Tobias Raun
Roskilde University, Communication, Department Member
- Social Media, Digital Media, Affect (Cultural Theory), Transgender Studies, Participatory Media, Studies On Men And Masculinity, and 16 moreYoutube, Online activism, Transgender Representation, Affective Politics, InterCultural Studies, Media Studies, Media, Film Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Masculinities, Memorialisation, Male Infertility, Facebook Studies, Mediatization (Communication Studies), Death Studies, and Death, Grief, and Mourningedit
- Tobias Raun is an Associate Professor at Communication Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark. He has presented his ... moreTobias Raun is an Associate Professor at Communication Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark.
He has presented his work at several conferences around Europe and the United States, where he has earned international reputation. His research has been published widely in book anthologies and peer reviewed journals in Danish and English (and a translation into Portuguese), primarily within the area of Visual Culture, New Media, Internet Studies, Cultural Studies and Gender Studies (especially Transgender and Queer Studies). In 2013 his PhD Thesis was grated the KRAKA prize in Denmark for groundbreaking gender research.
In 2016 he published a book with Routledge on trans video blogging titled: "Out Online: Trans Self-Representation and Community Building on YouTube" (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315599229).
He has been part of the international research project with the theme: “New Media New Intimacies” funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Science in Danish (http://rucforsk.ruc.dk/site/da/projects/new-media--new-intimacies(740221d3-0197-44ef-aa2d-da7c4b76d46b).html).
In 2018 he co-edited the anthology "Mediated Intimacies: Connectivities, Relationalities, Proximities" (https://www.routledge.com/Mediated-Intimacies-Connectivities-Relationalities-and-Proximities-1st/Andreassen-Petersen-Harrison-Raun/p/book/9781138631878).
From 2013 to 2019 he was the editor of the New Media section of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly (https://www.dukeupress.edu/TSQ-Transgender-Studies-Quarterly/). He has also been guest editor of an issue of MedieKultur entitled "Gender and Media Revisited" (http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/mediekultur). Since 2014 he has been part of the research network on Affect Studies, which collectively publishes articles and edits the research blog Peculiar (http://peculiar.dk/).
He has worked extensively on transgender self-representation, community building and activism via social media. This sommer he is publishing a new article (with Mons Bissenbakker) on healthcare discourses on the increase of transgender boys to the Gender Identity Clinic in Denmark. He has also been researching mourning in/through social media as well as new forms of self-branding among minorities. Currently he is working on a project entitled "Plastic Masculinity", investigating theoretically and analytically how to understand the reconfigurations of masculinity in light of the all-encompassing mediatization and biomedicalization of everyday life.edit
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Gennem en undersøgelse af behandleres bekymring for den øgede tilstrømning af transkønnede drenge til de danske kønsidentitetsklinikker, sådan som denne bekymring kommer til udtryk i den danske mediedækning, gør vi i denne artikel status... more
Gennem en undersøgelse af behandleres bekymring for den øgede tilstrømning af transkønnede drenge til de danske kønsidentitetsklinikker, sådan som denne bekymring kommer til udtryk i den danske mediedækning, gør vi i denne artikel status over opfattelserne af transkønnethed i Danmark. Med udgangspunkt i en specifik case vedrørende den danske mediedækning af medicinsk behandling af transkønnede børn/unge under 18 år fra 2019–2021 analyserer vi bekymringens logikker, som de kommer til udtryk i artikler og interviews med behandlere i dagspressen i perioden. Vi argumenterer for, at de patologiserende, heteronormative og kønsbinære bekymringer, som tidligere kendetegnede behandlernes forståelse af transkønnedes situation, er blevet erstattet af nye velmenende bekymringer, som på den ene side kan karakteriseres som mere transpositive, men som på den anden side må ses som byggende på et forstærket cisnormativt syn på køn. Med afsæt i transteori, queerteori og affektteori er vi optaget af a...
