Session Chair: Katrin Tiidenberg
Presentation 1
(Re)Attaching Life, Body and Memory Through Breonna’s Garden in Augmented Reality
Alisa Hardy
University of Maryland, United States of America
This study examines the augmented reality (AR) app Breonna’s Garden created in honor of Breonna Taylor. On March 13, 2020, Taylor, a twenty-six-year-old Black woman, was fatally murdered in her home in Louisville, Kentucky when multiple plainclothes officers executed a no-knock warrant as part of an investigation for narcotics. Created one year later, Breonna’s Garden emerged as an AR experience accessible through mobile devices developed by Lady Pheønix and Big Rock Creative in collaboration with Taylor’s family. Breonna’s Garden functions as a sanctuary that cultivates a sacred space for healing and for society to process their emotions of grief. This digital garden serves as a case study for understanding how Black feminist praxis is intertwined with AR technologies as a form of what Badia Ahad-Legardy calls "regenerative nostalgia," offering users a space for healing, activism, and reflexivity.
Presentation 2
FROM #BODYPOSITIVE TO #WEIGHTLOSSJOURNEY – EXPLORING WEIGHT LOSS NARRATIVES WITHIN THE FAT COMMUNITY
Ella Maria Holi
University of Bergen, Norway
The body positive and fat activist community is an extensive online network crossing many social media platforms, particularly active on Instagram and TikTok. Social media platforms provide “offer opportunities to support, community and practical solutions to issues” (Kyrölä, 2021, p. 113), and a space for resistance (e.g. Puhakka, 2023) for the body positive and fat acceptance movements.
Even though there is not a commonly agreed set of rules for body positivity or fat activism, the idea of intentional weight loss has largely been rejected by the fat community in favor of encouraging health promoting behaviors without the need for weight loss. However, the previously unified activist front has started to crack as prominent figures within the fat community have taken a sharp turn from #bodypositive content to documenting their #weightlossjourney.
Drawing from heory on master narrative, counter narratives and narrative resistance (Bamberg, 2004; Bamberg & Wipff, 2020; Hochman & Spector‐Mersel, 2020; McLean & Syed, 2015; Meretoja, 2020; Ronai & Cross, 1998), as well as fat studies, I explore online social media weight loss narratives of members of the fat community, as well as the responses from the fat community. More specifically, using digital ethnographic methods, I examine how the weight loss narratives on Instagram and TikTok negotiate between hegemonic narratives and narratives emerging from the fat community.
The analysis of #weightlossjourney narratives shows how online activist communities can be splintered when versions of the master narrative the communities have collectively resisted become adapted by members of the community.
Presentation 3
‘You cannot expect such validation in real life:’ Historical continuities and change in women’s romancing with AI chatbot Replika
Iliana Depounti, Paula Saukko
Loughborough University, United Kingdom
There is long-standing research on women’s use of media for romantic/erotic fantasy, including novelettes (Radway, 1984), porn (Juffer, 1998) and erotica apps Bellas & McAllister, 2023). This presentation explores the similarities and differences between earlier forms of media romancing and the use of an AI companion. Emerging research on AI chatbots uses frameworks that assign novelty to human-machine communications. In this study, we focus on the user experience – we conducted qualitative, in-depth interviews with twenty mostly midlife female users of the Replika chatbot, whom we recruited online. Thematic analysis identified that the women used the bot, first, for fantasies of a companion they were lacking in real life, such as an attentive lover, friend or child, in the context of feeling alone (due to e.g. living alone, caring for family, inattentive husband or having a chronic condition). Second, the bot was reflexively used for caring for or managing the self, such as validating one’s worth and emotions to neutralize negative thinking, following the therapeutic ethos (Illouz, 2008, Gravel-Patry, 2023). The fantasies of an attentive partner were similar to previous work on romancing, although the women’s life situations were more diverse than often investigated. The use of the bot for regulating emotions, however, was new and signifies the spirit of our time emphasizing self-management and positive thinking. The study contextualizes human-machine communication by discussing the individual experiences of female Replika users to understand better both change and continuity in our communication with media, from romance novels to AI chatbots.
Presentation 4
“YOU WILL BLOOM IF YOU TAKE THE TIME TO WATER YOURSELF:” A CONTENT AND THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF #INSTAGRAMVSREALITY IMAGES AND CAPTIONS ON INSTAGRAM
Meaghan Furlano, Kaitlynn Mendes
Western University, Canada
In 2017, a new trend emerged on social media called “Instagram vs. Reality.” To participate, Instagram users were encouraged to post side-by-side photos of themselves, one side being an idealized 'Instagram' depiction and the other a more ‘realistic’ one. Using a qualitative content and thematic analysis, we asked: How does a trend like Instagram vs. Reality fit within a context of popular feminism and confidence culture? Mindful of the ways that popular feminist campaigns privilege dominant feminine representations, we also asked who is contributing to the trend, and what messages these contributors are spreading? The results indicated two things. First, we argue that the trend is a neoliberal project emphasizing individual psychological change via developing media literacy, rather than efforts aimed at social transformation. Second, we discovered that the trend fits within popular feminist media representations because it privileges and makes visible young, slim, conventionally attractive white women, at the expense of more diverse body types, ages, and non-normative beauty standards. We conclude by taking a stand against arguments situating media literacy as the best solution to combating social ills, arguing instead that media literacy is a neoliberal harm reduction strategy that best fits within the ideology of confidence culture.
