Abstract
In Digital Countercultures and the Struggle for Community, Jessica Lingel offers three case studies. She uses a loose ethnographic approach that combines interviews, some observation and personal experience and weaves together a number of insights into the current uses of digital technology with the stated aim to ‘craft an alternative set of narratives for the Internet as a tool of communication and community’ (p. 3). She describes her approach as one that aims at ‘thick descriptions and ethnographic analysis to show how digital technologies shape social ties within these communities’ (p. 7) and refers to her approach as ‘network field studies’ (p. 13). Lingel puts the emphasis on the ‘alternative’ aspect, defining this as ‘the state of being alien or unrecognisable to the mainstream’ (p. 7). She specifically frames her subjects as communities above other forms of association, noting the political elements that exist within these countercultural groups but focusing primarily on their quotidian character. She is clearly inspired by the approach of thinkers like Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau, and in many ways this book feels like it contains a hat tip to some of the related early works of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Lingel is also deeply immersed in social anthropology and her grounded research takes its subjects very seriously, showing respect for classic virtues of ethnographic work even where it deviates from it. The book steps away from the current vogue for ‘big data’ and large-scale society-wide approaches, and in many ways is all the better for it – offering a nuanced and sympathetic reading of the communities she discusses. However, this is not only a molecular-level study because Lingel extrapolates from these case studies to make broader claims about countercultural Internet use and coping strategies. In terms of her case studies, she identifies a set of characteristics that form a kind of ideal type for countercultural communities, these being ‘legibility, flexibility and authenticity’ (p. 31).
Of the three case studies, the first, on the body modification online community, represented via the BME (Body Modification eZine), is the longest and most developed one. This is not surprising as Lingel professes to have been a member for many years. Lingel’s passion and commitment to the community is clear, though this does not reduce to a descriptive fan-culture level. Lingel does a good job of maintaining the rigorous eye of the ethnographer. Using a combination of website analysis and interviews, she traces the development, evolution and decline of the community – at least as it is operative via its website. She argues that the major affordance of the BME site is to allow sharing of pictures and stories without censorship or risk of getting caught. In that regard, it is the capacity to share openly, but to also remain secret, that is so powerful. The terms of service (TOS) provide useful evidence of the development of the website. There is a shift over time to explicit restrictions on conservatism. This is a change that Lingel sees as evidence of the coming together of a group ethic through the online community. The evolving TOS indicates both openness and restrictions in outsider groups, whose judgement and lack of knowledge would undermine the shared values. The maintenance of the BME community via the dedicated website flourished in the years from the birth of message boards up to the World Wide Web, but with the introduction of mainstream social media it began to decline – a story that is familiar to much online activist work, for example, the trajectory of Indymedia has a similar pattern. Lingel explores how the countercultural community has become absorbed both by commercial social media and mainstream culture. The success and mainstreaming of the community is ironically also its undoing, where widespread coverage and sharing undermined the scene’s ability to document its ‘own alterity’ (p. 58) and as a result its ‘monopoly on information threatened to unravel’ (p. 63). This is a fascinating and compassionate study, although it is interesting that in the whole discussion of the decline and shift to social media, the idea of the monetising of body modification as part of a wider pattern of the economic recuperation of ‘lifestyle’, as one of the driving forces and dangers of social media, is never mentioned. The analysis in that regard remains at a somewhat descriptive level – although of course the approach of ‘thick description’ taken does always lend itself to this tendency.
The second case study, on the New Brunswick DIY basement punk scene, explores the navigation of a DIY subculture through the use of digital media to maintain secrecy. Again unlike the wide-ranging dissemination of much social media, the basement punk scene aims to limit the spread of information beyond certain in-groups. The distinction between privacy as the protection of individual communication is held against the secrecy of a group, wherein the secrecy acts to maintain the borderline of the group. This is precisely the mechanism of the punk scene where the use of illegal venues, often in the basements of houses with poor sound insulation and fire, safely means such secrecy is an imperative. Thus, there is a need for a ‘mindful use of both online and offline communication tools in the service of a collective need for keeping secrets’ (p. 73). Lingel explains that while there is deep suspicion towards commercial social media, wherein ‘the dominant conceptualizations of DIY are tied to a loosely Marxist critique of capitalist systems of labor’ (p. 75), nevertheless, the most prevalent use of digital communications is via MySpace and Facebook, with some use of Reddit. The usages of these platforms are maintained at the most private and exclusive level, but this still reveals the challenge and tensions in the dominance of such platforms for countercultural work. While this case study offers an engaging and useful insight into the specificities of this DIY culture, the unpacking and exploration of particular usage of social media is not very extensive or revealing in itself. Indeed, this is perhaps because this subculture is not essentially framed or defined by the digital and is not really a digital counterculture at all, rather a counterculture that makes some use of digital communications. This distinguishes this community from the BME community, which is more obviously shaped through the use of digital media. This could be offered as a criticism, but perhaps also suggests the increasing difficulty of identifying digital countercultures at all – in a world in which the distinction between the offline and the online becomes ever more indeterminable.
The final case study looks at queer Facebook, and the Brooklyn drag community in particular. The research is drawn from the Bushwig 2-day festival in Brooklyn and explores the importance of social media in providing a platform for sharing multiple photos of the event, serving not only to promote the drag queens involved but also to allow an outlet for their creativity and expression. This countercultural group, unlike the previous studies, has no interest in secrecy – given the ‘expressive and hypervisible’ (p. 100) nature of drag. Rather Lingard here looks into the ways the mainstream platform is both a vital resource and a source of control and frustration, which fails ‘to accommodate the fluidity and complexities of their lives’ (p. 100). As such, there is a focus in the study on the distinctions between ‘alterity and the mainstream, between the strategic and the tactical, and between the ways that technologies are designed and the way they are used in everyday life’ (p. 100). Lingard brings out these nuances clearly and thoughtfully in this chapter, offering a much more in-depth exploration of the use of social media and its role in tying communities together and facilitating gatherings and self-expression. One striking issue is around the real-name policy on Facebook, which means many drag queens using stage names or pseudonyms have had their profiles frozen or removed – a policy that has led to ‘the drag queens I interviewed regarding Facebook’s real-name/authentic name policy as homophobic and prejudiced’ (p. 117). Lingel also offers some revealing insights into the tactical uses of Facebook by drag queens who operate by ‘tricking the platform’ about location in order to take advantage of different name conventions across the world. The problem is that ultimately ‘Facebook does not allow users flexibility in reshaping platforms interface’ (p. 116) and that all is ‘flattened out into homogenous metadata fields’ (p. 116) – a common concern across the study of social media.
Overall, this book is a valuable contribution to scholarship on online countercultural, radical and activist communities. Lingel reminds us of the importance of detailed and focused work in the everyday and local contextual uses of digital technology, and that there is more to life than big data. This strength produces some concerns, for example, some unevenness between the case studies and despite some useful concluding thoughts on the implications for theory, a lack of broader social, economic and political contextualisation – the study remains largely in the terrain of identity and group politics and leaves alone the broader picture of political economy. In that sense, again it shares a lot with the more culturalist and anthological wing of media and cultural studies – by which it is clearly influenced – although it would be unfair to offer this as a major criticism given the book’s own rationale, which is well met.