Dear Prime Minister, Mr Musk and Mr Zuckerberg!: The challenge of social media and platformed racism in the English premier league and football league

International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Ahead of Print.
This paper draws on original research from a larger study of racism and Islamophobia online around football, particularly a set of interviews with staff at English football clubs whose responsibility is to manage social media. We use that information alongside our reflections on “platformed racism” to appraise how expressions of racism on social media differ from those in and around the grounds, and how clubs and others in football contest them. This involves a consideration of three themes commonly identified by those speaking on behalf of the clubs: The triggers that ignite racist posts; the partnerships necessary to counter them; and their proposed solutions. Hence this is not just a cue for a collective wringing of hands, but an effort to point the way forward.

‘Send Nudes?’: Teens’ perspectives of education around sexting, an argument for a balanced approach

Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
This paper explores teens’ perceptions of Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) around sexting (the exchange of sexually explicit imagery). Adopting a ‘sex-positive’ balanced approach to adolescents’ digital expressions of sexuality may be a more beneficial response than censure since fear-based narratives fail to recognise sexting as part of an array of sexual behaviours enacted by teens. Prohibition, rather than educating for safe sexting practices, fails to protect young people. This qualitative study uses thematic analysis of interviews with teens, and social constructionism, to interpret their perspectives thereby contributing teens’ perspectives to debates around adolescent sexting and RSE.

The geopolitics of queer archives: Contested Chineseness and queer Sinophone affiliations between Hong Kong and Taiwan

Sexualities, Ahead of Print.
Hong Kong and Taiwan, two Sinophone societies peripheral to continental China, have divergent colonial pasts and distinct cultures. Yet, their fates have been increasingly intertwined since the rise of China in the global economy. We propose the geopolitics of queer archives to trace minor–minor exchanges of queer knowledge and activism that are neither officially recognized by the state nor mapped into mainstream discussions of international relations. Through a conjunctural analysis of queer scholarship in Hong Kong and Taiwan since the 1980s, we contest the notion of Chineseness in shaping the knowledge of queer sexualities and argue that a wholesale recycling of postcolonial critique on these two societies’ resistance to China risk reproducing US-centrism.