ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 explores Mumsnet users’ negotiation, resistance and subversion of the discourses identified in Chapter 5, foregrounding four specific resources that they draw on in these negotiations: double-voicing, evaluation, alignment and play. The analysis that is presented here suggests that, within this community, alignment with others is a powerful force for the negotiation of dominant discourses, and the construction of potentially ‘new’ norms. However, it is also noted that the collective voice of this community can constrain its users, limiting their access to different ways of being an individual and a parent. These findings show that digital contexts such as Mumsnet Talk are not straightforwardly egalitarian and empowering sites where users can be ‘whoever they want to be’. Rather, negotiating social forces and constructs such as ‘motherhood’ online is a complex interaction between individual autonomy, dominant discourses and local norms of sharing and interaction.
