval one into a modern one, but rather the fact that the world becomes picture at all is what distinguishes the essence of the modern age. (Heidegger, “Age” 129-30) It is the positionality largely determined through these structural relations that enables the identity of the modernist subject, and the possibility of its representation (as an object for another subject). Representationalism therefore requires positionality in order to represent. The print subject is sutured to the page or screen and this always provides it with a representable position. The subject of representationalism therefore comes to appear as naturally given, just as, in this view, technology is also a given. Positionality concerns fixation, or what can be held to be true. Positionality is what Deleuze and Guattari oppose to nomadism which concerns constant movement and circulation. Representationalism requires this stable formation, and infusions of ‘noise’ into the system are rendered as pathologies. “Virtual reality” then, in that it disrupts or introduces something that is apparently new into the system, tends to become a pathologisation of the subject. It is on this basis that claims are made of crises in modes of subjectivity within virtual reality or cyberculture, where the problematic is mis-construed in terms of the subject rather than in terms of this model of interpretation. In this sense, it clings to the illusion of the subject as ground, that everything that is, is an object for a subject. In this model, it becomes a question of repositioning the subject such that the subject may be accommodated in an expanded representational regime, a practice that is widespread. Bukatman (8-9), for example, has argued a representationalist position which can be seen in the following passage. It is the purpose of much recent science fiction to construct a new subject position to interface with the global realms of data circulation, a subject that can occupy or intersect the cyberscapes of contemporary existence. For Bukatman, it is about a new position for the subject: that is, it is a question of how to represent the subject such that it can be accommodated to or within a representationalist paradigm. This subject is reduced to the notion of positionality which is representable as the subject labelled “I”. It concerns differences in degree rather than in kind. The establishing of the human subject as ground for “that which is” positions the human in an entirely different way from the subject of earlier times. For the first time, Heidegger says, there became such a thing as a “position” of the human. Humanity is subiectum, and must stand in front of, or “take his stand in relation to whatever is as the objective”. What is decisive, he says is that man himself expressly takes up this position as one constituted by himself, that he intentionally maintains it as that taken up by himself, and that he makes it secure as the solid footing for a possible development of humanity. (Heidegger, “Age” 132) This decisive event, for Heidegger, is what begins a new way of being human that gives rise to the world as picture. Heidegger’s “age of the world picture” corresponds with the arrival of the mass textual system or model (the printing press of the fifteenth century) which serves to instantiate this model of “man”. This is an actualisation of the technology of the subiectum, the age of the world picture, that is henceforth demanded in order to produce and to represent this “man”, and to represent him to himself. There has been no radical break with the structures underlying the social formation of print culture, yet this formation is subject to increasing pressures. What is most under pressure in this late age of print, however, is not the particular formation of texts, but, crucially, this mode of being human that has been ever more deeply embedded in the human psyche for more than 500 years. This will not disappear overnight; however, its structural conditions of existence do appear to be beginning to overflow their limit, producing an excess that is not, or not easily, assimilated back to itself. This excess is constituted by those contemporary elements that do not fit the structural model of the print system of texts. There are several aspects to this which can only be gestured towards in this space. In particular, one aspect will concern the complex network of relations in the changing nature of information in a digital, networked era, the commodification of information in global capitalism, and the distortions of space and time these produce. It gestures towards the possibility of a post-representationalism – a new subject that, rather than being fixed and positional, sutured to a screen/page, is set in motion – a structure which would alter all relations as well as the constitution of the subject. Immersive virtual reality texts already begin the necessity of thinking these relations and the possibility of a subject in motion within fields of information flow. These immersive virtual realities gesture towards the possibility of the subject becoming a post-print. A post-print will not emerge fully formed or all at once, or even very soon, but reflections on what such a system of texts and subjects might be or become poses the relations of print or our reflections on them in a different way. In any event, it points towards a difficult time ahead for the print subject and for the formation and meaning of print culture. References Aries, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood. Trans. Robert Baldick. London: Jonathan Cape, 1973. Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham: Duke UP, 1993. Heidegger, Martin. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Trans. A. Hofstadter. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982. —. “The Age of the World Picture”. In Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Garland, 1977. 115-54. Luke, Carmen. Pedagogy, Printing, and Protestantism. Albany: State U of New York, 1989. Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge. 1982. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Roe, Phillip. "Dimensions of Print." M/C Journal 8.2 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/07-roe.php>. APA Style Roe, P. (Jun. 2005) "Dimensions of Print," M/C Journal, 8(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/07-roe.php>.

Intellectual property. It's a strange term, indicating from its structure that the questionable notion of property has been appended to something that, in a tangible sense, doesn't even exist. Difficult to grasp, like water, or air, yet at the same time so desirable to own... In Anglo-American law, property is defined, as the eighteenth-century jurist Sir William Blackstone put it, as "that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe" (Terry & Guigni 207). For most physical things, the 'right' of exclusion seems simple enough to understand, and to control. Yet even there, when the boundaries blur, especially over space and time, the results of such 'rights' become less and less manageable, as indicated by the classic 'tragedy of the commons' (Hardin). And once we move outside of the physical realm, and into the world of ideas, or of feelings or the spirit, the notion of an exclusive 'right' of ownership steadily makes less and less sense. It's an issue that's come to the fore with the rise of the Open Source movement, creating software that can be freely shared and used by anyone. There are many arguments about exactly is meant by 'free', though there's often an emphasis on freedom of ideas rather than price: "think of 'free' as in 'free speech', not as in 'free beer'" is how one group describes it (Free Software Foundation). Unlike proprietary software such as Microsoft Windows, the source-code from which the programs are compiled is available is available for anyone to view, amend, extend. As yet, few programmers are paid to do so; certainly no-one is excluded from doing so. The results from this apparently anarchic and altruistic model would be startling for anyone coming from a conventional economics background: for example, Sourceforge, the main Open Source repository, currently hosts almost 60,000 projects, with almost ten times that number of active contributors (Sourceforge). Some of these projects are huge: for example, the Linux kernel is well over a million lines of code, whilst the Gnome user-interface is already almost twice that size. Open Source programs such as the 'LAMP' quadrivirate of the GNU/Linux operating-system, Apache web-server, MySQL database and PHP, Perl or Python scripting languages provide most of the software infrastructure for the Internet (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Python). And the Internet returns the favour, by providing a space in which collaboration can happen quickly and for the most part transparently, without much regard for status or location. Yet central though the Internet may be to this new wave of shared 'public good', the core innovations of Open Source are more social than technological. Of these, probably the most important are a specific kind of collaboration, and an unusual twist on copyright law. Eric Raymond's classic essay 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar' is one of the best descriptions of the social processes behind Open Source (Raymond). "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch", says Raymond: see a need, tackle it, share the initial results, ask for help. Larry Wall, the initiator of Perl, "wanted to create something that was so useful that it would be taken up by many people" (Moody 133), and consciously promoted it in much the same way as a missionary (Moody 131). Open access to communications and a culture of shared learning provides the space to "release early, release often" and invite collaboration. Some projects, such as Apache and PHP, are run as a kind of distributed collective, but many are somewhat hierarchical, with a well-known lead-figure at the centre: Linus Torvalds for Linux, Larry Wall for Perl, Guido van Rossum for Python, Miguel de Icaza for Gnome. Yet the style rarely seems hierarchical in practice: the lead-figure's role is that of coordinator and final arbiter of quality, far removed from the militaristic 'command and control' so common in business environments. What makes it work is that anyone can join in, identify a bug, submit a patch, volunteer to design some desirable function or feature, and gain personal satisfaction and social respect for doing so. Programmers’ motivations vary enormously, of course: some share their work as a kind of libertarian statement, whilst others are more driven by a sense