Gregg - Testing the Friendship
Gregg, M. (2008). Testing the Friendship: Feminism and the Limits of Online Social Networks. Feminist Media Studies, 8(2): 206-209.
With the use of online technologies now becoming a matter of course for many middle-class professionals, research into online cultures and communities is thankfully starting to move beyond mass media demands to diagnose internet subcultures as the realm of pedophilia or pathology. Rather than fuelling parents’ fears about teen vulnerability or panics over privacy, a growing body of research is demonstrating that online friendships and communities are a necessary recompense for the intrusion of public-sphere demands on leisure time, the widespread expectation of computer literacy among young people and the long hours culture of the many engaged in computer-mediated information jobs. The extent to which people choose to conduct significant parts of their personal lives online – from finding the next book they should read to finding a life partner – shows that we are witnessing a change in both the opportunities available for previous forms of leisured activity and attitudes as to their reliability in providing satisfying personal relationships. What is not seen developing in line with these shifts is a range of theoretical tools for feminists to draw on to link these changes to established methodologies of inquiry and critique.
Melissa Gregg “Testing the Friendship: Feminism and the Limits of Online Social Networks”