Social Media Use in Negotiating Gender Identity among Young Thai Women

Abstract

        This study explored how 18-year-old women in Bangkok used social media to negotiate and express their gender identities online. In Thailand, prevailing cultures and traditional public discourses on hetero-normative sexualities potentially affect, control, and, constrain young women’s gender performance offline and online. The study interrogated processes of adaptation and resistance to traditional mainstream discourses through the consideration of social media as an alternative and flexible space for young women to negotiate diverse and autonomous gender performances. A gap was identified in terms of the ways in which identity was tactically managed and constructed within different class structures. To investigate these, young women were recruited from three socioeconomic backgrounds: lower class, middle class, and upper class. Data were gathered through focus groups, interviews, and online ethnographies, such as posted pictures, shared contents, and comments on profiles, and interpreted through a multimodal and social semiotic lens to gain deeper understandings of women's classed and gendered social media practices. By examining and cross-referencing qualitative data and the construction of online profiles deriving from different social backgrounds, insights were yielded and a snapshot of the everyday identity work of Thai young women captured as they responded to and resisted traditional forms of feminine conduct.