"Agency and Authorship in Three Anonymous Blogs,” Presentation, Ethics, Technology and Identity Conference, 19, June.
This paper attempts to show three examples of blogs that, while by no means representative of computer mediated-communication, challenge conventional notions of digital identity -- decenteredness, lack of individual identity, and the death of the author. Counter to traditional internet identity theory, bloggers in these cases strive to communicate what is real, personal and yet resistive about being a specific kind of individual. Blogs – as personal narrative – are sincere and presentational spaces, challenging notions of identity as false and representational.
In these ways, these strategically chosen blogs demonstrate how even at the margins -- here a stripper, pedophile and gay person -- some people are still articulating power and agency even as the Internet becomes increasingly policed, censored and corporatized.
This paper employs a textual analysis of these three anonymous bloggers. It was written under the tutelage of Barbie Zelizer.
This paper seeks to illuminate the parallels in the campaign to eradicate prostitution with the campaign to push out gays, lesbians and other “sexual deviates” from the city. Specifically, it will compare the campaigns against prostitution from roughly 1900 to 1920 and the campaigns to against gays from about 1940 to 1963, although there will be some overlap. The aim of this research is to show how different marginalized communities can be attacked in similar ways, even if the subjects – gays and prostitutes – are different. It also seeks to show how a network of politics, money, public morality, public health interests, police corruption and dubious tactics can converge to stigmatize and control perceived “deviants.” Finding similarities and differences in the treatment of prostitutes and gay communities is significant. It sheds light on how gay communities were perceived in urban spaces, how they were marginalized and how they are part of history of “morality” campaigns and vice control.
Written under tutelage of Gayle Rubin and Esther Newton, University of Michigan, 2005.