![[PDF]](/pb-assets/Icons/adobe-pdf-icon-1498649896243.png){kind=icon}
Abstract
How are companion animals, and cats in particular, built as Otherness, on social media? And how are human–animal boundaries reconfigured along the flow of online digital interactions? This article tries to answer these questions drawing on the story of female cat Daphne, as reported on the official Facebook page of a Portuguese animal shelter. Based on both narrative analysis and categorical content analysis of the posts and comments around the story, the article discusses the social construction of nonhuman animals, bringing together concepts from human–animal studies, science and technology studies, and media studies. It argues that, through digital practices on social media, animals are done and undone. Two emergent and conflicting versions of the same animal, Daphne, are constructed throughout the unstable and contingent flow of digital exchanges: the-animal-victim and the-animal-maladjusted. As such, digital practices become also animal practices, contributing to normative definitions of what an animal ‘is’. As a result, human–animal boundaries are reinstalled and reinforced, and the animals themselves become, once more and paradoxically, invisible.
References
|
Adams, C. (1990). The sexual politics of meat. Continuum. Google Scholar | |
|
Agamben, G. (2004). The open: Man and animal (1st ed., Hamacher, W. , Ed.). Stanford University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Almiron, N., Cole, M., Freeman, C. P. (2018). Critical animal and media studies: Expanding the understanding of oppression in communication research. European Journal of Communication, 33(4), 367–380. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Baym, N. K. (2010). Personal connections in the digital age. Polity Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Beck, A. M., Katcher, A. H. (1996). Between pets and people: The importance of animal companionship. Purdue University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Carter, B., Charles, N. (2011). Humans and other animals: Critical perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Chambers, D. (2013). Social media and personal relationships: Online intimacies and networked friendship. Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Charles, N. (2014). ‘Animals just love you as you are’: Experiencing kinship across the species barrier. Sociology, 48(4), 715–730. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Charles, N., Davies, C. (2008) ‘My family and other animals’: Pets as kin. Sociological Research Online, 13(5). doi:10.5153/sro.1798 Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Cole, M., Stewart, K. (2014). Our children and other animals: The cultural construction of human-animal relations in childhood. Ashgate. Google Scholar | |
|
Couldry, N. (2012). Media, society, world: Social theory and digital media practice. Wiley. Google Scholar | |
|
Cudworth, E. (1998). Gender, nature and dominance: An analysis of interconnections between patriarchy and anthroparchy, using examples of meat and pornography (PhD thesis). University of Leeds, School of Sociology and Social Policy. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004 Google Scholar | |
|
De Fina, A., Georgakopoulou, A. (Eds.). (2015). The handbook of narrative analysis. John Wiley. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Derrida, J. (2002). The animal that therefore I am (more to follow). (D. Wills, Trans ). Critical Inquiry, 28(2), 369–418 (Original work published 1999). Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Filippi, M. (2017). Questioni di specie. Eleuthèra. Google Scholar | |
|
Fudge, E. (2002). Animal. FOCI. Google Scholar | |
|
Fudge, E. (2008). Pets. Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Georgakopoulou, A. (2015). Small stories research. In De Fina, A., Georgakopoulou, A. (Eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis (pp. 255–271). John Wiley. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Lambert, A. (2015). Intimacy and social capital on Facebook: Beyond the psychological perspective. New Media & Society, 18(11), 2559–2575. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Latour, B. (1999). On recalling ANT. The Sociological Review, 47(1_suppl), 15–25. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Law, J. (1999). After ANT: Complexity, naming and topology. The Sociological Review, 47(1_suppl), 1–14. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Law, J., Miele, M. (2011). Animal practices. In Cartes, B., Charles, N. (Eds.), Human and other animals (pp. 50–65). Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Madianou, M. (2016). Ambient co-presence: Transnational family practices in polymedia environments. Global Networks, 16(2), 183–201. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
McVeigh-Schultz, J., Baym, N. K. (2015). Thinking of you: Vernacular affordance in the context of the microsocial relationship app, Couple. Social Media + Society, 1(2). Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Peggs, K. (2013). The ‘animal-advocacy agenda’: Exploring sociology for non-human animals. The Sociological Review, 61(3), 591–606. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Policarpo, V. (2019). The personal life of Facebook: Managing friendships with social media. Families, Relationships and Societies, 8(3), 445–461. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Redmalm, D. (2015). Pet grief: When is non-human life grievable? The Sociological Review, 63(1), 19–35. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Serpell, J. (1996). In the company of animals: A study of human–animal relationships. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Tuan, Y. (1984). Dominance and affection: The making of pets. Yale University Press. Google Scholar |
