Check out my new piece on “The digital ephemeral turn” out now in Media, Culture & Society OnlineFirst

“The danger for social media users is not a loss of privacy, but a lack of balance between risk and reward that is wrapped up in the incentives for content circulation. Risk in itself is not as troubling as the infrastructural incitements which draw us into activities imbued with risk, where the rewards are accrued by the companies rather than their users… Social media is distributing old risks to new populations, introducing unfamiliar forms of circulation and risk for a chance at love and connection. As I have argued previously, the architectures of social media resonate with queer social history, particularly in terms of orientations to relationality, space, and time. But the rapid uptake of these forms by populations not historically marginalized can produce a sort of cultural whiplash.”

The digital ephemeral turn: queer theory, privacy, and the temporality of risk