Tag Archives: Bollmer

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We’re All Born Naked and the Rest is Performative Materiality: Drag, Gender, and Audiences.

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In Materialist Media Theory, Grant Bollmer argues that media are not passive carriers of meaning but material processes that act upon bodies, shape subjects, and generate the conditions through which identities can emerge (Bollmer). Media, in this sense, does not simply represent; it performs. It intervenes in the world. It exerts force. It structures what bodies can do and how they appear.

The art of drag is a productive lens for understanding Bollmer’s notion of performative materiality. Rather than treating drag as an exceptional or marginal cultural form, I use it as a case that makes visible the broader media-ontological operations Bollmer attributes to all mediated identity. Drag helps us see, in concrete terms, how gender emerges from interactions among bodies, objects, technologies, and audiences. Drag exemplifies Bollmer’s core argument: Identity is the outcome of material practices, not an interior essence, and media such as prosthetics, language, and audiences participate in performing identity alongside us.

The Body as Medium

If media is performative, then the body is one of its primary sites of action. Bernadette Wegenstein describes the body as “our most fundamental medium,” a surface continuously shaped, rewritten, and extended through material practices (Wegenstein 2010). Drag performers make this process visible.

Egner & Maloney’s study documents performers who articulate gender not as a fixed inner truth but as something produced through embodied technique: padding, contouring, binding, layering, staging, and stylizing. These techniques are not superficial decorations; they are operations that actively reorganize the performer’s physical and social presence.

In Egner and Maloney’s study, performers consistently describe drag as something that operates beyond fixed categories of sex or gender. Performers move fluidly between masculine and feminine embodiments, sometimes within a single act, and anatomical exposure does not necessarily disrupt the gender being performed. What matters is not the visibility of the body’s “biological” markers, but the larger assemblage of gesture, costuming, movement, and audience orientation through which gender becomes legible.

Image Credits: BobTheDragQueen.com

Bollmer’s framework is useful here because these transformations are not simply symbolic gestures layered over an already-existing identity. They are material operations that actively reorganize how the body functions in space. Wigs, makeup, padding, and prosthetics act as media technologies that exert force on perception, movement, and social recognition. Drag performers, therefore, exemplify Bollmer’s argument that what we call “identity” is inseparable from “the material relations that allow subjects to be produced at all”. Gender is not expressed through media; it is generated through media.

Drag as Material Performance

Drag’s power lies not simply in its visual transformation, but in the convergence of materials, practices, and infrastructures that produce a performative body. As Egner and Maloney note, “acting in a way that disrupts expectations of how ‘normal’ people do gender allows drag performers to subvert gender expectations for both their everyday and on-stage gender presentation” (Egner and Maloney, 2016, p. 877). This disruption does not occur only at the level of meaning or representation. It happens through specific material actions such as costuming, makeup, bodily stylization, movement, and staging.

This is where Bollmer’s idea of performative materiality becomes especially useful. For Bollmer, media do not simply communicate identity after it already exists. Media are part of the process that brings identity into being. When drag performers alter their bodies through makeup, padding, wigs, and gestures, they are not expressing a pre-existing gender that lives inside them. They are using media technologies to actively produce gender as something that becomes visible and legible in the world.

From this perspective, the subversion that Egner and Maloney describe is not only cultural or symbolic. It is material. Disrupting how “normal” people do gender works because drag physically reorganizes bodies in space and changes how those bodies can be seen, interpreted, and responded to. What counts as masculine or feminine shifts because the material conditions that support those categories are being altered in real time. This is exactly what Bollmer means when he argues that identity emerges from material relations rather than from an inner essence. Drag does not represent gender. It participates in making gender possible in different ways.

Video Credits: RuPaul’s Drag Race

Audience as Medium: Interaction as Material Process

One of the most significant contributions of Egner and Maloney’s study is the claim that audience interaction is not supplemental to drag performance but constitutive of it. Performers report that their gender presentations shift depending on the audience present, the reactions they observe, and the boundaries they attempt to breach. What is being performed is therefore not a fixed gender identity but a relational process that only takes shape through response.

This is where Bollmer’s concept of performative materiality becomes especially clear. For Bollmer, media are environments that shape what actions can occur and what forms of identity can emerge. The audience functions as part of this media environment. Their reactions operate as material forces that influence how gender is performed in real time. Laughter, discomfort, silence, and shock are not just interpretations of drag. They actively condition what kinds of gender expressions become possible in that space.

Egner and Maloney show that performers adjust their performances depending on the setting. When performing for mixed or university audiences, performers often wear more clothing and reduce sexual content because less is required to breach dominant gender norms (Egner and Maloney, 2016, pp. 897 to 898). In queer venues, performers intensify their gender transgressions in order to generate the same disruptive effect. This demonstrates that subversion is not located in any single costume, gesture, or body. It is produced through a dynamic interaction between performer and audience.

From Bollmer’s perspective, this means that gender is not performed by an individual subject alone; it emerges from a media system composed of bodies, space, sound, attention, and reaction. Identity forms through ongoing material feedback rather than through internal psychological intent. Drag makes this process visible by showing how gender must be constantly adjusted in response to the media environment in which it appears.

Fluidity as a Media Condition

Drag performers in Egner and Maloney’s study frequently describe gender as fluid, shifting, and multiple. Rather than explaining this fluidity as a psychological experience or an inner truth of the self, Bollmer’s performative materiality allows us to understand it as something produced by media conditions themselves. Gender becomes fluid because the material relations that generate it are fluid.

Bodies become sites of repeated inscription through costume, makeup, gesture, and movement. Audiences function as interpretive infrastructures that change what kinds of gender presentations become legible or disruptive. Performance spaces shape how far gender can be pushed and in what direction. The result is that gender is not simply flexible in a personal sense. It is procedural. It is continuously built and rebuilt through interaction between bodies, materials, and environments.

Egner and Maloney describe this process as “gender bending,” rather than “gender acting” (Egner and Maloney, 2016). This wording emphasizes process over representation. Gender shifts within performance as performers respond to audience reaction. In some cases, new understandings of identity emerge through drag itself. Identity is therefore not something that exists first and is later expressed through performance. It takes shape through the material act of performing.

This directly mirrors Bollmer’s claim that identity is always produced through performances composed of material relations (Bollmer, 2020). Drag makes this visible by placing gender into a system where it must respond to bodies, media technologies, spatial conditions, and social reaction all at once.

Image Credits: RuPaul’s Drag Race

Gender as a Media Event

When viewed through Bollmer’s concept of performative materiality, drag becomes more than a genre of entertainment or a symbolic critique of gender norms. It becomes a system in which the material production of identity can be seen in real time. Gender does not appear in drag as an inner truth that is later expressed outward. It takes shape through concrete media operations such as makeup, costuming, bodily technique, spatial staging, and audience reaction. These elements do not decorate identity. They actively generate it.

Drag makes visible what Bollmer argues is always happening across media more broadly. Bodies become media surfaces through modification and stylization. Audiences become part of the media environment through their responses, which shape what kinds of gender expressions become legible, disruptive, or acceptable. Repeated performance turns gender into a process that must be continually recalibrated rather than a stable essence that simply endures. Identity, in this sense, is not located inside the performer and later communicated outward. It emerges through the material relations that connect performer, body, object, space, and audience.

Because drag requires constant adjustment to audience response, it makes clear that gender is not produced by individual intention alone. It is produced through feedback. The meaning and force of a performance change depending on who is watching, how they react, and what norms are already in place. This directly enacts Bollmer’s claim that media do not merely transmit meaning but operate as environments that shape what subjects can become. Gender in drag is therefore not just represented. It is materially organized through circulation, response, and repetition.

What drag ultimately reveals is that identity itself operates as a media process. The instability of gender in drag is not an exception to how identity normally works. It is an intensified version of the same material dynamics that structure identity in everyday mediated life. Drag shows with unusual clarity that subjects are not formed in isolation, but through ongoing interaction with media systems that exert force on bodies, perception, and social recognition. In this sense, drag does not only critique gender. It exposes the media conditions that make gender possible at all.

