Textually active: new communications technologies and young women's relationships

Abstract

Much research has considered how young women negotiate their identities and heterosexual relationships, but little has explored how their lives interact with new communications technologies. Framed by feminist post-structural theories, this study aimed to inform this under-investigated aspect of young women's social worlds drawing on discursive analytical tools. The two-part study involved focus group interviews with 16 young women (Part I) and analysis of material gathered and published by a journalist who posed as a 13-year-old girl to conduct chat room conversations via mobile telephone with several unidentified men (Part II). Each of the three one-hour focus group interviews was audio-taped and fully transcribed. The chat room data was extracted from three articles published in a national weekly newspaper, and contextualised by transcripts of the conversations recorded and supplied by the journalist. Analysis of both data sets drew on Foucaldian discourse analysis techniques; specific analytical tools included identifying patterns of meaning, discursive resources, positioning and subjectivity evident in the data. Analysis of data revealed the many possibilities for multiple and fluid identities offered by new technologies. Analysis of the young women's talk relating to their 'textual' relationships identified their positioning within contradictory 'new' femininity discourses: the sassy, assertiveness of 'Girl Power' and the vulnerability and insecurity of 'reviving Ophelia' as in conventional femininity. Analysis of the chat room data demonstrated cyberspace as a prime site for positioning a young women as a sexual subject, whose desirability is based on her physical - and sometimes sexual-appearance. Analysis revealed the extensive use of traditional heterosexual sex-drive discourse by the 'men' in the chat room, who generally positioned themselves as active initiators of sex, and the 'girl' as a passive sexual subject, thus indicating an unbalanced power structure. In some instances the 'men' drew on the sexual 'fun' of 'Girl Power' discourse in locating the 'girl' as sexually adventurous and creative. Findings suggest the possibilities offered by new technologies for multiple human identities may present a double bind for young women: while technologies may 'free' them to be more of themselves, it may also serve to 'entrap' them.