Internet Studies without Shame

The final speaker in this AoIR 2012 plenary is Terri Senft, who argues for a department of Shameless Studies. Is anyone actually shameless? We all constantly negotiate our shame, for all sorts of reasons; we are in solidarity with one another where we share a specific form of shame.

Similarly, we gather online around shared topics; an early example of such gathering was the early Web's Camgirl movement, and so often the people engaging in these topics were also considered to be too much, too shameless, even though what happened here is to ease one's shame, to empower oneself.

To study such practices is to move away from the idealised Habermasian rational self, the well-behaved public sphere; we move towards an understanding of counterpublics, of micro-publics, or personal publics. Such understandings also reflect the changed demographics of Internet-based media.

In this complex networked public sphere, the ready circulation of information about individuals often serves to maintain and increase the shame – recent cases of suicide by teens who were being bullied, blackmailed, and otherwise harassed online clearly show this. Our research in the field of Internet studies cannot be disinterested and unemotional, for this reason – it must be creative, activist, effective, at least part of the time. We must take care to communicate our work as if someone's life depended on it – because in some cases, it just might.

(Ok, this talk was so much more than a quick blog post can do justice. Go Terri!)