Artiklen analyserer de to udgivelser, der er kommet ud af forskningsprojektet ”Transseksualitet. En psykologisk/psykiatrisk beskrivelse samt efterundersøgelse”, som forestås af henholdsvis den tidligere leder af Sexologisk Klinik Ellids... more
Artiklen analyserer de to udgivelser, der er kommet ud af forskningsprojektet ”Transseksualitet. En psykologisk/psykiatrisk beskrivelse samt efterundersøgelse”, som forestås af henholdsvis den tidligere leder af Sexologisk Klinik Ellids Kristensen, den nuværende leder Annamaria Geraldi, psykolog på klinikken Rikke Kildevæld Simonsen og Gert Martin Hald, der er den eneste, der ikke samtidig er ansat som fungerende psykolog/psykiater på Sexologisk Klinik. Der spørges kritisk til ind til udgivelsernes forskningsetik og metodologi: Er det ikke forskningsetisk problematisk, at den eneste omfattende forskning i danske transkønnedes sociodemografi udøves af folk fra den institution, som har fået massiv kritik for at være uforstående over for netop transkønnedes livserfaringer, selvopfattelser og behov? Og er det ikke forskningsmetodisk problematisk, at forskningen bedrives af folk, som i høj grad har bidraget til at producere de udsagn og subjektspositioner, som de undersøger?
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This article analyses videos of men talking about and documenting their lack and growth of hair via Finasteride and Minoxidil. We explore these male self-representational videos on YouTube as a specific form of self-tracking enabled by... more
This article analyses videos of men talking about and documenting their lack and growth of hair via Finasteride and Minoxidil. We explore these male self-representational videos on YouTube as a specific form of self-tracking enabled by the camera within a specific platformed environment. We argue that the camera is not solely a tool, but rather an aesthetic practice with performative effects. In other words, self-tracking must be understood as always already entangled in and inseparable from mediating and aesthetic processes. The article then outlines the main characteristics of self-tracking videos as a self-representational audio-visual genre, defining them as momental videos and longitudinal videos. It is our claim that these defining characteristics constitute the central aesthetic principles of Finasteride and Minoxidil self-tracking videos, but that they are also applicable to other forms of videos preoccupied with representing and tracking transformation.
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This article investigates a community of men who use the pharmaceuticals Minoxidil and Finasteride to enable and restore beard and hair growth, and who track and trace the effects on YouTube. It argues that the traditional positions of... more
This article investigates a community of men who use the pharmaceuticals Minoxidil and Finasteride to enable and restore beard and hair growth, and who track and trace the effects on YouTube. It argues that the traditional positions of expert and patient are deterritorialized by the digitalization of health discourses and practices, and that the camera in these YouTube videos acts as a mediating/performative factor. The article seeks to answer the question of community formation among the male self-trackers. It offers a generic, analytical model where knowledge production is outlined as either expert or practitioner and community formation as either community member or community leader, both of which figure as intersecting axes on a continuum. Although derived from the case material, the article suggests that the generic, analytical model works across different audiovisually mediated selftracking communities and practices.
Th is article investigates a community of men who use the pharmaceuticals Minoxidil and Finasteride to enable and restore beard and hair growth, and who track and trace the eff ects on YouTube. It argues that the traditional positions of... more
Th is article investigates a community of men who use the pharmaceuticals Minoxidil and Finasteride to enable and restore beard and hair growth, and who track and trace the eff ects on YouTube. It argues that the traditional positions of expert and patient are deterritorialized by the digitalization of health discourses and practices, and that the camera in these YouTube videos acts as a mediating/performative factor. Th e article seeks to answer the question of community formation among the male self-trackers. It off ers a generic, analytical model where knowledge production is outlined as either expert or practitioner and community formation as either community member or community leader, both of which fi gure as intersecting axes on a continuum. Although derived from the case material, the article suggests that the generic, analytical model works across diff erent audiovisually mediated selftracking communities and practices.
Tobias Rauns Skærmfødsler – en undersøgelse af det transformative potentiale i unge transkønnedes video blogs på YouTube. (Screen births – An examination of the transformative potential in the video blogs of young transgendered people on... more
Tobias Rauns Skærmfødsler – en undersøgelse af det transformative potentiale i unge transkønnedes video blogs på YouTube. (Screen births – An examination of the transformative potential in the video blogs of young transgendered people on YouTube). The point of departure of the article is the rising number of video blogs (vlogs) on YouTube, where young transgendered people document and discuss their gender transformations. The article argues that these vlogs are a tool for staging the self and the creation of personal story telling in the shape of some sort of autobiographies and diaries, which also connect to creation, communication and negotiation with a larger collective story about being transgendered. Here the vlog is a means to be seen rather than secrecy, and this challenges pathologisation of transgenderedness.