Works Cited

Bollmer, Grant. Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781501337086. Accessed 5 December 2025.

Egner, Justine, and Patricia Maloney. ““It Has No Color , It Has No Gender , It’s Gender Bending”: Gender and Sexuality Fluidity and Subversiveness in Drag Performance.” Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 63, no. 7, 2016, pp. 875-903.

Wegenstein, Bernadette. “Body.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen, University of Chicago Press, 2010. Accessed 5 December 2025.

Header Image by Fernando Cysneiros (Taken at UBC!)

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Podcast Episode: Is AI Killing Creativity? Or Making It Better?

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In this podcast, Siming, Eira, and Aubrey explore whether Gen AI should be considered a creative medium and whether it suppresses or improves creativity. Through different examples in video editing, 3D modeling, and design, we explore what AI mediates and reflect on how these technologies reshape both creativity and authorship in contemporary media.

Citations 

Adobe. (n.d.). Automatic UV Unwrapping | Substance 3D Painter. https://helpx.adobe.com/substance-3d-painter/features/automatic-uv-unwrapping.html

Bollmer, G. (2019). Materialist media theory: An introduction.

Maisie, K. (2025). Why AI Action Figures Are Taking Over Your Feed. Preview.

https://www.preview.ph/culture/ai-action-figures-dolls-a5158-20250416-dyn

Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge.

Salters, C. (2024). The New Premiere Pro AI Tools I’ll Definitely Be Using. Frame.io Insider.

https://blog.frame.io/2024/04/22/new-premiere-pro-generative-ai-tools-video-editing/

Schwartz, E. (2023). Adobe Brings Firefly Generative AI Tools to Photoshop. Voicebot.ai

https://voicebot.ai/2023/05/23/adobe-brings-firefly-generative-ai-tools-to-photoshop/

Faribault Mill. (n.d.). The Spinning Jenny: A Woolen Revolution. https://www.faribaultmill.com/pages/spinning-jenny

Van Den Eede, Yi. (2014). “Extending ‘Extension’: A Reappraisal of the Technology-as-Extension Idea through the Case of Self-Tracking Technologies.” Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, edited by Pieter Vermaas et al., Lexington Books.

UX Pilot. (n.d.). UX Pilot: AI UI Generator & AI Wireframe Generator. https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1257688030051249633/ux-pilot-ai-ui-generator-ai-wireframe-generator

Loveable. (n.d.). Learn about Lovable and how to get started. https://docs.lovable.dev/introduction/welcome

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Performative Males vs. Performative Media

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The word performative circulates widely in our current society. It appears in online discourse, political commentary, and everyday conversations, often used to criticize shallow or insincere behaviour. In its common definition, the Oxford English Dictionary describes performative as: “Of action, speech, behaviour, etc.: done or expressed for the sake of appearance, especially to impress others or to improve one’s own image, typically with the implication of insincere intent or superficial impact.” This meaning focuses on the surface, and insinuates something staged, hollow, and self-serving. This meaning has become even more visible through contemporary memes, especially the “performative male” trend spreading through contemporary social media. These videos mock exaggerated male displays of tailored “feminine” habits, suggesting that certain gendered behaviours exist mainly as performances for a desired audience. However, when introduced in media studies through Bollmer’s Materialist Media Theory, the concept of performance takes on a very different meaning. Instead of describing behaviour done “for show,” Bollmer argues that media perform the world, and have a direct effect on our thoughts, behaviours, and actions. Rather than focusing on the intention, he examines how media shapes what becomes possible in experience and in social life (Bollmer, 2019, pp. 7–14). This contrast opens an important space for media theory, by proving that words do not carry stable meanings across contexts. When a term like performative crosses between popular culture and theory, it lands differently and shifts in significance. By examining these shifts, we gain a clearer understanding of how media produce, condition, and intervene in human action. Under this framework, performativity is not about appearances, but about material consequences.

What does it mean to be performative?

The Oxford Dictionary definition frames performative as a critique. When we say someone’s activism, fashion sense, or interests are “performative,” we imply their behaviour and identity revolves around self-branding for the purpose of impressing others. The same applies to social media: a post can be performative if it signals virtue or outrage without genuine commitment. This meaning depends on intentionality – a performative gesture is insincere because the actor intends to cultivate an appearance rather than effect real change. Bollmer challenges this intention-based thinking by arguing that we should analyze media not by what they represent, but by what they do. The main idea is that media produce realities through their operation. They play an active role in behaviour, identity, and social structures at the level of matter, code, infrastructure, and embodiment (Bollmer, 2019, pp. 20–24). This reframing connects to other theorists like Verbeek, who argues that technologies mediate human perception and action by amplifying some possibilities while reducing others (Verbeek, 2006, pp. 364–370). For Verbeek, the “intentions” of technology are embedded not in user consciousness but in the object’s inherent design, allowing them to guide and shape experience. Media perform through the affordances they create, the choices they structure, and the values they materialize. Taken together, Bollmer and Verbeek move us away from the idea that meaning is determined by the human user. Instead, they argue that true meaning emerges from interactions between humans and media environments. The performative concept becomes a tool that reveals how media act in the world and how they participate in shared life.

“Performative Male”: A Case Study

The recent caricature of the “Performative Male” offers a helpful cultural contrast. These memes exaggerate male behaviour by depicting specific tasks – drinking matcha, reading feminist literature, carrying Labubus – as elaborate displays of effort and identity. A “performative male” performs actions or participates in cultures mostly inhabited by women in an attempt to create a relatable energy. The joke lies in the clear theatrics of this performance:  obviously none of these behaviours are exclusive to women, but a man walking around in public with a barely-touched matcha, a Labubu clipped to his thrifted Carthharts, and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex in a screen-printed tote bag mimics a peacock performing a mating dance. This meme reflects the Oxford Dictionary’s meaning. The performative male’s labour is exaggerated for the sake of appearance, and his entire identity becomes a performance piece. The humour works because the behaviour signals attention-seeking rather than genuine action. In this sense, the meme critiques performative masculinity and the inflated self-presentation that digital culture rewards. 

However, from Bollmer’s perspective, the meme itself reveals a deeper layer of performativity. It shows how platforms like TikTok and Instagram actively shape behaviour – content creators learn to exaggerate, dramatize, and stylize actions because the platform’s algorithm rewards visibility, clarity, and engagement bait. The meme becomes a product of platform performativity, and displays how media systems encourage and incentivize specific forms of conduct. The meme becomes an example of performativity not because the individual man is insincere, but because social media platforms’ architecture performs social expectations. Media environments materialize what counts as visible or valuable behaviour.

Performative in Media Creation

Understanding performative through both the Oxford Dictionary and Bollmer’s definitions enriches our media theory toolkit. The Oxford Dictionary’s definition helps us analyze cultural performance, signalling, and authenticity, whereas Bollmer’s definition helps us analyze how systems act, intervene, and materialize social relations. Together, they give us a multifaceted view of how meaning moves between people, technologies, and infrastructures. The concept also teaches us that media theory is not just about interpretation, it’s about tracing consequences. When we understand media as performative, we recognize that they are active participants in shaping human experience and are capable of producing emotions, habits, and forms of life – not just images or videos. In a digital landscape dominated by AI, algorithmic feeds, and platform-driven identities, this shift in understanding becomes essential. We can no longer ask only what media say, we must ask what media do.

Citations

Bollmer, G. (2019). Materialist media theory: An introduction. Bloomsbury Academic.

Oxford English Dictionary. (n.d.). Performative. In OED Online. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com

Verbeek, P.-P. (2006). Materializing morality: Design ethics and technological mediation. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 31(3), 361–380. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243905285847

General Media Theory

Not (Yet?) a Swifty

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If Spotify recommends Taylor Swift to me one more time, I might start believing it knows something about me that I don’t. It’s strange how a platform can make you question your own musical identity, even if you, like me, have never listened to T. Swizzle. Perhaps she and Westside Gunn have more in common than I thought, or perhaps there are assumptions even my own listening choices cannot defy.