of obligation to others in the software-development community, or in the wider world. Yet for many, perhaps most, it's the personal satisfaction that's most important: as Linus Torvalds comments, "most of the good programmers do [Open Source] programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program" (Torvalds & Ghosh). In that sense it more closely resembles a kind of art-form rather than a conventional business proposition. Realistically, many of the smaller Open Source projects are little more than student exercises, with limited real-world usefulness. But for larger, more relevant projects this borderless, inclusive collaboration usually results in code of very high quality and reliability – "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" is another of Raymond's aphorisms – in stark contrast to the notorious security holes and general fragility of proprietary products from Redmond and elsewhere. And it leverages different people's skills to create an extraordinary degree of 'win/win', as Linus Torvalds points out: "imagine ten people putting in one hour each every day on the project. They put in one hour of work, but because they share the end results they get nine hours of 'other peoples work' for free. It sounds unfair: get nine hours of work for doing one hour. But it obviously is not" (Torvalds & Ghosh). It's this kind of return-on-investment that's making many businesses more than willing to embrace the 'insanity' of paying programmers to give away their time on Open Source projects (Pavlicek). The hard part, for many businesses, is that it demands a very different approach to business relationships. "Forget business as usual", writes Russell Pavlicek; "forget about demanding your own way; forget fluffy, empty management speeches; forget about fudging facts; forget about marketing that alienates the community; forget about pushing hype rather than real value; forget about taking more than you give" (Pavlicek 131-7). When everything is open, and everyone is in effect a volunteer, none of those time-dishonoured tactics works well. But the real catch is the legal framework under which Open Source is developed and distributed. Conventionally, placing work in the public domain – the intellectual-property equivalent of the commons – means that anyone can apply even the minutest of changes and then declare it exclusively as their own. Walt Disney famously did exactly this with many classics, such as the Grimms' fairy-tales or Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book. The Free Software Foundation's 'GNU Public License' – used for most Open Source software – avoids this by copyrighting the work, permitting freedom to view, amend and extend the code for any purpose, but requiring that any new version permit the same freedoms (GNU/FSF). This inclusive approach – nicknamed 'copyleft' in contrast to conventional copyright – turns the usual exclusive model of intellectual property on its head. Its viral, self-propagating nature uses the law to challenge the law of property: everything it touches is – in principle – freed from exclusive private ownership. Larry Lessig and the Creative Commons legal team have extended this somewhat further, with machine-readable licenses that permit a finer granularity of choice in defining what uses of a work – a musical performance, a book or a Weblog, for example – are open or withheld (Creative Commons). But the central theme is that copyleft, together with the open nature of the Internet, "moves everything that touches it toward the public domain" (Norlin). Which is not a happy thought for those whose business models depend on exclusion and control of access to intellectual property – such as Hollywood, the media and the biotechnology industry – nor, for that matter, for those who'd prefer to keep their secrets secret (AWOLBush). Part of the problem, for such people, is a mistaken notion of what the Internet really is. It's not a pipe or a medium, like cable TV; it's more like a space or a place, a 'world of ends' (Searls & Weinberger). Not so much infrastructure, to be bought and sold, but necessarily shared, it's more 'innerstructure', a kind of artificial force of nature: "like the Earth's fertile surface, it derives much of its fertility from the life it supports" (Searls). Its key characteristics, argues Doc Searls, are that "No-one owns it; Everyone can use it; Anyone can improve it". And these characteristics of the Internet ultimately arise not from the hardware – routers, cables, servers and the like – or even the software, but ultimately from an agreement – the Internet Protocol – and an idea – that network connections can and should be self-routing, beyond direct control. Yet perhaps the most important idea that arises from this is that one of the most basic foundation-stones of Western society – the model of property as an exclusive 'right', a "sole and despotic dominion" – simply doesn't work. This is especially true for supposed 'intellectual property', such as copyrights, trade-marks, patents, genome sequences, scientific theories: after all, from where do those ideas and patterns ultimately arise? Who owns that? In legal terms, there's no definable root for a trail of provenance, no means to identify all involved intermediaries, and hence no ultimate anchor for any kind of property claim. Many other types of intellectual property, such as domain-names, phrases, words, radio-frequencies, colours, sounds - the word 'Yes', the phrase 'The Real Thing', Ferrari red, the sound of a Harley-Davidson – can only be described as arbitrary expropriations from the public domain. In many senses, then, the whole legal edifice of intellectual property is little more than "all smoke and mirrors", held together by lawyers' bluff – hardly a stable foundation for the much-vaunted 'information economy'! Whilst it's not quite true that "nobody owns it", in practice the only viable ownership for any kind of intellectual property would seem to be that of a declaration of responsibility, of stewardship – such as a project-leader's responsibility for an Open Source project – rather than an arbitrary and ultimately indefensible assertion of exclusive 'right'. So a simple question about intellectual property – is it copyright or copyleft? should source-code be proprietary or 'free'? – goes deeper and deeper into the 'innerstructure' of society itself. Miguel Icaza describes this well: "as the years pass and you're working in this framework, you start to reevaluate in many areas your relationships with your friends and your family. The same ideas about free software and sharing and caring about other people start to permeate other aspects of your life" (Moody 323). Perhaps it's time to look more carefully to look more carefully not just at intellectual property, but at the 'rights' and responsibilities associated with all kinds of property, to reach a more equitable and sustainable means to manage the tangible and intangible resources of this world we share. Works Cited Blackstone, Sir William. "Commentaries on the Laws of England." Book 2, 1765, 2, quoted in Andrew Terry and Des Guigni, Business, Society and the Law. Marrickville, Australia: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1994. Hardin, Garrett. "The Tragedy of the Commons." Science 162 (1968): 1243-8. 10 Mar. 2003 <http://www.constitution.org/cmt/tragcomm.htm>. “The Free Software Definition.” Free Software Foundation. 10 Mar. 2003 <http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.php>. Sourceforge. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://sourceforge.net/>. Linux. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://www.linux.org/>. GNOME. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://www.gnome.org/>. Apache. The Apache Software Foundation. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://www.apache.org/>. MySQL. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://www.mysql.com/>. PHP. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://www.php.net/>. Perl. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://www.perl.org/>. Python. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://www.python.org/>. Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. 11 Aug. 1998. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://www.openresources.com/documents/cathedral-bazaar>. (Note: original location at http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ is no longer accessible.) Moody, Glyn. Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution. London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2001. Torvalds, Linus, and Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. "Interview with Linus Torvalds". First Monday 3.3 (1998). 9 Mar. 2003 <http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_3/torvalds/index.php>. Pavlicek, Russell C. Embracing Insanity: Open Source Software Development. Indianapolis: Sams Publishing, 2000. "Licenses – GNU Project." GNU/Free Software Foundation. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://www.fsf.org/licenses/licenses.html#TOCWhatIsCopyleft>. Lessig, Lawrence (Larry). Home page. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig>. Creative Commons. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://creativecommons.org/>. Norlin, Eric. Weblog. 23 Feb. 2003. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://www.unchartedshores.com/blogger/archive/2003_02_23_ar... ...chive3.html#90388497>. “G W Bush Went AWOL.” AWOLBush.com. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://www.awolbush.com/>. Searls, Doc, and David Weinberger. World Of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else. 9 Mar. 2003 <http://worldofends.com/>. Searls, Doc. "Is Linux Infrastructure? Or Is it Deeper than That?" Linux Journal 14 May 2002. 10 Mar. 2003 <http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6074>. ---. "Setting Fire to Hollywood’s Plans for the Net: The GeekPAC Story". Linux Journal 29 Apr. 2002. 10 Mar. 2003 <http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6033>. Links http://creativecommons.org/ http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig http://sourceforge.net/ http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ http://worldofends.com/ http://www.apache.org/ http://www.awolbush.com/ http://www.constitution.org/cmt/tragcomm.htm http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_3/torvalds/index.html http://www.fsf.org/licenses/licenses.html\lTOCWhatIsCopyleft http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html http://www.gnome.org/ http://www.linux.org/ http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6033 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6074 http://www.mysql.com/ http://www.openresources.com/documents/cathedral-bazaar http://www.perl.org/ http://www.php.net/ http://www.python.org/ http://www.unchartedshores.com/blogger/archive/2003_02_23_archive3.html\l90388497 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Graves, Tom. "Something Happened on the Way to the ©" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/03-somethinghappened.php>. APA Style Graves, T. (2003, Apr 23). Something Happened on the Way to the ©. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/03-somethinghappened.php>

