Gender, power and online communication tools: sex-affective couple relationships in the discourse of young people in Catalonia

Abstract

Online communication tools have not only widened the possibility of strengthening social links with others, but they also seem to be permeating different aspects of youth couples relationships, especially those gender-related. In this article, we present the results of a qualitative study, theoretically based on Foucault’s concept of power and Butler’s gender performativity. We used a thematic content analysis from a feminist perspective framework. The objective is to analyse young Catalonians’ discourses and the relationships of power marked by gender of the sex-affective couple, while using online communication tools. We focused on the contents that legitimised and that challenged patriarchal power relations. Mainly regarding the classification of users according to gender, and based on it, the definition of online practices of sex-affective relationships of couples differentiated by gender. We present the analysis framework in two categories: 1) Gender-based differences and 2) Love and online practices in sex-affective relationships. The main results suggest that they reproduce patriarchal discourses and also concrete possibilities for its resistance, the discourses that sustained them and how they have always kept linked and emerged with individualizing hegemonic discourses in a constant game of reproduction/transformation.