Crushing Power! How Participation in University Crush Pages Challenges Anonymity and Hegemonic Power

Abstract:

University crush pages are a type of informal user-ended media in which a subjective turn overflows these communication channels, where facts and data seem of less importance than feelings, introspection, and action. This study aims to understand how participation in these pages actually “crushes” institutional and hegemonic power. It questions how anonymity in student-run social media develops, claiming the impossibility of “networked anonymity”. Using a qualitative content analysis, this paper studies the Facebook crush pages of four universities in Ecuador, during two months of quarantine in 2020. Through a thematic analysis, posts were categorized into two non-mutually exclusive topics: subjectivity and participatory communication, and into two cross-cutting categories: anonymity and COVID-19. The outcomes suggest that crush pages do not demand legitimacy at an institutional level; however …

Año de publicación:

2021

Keywords:

Fuente:

google