Ann Werner

Experts, dads and technology Gendered talk about online music

With the internet and digital media technology increasingly central to practices around music, this shift is often seen as contributing to a networked music use characterized by individualism. Drawing on a focus group study with young adults in Stockholm and Moscow, this article argues, however, that digital music use today is shaped by discourses of difference, with gender a significant factor both in constructions of the ideal music and technology user, and in terms of musical influence and guidance. Taking into account contemporary research on new media technology, as well as feminist studies of technology and music, the article questions ideas of a neutral user of new music technologies, showing how the gendering of music and media technology can be seen as simultaneously context-bound and cutting across geographies.

Getting Bodied with Beyoncé on YouTube

In 2006 while I was conducting research about music use and gender among teenage girls in a Swedish town, one of the girls I was working with sent me an e-mail with a link to a YouTube video clip of a toddler dancing to Shakira’s song ‘Hips Don’t Lie’. Before Facebook, distributing URL links in e-mails was a common method for spreading viral videos, and because YouTube was a completely new website at the time, the video interested me. Later, in conversation with the girl in her home, I asked her about the clip and she said that she thought it was a funny video of a cute child, so she sent it to all her friends who might enjoy it. YouTube has grown in popularity since 2006 and is a platform for participatory media culture where millions of people from all over the world upload videos for others to view and comment on. While some of the videos posted on YouTube mirror overt commercial interests, others are part of a ‘do it yourself’ (DIY) culture where people conduct practical jokes, play music or dance. This type of online user culture is part of an increase in the number of people who produce their own media and broadcast it to others. Within British cultural studies of youth, combinations of music, style and play have been identified as three core ingredients of the lives and cultures of young people (Hebdige, 1979; McRobbie & Garber, 1975/2006).

Constructing Terminology and Defining Concepts for Gender Studies in Norway and Sweden

This position paper is written by four key researchers from two projects (one in Norway and one in Sweden) aiming to define and discuss terms and concepts in Gender Studies. It is inspired by the c ...

Gender jobs: Dilemmas of Gender Studies education and employability in Sweden:

In the past decades a large number of students have taken courses and degrees in Gender Studies around Europe and proceeded to find employment. This article is based on a quantitative and qualitative study carried out in 2012 of Gender Studies students in Sweden, their education and employment. The design of the study was inspired by a large European research project investigating Women’s Studies in Europe and concerned with the motives for doing Gender Studies among Swedish students, as well as who the students were, how they evaluated their Gender Studies education and what work they proceeded to after they left the university. In this article the results are discussed in terms of dilemmas: between Gender Studies’ critique of neoliberalism, employability and the former students’ wishes to be employed, and their evaluation of their studies and employment. The Swedish study is also compared with previous research in order to understand general and particular traits in Swedish Gender Studies education and employment. Analysis points to interesting contradictions within Gender Studies in relation to the labor market, student groups and employability.