AoIR Abstract

Author(s): Malin Sveningsson

Title: "Young women’s gender- and identity work in a Swedish Web community. "

*** The Internet enables us to seek information and to communicate with each other, but it also provides us with new ways to meet and create relationships with other individuals. The meeting places on the Internet attract various kinds of people, but it is perhaps notably children, adolescents and young adults who are the heaviest users. In Sweden, one of the most popular online meeting places is a web community called Lunarstorm (www.lunarstorm.se), which is also the most visited web site of all Nordic countries. Half of all Swedes aged 12-24 visit Lunarstorm on a regular basis (i.e., at least once a week). Out of the same age group, 17,8 % visit Lunarstorm every day. Although there are older members, most of its members are students in high school, university/college, or in the senior level of the nine-year compulsory school. Young people’s use of meeting places online implies that the means for adults, such as parents and teachers, to get insight into and to control what young people actually do during their leisure time may decrease. This, in turn, has often led to moral panics (Cohen, 1972). During the autumn of 2002, in a series of articles and TV documentaries, Swedish media addressed the issue of youngsters’ doings in Lunarstorm. The reason why this discussion evolved was that girls and young women were told to have been contacted in the web community, and persuaded to pose in pornographic pictures. This, in turn, led to a further discussion on the way teenage girls presented themselves on their personal pages (so called “krypin”) at Lunarstorm, pages that all members can log on to and look at. The presentations of self were said to often be sexually challenging, both as concern photos and presentations of self in written text. At the same time, paradoxically, Lunarstorm is known to be a web community with much regulation on users’ behavior. First, members often use Lunarstorm in order to interact with people they already know from their offline lives (for example class mates). The fact that users’ offline identities are known will likely increase the amount of social control (Sveningsson, 2001a). Secondly, in order to use the community at all, one must register as a member, and thus provide web masters with real name and address, social security number, etc. This implies that the means for web masters to sanction unwanted behavior increase. Procedures for informing against people who violate norms and rules are well developed, and Lunarstorm even cooperates with the Swedish police to prevent various types of crimes, such as prostitution and child pornography. The media discourse around Lunarstorm evokes questions on girls’ and women’s sexuality, which has often been seen as something threatening, both to society and to the women themselves. Female sexuality is often not acknowledged, but women are rather seen as helpless victims being abused by male predators. However, is it possible that things have changed? How do young women’s own attitudes towards sexuality look today? What part does the web community play in these attitudes? How common are these sexually challenging presentations of self and what do they really mean? Should the web community be seen as a space where young women can, in a relatively safe way, experiment with both sexuality and gender identity, and where an exposure of the body can be done in another way, perhaps with a different meaning, than in so called real life environments? The aim of the study is to look into these questions, and to challenge the traditional view of girls’ and women’s sexuality, as well as the view of the Internet as a harmful and dangerous place for young women. Above all it looks at the function Lunarstorm fills in young Swedish women’s gender- and identity work today. The method used is online ethnography, where material, such as young women’s descriptions of themselves in their personal “krypin”, are collected from Lunarstorm. Additional material, such as contributions to the web community’s discussion groups, participant observations and interviews with users, is also used. Theories deal above all with issues of identity (Giddens, 1991), presentation of self (Goffman, 1959; 1967), gender display (Goffman, 1976) and femininity as performance (Walkerdine, 1990).

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AoIR 5.0

	*Author(s):* Malin Sveningsson
	*Title:* "Young women’s gender- and identity work in a Swedish Web community. "

***	The Internet enables us to seek information and to communicate with each other, but it also provides us with new ways to meet and create relationships with other individuals. The meeting places on the Internet attract various kinds of people, but it is perhaps notably children, adolescents and young adults who are the heaviest users. In Sweden, one of the most popular online meeting places is a web community called Lunarstorm (www.lunarstorm.se), which is also the most visited web site of all Nordic countries. Half of all Swedes aged 12-24 visit Lunarstorm on a regular basis (i.e., at least once a week). Out of the same age group, 17,8 % visit Lunarstorm every day. Although there are older members, most of its members are students in high school, university/college, or in the senior level of the nine-year compulsory school. Young people’s use of meeting places online implies that the means for adults, such as parents and teachers, to get insight into and to control what young people actually do during their leisure time may decrease. This, in turn, has often led to moral panics (Cohen, 1972). During the autumn of 2002, in a series of articles and TV documentaries, Swedish media addressed the issue of youngsters’ doings in Lunarstorm. The reason why this discussion evolved was that girls and young women were told to have been contacted in the web community, and persuaded to pose in pornographic pictures. This, in turn, led to a further discussion on the way teenage girls presented themselves on their personal pages (so called “krypin”) at Lunarstorm, pages that all members can log on to and look at. The presentations of self were said to often be sexually challenging, both as concern photos and presentations of self in written text. At the same time, paradoxically, Lunarstorm is known to be a web community with much regulation on users’ behavior. First, members often use Lunarstorm in order to interact with people they already know from their offline lives (for example class mates). The fact that users’ offline identities are known will likely increase the amount of social control (Sveningsson, 2001a). Secondly, in order to use the community at all, one must register as a member, and thus provide web masters with real name and address, social security number, etc. This implies that the means for web masters to sanction unwanted behavior increase. Procedures for informing against people who violate norms and rules are well developed, and Lunarstorm even cooperates with the Swedish police to prevent various types of crimes, such as prostitution and child pornography. The media discourse around Lunarstorm evokes questions on girls’ and women’s sexuality, which has often been seen as something threatening, both to society and to the women themselves. Female sexuality is often not acknowledged, but women are rather seen as helpless victims being abused by male predators. However, is it possible that things have changed? How do young women’s own attitudes towards sexuality look today? What part does the web community play in these attitudes? How common are these sexually challenging presentations of self and what do they really mean? Should the web community be seen as a space where young women can, in a relatively safe way, experiment with both sexuality and gender identity, and where an exposure of the body can be done in another way, perhaps with a different meaning, than in so called real life environments? The aim of the study is to look into these questions, and to challenge the traditional view of girls’ and women’s sexuality, as well as the view of the Internet as a harmful and dangerous place for young women. Above all it looks at the function Lunarstorm fills in young Swedish women’s gender- and identity work today. The method used is online ethnography, where material, such as young women’s descriptions of themselves in their personal “krypin”, are collected from Lunarstorm. Additional material, such as contributions to the web community’s discussion groups, participant observations and interviews with users, is also used. Theories deal above all with issues of identity (Giddens, 1991), presentation of self (Goffman, 1959; 1967), gender display (Goffman, 1976) and femininity as performance (Walkerdine, 1990).