New Media Communities: Performing Identity in an Online Women's Magazine

Abstract

This case study investigates the kind of women's world that is created on an online discussion board and the forms of identity and community construction that underpin this process. The main source of data is the discussion board itself with additional data from a group discussion and email correspondence. Two key processes are identified – bonding and boundaries – which permit the creation of a ‘women's world’. This site appears to provide an extremely open forum for the users to create a ‘female’ space that they find welcoming and supportive. The web is traditionally seen as a male preserve so that the appropriation of this space by these females (given that the board is unmoderated) is an initiative in itself. While the space they have created might be considered a ‘girlie’ space, the fact that they have chosen this tactic of a highly feminised identity (and that they celebrate ‘girlieness’) may be seen as empowering. Ultimately, we argue, the discussion board must be seen as a contradictory space since it operates within a commercial environment that encourages discourses of individualised consumption rather than collective togetherness.