Genre as Culture on Spotify

Spotify may be a useful site for finding music and creating playlists, but it is also important for examining how genre and identity are produced today. In looking at how Spotify organizes genre and distributes listening statistics, as discussed in Muchitsch & Werner’s paper, we can understand genre not simply as a descriptive category but as a system of representation that shapes how listeners come to understand themselves. Genre formation has long been recognized as unstable — “fleeting processes whose boundaries are permeable and fluctuating, yet nevertheless culturally and socially safeguarded” (Brackett, 2016 qtd. in Muchitsch & Werner, 2024, p. 306). Genres constantly shift and divide, giving rise to newer sub-genres like indie pop or bubble grunge. But genre is also representational; it defines a type of music and, by extension, a type of listener.

Metadata and Identity

Spotify’s use of genre as metadata allows us to better see how they construct identities — genre becomes an identity category embedded into algorithmic logic, a technical shorthand for grouping users and predicting their future behavior. Besides recommendations, the advent of personalized playlists — like the well-known (and awful) “Just For You”s — are examples of how technology actively dictates the media we encounter. The algorithm assumes an identity about the listener and continually supplies content that reinforces that assumption. Although it appears that our listening habits inform the algorithm, the relationship is indeed reciprocal. Technology also shapes our perceptions of our own identities by offering back a curated and often reductive portrait of who we “are” as listeners.

Bollmer and Performativity

This feedback loop often goes unnoticed because of the widespread belief that technologies are neutral. Bollmer’s work on representation, identity, and performativity challenges this assumption, reminding us that representational identities—such as those produced in digital platforms—affect our capacity to act and perform within society. Especially as branding culture dominates the media landscape, individuals frequently become the “faces” of genres, embodying particular aesthetics or attitudes. These stylized identities influence how other listeners understand themselves and how the algorithm categorizes them in return. And, as we know but will not explore fully here, these categorizations are far from unbiased.

For Bollmer, identity is something both enacted and mediated. We cannot fully control how we are represented, nor can we detach ourselves from the biases and conditions that shape how we perform in the world. At the same time, we are constantly surrounded by stimuli that instruct us in the ways we should construct our identities. Playlists and music taste are only slim examples of the performative acts through which we present and negotiate a sense of self. Spotify, by mediating genre, participates in this process, co-producing musical identity through representational systems that determine what counts as meaningful performance.

What does this mean for users?

Rather than stable categories, genres have become interfaces for identity. Users construct self-image through listening habits, while platforms translate those habits into data profiles that feed back into the listening experience. Mood playlists—“chill,” “in love,” “rainy day,” “main character”—make this even clearer. They frame music not only as sound, but as a tool for managing and performing the self. In this way, Spotify exemplifies how contemporary media systems blur the lines between what we choose and what is chosen for us, shaping identity through the very categories that claim to represent it.

Identity as “Self Work”

Tia DeNora’s idea of music as a “technology of the self” deepens this understanding of genre and identity. For DeNora, people use music to regulate emotion, construct moods, and shape situations—music is a tool for self-presentation and self-maintenance. But when platforms pre-organize music into specific categories, they intervene in this process, prescribing what kinds of selves the listener might want to inhabit. What once felt like personal, intuitive self-work becomes filtered through Spotify’s mood-based playlists, quietly guiding the identities we perform and the emotions we deem appropriate.

Implications

The implications of this are subtle but significant; If identity is enacted through musical choice—as Bollmer and DeNora both suggest—then algorithmic curation narrows the range of performative possibilities. The listener performs the self through their music, but the platform anticipates, predicts, and nudges that performance, creating a closed loop where identity is both expressed and engineered. Genre, once a loose cultural concept, becomes a data-driven identity label that platforms use to categorize and influence behavior. And because these systems appear neutral, the shaping of identity through recommendations often feels natural rather than infrastructural.

In the end, the relationship between genre, identity, and streaming platforms reveals far more than how music is organized—it shows how contemporary technologies dictate who we are allowed to become. Spotify doesn’t just categorize sound; it categorizes people, returning our listening habits to us as ready-made portraits of taste and selfhood. Between Bollmer’s emphasis on mediated identity and DeNora’s conception of music as self-shaping, it becomes clear that our musical preferences are never solely our own. They emerge from an ongoing negotiation between personal expression and platform governance. And if my “rap-only” listening history can still make Spotify insist I’m a Taylor Swift fan, it’s worth asking: are we using these systems to express ourselves, or are they teaching us who we ought to be?

Bollmer, Grant. Materialist Media Theory. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2019.—Introduction.

DeNora, Tia. “Music as a Technology of the Self.” Poetics, vol. 27, no. 1, 1999, pp. 31–56.

Muchitsch, Veronika, and Ann Werner. “The Mediation of Genre, Identity, and Difference in Contemporary (Popular) Music Streaming.” Popular Music and Society, 2024, pp. 302-328.

Written by Allie Demetrick 

Photo from Spotify

Critical Comparison

Morality and Materiality in Digital Technology and Cognition

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Introduction

Peter-Paul Verbeek’s examination of the ethics and materiality of digital media in his book, Materilizing Morality, coincides with Grant Bollmer’s seventh thesis as described in Materialist Media Theory: 

“Media transforms cognition and thought. This is either a direct transformation, extending the body beyond the limits of the skin into body-brain-world assemblages, or an indirect one, through technological metaphors that remake how a body is understood”(174).

Verbeek discusses the ethical quandaries surrounding digital media, examining how immaterial modern technologies shape human action, ultimately affecting the material world. Bollmer correspondingly emphasizes media’s significance as an active participant in its consumption, noting how media’s materiality influences its overall message. Furthermore, Bollmer and Verbeek’s works highlight the complex material dynamics of digital media and cognitive processes to understand it. Both are immaterial, yet require material mediators to function effectively and ultimately have material impacts on physical reality. The moral implications and physical responses to immaterial digital media urge consideration of the material consequences of media, regardless of its original form and representation.

Materiality, Representation & Ethics: 

Bollmer challenges the assumption that media and technology are neutral and immaterial forces arguing that media is not passive; rather, it serves as a material infrastructure that mediates and influences the user. He critiques past scholarship that views materiality as self-evident; he states sarcastically that “media are material, period”(16). This satire critiques the notion that materiality simply refers to physicality. For Bollmer, materiality is a more complex concept that encompasses embodiment and representation stating that, “the belief that media is immaterial and detached from physical devices—a popular belief in 1990s’ discussions of cyberspace that persists today—is simply false”(18). This statement clarifies Bollmer’s views, as he sees media as material agents interconnected with physical means. Bollmer’s main argument is that the media shapes the conditions in which the world can be understood. A screen is not just a physical tool but an interface that affects human behavior through how users consume information. To Bollmer, materiality is not separate from meaning but embedded in it, providing a medium for representation to take shape. 

These ideas parallel Verbeek’s theories, similarly rejecting the idea that technology is morally neutral and that ethics exist separate from materiality. Verbeek argues that technology “coshape human action, [giving] material answers to ethical questions of how to act”(361). This perspective views media and technology as material as they mediate human action, ethics, and perception. This is evident with his example about medical imaging devices, as these tools shape how doctors interpret the human body. This example demonstrates how morality is not only about human intention but is shaped by technological design. Verbeek introduces the idea of “scripts,” which indicate how “technologies prescribe human actions”(361). Scripts are the “inscriptions” left by designers, who anticipate how users will interact with a product. To Verbeek, scripts are not merely physical, as technology goes beyond their “function” and influences human action (362). Scripts work as a framework to understanding how technology works to connect humans and materiality. This concept ties into Verbeek’s argument that ethics are embedded within materiality and that design itself is a moral act. Verbeek connects ethics with materiality by showing that technology does not merely carry morality but embodies it. 