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This paper explores a group of Dane’s motives for and experiences with using their personal Facebook profile to cope with the death of a close relative, based on extensive semi-structured media-go-along interviews. The focus of the... more
This paper explores a group of Dane’s motives for and experiences with using their personal Facebook profile to cope with the death of a close relative, based on extensive semi-structured media-go-along interviews. The focus of the article is on what I label emotional self-management, which came up repeatedly during the interviews as an integrated part of mourning online. It is argued that Facebook is used as an outlet for expressing thoughts and feelings that are often experienced as bypassed or silenced in off-line social interactions. However, these expressions of grief take place within a techno-social space, where one balances on a tight line between an allowed enactment of a private public self and a denigrated enactment of an oversharing, too transgressive intimate self. One is allowed to mourn but not excessively. In trying to balance sharing but not oversharing it is argued that the interviewees engage in continous dialog with multiple internal and external others.
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This article explores the intersection between trans identity and technology as it manifests in trans video blogs on YouTube. Taking my point of departure in eight case-study vloggers I analyse the different ways that the vlog can work as... more
This article explores the intersection between trans identity and technology as it manifests in trans video blogs on YouTube. Taking my point of departure in eight case-study vloggers I analyse the different ways that the vlog can work as a medium of transformation. The vlogs engender the ongoing process of ‘becoming’ man/woman/trans by inscribing the vlogger in multiple and intersubjective reflections, being visible to themselves and others as an image. I argue that the co-production of trans identity in/through the vlog takes the shape of a mirror, a digital diary or autobiography, and as artistic explorations and communications. The article demonstrates how vloggers take advantage of the multimodality of the medium to tell stories of trans that can animate and motivate others to dare to be visible or claim an identity as trans.
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This is a statement from Simon, put forth in a video blog (vlog), recorded in his home. We can barely see Simon because of the low-level light as he speaks straight into the camera with a rather timid look on his face. In this quote Simon... more
This is a statement from Simon, put forth in a video blog (vlog), recorded in his home. We can barely see Simon because of the low-level light as he speaks straight into the camera with a rather timid look on his face. In this quote Simon suggests that the camera is an integrated part of his self — documenting his thoughts and inner dialogue. But the camera also serves as an external interlocutor, a companion you can trust and tell everything. The camera becomes ‘the eye that sees and the ear that listens powerfully but without judgement and reprisal’ (Renov quoted in Matthews, 2007: 443). Here, the vlog seems to work as a therapeutic tool that enables Simon to locate and release powerful emotional energy in ways that are not possible off-screen.
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The article engages with trans male video blogs on YouTube, framing them as living archives that offer unique opportunities to access and share embodied trans knowledges—which have previously been limited or inaccessible—such as... more
The article engages with trans male video blogs on YouTube, framing them as living archives that offer unique opportunities to access and share embodied trans knowledges—which have previously been limited or inaccessible—such as information about and visual accounts of medical transitioning processes. It is argued that archiving one's transition works through a kind of performative documentation, partly documenting and partly instantiating the transformation by tracking and tracing the bodily changes. Testosterone figures as the transformative technology, while the upper body becomes the privileged site of self-fashioning. YouTube hereby offers an alternative and empowering archive of how trans male bodies could look, while its cumulative effects also play a significant role in determining how they should look.
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The article is in English but here comes a Danish summary: Denne artikel rejser en række epistemologiske og metodologiske spørgsmål vedrørende læsningen af trans som identitetskategori. Disse spørgsmål er stærkt underbelyste i en... more
The article is in English but here comes a Danish summary: Denne artikel rejser en række epistemologiske og metodologiske spørgsmål vedrørende læsningen af trans som identitetskategori. Disse spørgsmål er stærkt underbelyste i en skandinavisk akademisk kontekst, om end der ellers i stigende grad produceres analyser af trans identitetsnarrativer. Artiklen sætter fokus på, hvordan trans indrammes og betydningstilskrives indenfor visse former for queer teoretisk informerede læsninger. Gennem næranalyser af tre nyere tekster af henholdsvis Katherine Johnson, Dag Heede og Jodi Kaufmann påpeges farerne ved en alt for dissekerende læsning, da denne har tendens til at reducere trans til et spørgsmål om normativ (re)produktion eller subversiv dekonstruktion. Sluttelig argumenteres der for at (gen)besøge og ihukomme spørgsmålet om lokaliseringens politik som forsker og i den analytiske praksis; hvem taler og tildeles stemme – og på hvilke præmisser? Keywords: methodology, epistemology, transg...
