Storying My Body in Bits and Bytes

ABSTRACT

This study shows how cyberautoethnography can be used to critically interrogate and make sense of how technology and attendant artifacts shape our understanding of embodiment. Specifically, this goal is achieved by applying cyberautoethnography to study Bitmoji avatars, a digital artifact, as a type of digital embodiment. Users can personalize Bitmoji avatars by choosing from a variety of skin tones, body sizes, and other physical characteristics. Thus, similar to the creation of other avatars (such as those in social media and gaming environments), creating and circulating these digital artifacts can be understood as acts of strategic digital (re)presentation and embodiment. Here, I reflect on the process of creating my Bitmoji avatar and analyze conversations using Bitmojis to discuss how I use my Bitmoji to make my body hypervisible in a context that’s typically understood as disembodied. I conclude that the seemingly mundane use of Bitmojis can be understood as a feminist practice that marginalized individuals might engage with in order to extend the political dimensions of everyday, lived experiences into the digital realm. Thus, this critical cyberautoethnography showcases the value of autoethnography for understanding how agency is claimed and limited by contemporary forms of technology-mediated embodiment.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical cyberautoethnography
• avatars
• digital embodiment
• cultural representation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Small bowl.

2. Flat, sticky hair typically coded as unattractive.

3. Colloquial Indian euphemism for public sexual harassment of women by men.

4. I use quotation marks for caste status because while I need to use these labels to make my argument, I remain opposed to the caste hierarchy they signify and reinforce.

5. During menstruation, “upper-caste” women are considered temporarily unclean. Therefore, they are forbidden from entering holy spaces such as temples. For a complex discussion of purity rituals related to menstruation and caste politics in India, please see Sowjanya (2019).

6. Used to chastise Dalit Indian-Christians for converting to Christianity for a bag of rice. Caste among Indian-Christians is complex – Malabari (or Syrian) Christians, for example, still adhere to a caste hierarchy while other Christian communities might not and might have converted from Hinduism to escape the atrocities of the Hindu caste system.

7. See D’Souza (2021) for stereotypes of Indian-Catholics in popular Indian media.

8. Cultural citizenship refers to the ways in which belonging is practiced via cultural rather than legal practices. Importantly, many marginalized groups might have legal citizenship but might still be treated as second-class citizens via practices that deny them a sense of cultural belonging (Rosaldo, 1994).

9. Social construction of technology is a theoretical perspective that “argues that people are the primary sources of change in both technology and society” (Baym, 2015, p. 24).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marissa J. Doshi

Marissa J. Doshi Texas A&M University) is an associate professor at Hope College. Her research draws on feminist perspectives to examine the creative and cultural dimensions of media and technology use. Doshi’s secondary research interests include intercultural communication and media representation. Her research has been published in journals such as Communication Research, Journal of International & Intercultural Communication, International Journal of Communication, and Women’s Studies in Communication. At Hope College, she teaches courses on media writing, transnational feminisms, cultural studies, and social media activism. Currently, she is the editor of Women’s Studies in Communication.