This paper provides embedded, reflective practice-based insight arising from my experience collaborating to produce online and print-on-demand editions of a magazine showcasing the photography of members of haphazart! Contemporary Abstracts group (hereafter referred to as haphazart!). The group’s online visual, textual and activity-based practices via the photo sharing social networking site Flickr are portrayed as achieving cohesive visual identity. Stylistic analysis of pictures in support of this claim is not attempted. Rather negotiation, that Elliot has previously described in M/C Journal as innate in collaboration, is identified as the unifying factor. However, the collaborators’ adherence to Flickr’s communication platform proves problematic in the editorial context. Some technical incoherence with possible broader cultural implications is encountered during the process of repurposing images from screen to print. A Scan of Relevant Literature The photographic gaze perceives and captures objects which seem to ‘carry within them ready-made’ a work of art. But the reminiscences of the gaze are only made possible by knowing and associating with groups that define a tradition. The list of valorised subjects is not actually defined with reference to a culture, but rather by familiarity with a limited group. (Chamboredon 144) As part of the array of socio-cultural practices afforded by Web 2.0 interoperability, sites of produsage (Bruns) are foci for studies originating in many disciplines. Flickr provides a rich source of data that researchers interested in the interface between the technological and the social find useful to analyse. Access to the Flickr application programming interface enables quantitative researchers to observe a variety of means by which information is propagated, disseminated and shared. Some findings from this kind of research confirm the intuitive. For example, Negoecsu et al. find that “a large percentage of users engage in sharing with groups and that they do so significantly” ("Analyzing Flickr Groups" 425). They suggest that Flickr’s Groups feature appears to “naturally bring together two key aspects of social media: content and relations.” They also find evidence for what they call hyper-groups, which are “communities consisting of groups of Flickr groups” ("Flickr Hypergroups" 813). Two separate findings from another research team appear to contradict each other. On one hand, describing what they call “social cascades,” Cha et al. claim that “content in the form of ideas, products, and messages spreads across social networks like a virus” ("Characterising Social Cascades"). Yet in 2009 they claim that homocity and reciprocity ensure that “popularity of pictures is localised” ("Measurement-Driven Analysis"). Mislove et al. reflect that the affordances of Flickr influence the growth patterns they observe. There is optimism shared by some empiricists that through collation and analysis of Flickr tag data, the matching of perceptual structures of images and image annotation techniques will yield ontology-based taxonomy useful in automatic image annotation and ultimately, the Semantic Web endeavour (Kennedy et al.; Su et al.; Xu et al.). Qualitative researchers using ethnographic interview techniques also find Flickr a valuable resource. In concluding that the photo sharing hobby is for many a “serious leisure” activity, Cox et al. propose that “Flickr is not just a neutral information system but also value laden and has a role within a wider cultural order.” They also suggest that “there is genuinely greater scope for individual creativity, releasing the individual to explore their own identity in a way not possible with a camera club.” Davies claims that “online spaces provide an arena where collaboration over meanings can be transformative, impacting on how individuals locate themselves within local and global contexts” (550). She says that through shared ways of describing and commenting on images, Flickrites develop a common criticality in their endeavour to understand images, each other and their world (554).From a psychologist’s perspective, Suler observes that “interpersonal relationships rarely form and develop by images alone” ("Image, Word, Action" 559). He says that Flickr participants communicate in three dimensions: textual (which he calls “verbal”), visual, and via the interpersonal actions that the site affords, such as Favourites. This latter observation can surely be supplemented by including the various games that groups configure within the constraints of the discussion forums. These often include submissions to a theme and voting to select a winning image. Suler describes the place in Flickr where one finds identity as one’s “cyberpsychological niche” (556). However, many participants subscribe to multiple groups—45.6% of Flickrites who share images share them with more than 20 groups (Negoescu et al., "Analyzing Flickr Groups" 420). Is this a reflection of the existence of the hyper-groups they describe (2009) or, of the ranging that people do in search of a niche? It is also probable that some people explore more than a singular identity or visual style. Harrison and Bartell suggest that there are more interesting questions than why users create media products or what motivates them to do so: the more interesting questions center on understanding what users will choose to do ultimately with [Web2.0] capabilities [...] in what terms to define the success of their efforts, and what impact the opportunity for individual and collaborative expression will have on the evolution of communicative forms and character. (167) This paper addresseses such questions. It arises from a participatory observational context which differs from that of the research described above. It is intended that a different perspective about online group-based participation within the Flickr social networking matrix will avail. However, it will be seen that the themes cited in this introductory review prove pertinent. Context As a university teacher of a range of subjects in the digital media field, from contemporary photomedia to social media to collaborative multimedia practice, it is entirely appropriate that I embed myself in projects that engage, challenge and provide me with relevant first-hand experience. As an academic I also undertake and publish research. As a practicing new media artist I exhibit publically on a regular basis and consider myself semi-professional with respect to this activity. While there are common elements to both approaches to research, this paper is written more from the point of view of ‘reflective practice’ (Holmes, "Reconciling Experimentum") rather than ‘embedded ethnography’ (Pink). It is necessarily and unapologetically reflexive. Abstract Photography Hyper-Group A search of all Flickr groups using the query “abstract” is currently likely to return around 14,700 results. However, only in around thirty of them does the group name, its stated rules and, the stream of images that flow through the pool arguably reflect a sense of collective concept and aesthetic that is coherently abstract. This loose complex of groups comprises a hyper-group. Members of these groups often have co-memberships, reciprocal contacts, and regularly post images to a range of groups and comment on others’ posts to be found throughout. Given that one of Flickr’s largest groups, Black and White, currently has around 131,150 members and hosts 2,093,241 items in its pool, these abstract special interest groups are relatively small. The largest, Abstract Photos, has 11,338 members and hosts 89,306 items in its pool. The group that is the focus of this paper, haphazart!, currently has 2,536 members who have submitted 53,309 items. The group pool is more like a constantly flowing river because the most recently added images are foremost. Older images become buried in an archive of pages which cannot be reverse accessed at a rate greater than the seven pages linked from a current view. A member’s presence is most immediate through images posted to a pool. This structural feature of Flickr promotes a desire for currency; a need to post regularly to maintain presence. Negotiating Coherence to the Abstract The self-managing social dynamics in groups has, as Suler proposes to be the case for individuals, three dimensions: visual, textual and action. A group integrates the diverse elements, relationships and values which cumulatively constitute its identity with contributions from members in these dimensions. First impressions of that identity are usually derived from the group home page which consists of principal features: the group name, a selection of twelve most recent posts to the pool, some kind of description, a selection of six of the most recent discussion topics, and a list of rules (if any). In some of these groups, what is considered to constitute an abstract photographic image is described on the group home page. In some it is left to be contested and becomes the topic of ongoing forum debates. In others the specific issue is not discussed—the images are left to speak for themselves. Administrators of some groups require that images are vetted for acceptance. In haphazart! particular administrators dutifully delete from the pool on a regular basis any images that they deem not to comply with the group ethic. Whether reasons are given or not is left to the individual prosecutor. Mostly offending images just disappear from the group pool without trace. These are some of the ways that the coherence of a group’s visual identity is established and maintained. Two groups out of the abstract photography hyper-group are noteworthy in that their discussion forums are particularly active. A discussion is just the start of a new thread and may have any number of posts under it. At time of writing Abstract Photos has 195 discussions and haphazart! — the most talkative by this measure—has 333. Haphazart! invites submissions of images to regularly changing themes. There is always lively and idiosyncratic banter in the forum