Scripted Gender Practices: Young Adults’ Social Media App Uses in Portugal

Abstract

This research focuses on social media mobile applications as mediated interfaces of identity performances and interrogates to what extent everyday young adults’ uses are remaking gender scripts. We analyze young adults’ self-reported experiences on preferred social media apps and discourses of rejection of others, the technologies themselves, and how they favor certain behaviors. Theoretically, we resorted to feminist media studies and critical app research, focusing on users’ perceptions of their engagement with mobile technology. Empirically, we turned to semi-structured interviews with female and male young adults aged between 18 and 30 years. Results show limited agency to reshape normative gender scripts embedded in apps’ technological affordances and broad hegemonic discourses. We discuss these results and how they mirror normative gender expectations, recalling the impacts of contingent social formations in reproducing inequality.