The REJOICE Workshop

This workshop builds on the work of the Queer Joy as a Digital Good project, funded by ESRC’s Digital Good Network. The workshop is intended to bring together those with research interests in, and personal experiences of, the use of digital platforms as a tool for joyfully expressing and exploring aspects of one’s identity that exist outside and beyond normative structures of – inter alia – race and ethnicity, gender and sex, sexuality, and/or ability. 

In this workshop, we want to explore digital expressions of joy as a practice of resistance against real-world struggles for social and legal recognition, of the expression of identity and life unencumbered by normative standards of propriety and palatability, and of harnessing joy as an essential component of future technologies in a `good' digital society.

Topics of interest include:

• How joy is imagined, platformed, and performed

• The role of joy as an act of (individual and collective) resistance against oppression

• How the expression of joy that does not conform with hegemonic norms is coded or censored by platforms and policy.

• How users, regulators, policymakers and others can explicitly facilitate joy in future digital spaces

• Research approaches and methodologies for exploring identity expression, joy and/or resistance

Note that this format list is not exhaustive, and we will welcome proposals for other forms of contribution (questions and proposals should be sent to sarah.clinch@manchester.ac.uk).

The expected length of written submissions is 1-2 pages (excluding any references), up to approximately A2 size for art/pictorial works, and up to 5 minutes for performative/video/audio submissions. Submissions will be subject to a light review process in which the organisers will ensure the relevance to the themes of the workshop. To enable meaningful participation, the workshop is limited to 25 participants.  Accepted contributors are required to register for the BCS HCI conference and attend the workshop.

We particularly encourage participation from those whose interests or experiences pertain to aspects of identity that are outside and beyond normative structures of – inter alia – race and ethnicity, gender and sex, sexuality, and/or ability.  Further, we recognise Non-Binary people as existing outside of Western hegemonic norms, and invite (non-exclusively) participation from those who experience gender outside of the binary.  Experiences of and insights into such identities and their manifestation in digital spaces are a concrete realisation of our broader goal to enable digital platforms and their users to facilitate joyful expression as an act of resistance, resilience, and relationship-building.

Workshop Agenda

The half-day workshop will be structured into two sessions

Session 1

Together we will build shared language and identify common ground, considering questions such as:

• What is joy? What is resistance? (How) Do these concepts relate to each other?

• Why is joy and/or resistance needed on digital platforms?

• What does joy and/or resistance on digital platforms look or feel like?

• What does joy and/or resistance on digital platforms lead to?

• Who does joy and/or resistance on digital platforms affect, when, and to what extent?

• What are our personal experiences of joy and/or resistance (as an creator, propagator, and/or consumer)?

Activities in the first session include participant introductions and experience sharing, exploration of techniques to represent experiences, and identification of common themes.

Session 2

Subgroups of participants will engage in in-depth discussion of the themes identified in the first half, and collectively develop research agendas, manifestos or similar calvenising and directive outputs. To close, subgroups will reconvene for a larger discussion on next steps and commitments moving forward. In particular, post-workshop, we encourage involvement in two ongoing activities: 

1. Engagement in community building activities. It is intended that the workshop will help to build a growing community of researchers in relevant domains, facilitating new connections from which collaborative research projects will emerge. We particularly want to connect early career researchers (ECRs) with relevant interests and research. This could be realised in a number of ways depending on the wants and needs of those attending (possible examples include: creating a mailing list, setting up a peer network or connecting ECRs with more established researchers for mentoring/coaching).

2. Development and publication of a coauthored short article or design manifesto that reflects the discussion at the workshop (i.e., experiences, key themes, research agenda). The specific form and focus of this output will reflect the interests and disciplinary background of the participants and could be suitable for publication either online or in a special interest magazine (e.g. ACM Interactions). Note that no participants experiences/comments will. be included in such an output without their express consent, and anonymity/credit/authorship will be given in line with the participants' preferences.

Workshop Organisers

• Sarah Clinch is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. Sarah's research explores the role of pervasive technologies in cognition, mental health and behavior. Recently, this has included a number of projects on digital identity expression. 

• Molly O'Reilly-Kime is an Associate Lecturer and postgraduate research student in the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University. Their research focuses on creating dignified and inclusive social media spaces for Non-Binary users, including how platform design creates opportunities and challenges for diverse gender expression, and how Non-Binary communities re-purpose existing features to this end.

• Elisa Rubegni is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University. Elisa's research includes work that challenges children's gender stereotypical thinking.

• Madeleine Steeds is an assistant professor in Information and Communication studies at University College Dublin. Madeleine's research interests include the role of stereotypes in interactions with gendered AI systems and how biases may impact interaction.

• Lexi Webster is the Deputy Director of Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton. Lexi's research primarily explores the mediatisation and politicisation of discourses and ideologies surrounding gender and sexuality using a combination of approaches from corpus linguistics, socio-cognitive discourse studies, and cultural political economy. 

• Emily Winter is a Lecturer in the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University. Emily's research has included work on gender diversity in Computing, the socio-technical aspects of software engineering, and the social media lives of young people.

Resources

The following list contains writings that we have encountered/contributed to as we've developed this workshop proposal and our own related research. For transparency, writings by the workshop authors are marked with an asterisk (*).

We welcome suggestions for content that you think should be listed here.

The Queer Joy for Digital Good project

• Project overview (ESRC Digital Good Network)*

• Queering the web: Reshaping digital culture with queer joy (Alice Wilson, Diva magazine)*

• Joy is Power: How Queer Flourishing Creates Strength (Alice Wilson, The Egalitarian)*

Black joy/Black queer joy

• 'Joy is resistance’: Cross-platform resilience and (re) invention of Black oral culture online (Jessica H Lu and Catherine Knight Steele, Information, Communication & Society)

• On black queer joy and the digital (Christopher J. Persaud and Ashon Crawley, Social Media+ Society) 

Non-binary identities and gender non-conformance

• Building and Restructuring Social Media Platforms for Non-Binary Users: Pilot Survey of Non-Binary Social Media Users (Molly O'Reilly-Kime, Proceedings of ECCE 2023)*

• The colonial project of gender (and everything else) (Sandy O'Sullivan, Genealogy)

• "Why are they all obsessed with Gender?”—(Non) binary Navigations through Technological Infrastructures (Katta Spiel, Proceedings of ACM DIS 2021)