over the selection of a theme. To be submitted an image needs to be identified by a specific theme tag as announced on the group home page. The tag can be added by the photographer themselves or by anyone else who deems the image appropriate to the theme. An exhibition process ensues. Participant curators search all Flickr items according to the theme tag and select from the outcome images they deem to most appropriately and abstractly address the theme. Copies of the images together with comments by the curators are posted to a dedicated discussion board. Other members may also provide responses. This activity forms an ongoing record that may serve as a public indicator of the aesthetic that underlies the group’s identity. In Abstract Photos there is an ongoing discussion forum where one can submit an image and request that the moderators rule as to whether or not the image is ‘abstract’. The same group has ongoing discussions labelled “Hall of Appropriate” where worthy images are reposted and celebrated and, “Hall of Inappropriate” where images posted to the group pool have been removed and relegated because abstraction has been “so far stretched from its definition that it now resides in a parallel universe” (Askin). Reasons are mostly courteously provided. In haphazart! a relatively small core of around twelve group members regularly contribute to the group discussion board. A curious aspect of this communication is that even though participants present visually with a ‘buddy icon’ and most with a screen name not their real name, it is usual practice to address each other in discussions by their real Christian names, even when this is not evident in a member’s profile. This seems to indicate a common desire for authenticity. The makeup of the core varies from time to time depending on other activities in a member’s life. Although one or two may be professionally or semi-professionally engaged as photographers or artists or academics, most of these people would likely consider themselves to be “serious amateurs” (Cox). They are internationally dispersed with bias to the US, UK, Europe and Australia. English is the common language though not the natural tongue of some. The age range is approximately 35 to 65 and the gender mix 50/50. The group is three years old. Where Do We Go to from Here? In early January 2009 the haphazart! core was sparked into a frenzy of discussion by a post from a member headed “Where do we go to from here?” A proposal was mooted to produce a ‘book’ featuring images and texts representative of the group. Within three days a new public group with invited membership dedicated to the idea had been established. A smaller working party then retreated to a private Flickr group. Four months later Issue One of haphazart! magazine was available in print-on-demand and online formats. Following however is a brief critically reflective review of some of the collaborative curatorial, editorial and production processes for Issue Two which commenced in early June 2009. Most of the team had also been involved with Issue One. I was the only newcomer and replaced the person who had undertaken the design for Issue One. I was not provided access to the prior private editorial ruminations but apparently the collaborative curatorial and editorial decision-making practices the group had previously established persisted, and these took place entirely within the discussion forums of a new dedicated private Flickr group. Over a five-month period there were 1066 posts in 54 discussions concerning matters such as: change of format from the previous; selection of themes, artists and images; conduct of and editing of interviews; authoring of texts; copyright and reproduction. The idiom of those communications can be described as: discursive, sporadic, idiosyncratic, resourceful, collegial, cooperative, emphatic, earnest and purposeful. The selection process could not be said to follow anything close to a shared manifesto, or articulation of style. It was established that there would be two primary themes: the square format and contributors’ use of colour. Selection progressed by way of visual presentation and counter presentation until some kind of consensus was reached often involving informal votes of preference. Stretching the Limits of the Flickr Social Tools The magazine editorial collaborators continue to use the facilities with which they are familiar from regular Flickr group participation. However, the strict vertically linear format of the Flickr discussion format is particularly unsuited to lengthy, complex, asynchronous, multithreaded discussion. For this purpose it causes unnecessary strain, fatigue and confusion. Where images are included, the forums have set and maximum display sizes and are not flexibly configured into matrixes. Images cannot readily be communally changed or moved about like texts in a wiki. Likewise, the Flickrmail facility is of limited use for specialist editorial processes. Attachments cannot be added. This opinion expressed by a collaborator in the initial, open discussion for Issue One prevailed among Issue Two participants: do we want the members to go to another site to observe what is going on with the magazine? if that’s ok, then using google groups or something like that might make sense; if we want others to observe (and learn from) the process - we may want to do it here [in Flickr]. (Valentine) The opinion appears socially constructive; but because the final editorial process and production processes took place in a separate private forum, ultimately the suggested learning between one issue and the next did not take place. During Issue Two development the reluctance to try other online collaboration tools for the selection processes requiring visual comparative evaluation of images and trials of sequencing adhered. A number of ingenious methods of working within Flickr were devised and deployed and, in my opinion, proved frustratingly impractical and inefficient. The digital layout, design, collation and formatting of images and texts, all took place on my personal computer using professional software tools. Difficulties arose in progressively sharing this work for the purposes of review, appraisal and proofing. Eventually I ignored protests and insisted the team review demonstrations I had converted for sharing in Google Documents. But, with only one exception, I could not tempt collaborators to try commenting or editing in that environment. For example, instead of moving the sequence of images dynamically themselves, or even typing suggestions directly into Google Documents, they would post responses in Flickr. To Share and to Hold From the first imaginings of Issue One the need to have as an outcome something in one’s hands was expressed and this objective is apparently shared by all in the haphazart! core as an ongoing imperative. Various printing options have been nominated, discussed and evaluated. In the end one print-on-demand provider was selected on the basis of recommendation. The ethos of haphazart! is clearly not profit-making and conflicts with that of the printing organisation. Presumably to maintain an incentive to purchase the print copy online preview is restricted to the first 15 pages. To satisfy the co-requisite to make available the full 120 pages for free online viewing a second host that specialises in online presentation of publications is also utilised. In this way haphazart! members satisfy their common desires for sharing selected visual content and ideas with an online special interest audience and, for a physical object of art to relish—with all the connotations of preciousness, fetish, talisman, trophy, and bookish notions of haptic pleasure and visual treasure. The irony of publishing a frozen chunk of the ever-flowing Flickriver, whose temporally changing nature is arguably one of its most interesting qualities, is not a consideration. Most of them profess to be simply satisfying their own desire for self expression and would eschew any critical judgement as to whether this anarchic and discursive mode of operation results in a coherent statement about contemporary photographic abstraction. However there remains a distinct possibility that a number of core haphazart!ists aspire to transcend: popular taste; the discernment encouraged in camera clubs; and, the rhetoric of those involved professionally (Bourdieu et al.); and seek to engage with the “awareness of illegitimacy and the difficulties implied by the constitution of photography as an artistic medium” (Chamboredon 130). Incoherence: A Technical Note My personal experience of photography ranges from the filmic to the digital (Holmes, "Bridging Adelaide"). For a number of years I specialised in facsimile graphic reproduction of artwork. In those days I became aware that films were ‘blind’ to the psychophysical affect of some few particular paint pigments. They just could not be reproduced. Even so, as I handled the dozens of images contributed to haphazart!2, converting them from the pixellated place where Flickr exists to the resolution and gamut of the ink based colour space of books, I was surprised at the number of hue values that exist in the former that do not translate into the latter. In some cases the affect is subtle so that judicious tweaking of colour levels or local colour adjustment will satisfy discerning comparison between the screenic original and the ‘soft proof’ that simulates the printed outcome. In other cases a conversion simply does not compute. I am moved to contemplate, along with Harrison and Bartell (op. cit.) just how much of the experience of media in the shared digital space is incomparably new? Acknowledgement Acting on the advice of researchers experienced in cyberethnography (Bruckman; Suler, "Ethics") I have obtained the consent of co-collaborators to comment freely on proceedings that took place in a private forum. They have been given the opportunity to review and suggest changes to the account. References Askin, Dean (aka: dnskct). “Hall of Inappropriate.” Abstract Photos/Discuss/Hall of Inappropriate, 2010. 12 Jan. 2010 ‹http://www.flickr.com/groups/abstractphotos/discuss/72157623148695254/>. Bourdieu, Pierre, Luc Boltanski, Robert Castel, Jean-Claude Chamboredeon, and Dominique Schnapper. Photography: A Middle-Brow Art. 1965. Trans. Shaun Whiteside. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990. Bruckman, Amy. Studying the Amateur Artist: A Perspective on Disguising Data Collected in Human Subjects Research on the Internet. 2002. 