Sarah Shugars, Alexi Quintana-Mathé, Robin Lange, David Lazer
{"title":"Categorizing the non-categorical: the challenges of studying gendered phenomena online","authors":"Sarah Shugars, Alexi Quintana-Mathé, Robin Lange, David Lazer","doi":"10.1093/jcmc/zmad053","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Studies of gendered phenomena online have highlighted important disparities, such as who is likely to be elevated as an expert or face gender-based harassment. This research, however, typically relies upon inferring user gender—an act that perpetuates notions of gender as an easily observable, binary construct. Motivated by work in gender and queer studies, we therefore compare common approaches to gender inference in the context of online settings. We demonstrate that gender inference can have downstream consequences when studying gender inequities and find that nonbinary users are consistently likely to be misgendered or overlooked in analysis. In bringing a theoretical focus to this common methodological task, our contribution is in problematizing common measures of gender, encouraging researchers to think critically about what these constructs can and cannot capture, and calling for more research explicitly focused on gendered experiences beyond a binary.","PeriodicalId":48319,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication","volume":"175 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad053","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Studies of gendered phenomena online have highlighted important disparities, such as who is likely to be elevated as an expert or face gender-based harassment. This research, however, typically relies upon inferring user gender—an act that perpetuates notions of gender as an easily observable, binary construct. Motivated by work in gender and queer studies, we therefore compare common approaches to gender inference in the context of online settings. We demonstrate that gender inference can have downstream consequences when studying gender inequities and find that nonbinary users are consistently likely to be misgendered or overlooked in analysis. In bringing a theoretical focus to this common methodological task, our contribution is in problematizing common measures of gender, encouraging researchers to think critically about what these constructs can and cannot capture, and calling for more research explicitly focused on gendered experiences beyond a binary.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC) has been a longstanding contributor to the field of computer-mediated communication research. Since its inception in 1995, it has been a pioneer in web-based, peer-reviewed scholarly publications. JCMC encourages interdisciplinary research, welcoming contributions from various disciplines, such as communication, business, education, political science, sociology, psychology, media studies, and information science. The journal's commitment to open access and high-quality standards has solidified its status as a reputable source for scholars exploring the dynamics of communication in the digital age.