ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we approach social media as social and cultural sites for interpersonal communication, participation, knowledge construction and identity work (see, e.g., Leppänen, Jousmäki, Kytölä, Peuronen, & Westinen, 2014). In particular, our focus is on social media as sites for constructing, negotiating and contesting gender and sexuality (Laukkanen, 2007; Leppänen, 2008), and we investigate fictional short stories published on social media sites aimed at young women, and the ways in which they construct the category of so-called pissis girls-girls who are taken to embody a particular version of ‘bad’ young femininity in contemporary Finland. In the context of this volume focusing on diversity and identification in social media, this chapter thus highlights how social media functions as an influential site for articulating, evaluating and investigating gender categories and identities and the resources mobilized in such discursive, communicative and sociocultural practice.
