ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the increasing role of digital media in the way youngsters develop their sense of self, manage their social relationships and engage in processes of cultural creativity. It examines the way a succession of pop artists from Little Richard to Lady Gaga have elaborated a queer 'performance' that questions the binaries of gender and sexuality. The chapter continues by considering the way technologies such as Web 2.0 and smartphones increased the role of online communication and social media in young people’s lives. Traditional views of identity have seen it as a unified and coherent essence, a relatively straightforward expression of ‘the Individual’. Anti-essentialist views of identity have been especially pronounced in queer theory. The chapter concludes by considering young people's wealth of online creativity and cultural production, and assesses how far this surge of cultural expression represents a sea-change in the nature of young people's media engagement.
