Prelims

Half Title Page

Young Adulthood Across Digital Platforms

Title Page

Young Adulthood Across Digital Platforms: Digitally Constructing Gender and Sexualities

Edited by

Inês Amaral

University of Coimbra, Portugal

Rita Basílio de Simões

University of Coimbra, Portugal

And

Ana Marta M. Flores

University of Coimbra, Portugal

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL

First edition 2025

Editorial matter and selection © 2025 Inês Amaral, Rita Basílio de Simões and Ana Marta M. Flores.

Individual chapters © 2025 The authors.

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ISBN: 978-1-83753-525-5 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83753-524-8 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83753-526-2 (Epub)

List of Figures and Tables

About the Editors

Inês Amaral is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra. Inês holds a PhD in Communication Sciences from the University of Minho and is a Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies. She has developed research on sociability in digital social networks, participation and social media, gender and media, feminist media studies, masculinities, media and digital literacy, technologies and active ageing, audiences and disinformation. She is the PI of the project MyGender and a member of the Masculinities Observatory and Cyberjournalism Observatory teams. Among her latest publications are articles published in journals such as Social Media + Society, Social Sciences, El Professional de la Información, International Journal of Communication and European Journal of Women's Studies.

Rita Basílio de Simões holds a PhD in Communication Sciences and is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra (FLUC) in the Department of Philosophy, Communication and Information. She is a Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) and collaborates with CEIS20, also from the University of Coimbra, and ICNOVA, from the Nova University of Lisbon. She is the National Coordinator of the ‘Global Media Monitoring Project – Who Makes the News?’ She leads the Working Group on Gender and Sexualities of the Portuguese Association of Communication Sciences (SOPCOM).

Ana Marta M. Flores holds a PhD in Journalism and is a Researcher at ICNOVA/iNOVA Media Lab, affiliated with NOVA University Lisbon. She is also a Research Collaborator at the Trends and Culture Management Lab, part of the University of Lisbon's CEAUL. Currently, Ana Marta is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the MyGender project at the University of Coimbra while also assuming the role of Communication Officer for the Digital Culture and Communication section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA).

About the Contributors

Rita Alcaire is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) and a Collaborator Researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20), University of Coimbra (Portugal). Her research interests lie in the study of gender and sexualities, mental health and pop culture, using media as a privileged way to engage with them. She is a Researcher in the UnCover – Sexual violence in Portuguese media landscapes (2023–2026) project. She participated in national (Ouvir Vozes, MyGender, Equal.STEAM) and European (ReMO, CILIA LGBTQI+ and KINDER) projects as a Researcher and a Consultant. She is a Guest Lecturer on MA and PhD programmes in (mental) health, media and communication and contemporary studies. She holds a PhD in Human Rights in Contemporary Societies (CES/III, 2019) and a Master in Cultural Psychiatry (FMUC, 2011). She is developing a postdoctoral project entitled ENGAGE – Promoting gender equality and social justice through transmedia storytelling and social science communication (2022–2025) that aims to propose changes in how research and scholarship in gender studies are co-produced and co-performed in and beyond academia.

Juliana Alcantara holds a PhD in Communication Sciences at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra (FLUC, Portugal). She holds a Master’s degree in Journalism and Communication at the same institution, where she received the Top 3% of Students Award. She has a postgraduate degree in Business Communication and Higher Education Teaching. She also has more than 10 years of professional experience as a Public Relations Officer and a Journalist in the Brazilian media. She is part of the Interuniversity Network for Journalist Studies (RIEJ) in Portugal. Her academic interests have been directed to communication sciences, gender, health and democracy issues. Among her latest publications are articles published in Journalism, Journalism Practice and International Journal of Communication.

Eduardo Antunes is a Research Fellow and a doctoral student in Communication Sciences at the University of Coimbra, where he completed his Master's degree in Journalism and Communication. Additionally, he is a Radio Broadcaster and an author at RUC, where he previously served as the Programme Coordinator. He seeks to develop studies on the dynamics of orientalism and gender in the media, with a particular focus on examining identity construction processes, having published works in journals like Social Sciences, Social Media + Society, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Media & Jornalismo and Comunicação e Sociedade.

