ORCID Profile
0000-0002-2883-335X
Current Organisation
University of Queensland
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Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 06-12-2023
DOI: 10.1177/1329878X211064646
Abstract: There is a pressing need to facilitate sensitive conversations between people with differing or opposing views. On video-sharing app TikTok, the erse experiences of donor-conceived people and recipient parents sit uneasily alongside each other, coalescing in hashtags like #donorconceived. This article describes a method ‘Situated Talk’ which uses TikToks to facilitate a reflexive encounter, drawing on three areas of scholarship: media ethnography and elicitation, researcher reflexivity and duoethnography/collaborative autoethnography. We describe how we, as a donor-conceived adult (Giselle) and a queer woman who would need donor sperm to have a child (Clare), employed TikToks from #donorconceived as prompts to facilitate a sensitive conversation and elicit situated insights. We explore three central insights from applying our method: (1) discomfort as a productive tension (2) unresolved dilemmas and (3) discovering parallels in experience. Using TikToks as stimuli, ‘Situated Talk’ contributes an innovative method for generating grounded social media insights.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-05-2023
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-08-2023
Abstract: As the culture of silence that once surrounded cancer has gradually given way to greater public awareness, normative visions of what cancer survivorship should entail have proliferated. These visions emphasise positivity and perseverance in pursuit of cure. While these visions provide comfort to many, for people with metastatic cancer, the emphasis on cure can undermine their sense of belonging to the broader collective of people living with cancer. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with 38 Australian women living with metastatic breast cancer, we explore how incurable cancer inflects understandings of self and transforms interpersonal relationships. Extending ideas around biosociality and belonging, we explore the tenuousness of social bonds, revealing how (in)visibility, (in)authenticity and (in)validation circulate within the daily lives of women with metastatic breast cancer. We conceptualise accounts according to four social bonds: (1) threatened bonds where a relationship is strained by misunderstanding, (2) severed bonds where a relationship is ruptured due to misunderstanding, (3) attuned bonds whereby a relationship is based on shared identification and (4) flexible social bonds when a relationship is based on mutual understanding. More broadly, we illustrate the persistence of normative visions of cancer survivorship and their enduring effects on those whom such visions exclude.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 08-06-2023
DOI: 10.1177/00380385221091184
Abstract: The digital age is characterised by unprecedented access to technologies to understand our bodies, genetics and family histories. The last decade has seen a growing uptake of direct-to-consumer DNA testing, which is (re)shaping in iduals’ identity narratives. Drawing on data from a national online survey with Australian donor-conceived people (N = 91) and semi-structured interviews (N = 28), we conceptualise DNA results as a genetic narrative that coexists with other sources of identity information such as familial narratives, medical records and experiential knowledge from peers. Our analysis derived three themes: truth – how DNA results disrupted ontological security and prompted confrontation proof – how DNA testing was valued and legitimised, especially compared with medical records and sleuth – how DNA testing was leveraged in agentive practices. In doing so, we explore how processes of (dis)trust shape the forms of identity information in iduals seek out, believe and rely upon to position themselves within relational and socio-technical webs.
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Date: 11-2021
DOI: 10.1332/239788221X16357694113165
Abstract: The health and social ‘after-effects’ of caring are well established, yet the way carers experience pathways out of caring remains under-researched. In this article, we analyse qualitative free-text responses ( n = 1,746) from a national survey of Australian carers to explore current and former carers’ concerns, opportunities and preferences around care endings. Our thematic analysis derived three key findings: (1) anticipation and fears for the care recipient (2) prospects for life after caring and (3) responsibility, recognition and loss. We engage with scholarship on the moralities of caring to discuss carers’ precarious relational and social positions, and their uncertainties around how caring ends.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 2022
DOI: 10.1177/20563051211069055
Abstract: Memes are a key feature of participatory digital cultures and have been found to play an important role in collective identity formation. Limited scholarship has explored the role of memes within closed communities, where perceived privacy and trust may impact the ways users demarcate the in-group (us) and out-group (them) through humor. This article draws on analysis of semi-structured interviews with Australian donor-conceived people (people conceived with donor sperm or eggs) and a collection of memes they shared. We take an interdisciplinary approach to analysis, combining reflexive thematic analysis informed by interpretive traditions within sociology with an analysis that applies the iconization framework from social semiotics. Our findings explore how donor-conceived people view memes as: texts that “only we get,” that are “light and fun” and that provide “a way to deal with emotions.” We conceptualize memes as bonding icons: semiotic artifacts which foreground shared feelings and invite alignment around a collective identity. More broadly, we argue that “getting” a meme requires alignment with the values construed, a process which reinforces ties to the community. In doing so, we explore how everyday social and linguistic practices contribute to in iduals’ sense of belonging.
No related grants have been discovered for Giselle Newton.