The simulated and sensuous body in young people's digital cultures: exploring the transgressive potentials of creative methods

Marston, Kate 2026. The simulated and sensuous body in young people's digital cultures: exploring the transgressive potentials of creative methods. Journal of Gender Studies 10.1080/09589236.2026.2712489

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Abstract

Drawing on group and individual interviews with young people aged 11–18 years old in England and Wales in 2018, this paper examines what creative methods can enable in research on young people’s digitally networked lives. This study contributes to a growing body of research that is adopting more artful and craft-based approaches to researching the social world. It engages with the methodological potential of designing digital avatars, digital tours and map-making for tapping into the material, embodied and sensory dynamics of encounters with digital technologies. Specifically, I consider how these methods generated insights into young people’s digitally networked body cultures. It considers media incitements to transform the body in relation to participants’ talk about simulated avatars, selfie-editing applications and computer-generated influencers as well as the relationship between these technologies. It also explores how new genres of YouTube content such as spot -squeezing and slime videos are taking the transformation imperative into sensuous directions. In doing so, this paper examines the different ways the digitally networked body can be/come and how this is transforming the gendered, sexualized, racialized and classed arena of body politics.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education) Schools > School of Social and Spatial Sciences
Publisher:	Taylor and Francis Group
ISSN:	1465-3869
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	14 August 2026
Date of Acceptance:	27 July 2026
Last Modified:	14 Aug 2026 13:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/188974

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