Technology, sexism, and the male gaze

The Sociological Images blog published an interesting post about gender and technology. I’m very pleased to see my contribution in this article, namely the new commercial video from Nokia. In this ad, not only the female objectification is undoubtedly visible, as the ethnic & racial preconception is evident: her name is Suzy, she’s Latina – she starts with a “holla” and has a clear Hispanic accent – and then she goes on to say that she is hot…wait…she is sizzling hot. The whole narrative is based on a highly sexualized Latina woman that shows you her product. In the end, she even asks you “Wanna see more of me?”. Seriously, Nokia! More than connecting people, it seems the new core business of this tech company is to connect prejudices. I was honestly getting used to deconstruct more “subtle” sexist ads, but this one is just unbelievably straight to the point.

Enjoy!

Our “Digital Citizenship” book is finally out! (In Portuguese)

Our Cidadania Digital (Digital citizenship) book is finally out! In Portuguese, though. It’s a selection of articles about digital citizenship written by Portuguese authors, and edited by Isabel Salema Morgado and António Rosas. And you can download it for free! 🙂

And now some shameless self-promotion – My article “Cidadania Digital? Das cidades digitais a Barack Obama. Uma abordagem crítica. is a critique of the “digital citizenship” concept, based in two studies: the Portuguese digital cities; and the political campaign of President Barack Obama and the intensive use of ICT.

So, if you can read Portuguese, please enjoy and leave us your comments!


Sinopse

A cidadania como exercício político que se pratica no médium digital é uma realidade que paulatinamente vai aprofundando a acção participativa dos governados nos regimes democráticos, ou não deixa de ser um simulacro de uma realidade que é apenas visionada por alguns, mas cuja acção e efeitos são irrelevantes para os que efectivamente controlam o poder?
Neste livro, os autores vão procurar encontrar respostas para esta questão central, apresentando análises de realidades diversas cujo enquadramento comum são os usos que os cidadãos fazem das redes digitais.