Digital Cultures of Care: Affective Resonance on Facebook and TikTok
Presented by the Social Innovation Research Institute.
What are the forms and capacities for collective care in the current digital ecosystem? How is care understood and enacted via automated systems; between social media platforms, apps, and wearable devices; within health service-supported online forums; and across the dark web?
This seminar series looks at evidence and answers, as well as research practices and ethics, to understand personal and collective attempts to negotiate, manage, circumvent and otherwise find ways to reinvent cultures of care through digital platforms.
Our August webinar focuses on everyday affective and political practices of care on TikTok and Facebook.
Digital Carespaces: Everyday Care Practices among Donor-Conceived Peers
Giselle Newton, UNSW, Sydney
Online support groups can offer people with hidden or marginalised identities spaces to exchange social support. One example of such spaces are Facebook groups for donor-conceived people (that is, people created through third-party reproduction with a sperm or egg donor/s) in which members are able to access information, seek advice and share their personal experiences. Drawing on analysis of semi-structured interviews with Australian donor-conceived people who use Facebook groups (n=28), I explore everyday practices of care, focusing on three domains: affective practices, care work, and ethico-politics of care. In doing so, I seek to extend understandings of how care is enacted in informal digital communities, insights which likely have resonance across other carespaces in which experiences of marginality, complexity and difference coalesce.
Giselle Newton (she/her) is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Social Research in Health, UNSW, Sydney. She is conducting an interdisciplinary study (sociology/social semiotics) on donor-conceived people’s experiences, perspectives and support needs. Broadly, her research interests are relationships and family, identity and community, care and support, digital media and cultures. More information about her at www.DCstudy.org or on Twitter @newtonatron.
“It feels a lot warmer than other platforms”: LGBTQ+ young people’s use of TikTok for mental health support
Paul Byron, University of Technology Sydney
Social media have long been considered valuable for offering vital support and information to LGBTQ+ young people. Assessing the cultures of care of particular platforms - in this case, TikTok - can expand our understandings of everyday mental health support. Reporting on findings from the Digital Peer Support survey (Aug-Nov 2020) of LGBTQ+ young people in Australia, I consider participants' statements about TikTok as a support environment, particularly for 16-17 year olds who made up two thirds of the 660 respondents. A majority of participants named either Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube as the most valuable platforms for mental health support. Those who found TikTok as most supportive commonly noted that connections were between strangers and rarely involved direct interaction. That many LGBTQ+ young people are experiencing care and support without directly seeking this, nor directly engaging with their 'carers', underscores a need to investigate the affective aspects of TikTok. To do so, I consider how TikTok care is characterised by participants who feel that their mental health is supported through their use of the platform. Some participants referred to TikTok as more 'real', 'authentic' or 'sincere' than other platforms, or as a space that 'feels warm', feels 'like home', or 'just makes me smile.' These statements highlight the affective force of care on TikTok, whereby care, support and information are often found without active search. As such, TikTok care is unlikely to be noticed by health promoters and educators who typically see LGBTQ+ young people as ‘help-seekers’ - as actively seeking and finding support online, rather than support finding them – in this case, through algorithmic flows and everyday circulations of care.
Paul Byron is a postdoctoral researcher at UTS, currently researching digital peer support among LGBTQ+ young people. His research on digital cultures of care - in relation to young people’s mental health, sexual health, use of dating/hook-up apps, and LGBTQ+ peer support - is explored in his recent book, Digital Media, Friendship, and Cultures of Care.
Twitter: @paulibyron
Event contact
Professor Kath Albury kalbury@swin.edu.au
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