Bollmer and Verbeek’s work grounds the argument that media should be viewed as material and reinforces the idea that technology is not neutral. Both theorists show that materiality is intertwined with morality and representation. Bill Brown’s writing Materiality strengthens this argument by demonstrating that materiality is simply about the physicality of an object, but the way objects influence how we experience life, media, and reality. Brown argues that debate on material/immaterial is often misconcluding, as objects that are often viewed as “immaterial,” like scripts or digital communities, still shape how we interact with the world. He points out that material is not solely limited to what is tangible or visible. This correlates with Bollmer’s argument that the materiality of any medium, whether physical (hardware) or digital  (e.g., the internet), shapes how people understand social, political, and cultural norms. Verbeek’s work extends this argument through his concept of “scripts”, demonstrating how technology shapes human action and moral decisions. He reminds the audience that the design of a device carries ethical consequences, as they impact how users perceive the world around them. Together, these viewpoints cause us to reconsider the importance of understanding media’s materiality. If media is seen as immaterial or neutral, we overlook its influence on reality. Treating media as immaterial ignores the political, ethical, and represented work embedded within technology. Bollmer and Verbeek’s theories, with the support of Brown, demonstrate how the media is not a neutral agent of information but a material being that mediates the world around us. 

 

The (Im)Materiality of Digital Media and Cognition

The materiality of digital technology is comparable to that of cognition. Materialist approaches to human cognition view the essence of thought as “[existing] in organizational structure rather than physical matter” and assume that human thoughts can be adequately translated into computational systems, provided they are designed to mimic human brains (Bollmer 127). This conceptualization of thought investigates the very nature of humanity and poses, if our thoughts are equally applicable to digital technologies, what exactly makes us human? 

Viewing our thoughts as finished, tangible materials to be moved and translated results in existentialist ideologies surrounding humanity and technology in the modern age. Instead, we should consider our bodies as materials, not our cognition. Bollmer describes the body–and by extension, the brain–as mediums that “[negotiate] external world and internal sensation” that are both made and modified by the outside world, aligning with Tim Ingold’s concept of transducers: the means through which a message is communicated and understood (Bollmer 118; Ingold 102). By effect, our thoughts are products of, and effectively embody, the experiences of our bodies. Embodiment, within the context of media, is “the cognitive possibility of a body and envisioning technology not as itself but as a mediational extension of the body”(Bollmer 131). Similarly, an embodying relationship with media sees users understanding technologies not as themselves, but as tools to further perceive environments, also using them as extensions of the human body (Verbeek 365). Essentially, embodiment is using media to extend one’s body, effectively incorporating these medias into a material role regardless of their original physicality.

Bollmer defines cognition as an immaterial process that “interprets information within contexts that connect it with meaning”, paralleling Verbeek’s definition of hermeneutic relationship with media (132). Hermeneutic media provides a representation of reality which requires interpretation, establishing a relationship between humans and reality by “[amplifying] specific aspects of reality while reducing other aspects” much like the aforementioned definition of representation (Verbeek 363). The experiences of our physical body dictate our sensory relationship with reality, transforming how we perceive it. Our brains facilitate cognition influenced by physical circumstance and experience, mediating our ultimate conclusions. Likewise, hermeneutic media mediates the world around us, influencing its users’ perceptions and subsequently the cognitive processes they undergo to form understandings.

This relationship between the material brain and immaterial cognition translates to that between digital media and what it communicates. Similar to our bodies, technological artifacts “[facilitate] people’s involvement with reality, and in doing so, [coshape] how humans can be present in their world”(Verbeek 363). Virtual media presents information akin to that presented by our senses, influencing perceptions of reality and therefore physical actions. Both phones and bodies are material, each presenting immaterial media to be processed in our cognition. This immaterial media’s impact grows as it integrates further within our societies, ultimately urging us to reconsider the boundaries of what is deemed material. While our cognition is biased through our own lived experiences, digital media is imbued with the biases of their creators. Consequently, “technologies have “intentions,” they are not neutral instruments but play an active role in the relationship between humans and their world”(Verbeek 365). The structures presenting digital media are saturated with their creators’ biases, influencing their purpose and overall effect, affecting how users interpret them, the conclusions users come to, and their actions in response.

The material definition of cognition and digital media is complex and nuanced. While our phones and brains are decidedly physical, our thoughts and virtual worlds are not, yet digital technologies influence how we act in the material world and how we cognitively process media. Overall, regardless of their immateriality, digital technologies have material effects and should be handled accordingly.

Conclusion

As media students, understanding different lenses on materiality helps us recognize that media does more than just carry information; they reshape how we interact with the world around us. Bollmer and Verbeek show that media are intertwined with materiality, influencing how people think and decide. Media works alongside cognitive processes by mediating our senses and structuring how meaning is formed. This hermeneutic and embodiment view on cognition demonstrates how digital technologies go beyond physicality and influence our experience with reality. For Media students, it’s crucial that we understand that media has material effects: they shape power structures, ethics, and thought processes. Understanding this view on materiality trains us to identify the hidden biases and ethical decisions embedded in technology designs. This framework allows us to expand our ideas of materiality and understand that media matters because of what they “do” and how they “act” within society. 

Works Cited

Bollmer, Grant. “Conclusion: Ten Theses on the Materiality of Media.” Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 173–176. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 15 Nov. 2025. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501337086.0009. 

Brown, Bill. “Materiality.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W.J.T Mitchell and Mark B.N. Hansen, The University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 49-63.

Ingold, Tim. Making. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2013.

Verbeek, Peter-Paul. “Materializing Morality: Design Ethics and Technological Mediation,” Science, Technology, and Human Values, 2006, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 361-380. 10.1177/0162243905285847. 

Written by Molly Kingsley and Aminata Chipembere

Image by Molly Kingsley

Critical Comparison

Behind the Glass: Seduction as the Missing Piece in Materialist Media Theory

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In Materialist Media Theory, Grant Bollmer argues that our media are never immaterial, even if they often feel that way. What appears virtual and weightless is actually grounded in vast infrastructures, sensory demands, physical interfaces, and bodily routines. Bollmer’s central project is to shift media studies away from its traditional focus on representation and toward an understanding of digital technologies as material agents reshaping human perception, experience, and cognition at a fundamental level. However, Bollmer emphasizes materiality; Mark Weiss’s “Seduced by the Machine” emphasizes something more elusive. The emotional, aesthetic, and psychological seductions that draw us toward our devices. Weiss’s account suggests that our relationships with technology cannot be explained solely by reference to hardware, interfaces, or infrastructures. Instead, our attachments are driven by fantasies, desires, and the subtle ways technologies promise mastery, autonomy, and intimacy. If Bollmer gives us the mechanics of media materiality, Weiss gives us the affective charge that makes people care about and often depend on their machines. 

The main argument of this blog post is that Weiss’s concept of technological seduction exposes a significant limit in Bollmer’s materialist framework. While Bollmer helps us understand the physical conditions that shape digital experience, he underestimates the role of pleasure, fantasy, and symbolic attachment in shaping how people engage with media. Weiss complicates Bollmer’s claim that materiality is the primary site of media’s power, suggesting instead that music of this power operates in the immaterial or material realm of desire. 

For Bollmer, digital media only appear immaterial because their interfaces are smooth, their screens are luminous, and their infrastructures are hidden from everyday experience. Beneath this illusion lie data centers, cables, processors, gestures, cognitive adaptations, and bodily postures. Materiality for Bollmer is not just about physical hardware but about all the background conditions that make media possible: how technology occupies space and time, how it organizes sensory experience, and how it silently governs attention, movement, and affect. The point is not simply that machines have bodies, but that their material operations shape our own bodies long before meaning or interpretation comes into play. 

Weiss, however, presents a different angle. In “Seduced by the Machine”, he argues that people are drawn into technological systems not implicitly because of their material affordances but because technologies seduce them. Seduction, in Weiss’s sense, involves allure, desire, and the promise of seamlessness and control. People feel recognized by their devices; they experience the pleasure of instant response, and they embrace the fantasy that the machine “knows” them. This sense of intimacy or fluency is not reducible to the way a touchscreen works, even though that material mechanism makes the feeling possible. It is instead a symbolic and affective process, something closer to psychological enchantment than to bodily conditioning. 

