Katherine Harrison

Online negotiations of infertility: Knowledge production in (in)fertility blogs

Although now used for a wide range of functions such as education, marketing and political commentary, blogs were originally a space for narrating personal life stories and have much in common with autobiography and diary genres. This article examines (in)fertility blogs written by women trying to conceive, arguing that blogging helps women to renegotiate their experiences of femininity when motherhood is denied or difficult. To do this, I focus on blogs as a space for knowledge production, creating a new paradigm for fertility information which challenges both the doctor/patient power dynamic and traditional discourses concerning fertility. I show how bloggers use their blogs to ‘make sense’ of their (in)fertility experiences by looking at the distinctive content, style and format of their blogs. Finally, the knowledge produced in the blogs is problematized by ‘situating’ them within a broader sociohistorical framework.

Exploring Grey Zones and Blind Spots in the Binaries and Boundaries of E.L. James' Fifty Shades Trilogy

In this article, we problematise the implications of some of these familiar binaries asthey are used in the Fifty Shades trilogy. Through analysis of some of the trilogy’s narrative tropes, we inve ...

Researching Intimacies and New Media: Methodological Opportunities and Challenges

Researching intimacies and new media encompasses a wide variety of intersecting practices and relationships. This special issue presents contributions from researchers who are investigating practices of intimacy mediated either wholly or in part through new media in which a variety of different methodological opportunities and challenges are highlighted and discussed. Existing research has addressed different combinations of new media, intimacy, and methodology, but there remains space for a dedicated focus on the ways in which these areas are interrelated and entangled. The articles in this special issue build up a conversation around this particular intersection from a range of directions, from reflections on specific technological devices/apps and their promotion of particular forms of intimacies that may lead to (dis)comfort and (dis)connection, to the intimate—and sometimes risky—investments in research processes and fieldwork, as well as the ethical frameworks and decision-making processes guiding the research.

A virtual promise of happiness: kinship on the websites of Danish fertility clinics and sperm banks

ABSTRACT Each month thousands of people travel across national borders to access assisted reproductive treatments across Europe. The possibility to purchase fertility treatments in a similar way to other products and services has led not only to a clearly defined market place and customer, but has also contributed to scholarly work on critical studies of kinship. To date, however, there has been little research enquiring into how new media technologies relied upon by parents for finding fertility information may contribute to shaping and circulating ideas of kinship. Within the transnational fertility marketplace, Denmark has become a hub for would-be parents due to liberal legislation, cheaper prices and shorter waiting times. As the first contact point for potential fertility travellers, the websites of Danish fertility clinics and sperm banks fulfil several roles, including marketing, disseminating information about scientific breakthroughs, and providing guidance on healthy lifestyle choices for potential parents. Using multimodal analysis of home pages, this paper examines how the websites of Danish fertility clinics and sperm banks contribute to shaping and circulating ideas about kinship. These websites attract and engage with customers by creating emotive representations of kinship that rely on the mother-child image.

Who is the assumed user in the smart city

This chapter starts with the premise that the design and development of an artefact (a system or tool) is a process that assumes certain users and usages Akrich (Managing technology in society: the approach of constructive technology assessment. Pinter, London, pp 167–185, 1995) [1]. The assumed user of an artefact shapes the affordances and limitations of the artefact; designers and developers strive to create a system that balances their understanding of the needs of the assumed user and the material limitations of the technology itself. Inspired by critical perspectives towards design, development and use of technological artefacts drawn from science and technology studies, this chapter will ask: who is the assumed user in the contemporary smart city? Illustrating this critical framework with examples from contemporary smart cities projects, this chapter will encourage the reader to reflect on the characteristics of the assumed user, and which users may have been unwittingly overlooked during design and development. It poses the question: which citizens’ needs are not adequately addressed because they do not constitute the assumed user(s)? Foley and Ferri (J Res Spec Educ Needs 12:192–200, 2012) [6], Strengers (Interactions 21:24–31, 2014 [19].

“Relive the passion, find your affair”: revising the infidelity script

Affairs websites such as Victoria Milan, Gleeden or Illicit Encounters are the latest in a long line of commercial online ventures offering different kinds of intimacy. While online dating sites have long been used as a covert way to find additional partners or extramarital intimacy, recent years have seen an increase in the variety of new media services explicitly targeted at unfaithful partners. However, as the July 2015 hacking (and subsequent media coverage) of well-known affairs site, Ashley Madison, showed, the status of these sites is still contested and the services they offer still highly provocative. With this in mind, this article explores the intersection of new media and the contested form of intimacy often referred to as ‘infidelity’. In this article, I analyse material from four websites offering non-consensual non-monogamies to examine how they are attempting to change the cultural script of infidelity through a combination of content and material affordances. To do so, I draw on the idea of intimacy as a kind of organizing ‘public’ narrative that determines ‘private’ acts of intimacy (Berlant, 2000).

Becoming-a-firefighter – on the intra-active relationship between firefighters and their tools

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the relationship between the members of a local fire brigade in Sweden and their tools, as well as the organisational dynamics that forge this relation. Drawing on the work of Karen Barad [2007. Meeting the universe halfway. Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham: Duke University Press], and particularly her notion of intra-action, the intention is to unpick the strong material and symbolic relationship between men, masculinity and tools seen in this profession. While Barad’s work has been useful within feminist theories, few attempts have been made to investigate how her work can benefit critical studies of men and masculinities, one exception being Ulf Mellström [2016. From a hegemonic politics of masculinity to an ontological politics of intimacy and vulnerability? Ways of imagining through Karen Barads work. Rhizomes, 30. Retrieved from http://www.rhizomes.net/issue30/mellstrom.html] who explores how intimacy may be productive in developing more nuanced understandings of masculinities. Inspired by this approach, this article explores how using Barad’s notion of intra-action as an analytical tool can facilitate a deeper exploration of men’s intimate relationships with technologies. The intra-action between the members of the local fire brigade and their firefighting tools is not a one-off encounter, but takes place continuously. Hence, while a tool – in a specific situation – becomes an integral part of the body and the identity of a group of people, it requires constant maintenance in order to accomplish successful fire extinctions.

Detecting bodily and discursive noise in the naming of biotech products

This article contributes to existing feminist technoscience analyses by proposing a new tool for examining how norms governing viable and unviable bodies are discursively constructed in an increasingly technologized world. This tool is the result of synthesizing two existing concepts: white noise from the field of media theory/information studies, and the abject from psychosemiotics/gender studies. Synthesizing these two concepts produces an enriched term for detecting interrelations between discursive disturbances and disturbances in bodily norms. In this article, the synthesized concept (abject/ noise) is used as a tool to analyse material concerning the assignment of International Nonproprietary Names (or ‘generic’ names) to biotechnological drugs. Biotech offers itself as a prime testing ground for this new tool, replete as it is with bodily anxieties, powerful discourses and innovative technologies. This article compares three versions of an INN guidance document showing how anxieties about bodily norms are reflected in, and managed through, these documents.