Lauren S. Berliner – författare

Feminist Interventions in Participatory Media is an edited collection that brings together feminist theory and participatory media pedagogy. It asks what, if anything, is inherently feminist about participatory media? Can participatory media practices and pedagogies be used to reanimate or enact feminist futures? And finally, what reimagined feminist pedagogies are opened up (or closed down) by participatory media across various platforms, spaces, scales, and practices? Each chapter looks at a specific example where the author(s) have used participatory media to integrate technology and feminist praxis in production and teaching. The case studies originate from sites as varied as community organizations to large scale collaborations between universities, public media, and social movements. They offer insights into the continuities and disjunctures which stem from the adoption of and adaption to participatory media technologies. In complicating and dismantling perceptions of participatory media as inherently liberatory, Feminist Interventions in Participatory Media curbs the excesses of such claims and highlights those pedagogical methods and processes that do hold liberatory potential. This collection thus provides a roadmap toward (re)imagining feminist futures, while grounding that journey in the histories, practices, and past insights of feminism and media studies.

Producing Queer Youth challenges popular ideas about online media culture as a platform for empowerment, cultural transformation, and social progress. Based on over three years of participant action research with queer teen media-makers and textual analysis of hundreds of youth-produced videos and popular media campaigns, the book unsettles assumptions that having a "voice" and gaining visibility and recognition necessarily equate to securing rights and resources. Instead, Berliner offers a nuanced picture of openings that emerge for youth media producers as they negotiate the structures of funding and publicity and manage their identities with digital self-representations. Examining youth media practices within broader communication history and critical media pedagogy, she forwards an approach to media production that re-centers the process of making as the site of potential learning and social connection. Ultimately, she reframes digital media participation as a struggle for—rather than, in itself, evidence of—power.

Producing Queer Youth challenges popular ideas about online media culture as a platform for empowerment, cultural transformation, and social progress. Based on over three years of participant action research with queer teen media-makers and textual analysis of hundreds of youth-produced videos and popular media campaigns, the book unsettles assumptions that having a "voice" and gaining visibility and recognition necessarily equate to securing rights and resources. Instead, Berliner offers a nuanced picture of openings that emerge for youth media producers as they negotiate the structures of funding and publicity and manage their identities with digital self-representations. Examining youth media practices within broader communication history and critical media pedagogy, she forwards an approach to media production that re-centers the process of making as the site of potential learning and social connection. Ultimately, she reframes digital media participation as a struggle for—rather than, in itself, evidence of—power.