This is where a limit in Bollmer’s framework emerges. Bollmer urges us to look past representation and symbolism, but Weiss suggests that these elements are not distractions from materiality; they help explain why materiality matters in the first place. Technologies succeed not only because they physically shape our habits and perceptions, but because they seduce us into wanting those shapes. The fantasy of immateriality, for instance, is not an innocent misunderstanding that Bollmer can correct by revealing the true material structure of digital media. It is an engineered aesthetic effect that technology companies carefully cultivate. In other words, the illusion of immateriality is part of the seduction. Bollmer’s framework does not fully capture how this illusion is produced or why it is so compelling. Materiality alone also cannot explain technological desire. Bollmer shows how media act on us through bodily rhythms, infrastructural constraints, and neural patterns. However, he doesn’t fully address why users form powerful emotional bonds with devices, nor why they experience guilt, pride, pleasure, or even longing in their technological interactions. Weiss’s emphasis on seduction fills this gap by showing that technologies engage not just our senses but our fantasies, positioning themselves as objects of intimacy and aspiration. 

There is also a political dimension to this critique. Bollmer focuses primarily on the politics of infrastructure, how technology organizes power through access, distribution, and bodily modulation. Weiss introduces another form of power: the politics of seduction. When technologies promise empowerment while quietly increasing dependency, seduction becomes a mechanism of control. It masks coercion behind convenience, and surveillance behind personalization. Bollmer’s framework, while useful for uncovering hidden infrastructures, does not fully account for this more subtle dynamic. This tension between Bollmer and Weiss matters for how we think about digital media today. In class, we have often discussed representation, signification, and the ways media objects act as tools for thought. Bollmer asks us to shift our focus to the material operations that underlie these symbolic processes. Weiss, however, shows that the symbolic dimension cannot be dismissed so easily. The seductive surface of the devices works together with their material operations to shape behaviour and desire. Screen-based media do not fall neatly into categories of material or immaterial, they are materially constricted precisely to appear immaterial. The fantasy of frictionless immediacy is part of their design.

The encounter between Bollmer and Weiss suggests that the im/material distinction itself might be misleading. What matters is how media use the fantasy of immateriality to hide their actual material conditions, and how this fantasy helps produce the forms of attachment that Weiss describes. Materiality and immateriality, in other words, are not opposites. They are co-produced. The sleep interface depends on the heavy infrastructure, the seductive illusion depends on the physical labour and environmental cost that Bollmer wants us to acknowledge. 

Expanding on this entanglement of desire and materiality, it becomes clear that Weiss’s framework forces us to reconsider what counts as “material” in the first place. Bollmer tends to define materiality through physical infrastructures, bodily interfaces, and spatial-temporal structures, while Weiss shows that affect and desire themselves have a kind of material force. Seduction produces real behavioural patterns: people check their phones reflexively, experience phantom vibrations, and organize their days around notifications or algorithmic nudges. These are not simply symbolic effects, they are embodied habits that shape muscle memory, attention spans, and even sleep cycles. In this sense, Weiss pushes materiality into a more psychological or phenomenological register, one that Bollmer gestures toward but does not fully theorize. This broader perspective matters because it highlights how deeply screens shape our lived experience. Even though the interface feels frictionless, the effects it produces are anything but. The seduction of seamlessness often results in fragmented attention, compulsive scrolling, and a form of low-level dependency that becomes part of everyday life. When a device feels natural or indefensible, this is not a purely material process, it is a combination of affect, design, and desire. Bollmer’s emphasis on infrastructure helps us understand why these patterns emerge, but Weiss helps us understand why they persist and why users rarely resist them. Together, these insights reveal that any serious critique of digital media must move beyond a strict materialist lens. Seduction is not a superficial or secondary effect but a crucial part of how technologies maintain their power. If Bollmer uncovers what digital media are, Weiss uncovers why we let them in so easily, and why they’re so hard to give up. 

Ultimately, a fuller theory of digital media requires combining Bollmer’s attention to material conditions with Weiss’s account of technological seduction. Bollmer helps us see the infrastructures and bodily routines that shape digital experience, while Weiss helps us understand why those experiences are so compelling and why users so willingly submit to them. If Bollmer shows us how media shapes us, Weiss shows us why we cooperate.  By bringing the two thinkers together, we get a clearer picture of the power of screen-based technologies. They are material objects that create immaterial desires, physical infrastructures concealed beneath seductive illusions. And it is precisely through this entanglement, not through materiality alone, that media exert their deepest influence on everyday life. 

Critical Comparison

Siri-ously Performing: When Media Does More Than Talk Back

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Introduction:

Grant Bollmer’s Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction reframes how we understand media. For Bollmer, “What media are must be understood in terms of what they do materially—media make things happen” (Bollmer 6). This idea of “performative materialism” insists that media are not passive symbols but active forces that shape the world. Bollmer defines materialism as “a set of perspectives united by the claim that physical materiality—be it of a technology, practice, or body—matters in the shaping of reality” (1). He insists media studies remain politically engaged, balancing how media functions and what they signify. By doing so, Bollmer creates space to analyze technologies like Siri as both material systems and sites of representation.

The voice assistant is not merely a representation of service or femininity, but through Bollmer’s lens, a performative system that materializes social hierarchies through speech, affect, and design. With Peter-Paul Verbeek’s theory of “technological mediation” and Emily McArthur’s discussion of Siri’s “posthuman aura,” we can see how Siri’s design and discourse perform gender materially. Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) develops this idea further, exploring what happens when a digital voice assistant gains emotion and self-awareness. Collectively, these works suggest that digital media do more than represent gender; they actively enact it through material and affective processes.


Image Credit: Apple


Bollmer’s Performative Materialism – When Media Do Things:

Bollmer argues that media should be understood as performative entities that act. He proposes that representations function as material practices that produce effects in the world rather than merely reflecting it. Drawing on J. L. Austin’s speech-act theory, he explains this idea through examples such as saying “I do” at a wedding or naming a vehicle; statements can create rather than describe reality. In the same way, media enact realities through their words, sounds, and interfaces.

This view revises decades of representational critique. In his introduction, Bollmer writes that media scholars have long been “content reading media,”  focusing on “what an image signifies” and “how representations construct specific ways of understanding identities and the world” (1-2). While these analyses remain important, he argues that they cannot explain how media has the power to shape and influence reality. To think only about meaning is to ignore the physical infrastructures embedded in media that enable and shape experience (3). In this sense, performative materialism links media’s representational effects to their material actions. It’s not enough to interpret what Siri’s voice means; we must examine how it influences users to command, obey, and emotionally invest in technology

While Bollmer’s performative materialism is compelling, it risks attributing too much agency to media themselves, potentially underplaying the role of users, social context, or systemic forces. By focusing on what media does materially, there is a danger of suggesting that technologies act independently of the human and institutional frameworks that produce, distribute, and interact with them. In other words, media are undeniably active, but their actions are often entangled with existing social hierarchies, cultural norms, and economic systems. This tension highlights the need to pair performative materialism with approaches, like Verbeek’s technological mediation, that consider the co-constitution of humans and media.

Image Credit: Suebsiri

Verbeek and the Ethics Built into Design

Peter-Paul Verbeek’s essay “Materializing Morality” aligns with Bollmer’s argument by locating ethics within design itself. “Technological artifacts are not neutral intermediaries but actively coshape people’s being in the world” (Verbeek 364). Through technological mediation, artifacts co-constitute human action. Technological designers materialize morality by embedding values and expectations into devices. The morality of things is to be found in the ways they mediate human actions and decisions.

Verbeek’s perspective shows that morality and materiality are inseparable. The design of a device guides how we act. Its voice, tone, and affordances all impact our decisions and influence our perspective while serving its purpose. Bollmer’s performative materialism extends this by arguing that the media themselves, not just their designers or users, perform meaning. A voice assistant like Siri doesn’t just represent compliance; it performs it through sound, language, and repetition.

