Interpreting the Internet  - Feminist & queer counterpublics 
Elisabeth Jay Friedman


Notes on --->

• 'Counterpublics'
• are the places, spaces or means through which those pushed to socoietes margins develop their idenities and their construct communities and formulate strategies for transforming wider public 
• Latin american feminst and queer communities and their reginal networks long predate the internet but they have always relied on the circulation of alternative media.
  • • Personal ---> reaction to to commodifcation  of queer, the fear of identies be topical or hip when it is an ongoing lived experince
• 'two major attrubites of the internet- its facillation of communications and it information distrution - are esstional to counterpublics' 

• 'The internet itslef offer no garantee of transformation' 
• "the internets potential depends on conciouness creativity with which activist translate it into their own contextsadopting, sharing and deploying it "
  • Personal --->  agnecy - not passive users but crtically enaged in the systems.... queer people are used to ths neeed to great own spaces for own experinces 
  • Sociomateriality 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociomateriality

• Lesbians in (Cyber) space: The politics of the internet in Latin American on- and off-line communities
• Living in societies that use law, mainstream media and social opprobrium to deny their enjoyment of basic rights – and sometimes their very existence – Latin American lesbians have long relied on alternative ways of expressing and associating themselves. In the late 1990s, they adopted a powerful new tool that is also a'virtual' space: the internet, or cyberspace. This article argues that cyberspace – the dense web of information and communication created by email, chat, distribution lists and websites – is a virtual public sphere especially useful for Latin American lesbian communities. The internet addresses the central problems impeding the effectiveness of lesbian organizing: isolation, repression, resource restriction and lack of community cohesion. Despite the opportunities cyberspace offers, it presents new challenges for organizers, from an increase in responsibilities to an erosion of political accountability. Nevertheless, the contributions of the internet far outweigh the complications it brings.
• 'Corprations seeking to commodify user information have enclosed the so-called 'internet commons' by offering a devlils bargin trading acess to gobal networks for indiviual privacy'
• neither the state or the market are intrested in open access
• Jenny Sundén - 'the material body marked by gender, race and class not only forms the physciall ground for cyberspace travelrs but is clearly introduced and reproduced in the new electric space in inhabits'
• Jessie Daniels 
• 'whitness as normative' 
• Lisa Nakamura's
• Race - 
  • Nacy fraser --- critcque  /// 
  • Jurgen Habermans - uptipan coffee house - cybercafe freedom & experession 
  • public sphere 
  • 'materialistic conventional middle class men could entrech their own power'
  • "Members of subordinate groups women works people of colour gays and lesbians - have repeatedly found advantageuos to consitute alternative publics" 
  • counterpublic 
  • " a spce to withdraw and regroup"
  • ' Alternative media is esstional' ----> 
  • Clemencia Rodriguez - 'citizens' media 
  • "communication spaces where citizens can learn to maniplate their own languages, codes, signs, and symbols, empowering them to name the world in their own terms' 
  • Ann Travers --

• Kristine Blair
• Radhika Gajjala 
• Christine Tulley 
• must look at to understand women on the internet 'offline & online spaces'