Reclaiming agency in the digital neighborhood: an ethnographic exploration of ethno-religious minority youths’ performances of the masculine self
通过对23名比利时弗拉芒地区民族宗教少数族裔青年男性15个月的混合民族志研究，揭示他们如何在数字邻里中通过表演“男性理想”来回应种族化话语，从而重获对自我呈现的主体性。
Abstract Self-presentation has been identified as a key practice within digital youth cultures. The scholarship on youths’ self-presentation has extensively investigated how young people negotiate affordances in ways that optimally support their transitions into adulthood. However, the scholarship’s focus on identity development and technological affordances risks constructing a homogeneous, de-contextualized, and media-centric representation of digital youth cultures. To unveil how self-presentation practices are embedded within a broader socio-cultural context, I conducted a 15-month hybrid ethnographic study with 23 ethno-religious minority young men living in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. The observations illustrate that these young men attempt to reclaim agency over their identity representations by performing “masculine ideals” of the self in response to racialized discourses. Overall, the results underscore the necessity of adopting an intersectional perspective that considers the interplay between self-presentation on social media and the threats and opportunities within youths’ (digital) neighborhoods.