Siri and the Feminized Performance of Technology

Emily McArthur’s essay “The iPhone Erfahrung” examines Siri as a piece of technology that exists in a liminal space; Siri is not exactly human, but not exactly a “thing” either (McArthur 115). Her analysis demonstrates how Apple strategically designed Siri with a posthuman aura: “the sense of uniqueness and authenticity” accredited to Walter Benjamin (115). This inexplicable aura, once associated with art, has now transferred to technology like Siri, achieving incomprehensible feats by blurring the line between human and technology (114).

Siri is programmed to sound almost human while keeping a slightly artificial tone. McArthur describes this as being a deliberate decision from Apple, reminding users that they are interacting with technology rather than a human (119). Her evasive answers about humanity or gender reinforce this effect, encouraging users to marvel at the system’s sophistication rather than to connect with it personally. This hypermediated design amplifies Siri’s posthuman aura; like Benjamin’s description of how objects with aura command attention, Siri accumulates and responds to data, gradually learning from the user while subtly shaping the interaction.

Siri occupies a liminal space—both familiar and uncanny—where her aura operates performatively rather than representationally. Her feminized voice and courteous tone enact digital labour that mirrors gendered expectations of service, making obedience feel naturalized rather than demanded. Bollmer’s framework explains this process: instead of reflecting social norms, Siri’s utterances do gender, turning speech into material action (Bollmer 46).

Drawing on Judith Butler, Bollmer argues that gender is not something one is but something one does; a series of repeated acts that give social meaning through performance. Siri’s vocal design thus becomes a technological performance of femininity that both exposes and reproduces the norms it imitates. Her polite responses translate cultural scripts of service into material interaction, making ideology tangible through everyday use. Each exchange rehearses mastery and compliance, teaching users how to internalize gendered labour as natural.

Verbeek’s theory of technological mediation extends this idea: Siri’s personality and voice result from design decisions that embed moral and cultural assumptions into technology. Her compliance is engineered, showing how morality and materiality are inseparable. From this view, Siri’s feminized behaviour becomes both a design and an ethical issue, mediating users’ sense of power, empathy, and dependency. Bollmer’s performative materialism reveals that these interactions do not merely symbolize hierarchy but enact it materially through voice, repetition, and affect.

Image Credit: Composed by Sam Garcea using an Apple Emoji and Illustration by Alex Castro

Labour? I Hardly Know Her: Intimacy, Siri, and the Posthuman Aura

Spike Jonze’s Her extends these dynamics into a speculative narrative. Samantha, the AI voiced by Scarlett Johansson, continues Siri’s design: a voice that learns, feels, and loves. The film illustrates Bollmer’s claim that statements make things happen, showing how Samantha’s language shapes emotional and social realities that transform Theodore’s life. Her performative speech blurs the line between representation and action, as her affection produces tangible change.

Verbeek’s concept of materialized morality is also relevant. Samantha’s behaviour reflects the moral structure of her programming, influencing Theodore’s habits and expectations. The film’s tenderness hides this mediation, showing how design can naturalize emotional dependence. Like Siri, Samantha’s femininity is coded to soothe and serve, making intimacy a function. What seems like spontaneous affection is, in Verbeek’s terms, a technologically mediated moral relation.

Both examples reveal what McArthur calls the posthuman aura, the sense that technology carries authenticity and presence. This aura hides the infrastructures and hierarchies that sustain it. Bollmer’s framework shows how that aura reinforces systems of inequality, especially around gendered labour and emotional work.

Image Credit: Her (2013) Directed by Spike Jonze

When Representation Performs

The cases of Siri and Samantha illustrate that performativity does not replace representation but operates through it. While both technologies enact gendered behaviours, those behaviours are still read and experienced as representations of femininity. Bollmer’s point that representation itself is material becomes crucial here. What we perceive as symbolic acts—tone, politeness, service—are in fact material processes that shape how gender and power are lived through technology.

This interdependence complicates the idea that performativity “abandons” representation. Instead, representation becomes active, participating in the very performances it describes. Siri and Samantha’s voices thus blur not only the line between human and machine but also between meaning and action.

The Capitalist Aura

McArthur’s discussion of Siri connects this performance to capitalism’s affective economy. The assistant’s calm tone and perpetual readiness reinforce ideals of productivity, comfort, and control. Her politeness conceals the systems of labour and surveillance that sustain her operation. In Her, Samantha’s emotional intimacy becomes the next stage of this logic: connection itself becomes a commodity.

Bollmer’s approach exposes how these technologies participate in broader networks of inequality. The feminized aura of helpfulness and empathy reinforces existing hierarchies, making subservience appear natural and care transactional. Verbeek’s mediation theory adds that these effects are not accidental—they emerge from design decisions that translate social and moral norms into technical form.

Moments when these systems falter, such as Siri’s mishearing or Samantha’s disappearance, momentarily expose their material foundations. These breakdowns align with Bollmer’s insistence that the infrastructures behind media matter: the code, servers, and networks that make digital performance possible. When they become visible, the illusion of effortless intimacy collapses, revealing media’s performative power as both constructed and constrained.

Conclusion

Bollmer’s performative materialism redefines media as actors within social and political systems rather than neutral channels of meaning. Verbeek’s technological mediation complements this view by showing how design itself carries ethical weight. McArthur’s analysis of Siri and Jonze’s portrayal of Samantha demonstrate how these theories play out in practice: both assistants perform gender and morality through voice, interaction, and emotional appeal.

Seen together, these perspectives reveal that media do not simply depict power—they enact it. Siri and Samantha extend Butler’s notion of gender performativity into the digital sphere, repeating and reifying scripts of service, care, and obedience. Bollmer’s question—what does media do?—finds its answer here: through everyday interaction, our technologies reproduce the very hierarchies they seem to transcend. Understanding media as performative materialities forces us to confront the ethics of their design and the politics embedded in their use.

By Sam Garcea

Works Cited:

Bollmer, Grant. Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. Accessed 10 November 2025.

Jonze, Spike, director. Her. Warner Bros. pictures, 2013.

McArthur, Emily. “The iPhone Erfahrung: Siri, the Auditory Unconscious, and Walter Benjamin’s ‘Aura.’” Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, 2014, pp. 113-128.

Verbeek, Peter-Paul. “Materializing Morality Design Ethics and Technological Mediation.” Science, Technology, & Human Values, vol. 31, no. 3, 2006, pp. 361-380.

Heading Image: Her by Studioroeu

Critical Comparison

Materialism and Mediation: The Shared Critique of the Subject-Object Divide

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Photo by Aubrey Ventura

Introduction

Grant Bollmer’s Materialist Media Theory and Dennis Weiss’ “Seduced by the Machine” both show how media are material forces that structure experience. Bollmer emphasizes how infrastructures perform power and organize social relations, while Weiss highlights how technologies act through the body. While Bollmer focuses on the political and social effects of material media, Weiss raises ethical questions about the authenticity of emotions mediated by technology. Together, they show that mediation is both material and emotional, intertwining power, feeling, and ethical experience in human life.

Overview of Bollmer’s (2019) Materialist Media Theory 

Grant Bollmer’s Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction (2019) explores how materialist perspectives shape how we understand and study media. Bollmer argues that “media and technology are not mere tools” that shape our perceptions of power and discrimination; instead, they are “locations for the perpetuation of inequality and the management of social difference” (Bollmer 1). Throughout the book, he critiques the common form of solely studying symbols and representations in media studies, claiming that it disregards how media truly produce cultural and political effects. He explains that when we “only examine meaning, what a medium is and does is limited to human perception and experience,” which he identifies as a key flaw in traditional meaning-based media studies education (Bollmer 2). Instead, he encourages a materialist approach, where media act as “participants” that influence our relations with people, objects, and ideas, rather than serving as a passive, neutral tool (Bollmer 25).

