Negotiating Identities/Queering Desires: Coming Out Online and the Remediation of the Coming-Out Story

摘要

Drawing on a 19-month ethnographic study, this essay explores how rural young peoplenweave digital-media-generated source materials into their identity work, particularly asnthey navigate the politics of visibility’s master narrative event: ‘‘coming out.’’ More so thannin urban scenes where a critical mass of LGBTQ visibility is taken for granted, these storiesnresonate with the complex negotiation of visibility and family ties that consume rural youngnpeople’s everyday lives. At the same time the amount rural youth absorb or rework thesencategories has everything to do with each person’s capacity to enact and publicly assertnthem. This approach to studies of media effects calls for a deeply situated understanding ofnmedia engagements beyond reception of particular media texts.