12 Jan. 2010 ‹http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/ethics_bru_full.html>. Bruns, Axel. “Towards Produsage: Futures for User-Led Content Production.” Proceedings: Cultural Attitudes towards Communication and Technology 2006. Perth: Murdoch U, 2006. 275–84. ———, and Mark Bahnisch. Social Media: Tools for User-Generated Content. 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IntroductionFestivals, according to Chris Gibson and John Connell, are like “glue”, temporarily sticking together various stakeholders, economic transactions, and networks (9). Australia’s First Nations peoples see festivals as an opportunity to display cultural vitality (Henry 586), and to challenge a history which has rendered them absent (587). The 2017 Australia Council for the Arts Showcasing Creativity report indicates that performing arts by First Nations peoples are under-represented in Australia’s mainstream venues and festivals (1). Large Aboriginal cultural festivals have long thrived in Australia’s northern half, but have been under-developed in the south. Each regional happening develops a cultural landscape connected to a long and intimate relationship with the natural environment.The Far South East coast and mountainous hinterland of New South Wales is rich in pristine landscapes that ground the Yuin and Monaro Nations to Country as the Monaroo Bobberrer Gadu (Peoples of the Mountains and the Sea). This article highlights cross-sector interaction between Koori and mainstream organisations in producing the Giiyong (Guy-Yoong/Welcoming) Festival. This, the first large festival to be held within the Yuin Nation, took place on Aboriginal-owned land at Jigamy, via Eden, on 22 September 2018. Emerging regional artists joined national headline acts, most notably No Fixed Address (one of the earliest Aboriginal bands to break into the Australian mainstream music industry), and hip-hop artist Baker Boy (Danzal Baker, Young Australian of the Year 2019). The festival followed five years of sustained community preparation by South East Arts in association with Grow the Music, Twofold Aboriginal Corporation, the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council, and its Elders. We offer dual understandings of the Giiyong Festival: the viewpoints of a male Yuin Elder wedded to an Australian woman of European descent. We acknowledge, and rely upon, key information, statistics, and photographs provided by the staff of South East Arts including Andrew Gray (General Manager), Jasmin Williams (Aboriginal Creative and Cultural Engagement Officer and Giiyong Festival Project Manager), and Kate Howarth (Screen Industry Development Officer). We are also grateful to Wiradjuri woman Alison Simpson (Program Manager at Twofold Aboriginal Corporation) for valuable feedback. As community leaders from First Nations and non-First Nations backgrounds, Simpson and Williams complement each other’s talents for empowering Indigenous communities. They plan a 2020 follow-up event on the basis of the huge success of the 2018 festival.The case study is informed by our personal involvement with community. Since the general population barely comprehends the number and diversity of Australia’s Indigenous ‘nations’, the burgeoning Indigenous festival movement encourages First Nations and non-First Nations peoples alike to openly and confidently refer to the places they live in according to Indigenous names, practices, histories, and knowledge. Consequently, in the mental image of a map of the island-continent, the straight lines and names of state borders fade as the colours of the Indigenous ‘Countries’ (represented by David Horton’s wall map of 1996) come to the foreground. We reason that, in terms of ‘regionality,’ the festival’s expressions of “the agency of country” (Slater 141) differ vastly from the centre-periphery structure and logic of the Australian colony. There is no fixed centre to the mutual exchange of knowledge, culture, and experience in Aboriginal Australia. The broader implication of this article is that Indigenous cultural festivals allow First Nations peoples cultures—in moments of time—to assume precedence, that is to ‘stitch’ back together the notion of a continent made up of hundreds of countries, as against the exploitative structure of ‘hub and region’ colonial Australia.Festival Concepts and ContextsHoward Becker observed that cultural production results from an interplay between the person of the artist and a multitude of support personnel whose work is not frequently studied: “It is through this network of cooperation that the art work we eventually see or hear comes to be and continues to be” (1). In assisting arts and culture throughout the Bega Valley, Eurobodalla, and Snowy Monaro, South East Arts delivers positive achievements in the Aboriginal arts and cultural sector. Their outcomes are significant in the light of the dispossession, segregation, and discrimination experienced by Aboriginal Australians. Michael Young, assisted by Indigenous authors Ellen Mundy and Debbie Mundy, recorded how Delegate Reserve residents relocating to the coast were faced with having their lives controlled by a Wallaga Lake Reserve manager or with life on the fringes of the towns in shacks (2–3). But as discovered in the records, “their retention of traditional beliefs, values and customs, reveal that the accommodation they were forced to make with the Europeans did not mean they had surrendered. The proof of this is the persistence of their belief in the value of their culture” (3–4). The goal of the Twofold Aboriginal Corporation is to create an inclusive place where Aboriginal people of the Twofold Bay Region can be proud of their heritage, connect with the local economy, and create a real future for their children. When Simpson told Williams of the Twofold Aboriginal Corporation’s and Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council’s dream of housing a large cultural festival at Jigamy, Williams rigorously consulted local Indigenous organisations to build a shared sense of community ownership of the event. She promoted the festival as “a rare opportunity in our region to learn about Aboriginal culture and have access to a huge program of Aboriginal musicians, dancers, visual artists, authors, academics, storytellers, cooks, poets, creative producers, and films” (McKnight).‘Uncle Ossie’ Cruse of Eden envisaged that the welcoming event would enliven the longstanding caring and sharing ethos of the Yuin-Monaro people. Uncle Ossie was instrumental in establishing Jigamy’s majestic Monaroo Bobberrer Gudu Keeping Place with the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council in 1994. Built brick by brick by Indigenous workers, it is a centre for the teaching and celebration of Aboriginal culture, and for the preservation of artefacts. It represents the local community's determination to find their own solutions for “bridging the gap” by creating education and employment opportunities. The centre is also the gateway to the Bundian Way, the first Aboriginal pathway to be listed on the NSW State Heritage Register. Festival Lead-Up EventsEden’s Indigenous students learn a revived South Coast language at Primary and Secondary School. In 2015, Uncle Ossie vitally informed their input into The Black Ducks, a hip-hop song filmed in Eden by Desert Pea Media. A notable event boosting Koori musical socialisation was a Giiyong Grow the Music spectacle performed at Jigamy on 28 October 2017. Grow the Music—co-founded by Lizzy Rutten and Emily White—specialises in mentoring Indigenous artists in remote areas using digital recording equipment. Eden Marine High School students co-directed the film Scars as part of a programme of events with South East Arts and the Giiyong Festival 2018. The Eden Place Project and Campbell Page also create links between in- and out-of-school activities. Eden’s Indigenous students thus perform confidently at NAIDOC Week celebrations and at various festivals. Preparation and PersonnelAn early decision was made to allow free entry to the Giiyong Festival in order to attract a maximum number of Indigenous families. The prospect necessitated in-kind support from Twofold Aboriginal Corporation staff. They galvanised over 100 volunteers to enhance the unique features of Jigamy, while Uncle Ossie slashed fields of bushes to prepare copious parking space. The festival site was spatially focused around two large stages dedicated to the memory of two strong supporters of cultural creativity: Aunty Doris Kirby, and Aunty Liddy Stewart (Image 1). Image 1: Uncle Ossie Cruse Welcomes Festival-Goers to Country on the Aunty Liddy Stewart Stage. Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduction Courtesy of South East Arts.Cultural festivals are peaceful weapons in a continuing ontological political contest (Slater 144). In a panel discussion, Uncle Ossie explained and defended the Makarrata: the call for a First Nations Voice to be enshrined in the Constitution.Williams also contracted artists with a view to capturing the past and present achievements of Aboriginal music. Apart from her brilliant centrepiece acts No Fixed Address and Baker Boy, she attracted Pitjantjatjara singer Frank Yamma (Image 2), Yorta Yorta singer/songwriter Benny Walker, the Central Desert Docker River Band, and Jessie Lloyd’s nostalgic Mission Songs Project. These stellar acts were joined by Wallaga Lake performers Robbie Bundle, Warren Foster, and Alison Walker as well as Nathan Lygon (Eden), Chelsy Atkins (Pambula), Gabadoo (Bermagui), and Drifting Doolgahls (Nowra). Stage presentations were technologically transformed by the live broadcast of acts on large screens surrounding the platforms. Image 2: Singer-Songwriter Frank Yamma Performs at Giiyong Festival 2018. Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduction Courtesy of South East Arts.Giiyong Music and Dance Music and dance form the staple components of Indigenous festivals: a reflection on the cultural strength of ancient ceremony. Hundreds of Yuin-Monaro people once attended great corroborees on Mumbulla Mountain (Horton 1235), and oral history recorded by Janet Mathews evidences ceremonies at Fishy Flats, Eden, in the 1850s. Today’s highly regarded community musicians and dancers perform the social arrangements of direct communication, sometimes including their children on stage as apprentices. But artists are still negotiating the power structures through which they experience belonging and detachment in the representation of their musical identity.Youth gain positive identities from participating alongside national headline acts—a form of learning that propels talented individuals into performing careers. The One Mob Dreaming Choir of Koori students from three local schools were a popular feature (Image 3), as were Eden Marine student soloists Nikai Stewart, and Nikea Brooks. Grow the Music in particular has enabled these youngsters to exhibit the roots of their culture in a deep and touching way that contributes to their life-long learning and development. Image 3: The One Mob Dreaming Choir, Directed by Corinne Gibbons (L) and Chelsy Atkins (R). Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduction Courtesy of South East Arts. Brydie-Leigh Bartleet describes how discourses of pride emerge when Indigenous Australian youth participate in hip-hop. At the Giiyong Festival the relationship between musical expression, cultural representation, and political positioning shone through the songs of Baker Boy and Gabadoo (Image 4). Channelling emotions into song, they led young audiences to engage with contemporary themes of Indigeneity. The drones launched above the carpark established a numerical figure close on 6,000 attendees, a third of whom were Indigenous. Extra teenagers arrived in time for Baker Boy’s evening performance (Williams), revealing the typical youthful audience composition associated with the hip-hop craze (Image 5).Image 4: Bermagui Resident Gabadoo Performs Hip-Hop at the Giiyong Festival. Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduced Courtesy South East Arts.Image 5: A Youthful Audience Enjoys Baker Boy’s Giiyong Festival Performance. Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduced Courtesy South East Arts.Wallaga Lake’s traditional Gulaga Dancers were joined by Bermagui’s Gadhu Dancers, Eden’s Duurunu Miru Dancers, and Narooma’s Djaadjawan Dancers. Sharon Mason founded Djaadjawan Dancers in 2015. Their cultural practice connects to the environment and Mingagia (Mother Earth). At their festival tent, dancers explained how they gather natural resources from Walbanja Country to hand-make traditional dance outfits, accessories, and craft. They collect nuts, seeds, and bark from the bush, body paint from ancient ochre pits, shells from beaches, and bird feathers from fresh roadkill. Duurunu Miru dancer/didjeriduist Nathan Lygon elaborates on the functions of the Far South East Coast dance performance tradition:Dance provides us with a platform, an opportunity to share our stories, our culture, and our way of being. It demonstrates a beautiful positivity—a feeling of connection, celebration, and inclusion. The community needs it. And our young people need a ‘space’ in which they can grow into the knowledge and practices of their culture. The festival also helped the wider community to learn more about these dimensions. (n.p.)While music and dance were at the heart of the festival, other traditional skills were included, for example the exhibitions mounted inside the Keeping Place featured a large number of visual artists. Traditional bush cooking took place near Lake Pambula, and yarn-ups, poetry, and readings were featured throughout the day. Cultural demonstrations in the Bunaan Ring (the Yuin name for a corroboree circle) included ‘Gum Leaf Playing.’ Robin Ryan explained how the Yuin’s use of cultural elements to entertain settlers (Cameron 79) led to the formation of the Wallaga Lake Gum Leaf Band. As the local custodian of this unique musical practice, Uncle Ossie performed items and conducted a workshop for numerous adults and children. Festival Feedback and Future PlanningThe Giiyong Festival gained huge Indigenous cultural capital. Feedback gleaned from artists, sponsors, supporters, volunteers, and audiences reflected on how—from the moment the day began—the spirit of so many performers and consumers gathered in one place took over. The festival’s success depended on its reception, for as Myers suggests: “It is the audience who create the response to performance and if the right chemistry is achieved the performers react and excel in their presentation” (59). The Bega District News, of 24 September 2018, described the “incredibly beautiful event” (n.p.), while Simpson enthused to the authors:I believe that the amount of people who came through the gates to attend the Giiyong Festival was a testament to the wider need and want for Aboriginal culture. Having almost double the population of Eden attend also highlights that this event was long overdue. (n.p.)Williams reported that the whole festival was “a giant exercise in the breaking down of walls. Some signed contracts for the first time, and all met their contracts professionally. National artists Baker Boy and No Fixed Address now keep in touch with us regularly” (Williams). Williams also expressed her delight that local artists are performing further afield this year, and that an awareness, recognition, and economic impact has been created for Jigamy, the Giiyong Festival, and Eden respectively:We believe that not only celebrating, but elevating these artists and Aboriginal culture, is one of the most important things South East Arts can do for the overall arts sector in the region. This work benefits artists, the economy and cultural tourism of the region. Most importantly it feeds our collective spirit, educates us, and creates a much richer place to live. (Giiyong Festival Report 1)Howarth received 150 responses to her post-event survey. All respondents felt welcome, included, and willing to attend another festival. One commented, “not even one piece of rubbish on the ground.” Vanessa Milton, ABC Open Producer for South East NSW, wrote: “Down to the tiniest detail it was so obvious that you understood the community, the audience, the performers and how to bring everyone together. What a coup to pull off this event, and what a gift to our region” (Giiyong Festival Report 4).The total running cost for the event was $257,533, including $209,606 in government grants from local, state, and federal agencies. Major donor Create NSW Regional Partnerships funded over $100,000, and State Aboriginal Affairs gave $6,000. Key corporate sponsors included Bendigo Bank, Snowy Hydro and Waterway Constructions, Local Land Services Bega, and the Eden Fisherman’s Club. Funding covered artists’ fees, staging, the hiring of toilets, and multiple generators, including delivery costs. South East Arts were satisfied with the funding amount: each time a new donation arrived they were able to invite more performers (Giiyong Festival Report 2; Gray; Williams). South East Arts now need to prove they have the leadership capacity, financial self-sufficiency, and material resources to produce another festival. They are planning 2020 will be similar to 2018, provided Twofold Aboriginal Corporation can provide extra support. Since South East Arts exists to service a wider area of NSW, they envisage that by 2024, they would hand over the festival to Twofold Aboriginal Corporation (Gray; Williams). Forthcoming festivals will not rotate around other venues because the Giiyong concept was developed Indigenously at Jigamy, and “Jigamy has the vibe” (Williams). Uncle Ossie insists that the Yuin-Monaro feel comfortable being connected to Country that once had a traditional campsite on the east side. Evaluation and ConclusionAlthough ostensibly intended for entertainment, large Aboriginal festivals significantly benefit the educational, political, and socio-economic landscape of contemporary Indigenous life. The cultural outpourings and dissemination of knowledges at the 2018 Giiyong Festival testified to the resilience of the Yuin-Monaro people. In contributing to the processes of Reconciliation and Recognition, the event privileged the performing arts as a peaceful—yet powerful truth-telling means—for dealing with the state. Performers representing the cultures of far-flung ancestral lands contributed to the reimagining of a First Nations people’s map representing hundreds of 'Countries.’It would be beneficial for the Far South East region to perpetuate the Giiyong Festival. It energised all those involved. But it took years of preparation and a vast network of cooperating people to create the feeling which made the 2018 festival unique. Uncle Ossie now sees aspects of the old sharing culture of his people springing back to life to mould the quality of life for families. Furthermore, the popular arts cultures are enhancing the quality of life for Eden youth. As the cross-sector efforts of stakeholders and volunteers so amply proved, a family-friendly, drug and alcohol-free event of the magnitude of the Giiyong Festival injects new growth into an Aboriginal arts industry designed for the future creative landscape of the whole South East region. AcknowledgementsMany thanks to Andrew Gray and Jasmin Williams for supplying a copy of the 2018 Giiyong Festival Report. We appreciated prompt responses to queries from Jasmin Williams, and from our editor Rachel Franks. We are humbly indebted to our two reviewers for their expert direction.ReferencesAustralian Government. Showcasing Creativity: Programming and Presenting First Nations Performing Arts. Australia Council for the Arts Report, 8 Mar. 2017. 20 May 2019 <https://tnn.org.au/2017/03/showcasing-creativity-programming-and-presenting-first-nations-performing-arts-australia-council/>.Bartleet, Brydie-Leigh. “‘Pride in Self, Pride in Community, Pride in Culture’: The Role of Stylin’ Up in Fostering Indigenous Community and Identity.” The Festivalization of Culture. Eds. Andy Bennett, Jodie Taylor, and Ian Woodward. New York: Routledge, 2014.Becker, Howard S. Art Worlds. 25th anniversary edition. Berkeley: U of California P, 2008.Brown, Bill. “The Monaroo Bubberer [Bobberer] Gudu Keeping Place: A Symbol of Aboriginal Self-determination.” ABC South East NSW, 9 Jul. 2015. 20 May 2019 <http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2015/07/09/4270480.htm>.Cameron, Stuart. "An Investigation of the History of the Aborigines of the Far South Coast of NSW in the 19th Century." PhD Thesis. Canberra: Australian National U, 1987. Desert Pea Media. The Black Ducks “People of the Mountains and the Sea.” <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fbJNHAdbkg>.“Festival Fanfare.” Eden Magnet 28 June 2018. 1 Mar. 2019 <edenmagnet.com.au>.Gibson, Chris, and John Connell. Music Festivals and Regional Development in Australia. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012.Gray, Andrew. Personal Communication, 28 Mar. 2019.Henry, Rosita. “Festivals.” The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture. Eds. Syvia Kleinert and Margot Neale. South Melbourne: Oxford UP, 586–87.Horton, David R. “Yuin.” Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. Ed. David R. Horton. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1994.———. Aboriginal Australia Wall Map Compiled by David Horton. Aboriginal Studies Press, 1996.Lygon, Nathan. Personal Communication, 20 May 2019.Mathews, Janet. Albert Thomas Mentions the Leaf Bands That Used to Play in the Old Days. Cassette recorded at Wreck Bay, NSW on 9 July 1964 for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (AIATSIS). LAA1013. McKnight, Albert. “Giiyong Festival the First of Its Kind in Yuin Nation.” Bega District News 17 Sep. 2018. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://www.begadistrictnews.com.au/story/5649214/giiyong-festival-the-first-of-its-kind-in-yuin-nation/?cs=7523#slide=2>. ———. “Giiyong Festival Celebrates Diverse, Enduring Cultures.” Bega District News 24 Sep. 2018. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://www.begadistrictnews.com.au/story/5662590/giiyong-festival-celebrates-diverse-enduring-cultures-photos-videos/>.Myers, Doug. “The Fifth Festival of Pacific Arts.” Australian Aboriginal Studies 1 (1989): 59–62.Simpson, Alison. Personal Communication, 9 Apr. 2019.Slater, Lisa. “Sovereign Bodies: Australian Indigenous Cultural Festivals and Flourishing Lifeworlds.” The Festivalization of Culture. Eds. Andy Bennett, Jodie Taylor, and Ian Woodward. London: Ashgate, 2014. 131–46.South East Arts. "Giiyong Festival Report." Bega: South East Arts, 2018.———. Giiyong Grow the Music. Poster for Event Produced on Saturday, 28 Oct. 2017. Bega: South East Arts, 2017.Williams, Jasmin. Personal Communication, 28 Mar. 2019.Young, Michael, with Ellen, and Debbie Mundy. The Aboriginal People of the Monaro: A Documentary History. Sydney: NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, 2000.