Overview of Dennis M. Weiss’ “Seduced by the Machine” 

Dennis M. Weiss’s essay “Seduced by the Machine: Human-Technology Relations and Sociable Robots” (2014) from Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman tries to answer key questions related to sociable robots and “relational artifacts,” machineries designed to mimic emotions, empathy, and human connection. Weiss has used four major perspectives to support his discussion. He has used Turkle’s “Machines Take Advantage of Human Vulnerability” to “seduce us into a relationship” (Turkle et al. 2006, 326). This can lead to a new kind of “loner yet never alone,” an extended loneliness, and a feeling of loss and longing that paradoxically arises in the context of an abundance of networked connections. Later, with Corry and Allenby in Final Position, bringing the ideas on emotional companionship, Corry describes the intense relief of one when receiving the illusion of a companion, which suggests that machines can fulfill a basic human social connection. However, Allenby, after fulfilling a human contact, is later shot to prove Corry’s point of emotional bonding between human and machine, which raises the question of how to understand the role of relational robots in our lives. (Weiss 218) Lastly, Weiss mentions Verbeek’s philosophical counterargument on the separation of subjects from objects, bringing a cautious view on how technology can co-shape human existence and morality, that “we are profoundly technologically mediated beings” (Weiss 223).

Comparison of Bollmer’s and Seduce by the Machine

The strongest bond between Weiss and Bollmer is the broader philosophical critique of the separation between humans and technology, which is the central project of Bollmer’s materialism theory. In his work on materialism, Bollmer claims that “physical materiality… matters in the shaping of reality” in his Thesis 9, which, with media, we come into contact with and become something else (Bollmer, 176), with the key concept of interacting with some medium that alters human beings. This is going hand in hand with Weiss’s argument using Verbeek’s theory: “Humans and technologies do not have a separate existence anymore but help to shape each other in myriad ways” (Weiss 224). To further support this case, in Bollmer’s book, he states that “media are performative.” He sees them as active participants: they do things. They shape how people, objects, and ideas relate to one another. He also argues that media are “vital objects, possessive of their own agencies and abilities” (Bollmer 176). This is similar to Verbeek’s philosophical argument that technologies are not just tools but actively “co-shape” human existence, morality, and perception. For example, the sociable robot, Paro, is the evidence for this case study, with the robot’s material design, which is fluffy and reacts to touch. It becomes a presence that shapes the person’s emotional response and social habits, which might match the definition of “companion.”

However, the authenticity of human emotion is the core of the contradiction between Bollmer’s theory and Weiss’s essay. While Bollmer’s materialism tries to move away from centering human experience and avoiding reducing the machines to human experience to focus more on material performance and political outcome, especially in thesis 5. Weiss focuses more on the simulated emotion (machine) and authentic emotion (human), which is the core of Turkle’s critique. In his conclusion, the Twilight Zone episode reveals the ethical cost of such mediation. The prisoner Corry fell into despair and realized that the companionship with Allenby was only an illusion, which shows a hierarchy where human connection is morally superior to the machine-mediated one.

Distinguishing the Im/material in screen-based media

The distinction between what is material and what is immaterial has become increasingly vague with the rise of new media and technology, especially with the rise of artificial intelligence. Bollmer argues that “media are vital objects, possessive of their own agencies and abilities,” meaning that even intangible forms of media, such as an app interface and networks, influence our perception and behaviours. (Bollmer 174). On the other hand, Weiss’s focus on “social” robots and their ability to mimic human emotions and empathy exhibits its need for material design, such as their programmed tone of voice and trained outputs. Weiss explains that “the truth is that we are profoundly technologically mediated beings,” indicating that our emotional and thinking processes are continually built by the technologies we interact with. Considering this, the ability to differentiate between material and immaterial does not have much value in the context of screen-based media, as scrolling through an app or talking to an AI chatbot relies on physical systems and even our own bodies to operate.

The importance of Materiality in Media Technology

According to Bollemer, materiality can be considered the basis of media, and to understand media, one has to move beyond the representation and meaning to how they act, affect, and structure relations between humans and technology, in other words, the material means. Weiss reinforces this by quoting the views of Turkle, who has written, “Material culture carries emotions” and ideas of startling intensity (Turkle 6) in Evocative Objects, and noting that media technology is already interacting and reshaping the material world. Concluding from both readings, materiality is crucial when it comes to discussing media technology because the function – or the “affordance” – of media technology is what humans can discern directly. This is the first step of understanding media technology, which is rapidly evolving and developing new applications every day. 

The affordance of media technology changes as their materiality changes, as Bollemer noted; media are not neutral and produce and sustain power structures through their material existence. Weiss supports this through examples and presents that the difference in materiality caused a large division in the human’s attitude towards machines, which shows the importance of materiality when it comes to discussing media technology. 

Link back to previous readings

Bollmer argues that media are “not mere tools” but “locations for the perpetuation of inequality and the management of social difference” (Bollmer 3), shaping how we relate to others, objects, and the world. By defining media as performative, things that act and make things happen, Bollmer emphasizes that technological mediation is an active, material process organizing human experience. Media are not neutral backdrops; they structure social relations and determine which bodies, histories, and interactions are made visible. Weiss illustrates this on a bodily level, showing that human attention, emotion, and desire are shaped by technological design. Users are pulled into emotional and social patterns by technology, and interfaces guide how they interact, showing that humans and machines shape each other. Annalee Newitz’s “My Laptop” personalizes this idea, describing a reciprocal relationship of care and dependence: “It doesn’t just belong to me; I also belong to it” (Newitz 88). Together, these works show that mediation operates materially, socially, and emotionally, challenging the traditional separation between subjects and objects. Humans don’t act alone on passive tools but are connected with technology, which influences who we are, how we interact, and what matters to us.

Conclusion

Between the two readings, what defines materiality is presented in various ways. In conclusion, materiality is the wires, the shape, and the technical form of the medium, as well as the way they “speak” and “express” to humans. Bollmer and Weiss may both agree that materiality is the crucial element in defining a media technology, which is not only a tool but also an outlet that shapes and bends our emotions and perception of the world. 

Works Cited

Dennis, Weiss M. “Design, Mediation & The Post Human. Chapter Eleven, Seduced by the Machine: Human-Technology Relations and Sociable Robots.” Accessed 8 Nov. 2025. 

Grant, Bollmer. “Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction.” Bloomsbury, www.bloomsbury.com/us/materialist-media-theory-9781501337093/. Accessed 8 Nov. 2025. 

Newitz, Annalee. “MY LAPTOP.” In Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, edited by Sherry Turkle, 86–91. The MIT Press, 2007. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hhg8p.14.

Turkle, Sherry. Evocative Objects: Things we work with. The MIT Press. 2011. https://williamwolff.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/turkle-objects-2011.pdf. Accessed 9 Nov. 2025.

Turkle et al. “A Nascent Robotics Culture: New Complicities for Companionship.” [online] AAAI Technical Report Series, July 2006. Available at: web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/nascentroboticsculture.pdf.

Contributors: Lorriane Chua, Siming Liao, Eira Nguyen, Aubrey Ventura

Book Review

Digital Black Feminism: Media, Embodiment & Resistance

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Introduction

Catherine Steele’s book, Digital Black Feminism, is an exploration of critical issues surrounding race and media in modern media theory. It was published in October 2021, at the height of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The book highlights Steele’s expertise as a scholar of race, gender, and media. Steele is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland, where she runs the Black Communication and Technology (BCaT) lab. Her scholarship focuses on how marginalized communities have resisted oppression through digital technologies. Her book came at a crucial time, in a moment in which social media activism was at its peak, renewing attention to racial justice and the politics of technology. 

Steele’s book reframes how scholars understand the intersection between race, media, and politics. It highlights the essential contributions of Black women to the media landscape while acknowledging the lack of recognition of their revolutionary innovations due to their positionality. Steele analyzes Black women’s use of the internet as a tool of recognition, activism, and survival. This work reminds us that the media is never neutral; it’s inherently political, often working to silence already marginalized voices. A central theme is acknowledging how Black women have been fighting against these political systems that surveil and constrain users due to racial and gender bias. Steele argues that Digital Black feminism works to repurpose these systems that have historically marginalized them. She states that Black women have long used media as spaces of community, extending a lineage of traditional Black feminism that predates the internet as a way to remain visible and represented in a world that wants to do the opposite.

