Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

4Q
Digital social worlds (Chair, Marjorie Kibby)
Suneel Jethani Self-tracking and body dysmorphia: materiality, mediation and a pragmatic reassertion of the social.
Wearable sensor-enabled devices and health and fitness data collecting mobile applications feature heavily
in the portrayal and understanding of body weight. While such technologies are generally viewed as having
positive impacts on health and body image, their role in body dysmorphic disorders remains under
theorised. In this paper, I examine user discourses occurring online around a range of unexpected and
idiosyncratic practices associated with the use of self-tracking technologies that are functioning to introduce
and/or repathologize dysmorphic cognitions of self (e.g. cheating, addiction). I argue that the use of selftracking
technologies to monitor weight complicate the relationship between body image (one’s attitudes,
beliefs and perception of their body) and body schema (perception of activity, pain, and physical potential)
in ways which alter the diagnosis, treatment and prognoses of body dysmorphic disorders. I suggest that a
more nuanced understanding of these relations are important to the development of new and innovative
devices within this particular class of technology. Further, as wearable devices and data collecting
applications become increasingly present in domestic, work, educational and clinical settings their
potentially iatrogenic impacts invite materialist analyses which foreground the technical process of
mediation via algorithms, the representation of data via interfaces and dashboards and the potential
mechanisms through which an enhanced dialog between users, healthcare professionals and developers
about increased data literacy, adverse event reporting and consumer protection might be achieved.
Helen Thornham* & Sarah Maltby
Bobbing for Chips: Dog Boards, Lifelines and the Digital Mundane
This paper draws on empirical data with British military personnel funded by an ESRC grant, in order to
investigate what we call the digital mundane in military life. We argue that social media and smartphone
technologies within the military offer a unique environment in which to investigate the ways individuals
position themselves within certain axes of institutional and cultural identities. On the one hand, the
convolutions, mediatory practices, and mundane social media rituals that service personnel employ through
their smartphones resonates widely with, for example, youth culture, digital mobile cultures. On the other
hand, service personnel are unique demographics – at risk on a range of personal and institutional scales
through social media use and the various actions of tagging, self-disclosure or sharing (for example).
Investigating normative mobile and social media use reveals nuanced and complex mediations with social
and mobile media, that draws on, and extends non-military practice into new (and increasingly normative)
terrains. Sexting, tagging, selfies and messaging, for example, constitute normative and quotidian behaviour
and high risk information sharing that potentially damages the military on reputational and operational
scales. In this paper we draw on our empirical material in order to ask about what the digital mundane
means for the military – in terms of identities and practices. But we also identify strong parallels outside the
military in terms of the sociotechnical affordances of the particular Apps and social media the military utilise,
which suggest that contrary to these practices being unique to a masculine and even misogynistic military
culture, are in fact endemic of a much wider gendering of mobile culture that is shaping normative
communication practices more widely.
Punit Jagasia
The Cultural Regulation Of Facebook’s Privacy Policies
Cultural regulation is described as the modes of negotiation and resistance that Facebook is subject to, by it
users and non-users and the subsequent effects of this power struggle on Facebook’s policies and practices.
My argument is that throughout its short history, Facebook has been culturally regulated. Facebook users
have repeatedly challenged Facebook’s policies and terms, in multiple ways. An example is the ongoing class
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