Digital sexual citizenship and LGBT young people's platform use

Abstract

Drawing on original interviews and digital ethnography conducted with 20 LGBT young people, and using critical platform studies and a design-centric approach, this paper demonstrates how platform use has enabled LGBT young people maintain sexual identity authenticity, normalise fluidity, reimagine community through allied algorithmic mediation, negotiate the threat of peer surveillance, and refuse platform norms so as to self-narrate gender affirmation, organise collective resources and repudiate the performance of online inauthenticity. This paper considers these practices as emergent acts of digital sexual citizenship that are becoming prevalent in countries with no sexual rights and argues that platform affordances furnish the infrastructure for LGBT young people to evade the state surveillance of homosexuality and find allied friendships, romantic partners and safe communities.