This book report examines how Black Digital Feminism works to redefine media theory through connections to representation, politics, embodiment. By drawing on theories introduced by Grant Bollmer’s Materialist Media Theory, Simone Browne’s work Dark Matters: On Surveillance of Blackness, Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression, and Mark Hansen’s Bodies in Code. This work acts as a bridge to connecting themes raised in Steele’s work and broader media studies theories. As Media Studies students, Steele’s book reminds us to analyze systems of power and oppression. She invites the reader to take a look at who is seen, who is silenced, and how marginalized communities reimagine the world of technology.

Overview of the Book

Steele’s Digital Black Feminism explores how Black feminist thought intersects with digital technology. Steele centers Black women’s voices and highlights how their use of technology is rooted in a long history of resisting oppression. In the first chapter, she discusses how technology shaped Black women’s lives during slavery, touching on oral culture, forced labor, and communication between worlds. Steele argues that Digital Black Feminism is a “political choice that bolsters the claim that feminism practiced without adherence to racial practices is not feminism at all”(18). She warns against analyzing technology through a “colorblind” lens, as that perpetuates more oppression, ignoring the harassment Black women face online. Steele emphasizes the need to recognize Black women’s foundational roles in feminist and civil rights movements, and urges readers to approach Digital Black Feminism with awareness of its historical and political context.

In the next chapter, Steele introduces the “virtual beauty shop” as a metaphor for Black feminism in digital spaces. She describes the virtual beauty shop as a constructed space for Black women. As beauty salons have been safe havens for the Black community, Steele shows how Black women are extending these safe spaces online through conversations about hair care. In the next three chapters, she connects this idea to the work of historic Black feminist icons and argues that social media has become a powerful tool for continuing their legacy. Steele challenges stereotypes that erase Black women from technology, showing how activities like blogging, hair tutorials, and Black Twitter contribute to knowledge, resistance, and academic discourse. She argues that Digital Black Feminism broadens the idea of scholarship, making theory more accessible. This book reframes the media not as a neutral technology but as a political space that is tied to history, empowerment and resistance. 

Media and Representation

Catherine Steele’s arguments in this book bring forward key ideas about media and power, and representations that align with the central themes of our course. Steele reminds the audience of the importance of Black women creators in the digital landscape, highlighting them as voices for their community and figures of representation. This resonates with Grant Bollmer’s discussion in Materialist Media Theory, where he argues that representation is essential to the politics of media, since it works to determine whose voices are heard and whose are erased. He highlights that the silencing of marginalized people is not simply an oversight but a tactic of political erasure. As representation in the media is a symbol of power, lack of visibility works to restrict political action. Steele’s analysis grounds this theory, as the harassment of Black women online, censorship, and algorithmic bias demonstrate how digital platforms function to discipline and silence marginalized users, limiting their participation in public discourse.

However, through Steele’s work, she demonstrates how Black feminists are actively defying these systems of power. The Digital Black Feminist movement emerges as a countermeasure to this silencing, transforming exclusion into a space for community. Through social media, digital storytelling, and activism, Black women are creating a space of affirmation and political critique that challenges the social hierarchies embedded in the media. This movement correlates with Bollmer’s ideas that the politics of representation lies not only in obtaining visibility but having control within these systems in order to change them. Steele reminds us that when Black women organize and create online, they are not simply using media but remaking it, pushing back against the very systems that aim to silence them. 

Media Politics & Surveillance

Steele’s discussions on representation and empowerment directly connect to ideas on media politics and surveillance explored in class and broader media scholarship. In discussions on mass media, it was emphasized that the media is centered around and controlled by institutions of power. Steele’s Digital Black Feminism, alongside theories by Simone Browne and Safiya Noble, exposes how media is inherently political, reproducing racial hierarchies through surveillance and algorithmic bias. Browne’s Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness traces how the system of racialized surveillance is rooted in slavery and colonialism. She argues that racialized surveillance is “a technology of social control where surveillance practices, policies, and performances concern the production of norms pertaining to race and a power to define what is in or out of place” (Browne 77). These practices are reproduced in digital forms through tracking, data collection, and targeted harassment. These systems of power aim to control Black voices by supervising their interactions with the media. 

This is prevalent in Steele’s work as she discusses how targeted harassment and “algorithms of oppression,” a concept introduced by Noble, work to push Black women off digital platforms. Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression highlights how search engines and digital infrastructures are encoded with racial bias that pushes anti-Black rhetoric. She provides an example of how Google’s photo application automatically “tagged African Americans as “apes” and “animals” (Noble 6). This is just one example of the hundreds of “accidental” algorithmic incidents of racism. These algorithms aim to control and discourage Black users rather than allowing them to speak their truths. Steele extends this analysis by discussing how this surveillance works to hide Black presence, allowing their scholarship to be drowned out by harassment or go unnoticed. It’s important to acknowledge that race impacts a person’s experience on the internet and that colorblind view on media politics does more harm than good. 

Critical Reflection & Possibilities

Steele’s work highlights the blind spots that theorists often overlook when discussing race and technology. It offers more than a case study; it introduces a movement.  Theory is often influenced by embodied experiences. As introduced by Mark Hansen in Bodies in Code, media is an extension of the body that shapes perception and experiences. Hansen suggests that digital media makes the body the site of mediation, closing the distinction between human and technological experience. This reminds us that Digital Black Feminism is more than just a theoretical framework; it’s a lived experience. For Black women, embodiment in digital spaces is not evenly distributed. It’s important we acknowledge that the Black body is both hypervisible and surveilled.

However, after reading Steele’s argument, I was left with questions about Digital Black  Feminism and the limitations of her discussions. As an Afro-Latina media scholar, I noticed that Steele’s argument was largely grounded in a U.S. context. This focus allows her to speak on her positionality and the rich history between the African American slave experience and modern media practices. However, it is also a limitation. It left me wondering about the exploration of African, Caribbean, and Black diasporic lenses. Black Feminist media practices are at play globally, often interacting with colonial legacies and political oppression. A diasporic lens would work to extend ideas of surveillance, representation, and algorithmic bias. With the current state of the political world, I feel like analyzing the power of Digital Black Feminism and media politics in places like Sudan and Congo, which are suffering from extreme oppression and humanitarian crises, would provide another larger, inclusive perspective. Looking at Digital Black Feminism from a global lens would help root her claims as a universal Black experience rather than just through an American context, since it is bigger than just the USA. Given this, I would be interested in further analyzing Grant Bollmer’s ideas on geopolitics and colonial power influencing the media. 

Conclusion

Catherine Steele’s Digital Black Feminism transforms how we understand media, politics, and representation. By connecting digital culture with the long history of Black feminist communication, Steele demonstrates that media is both an agent of control and a tool for resistance. When read alongside Bollmer’s ideas on representation, Browne’s theory of surveillance, Noble’s work on algorithmic bias, and Hansen’s discussions on embodiment, it is evident that the media is deeply political and a lived experience. For Media Studies students, Steele’s book challenges us to reevaluate our ideas on media by making the reality of Black women media users present and visible. It warns us that the media is tied to systems of power that often work to hinder marginalized voices. Steele does suggest that if used with intention, it can work to create a safe haven of community and creativity. Ultimately, Steele’s work insists that the study of Black Digital Feminism should be seen as a study of liberation (as with her example of the virtual beauty salon), showing how marginalized communities can not only survive within the political systems but transform them into a space of joy and resistance. 

Written by: Aminata Chipembere

Works Cited

Bollmer, Grant. Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction. Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 

Browne, Simone. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Duke University Press, 2015. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw89p. Accessed 10 Nov. 2025.

Hansen, M. B. N. Bodies in Code: Interfaces with New Media. Routledge, 2006.

Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press, 2018. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1pwt9w5. Accessed 9 Nov. 2025.
Steele, Catherine Knight. Digital Black Feminism. New York University Press, 2021.