Emo online: networks of sociality/networks of exclusion
Overell, Rosemary

Publisher
Cite this item:
Overell, R. (2010). Emo online: Networks of sociality/networks of exclusion. Perfect Beat, 11(2), 141-162. doi: 10.1558/prbt.v11i2.141
Permanent link to OUR Archive version:
http://hdl.handle.net/10523/8382
Abstract:
This article examines Australian emo subcultural practices and new media technologies. I use subcultural studies to analyse whether emo is, indeed, a subculture. I respond to framings of emo as an ‘Other’ (sub)culture, in mainstream Australian media and Australian alternative music scenes. I interrogate whether, as dominant media claims, emo subculturalists’ internet usage inevitably leads to ‘social alienation’. First, I present a case study of a mediatized moral panic concerning the so called ‘emo suicides’ of Jodie Gater and Stephanie Gestier in 2007. Media reports positioned emo adherents as non-normative ‘dark’ users of new technologies, particularly the internet. I counter this representation with a textual analysis of emo micro media, in the form of MySpace homepages, which demonstrate emo sociality online. However, in my final section I look at how such sociality is limited by gate-keeping practices mobilizing discourses of subcultural capital.
Date:
2011-02-27
Publisher:
Equinox
Pages:
141-162
Keywords:
emo, cultural studies, ethnography, subcultures, youth cultures, media studies
Research Type:
Journal Article
Languages:
English