Introduction One in three Australian marriages ends in divorce (ABS, Parental Divorce). While such statistics may be interpreted to mean that marriage is becoming less significant to Australians, many Australians continue to invest heavily in marriage as a constitutive mode of subjectification. Recently released first-wave data from a longitudinal study being conducted with seven thousand high school students in Queensland indicates that the majority of high schoolers expect to get married (Skrbis et al. 76). Significant political attention and debate in Australia has centred on the issue of marriage “equality” in relation to legislating same-sex marriage. Many accounts problematise marriage in Australia today by focussing on the current inequities involved in who can and cannot legally get married, which are important debates to be had in the process of understanding the persistent importance of marriage as a social institution. This paper, however, provides a critical account of “equality” in contemporary heterosexual marriages or heteronormative monogamous relationships. I argue that, far from being a mundane “old” debate, the distribution of unpaid work between spouses has a significant effect on women’s spousal satisfaction, and it calls into question the notion of “marriage equality” in everyday heterosexual marriages whether these are civil or common law relationships. I suggest that the contemporary “Hollywood” fantasy about marriage, which informs the same-sex marriage movement, sets up expectations that belie most people’s lived realities.Project Overview This paper draws on data from a larger research project that explores the impact of globalised ideas about good womanhood and good motherhood on Western Australian women, and how local context shapes these women’s personal ideals about their own life trajectories. Interviews were conducted with a series of women living in regional Western Australia. While more women were interviewed as part of the larger research project, this paper draws on interviews with seven intending-to-mother women and fifteen mothers. Through several open-ended questions, the women were asked about either their plans for motherhood or their experiences of motherhood, in relation to additional expectations of women’s lives, such as participation in the paid sector and body ideals. Married women were also asked about how unpaid labour—that is, domestic and, where relevant, childcare labour—is divided between themselves and their husbands. Women’s responses to these questions provide a critical account of how marriage and the notion of “equality” is currently lived out in Australia. To ensure confidentiality, their real names have been replaced by pseudonyms. My purpose in drawing on my own data in conjunction with literature on the gendered division of unpaid labour is to emphasise that while the theoretical insights are not new, the fact that a gendered disparity continues to exist is of concern because of women’s dissatisfaction with the situation, particularly in the context of frequent claims that equality is already achieved, and given that it queries the fantasy of marriage continuing to circulate in contemporary culture. The women I interviewed responded openly to questions about the division of domestic, and where relevant, childcare labour and the affects of this on their relationships. Feminist approaches to the research process highlight the importance of being reflexive about the relationship(s) between researcher and researched to make the presence of the researcher in the research process explicit (Ramazanoglu and Holland 156). Ramazanoglu and Holland argue “producing knowledge through empirical research is not the same as acting as a conduit for the voices of others” (116). While the power dynamic between researcher and researched is not generally an equal one, the fact that I am younger than all of my participants bar one (who is the same age) I believe went some way towards diffusing my position of power in the interviews. Some of my participants were also either already known to me, or had been referred to me by another participant prior to the interview, which may have made the process of interview less intimidating and more comfortable. Importantly, in many instances, my participants’ reflections about the division of unpaid labour in their marriages, their expectations, hopes for the future, and feelings about it mirrored my own feelings and realities. I related personally to their experiences, and empathise with their dilemmas. This is significant methodologically because “emotional connectedness” (Coffey 158–9) including a close identification with participants (Conle 53–4) influences the process of interpretation. However, in Scott’s terms, power operated through my assessment of participants’ dilemmas being similar to my own and my writing up of their interviews (780). The findings presented in this paper are based on my interpretation of the voices of others, and are unavoidably influenced by my personal context as the researcher. Two predominate themes emerged from women’s accounts of unpaid domestic and childcare labour. Women anticipated their partner’s participation in domestic care activities, although in most cases, this expectation was not met. Further, women held these expectations for “when they had children,” even though their partners did not presently participate in domestic activities. At the same time, the women accepted that, while their husband’s should participate more in unpaid work, this participation would not be equal to their own responsibilities regardless of what other activities either were engaged in outside of the domestic and familial sphere. I found that while women expect a fairer division of domestic labour, they do not expect it to be “50/50.” I argue that the gendered division of labour has changed less than most couples readily admit, as seen through the following overview. Gender Relations: Changes and Stases In Western societies, women’s roles in the public sphere have changed considerably over the last fifty plus years. Women now constitute a significant percentage of the paid workforce. Today, couple families where both partners work in the paid sector are the most common of all families (ABS, Family Functioning). However, there has not been a corresponding shift in the way that unpaid labour is divided between partners. Only one half of the historical gendered division of labour has undergone change; while women as well as men now operate in the paid (and thus valued) sector (traditionally available only to men), women still predominately perform most of the unpaid (and undervalued) domestic work. Gender researchers have been reporting on the unequal division of domestic labour between couples, and the material and emotional consequences for women, for a long time (see Hochschild; DeVault; Coltrane), yet I argue that it remains largely unchanged, and dismissed as an important issue in the Australian community. Hochschild’s work, in particular, made a significant contribution to research into the gendered division of unpaid labour between couples by analysing and reporting on interview data collected from fifty couples, both working full-time in the paid sector, with young children. Hochschild identified and reported on couples justifications for the way they divide domestic and care, which, as I will demonstrate, are still common today (17, see also Hochschild with Machung 128). Several contemporary studies (Meisenbach; Shelton and Johnson) report that women perform the majority of domestic and care duties, despite women’s long established presence in the paid workforce. Indeed, historically, the majority of women participated in the workforce, with only middle and upper-class women experiencing a delayed entry to paid work. In their review of current research into the division of household labour in the United States Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard find that: In spite of women’s increased commitment to the labour force market and their associated political and social achievements, their advances have not been paralleled in the familiar sphere…the gains women have made outside the home have not translated directly into an egalitarian allocation of household labour…[American] women continue to perform the vast majority of unpaid tasks performed to satisfy the needs of family members or to maintain the home. (767) Exchange theories predicted that women’s increased participation in paid work would stimulate an increase in the time men spent performing domestic work (Carter 16). However, various studies including Lupton’s investigation into the distinctions, or indeed, commonalities, between the roles of “mother” and “father” find that women still perform the majority of childcare and domestic labour, even those who are also engaged in paid employment. Time use studies conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics also suggest that this prediction has not eventuated, and that whilst some women may have an improved capacity to negotiate with