ABSTRACT
Webisodes, a form of serial storytelling made available on the internet, combine more or less industrially produced television series and variations of fan activism. In this chapter, social media and webisodes interaction is explored as potential subversive forms of representation of gender and sexuality. An empirical analysis of four webisode categories is undertaken. Findings show that social media can serve subversive aspects of webisodes by offering gender prototypes that deviate from the traditional. Furthermore, social media make possible various webisode categories that display certain specificities of forms of audience engagement in various social media platforms. This opens for engagement as expressions like sharing and commenting on the content. Social media is more a ‘validation choir’ of the content and these gender prototypes; comments confirm that one likes the content, like a round of applause. Mainly YouTube seems to invite an international webisode audience as an ongoing validation choir, where comments are still being posted even if the production is 11 years old. Facebook commentaries on webisodes are a powerful discourse of prevailing sexual norm-infused possible lifestyles: love stories between two people that are easily understood as heterosexual or gay or lesbian. Comments on more fluid gender and sexual identities, sometimes clearly found in the webisode, take place on other internet-connected platforms in more a trans or queer community than webisode fan community. The fluidness of webisodes in and between social media is also a subversive act of its own. Webisodes are not pinned down as a form of symbolic order in particular social media contexts. It can also be argued that gay identity is per se a realm of subversive forms of representation of gender and sexuality. The question as to whether or not all these findings provide subversive power in a political sense can only be answered through further study.
