2025/06/02 by Hannah Cowdell · 1 voice
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies #LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy #Middle East Politics and Society
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/13530194.2025.2510220
openalex publication_date 2025/06/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/23
This article considers the spatial dynamics of social media use by LGBTQIA+ influencers and activists in Lebanon. Drawing on digital ethnographic data, it argues that social media use by Lebanese LGBTQIA+ activists and influencers produces digital ‘queerscapes’ which constitute a heterotopic venue for the formation of Lebanese queer publics and counterpublics. It demonstrates that despite the opportunities for subjectivity-formation and information-sharing that social media provides, its possibilities as an activist tool are balanced by socio-economic and infrastructural barriers, replicating class-based exclusions in offline LGBTQIA+ spaces. Moreover, given that contestations over the visibility of LGBTQIA+ individuals now straddle the online/offline divide in Lebanon, those who inhabit social media queerscapes must contend with a digital landscape characterized by risks of harassment and surveillance from homophobic and transphobic actors. These dynamics belie the cyberutopian characterization of social media as an LGBTQIA+ ‘safe space’ and should lead us to consider the ambivalent role that these platforms hold in LGBTQIA+ movements and socialities.