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The article takes its point of departure in a case from November, 2012, where Sundhedsstyrelsen [the Danish Ministry of Health] instituted sanctions against medical professionals who provided gender confirming treatment to transgender... more
The article takes its point of departure in a case from November, 2012, where Sundhedsstyrelsen [the Danish Ministry of Health] instituted sanctions against medical professionals who provided gender confirming treatment to transgender people outside the purview of the state-funded and licensed Sexological Clinic in Copenhagen. I investigate the role of conventional news media in framing the 2012 case and contrast it with transgender people’s use of social media – Facebook in particular – as a forum for responding to the media coverage. This article raises the following questions: How do Denmark’s established news media represent and frame the 2012 case? How do transgender people engage with this news coverage – sharing articles, commenting, and discussing new developments – on Facebook? How do they use Facebook as a platform for sharing information within the trans community and articulating concerns about the case and its broader implications?
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This article was published on QueerKraft and introduces a basic trans* vocabulary as well as Trans* studies. It’s written with Tobias Raun and Mons Bissenbakker Frederiksen.
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The article is in English but here comes a Danish summary: Denne artikel rejser en række epistemologiske og metodologiske spørgsmål vedrørende læsningen af trans som identitetskategori. Disse spørgsmål er stærkt underbelyste i en... more
The article is in English but here comes a Danish summary: Denne artikel rejser en række epistemologiske og metodologiske spørgsmål vedrørende læsningen af trans som identitetskategori. Disse spørgsmål er stærkt underbelyste i en skandinavisk akademisk kontekst, om end der ellers i stigende grad produceres analyser af trans identitetsnarrativer. Artiklen sætter fokus på, hvordan trans indrammes og betydningstilskrives indenfor visse former for queer teoretisk informerede læsninger. Gennem næranalyser af tre nyere tekster af henholdsvis Katherine Johnson, Dag Heede og Jodi Kaufmann påpeges farerne ved en alt for dissekerende læsning, da denne har tendens til at reducere trans til et spørgsmål om normativ (re)produktion eller subversiv dekonstruktion. Sluttelig argumenteres der for at (gen)besøge og ihukomme spørgsmålet om lokaliseringens politik som forsker og i den analytiske praksis; hvem taler og tildeles stemme – og på hvilke præmisser? Keywords: methodology, epistemology, transgender studies, trans life-story narratives
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O artigo tem seu ponto de partida na investigacao de doutorado de Tobias Raun, explorando os inumeros blogs de video (vlogs) no YouTube onde pessoas trans (usando hormonios e/ou cirurgia para alterar seu corpo) documentam e discutem sua... more
O artigo tem seu ponto de partida na investigacao de doutorado de Tobias Raun, explorando os inumeros blogs de video (vlogs) no YouTube onde pessoas trans (usando hormonios e/ou cirurgia para alterar seu corpo) documentam e discutem sua transicao de genero. O artigo apresenta uma caracterizacao da midia vlog como esta sendo posta em pratica pelas pessoas trans, argumentando que o vlog opera tanto como um diario, uma autobiografia, e como um veiculo de comunicacao e conexao social. Alem disso, Tobias Raun levanta questoes como: que tipo de possibilidades uma nova midia como vlogs permite em relacao a representar e negociar o significado da identidade trans? Possibilitam os vlogs trans um senso de autonomia e ajudam a criar visibilidade politica e acao politica?
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This is a statement from“Seth” a 21 years old FTM living in the US. I find it useful to take this statement as a starting point for exploring the relation between new media and affect. In this quote Seth pinpoints the camera as a kind... more
This is a statement from“Seth” a 21 years old FTM living in the US. I find it useful to take this statement as a starting point for exploring the relation between new media and affect. In this quote Seth pinpoints the camera as a kind interlocutor, a companion you can trust and tell ...
