Introduction

This book analyses the relationship between digital media logics and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ+) representation and resistance. A resurgence of representational harms that denigrate, misrecognize, erase, or omit minority communities, has once again demonstrated the inequities of LGBTQ+ misrepresentation (Colbran 2022). These harms are grounded in bigotry that frames samesex conduct and related gender identity as moral wrongs (The Southern Poverty Law Center 2011). These wrongs are embedded in legal, medical, and religious ideology amplified through media and technological infrastructure across jurisdictions. This framing can draw on legacies of criminalization and pathologization in many Western liberal democracies, and in over sixty United Nations (UN) member states that still criminalize consensual same-sex conduct (ILGA World 2020a).

The hybrid media ecosystem of old and newer digital media logics (Chadwick 2017) has amplified anti-LGBTQ+ individual and group hate through misinformation and disinformation that contributes to the overall imaginary of diverse sexualities and genders as deviant (The Southern Poverty Law Center 2011, 2020b). This can include bias-motivated conduct across and through digital platforms, including slurs that minimize or conceal hate, algorithmic censorship, online and in-person vilification, and assault. Concurrently, there is growing evidence that online bias-motivated conduct is mutually constituted with in-person bias-motivated conduct (Williams et al 2020), and the other way around (Ellis 2021, 2022, Wiedlitzka et al 2021). This evidence supports growing calls for timely responses from digital platforms and news media companies to address misinformation and disinformation amplified through their platforms and channels, and for news media companies to reflect on their role in this malign media environment (Gingerich 2022). At the same time, representational harms originate in legal, medical and religious stigma based on religious fictions about same-sex attraction and related gender identity.

The book provides an overview of current issues on the relationship between identity, digital media technology and LGBTQ+ agency. As such, the book will resonate with scholars and students in criminology and related disciplines, media practitioners, and readers from the general public. These readers may seek to understand why, despite a range of protections for LGBTQ+ peoples across many jurisdictions, LGBTQ+ individuals and communities continue to face challenges of renewed complexity from anti-LGBTQ+ bigots and hate groups.