Sexual Reputations in the Connected Middle Schools
Abstract
Through this paper, I show how online interactions allow French teenagers to experiment body performances they wouldn’t, surrounded by schoolyard social control. To support this analysis, I will use the data I collected for my PhD on pupils’ negative reputations. I conducted a three-year survey in four middle school of diverse socio-geographical configurations in the Parisian region. I observed & interviewed students at school and followed a hundred volunteers’ students on Instagram and Snapchat. To begin with, I will present how the educational institution imposes a differentiated control over bodies according to their gender. Then, I will show how the teenagers uses online social media to experiment gender away from peers’ and adults’ control. To finish with, I would analyze some cases when the social control slips into the intimacy of online exchanges and induces shaming.