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While studies of masculinities often trace processes of either medicalization or mediatization, few interrogate masculinities at their very intersection. Doing so is the main contribution of this panel, which brings together cases that... more
While studies of masculinities often trace processes of either medicalization or mediatization, few interrogate masculinities at their very intersection. Doing so is the main contribution of this panel, which brings together cases that illustrate the effects these large-scale changes in digital and medical technologies have on masculinities today. Theoretically, the panel is based on the notion that society and everyday life are increasingly intertwined with and enrolled in both the logics of the health and pharmaceutical industry and in communication technology and media. Femininities have long been the subjects for the (bio)medicalizing, and conversely, up until the release of Viagra, privileged or hegemonic masculinities were left seemingly unaffected. At the same time, to understand masculinity today we must also consider how media technologies take part in the negotiation, practice, and affect of masculinities. To do so the panel presents four cases of mediatized and medicalize...
This article takes the Danish artist Kristian von Hornsleth’s controversial art project Hornsleth Village Project Uganda (2006-2007) as a starting point for a discussion of the relation between aesthetics and ethics in contemporary art.... more
This article takes the Danish artist Kristian von Hornsleth’s controversial art project Hornsleth Village Project Uganda (2006-2007) as a starting point for a discussion of the relation between aesthetics and ethics in contemporary art. Far from advocating that art must be ethically ‘good’ to be of importance, the authors question why transgressive and provocative socially engaged art projects frequently perform, repeat and consolidate patriarchal, racist and colonial structures. The article shows how Hornsleth’s neocolonial ethnographic project enables a reenactment of Western colonial subjectivity, embodied by the artist in the form of a bad ass white avantgarde masculinity, untouchable and above critique.
Trans people are increasingly stepping out of the shadow of pathologization and secretiveness to tell their life stories, share information and to connect with like-minded others, using YouTube as a platform. Out Online: Trans... more
Trans people are increasingly stepping out of the shadow of pathologization and secretiveness to tell their life stories, share information and to connect with like-minded others, using YouTube as a platform. Out Online: Trans Self-Representation and Community Building on YouTube explores the digital revolution of trans video blogging, addressing ’trans’ in its many meanings and configurations to examine the different ways in which the body in transformation and the vlog as a medium intersect. Drawing on rich, virtual ethnographic studies of trans video blogging, the author sheds light on the ways in which the video blog (or ’vlog’) as a multimodal medium enables trans people to tell their stories with the use of sound, text, music, and pictures - thus offering new ways to construct and archive bodily changes, and to revise the story endlessly. A groundbreaking study of the intersection between trans identity and technology, Out Online explores the transformative and therapeutic potential of the video blog as a means by which trans vloggers can emerge and develop online, using the vlog as a site for creation, intervention, community building and resistance. As such, it will appeal to social scientists and scholars of cultural and media studies with interests in gender, sexuality and embodiment.
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This chapter takes the juxtaposed images of Dowling/Levine as its point of departure in order to address the dilemmas that trans men face in seeking to create images of themselves as male and as sexually desirable. While trans men must... more
This chapter takes the juxtaposed images of Dowling/Levine as its point of departure in order to address the dilemmas that trans men face in seeking to create images of themselves as male and as sexually desirable. While trans men must struggle to pass as “male enough” in order to be considered men by non-trans people, their success in this performance is often criticized for upholding oppressive gender norms attached to ideal masculinity. Acknowledging this paradoxical situation, we suggest that the image of Dowling offers a rare and wide exposure of a trans male body as worthy of sexualized consumption. We argue that in order to understand the gendered and sexual complexities of this image, it is necessary to contextualize it within Dowling’s comprehensive selfie-practice on YouTube and Instagram. Although this image is not a selfie per se, it is almost impossible to separate from Dowling’s exploration of his trans male self as an embodied image, as both a subject and object of representation. Hence, Dowling’s selfies—as well as the image comparison with Levine—can be seen as a persistent attempt to work with and through what Jameson Green labels “the visibility dilemma for transsexual men” (Green, 2006). As trans men (through medical transition) become more recognizable as men, they simultaneously become more invisible as trans. If trans men are open about being or visible as transgender, this potentially puts them in awkward if not harmful situations in which they risk being perceived as not men. Hence, “trans” and “man” seem to eradicate each other.