their partners about domestic labour division because of their income, this is not always the case (Carter 17). Ella (aged 32, mother of one) described “quite enjoying it” when her partner was away on business because it was less work not having to deal with his mess on top of other tasks. This is consistent with earlier research findings that single mothers spend less time on domestic work than women with children who live with men (Carter 17). It is common for men to do less domestic work than they create (Bittman 3). All of the women I interviewed who were in partnerships and intending to mother sometime in the future were either employed full-time in the paid sector, seeking full-time employment after completing graduate degrees, or combining paid work with tertiary study. One participant had recently dropped her hours from full-time to part-time because she was pregnant. All of the partnered women who were already mothering at the time of the interview were in full-time employment before the birth of their first child, and seven of them were still in paid employment; one full-time, one three-quarter time and five part time. Most women reported doing the majority, if not all, of the domestic and childcare labour regardless of whether they combined this work with paid work outside of the home. Whilst some women were indifferent to the inequity in their domestic labour and childcare responsibilities, most identified it as a source of tension, conflict, and disappointment in their spousal relationships. These women had anticipated greater participation by their husbands in the home, an optimism derived from some other source than those women with whom they interact.Anticipating Participation In their in-depth psychological study into the specific temporal disruptions and occasions of social dislocation ensuing from the birth of a child in the United States, Monk et al. found that the disruption to daily events and the reduction of social activities were more discernible for women than for men. Other research (Arendell; Hays; Mauthner; Nicolson) conducted at this time concurred with these findings. Similar results are found over a decade later. Choi et al. found most women feel at least some resentment about the impact of parenthood on their lives being “far greater for them than for their partner” (174). Influenced by reports of a supposed ideological shift in the late 1990s wherein fathers were encouraged to take a more active role in the raising of their children in ways previously considered maternal (Lupton 51), women today tend to anticipate that their husband’s will participate more in domestic and care activities, which predominately, does not eventuate. Consequently, feeling “let down” by partners has been identified as a key factor in the presentation of postnatal depression (Choi et al. 175). The women I interviewed who were planning to mother sometime in the future anticipated that their husbands would participate more in the home after the birth of a child. Gabrielle (aged 25, married for three years) hoped that this would be an 80/20 split. The idea of an 80/20 split as an “improvement” may be confronting, but this is Gabrielle’s reality, and her predicament—shared by many other women today—captures the prevailing importance of discussions around the gendered division of domestic labour. Several interviewees who were already mothering had also anticipated that their husbands would participate alongside them in household and childcare related activities. For most, this kind of participation had not eventuated and women were left with feelings of disappointment, and tensions and conflicts in their marriages. Grainne (aged 30, married for five years, mother of one) had expected her husband to be reasonably supportive and helpful around the house when they started their family. Yet she was unpleasantly surprised and intensely disappointed by how participation in the home had worked out since she and her husband had become parents six months ago. Grainne explained that she: expected that my husband would be more supportive and more helpful…I’ve been even more disappointed because he hasn’t followed through with…how I thought he would be…I almost despair a bit…we have actually struggled more in our relationship in the last six months than in the five and a half years. Grainne spoke about the impact of this inequity on the intimacy in her relationship. This is consistent with Pocock who identifies inequity in the division of unpaid work as one of “two work-related spokes in the wheel” (106–107) of spousal intimacy; the other being time and energy to communicate. According to Pocock intimacy, not necessarily sexual, is lacking in many Australian spousal relationships with unequal divisions of unpaid labour (107). While the loss of intimacy results in feelings of loss and regret, for some women, it is characterised as a past concern in their overworked and stressed lives (Pocock 107). Several women from professional backgrounds, in particular Lena and Freya, identified the inequity in their partnerships when it came to home duties and childcare as a significant, and even as the “main,” source of tension and conflict in their spousal relationships. Lena (aged 30, married for five years, mother of two) described having “great debates” with her husband about the division of domestic labour and childcare in their partnership. From her husband’s perspective, it is her “job…to do all the kids and the housework and everything else,” whereas from Lena’s perspective, “he should be able to feed the kids and clean up” on the weekend if she needs to go out. Freya (aged 30, married for ten years, mother of three) also talked about the “various rows” she had had with her husband about her domestic and childcare load. She described herself as “not coping” with the workload. For all of these women, domestic inequality in their marriages has real emotional consequences for them as individuals, and is a significant source of marital discontent. Women’s decisions about whether and when to have children, and how many to have, are influenced by the inequity experienced in marital relationships. Although I suggest that women’s desire to become mothers may eventually outweigh these immediate and everyday concerns, reports from already mothering women suggest that this source of conflict does not dissipate. The evidence gathered from my interviews demonstrates that trying to change dynamics in a relationship, when it comes to domestic tasks, is even more difficult when it is compounded with the emotional, mental and physical demands of motherhood, as Choi et al. also suggest (177).Accepting Inequality The findings of my study suggest that women intending to mother and those already mothering continue to expect to do more domestic and childcare labour than their partners. However, even with this concession, some women are still over-optimistic in their estimations about the amount of domestic labour their partner’s will perform. Fetterolf and Eagly find similar patterns in gender equality expectations in the United States amongst female college undergraduates planning to mother sometime in the future (90–91). Some women I interviewed who were planning to mother sometime in the future described their own attempts to negotiate with their partner to make them do more work. For instance, Gabrielle (aged 25, married for three years), who, as discussed earlier, hoped that her husband will participate more in the home after the birth of a child, said: Once we’ve had kids he might change and realise he might have to help out a little bit more, I can’t actually do everything…I don’t think it’ll be 50/50 just from experience of how we’ve been married so far… I do hope that it’ll be maybe 80/20 or something like that. When asked about whether their current division of house work was a concern for her, particularly in relation to having children, Gabrielle replied that she just “nagged” about it. Putting her discontent in the frame of “nagging” trivialises the issue. While it is men who tend to characterise women’s discontent as “nagging,” women can also internalise, and use this language to minimise their own feelings. That men “just don’t see mess and dirt” in the same way that women do is a popular idea drawn on to account for women’s acceptance of inequity in the home as evidenced in numerous statements from the women I interviewed. Commentaries like these align with Carter’s (1) observations that generally accepted ideas about women and men (for example, that women see dirt and men do not) are drawn on to explain and justify domestic labour arrangements. In response to how domestic labour is divided between her husband and herself, Marguerite (aged 25, married for ten months), like Gabrielle (aged 25, married for three years), described an “80/20 split,” with her as the 80%. Marguerite commented that “it’s not that he’s lazy, it’s just that he doesn’t see it, he doesn’t realise that a house needs cleaning.” Fallding described these ideas, and the behaviours that ensue, as a type of patriarchal family model, specifically “rightful patriarchy” (69) that includes the idea that women naturally pay more attention to detail than men. Conclusion “Falling in love” and “getting married” remains an important cultural narrative in Australian society. As Gabrielle (aged 25, married for three years) described, people ask you “when are you getting married? When are you having kids?” because “that’s just what you do.” I argue that offering critical accounts of heteronormative monogamous relationships/marriage equality from a variety of positions is important to understandings of these relationships in contemporary Australia. Accounts of the division of unpaid labour in the home between spouses provide one forum through which equality within marriage/heteronormative monogamous relationships can be examined. A tension exists between an expectation of participation on the part of women about their partner’s role in the home, and a latent acceptance by most women that equality in the division of unpaid work is unrealistic and unachievable. Men remain largely removed from work in the home and appear to have a degree of choice about their level of participation in domestic and care duties. The consistency of these findings with earlier work, some of which is over a decade old, suggests that the way families divide unpaid domestic and care labour remains gendered, despite significant changes in other aspects of gender relations. Many of the current discussions about marriage idealise it in ways that are not borne out in this research. 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