Sofia P. Caldeira is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at CICANT, Lusófona University [g.a. 101,059,460]. She holds a Communication Sciences PhD from Ghent University, Belgium (2020). Her research focuses primarily on feminist media studies, social media practices and politics of gender representation. She currently serves as the Chair of ECREA's Digital Culture and Communication section.

Frederico Fonseca is a doctoral student in Communication Sciences at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra and has a degree in Multimedia. He is a Professor in public and private higher education and a Researcher in Communication Sciences and Information and Communication Technologies. He has recently been part of the research team for three funded projects, two national and one international (ERASMUS+). He is interested in topics related to algorithmic governance, datafication, m-apps, (in)fertility, serious games and active ageing.

Carolina Matos is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Sociology at the Department of Media, Culture and the Creative Industries (MCCI) at the School of Communication and Creativity at City, University of London, and also a former Visiting Associate Professor in Global Communications at the School of Communication, University of Miami, US. Matos' research is in the area of gender, media and development and international communications. She investigates the role of communications for social change in processes of development, paying particular attention to structural inequalities of gender, race and class. A previous Journalist, Matos is the author of four books, various chapters and articles, including the book Gender, Health Communications and Reproductive Health in International Development (McGill Queen's University Press, 2023).

Elena Pilipets is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Digital Media and Methods at the Department of Media Studies, University of Siegen (PhD in Media Studies, University of Klagenfurt). Her work focuses on the processes of social media circulation, with particular attention to the study of platforms through combinations of visual and digital methods. This includes online-grounded empirical investigations of internet memes, platform subcultures and social bots, the latter being studied in a working group funded by the Centre of Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum.

Sofia José Santos is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra and a Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies. Sofia studies the politics of media representations and media production from a critical and feminist perspective, focusing on international relations; peace, violence and security studies; masculinities; and technopolitics. Within CES, she is currently the PI of the project ‘UNCOVER: Sexual Violence in Portuguese Mediascape’ and a co-editor of Alice News. She has a PhD in International Relations from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra and a diploma in Advanced Studies in Communication Sciences from ISCTE-IUL. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Flemish Peace Institute, Belgium, and a Marie Curie Fellow in the Anthropology department at Universiteit Utrecht, the Netherlands. Her research has been published in academic journals such as Media and Communication, European Journal of Women's Studies and Contexto Internacional.

Cosimo Marco Scarcelli, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology of the University of Padua (Italy). He teaches Media, Gender and Sexuality (BD in Communication) and Digital Culture, Gender and Society (MD in Strategies of Communication) and is a member of the board of PhD Programme in Social Sciences. His research deals with sexuality, gender and digital culture, intimacies, pornography, masculinities, love and emotions and young people. He is particularly interested in qualitative and participatory research. He is an Editor of Journal of Gender Studies. From 2016 to 2021, he served as the Vice-Chair and then the Chair for ECREA's Gender, Sexuality and Communication section.

Rita Sepúlveda is a Postdoctoral Researcher at ICNOVA, Instituto de Comunicação da Nova, Nova University of Lisbon (Ref: ICNOVA/PÓSDOC/2022). She holds a Communication Sciences PhD from ISCTE-Iul, Portugal (2021). Her research focuses on collective and dynamic expressions in digital environments regarding the transformation of intimacy in the context of digital platforms appropriation. She is an Associate Researcher at Cies (ISCTE-Iul) and coordinator of the MetDigi project (Cies-Iscte). Since 2019, she’s been lecturing in postgraduate degrees on communication, social media, and methodologies subjects.

Filipa Subtil is a Coordinator Professor at Escola Superior de Comunicação Social, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, and a Researcher at LIACOM and ICNOVA. She holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the Universidade de Lisboa. Her research interests include the sociology of communication, social theory of communication in the United States and Canada, and media frameworks on gender issues. Her work has been published in academic journals such as Journalism Practice, Journalism Studies, History of Media Studies, Media e Jornalismo, Revista Famecos and Revista Brasileira de Ciências da Comunicação. She is also co-editor and author of Os três D’s dos media: desigualdade, desprofessionalização e desinformação (2021) and Media and Portuguese Empire (2017), among others.

Acknowledgement

Portuguese national funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) provided financial support in the framework of the project ‘Mediated young adults' practices: advancing gender justice in and across mobile apps’ (PTDC/COM-CSS/5947/2020). https://doi.org/10.54499/PTDC/COM-CSS/5947/2020