Ti t l e Th e w alk t h r o u g h m e t h o d : a n a p p r o a c h t o t h e s t u dy of a p p s

This study extends previous research into social networking sites (SNSs) as environments that often reduce spatial, temporal, and social boundaries, which can result in collapsed contexts for social situations. Context collapse was investigated through interviews and Facebook walkthroughs with 27 LGBTQ young people in the United Kingdom. Since diverse sexualities are often stigmatized, participants' sexual identity disclosure decisions were shaped by both the social conditions of their online networks and the technological architecture of SNSs. Context collapse was experienced as an event through which individuals intentionally redefined their sexual identity across audiences or managed unintentional disclosure. To prevent unintentional context collapse, participants frequently reinstated contexts through tailored performances and audience separation. These findings provide insight into stigmatized identity performances in networked publics while situating context collapse within a broader understanding of impression management, which paves the way for future research exploring the identity implications of everyday SNS use.

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Leaked documents, press coverage, and user protests have increasingly drawn attention to social media platforms’ seemingly contradictory governance practices. We investigate the governance approaches of Tinder, Instagram, and Vine through detailed analyses of each platform, using the ‘walkthrough method’ (Light, Burgess, and Duguay, 2016 The walkthrough method: An approach to the study of apps. New Media & Society 20(3).), as well as interviews with their queer female users. Across these three platforms, we identify a common approach we call ‘patchwork platform governance’: one that relies on formal policies and content moderation mechanisms but pays little attention to dominant platform technocultures (including both developer cultures and cultures of use) and their sustaining architectures. Our analysis of these platforms and reported user experiences shows that formal governance measures like Terms of Service and flagging mechanisms did not protect users from harassment, discrimination, and censorship. Key components of the platforms’ architectures, including cross-platform connectivity, hashtag filtering, and algorithmic recommendation systems, reinforced these technocultures. This significantly limited queer women’s ability to participate and be visible on these platforms, as they often self-censored to avoid harassment, reduced the scope of their activities, or left the platform altogether. Based on these findings, we argue that there is a need for platforms to take more systematic approaches to governance that comprehensively consider the role of a platform’s architecture in shaping and sustaining dominant technocultures.

This article investigates the relationship between social media platforms and the production and dissemination of selfies in light of its implications for the visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) people. Applying an Actor Network Theory lens, two popular visual media apps, Instagram and Vine, are examined through a comparative walkthrough method. This reveals platform elements, or mediators, that can influence the conversational capacity of selfies in terms of the following: range, the variety of discourses addressed within a selfie; reach, circulation within and across publics; and salience, the strength and clarity of discourses communicated through a selfie. These mediators are illustrated through LGBTQ celebrity Ruby Rose's Instagram selfies and Vine videos. Instagram's use expectations encourage selfies focused on mainstream discourses of normative beauty and conspicuous consumption with an emphasis on appearance, extending through features constraining selfies' reach and salience. In contrast, Vine's broader use expectations enable a variety of discourses to be communicated across publics with an emphasis on creative, first-person sharing. These findings are reflected in Rose's Instagram selfies, which mute alternative discourses of gender and sexuality through desexualized and aesthetically appealing self-representations, while Vines display her personal side, enabling both LGBTQ and heterosexual, cisgender people to identify with her without minimizing non-normative aspects of her gender and sexuality. These findings demonstrate the relevance of platforms in shaping selfies' conversational capacity, as mediators can influence whether selfies feature in conversations reinforcing dominant discourses or in counterpublic conversations, contributing to everyday activism that challenges normative gender and sexual discourses.