Belinda Mahlknecht

Bio: Belinda Mahlknecht is an academic researcher from University of Innsbruck. The author has contributed to research in topics: Digital media & Online and offline. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 2 publications receiving 11 citations.

(Cyber)Bullying in schools – when bullying stretches across cON/FFlating spaces

Abstract: This article posits that analyses of (cyber)bullying among digitally connected young people need to explore the interdependences, intersections and cON/FFlation of bullying in ONline and OFFline sp...

‘She felt incredibly ashamed’: gendered (cyber-)bullying and the hypersexualized female body

Abstract: Abstract Cyberbullying has become an ever-pressing topic for young people in a time of ubiquitous media. Some of the existing, mostly quantitative studies reveal that (cyber-)bullying is gendered and that female and genderqueer young people are bullied more often and differently than males. However, there is a lack of qualitative studies that look into the specific reproduction and dynamics of gendered discourses in bullying that stretches across entangled socio-material-technological spaces. Informed by insights from digital geographies, gender(-queer) geographies, and interdisciplinary research on (cyber-)bullying, and taking a feminist perspective, this article investigates gendered discourses in young adults’ narratives about (cyber-)bullying. The analysis is based upon 42 written narratives produced by young adults attending upper secondary schools in Austria describing (cyber-)bullying they were involved in as (co-)perpetrators, targets or bystanders. (Cyber-)bullying reported ranges from early undesired reception of sexual content to hypersexualized harassment (by peers) to sexual grooming (by unknown adults). Rather than focusing on the narrators’ active or passive roles in the bullying practices themselves, through narrative analysis we reveal how, in their accounts of (cyber-)bullying attacks, our participants—often unintentionally—reproduce gender roles and ideals of femininity and masculinity, and therewith deeply ingrained heteronormative discourses that prevail in Austrian society. For female young people, the persistent and complex ‘sexual double standard’ is particularly harmful in serving to legitimize undesired hypersexualization of their bodies online while simultaneously prohibiting their right to self-determined sexual practices online.

Bullying in con/fflating spaces – why a ‘space’ perspective mattersfor understanding young people’s experiences and practices of bullying

Abstract: There is an urgent need for the currently mostly disparate and quantitative research on traditional or cyberbullying, to not only take note of each other, but also to analyse the interdependences, intersections and conflation of bullying in digital and offline spaces in a more comprehensive manner. More recent conceptualisations of ‘space’ offer valuable contributions to a reflection upon the epistemological and related methodological considerations when seeking to understand the lifeworlds, practices and experiences of young people involved in bullying. In this sense, we have recently advanced the concept of “cON/FFlating situational spaces and places” (Bork-Huffer and Yeoh 2017: 93) in an attempt to integrate existing algorithmic, (post-)feminist and relational perspectives to the analysis of bullying (cf. Bork-Huffer et al. 2020). We ask: Whether and how does bullying in physical and digital spaces intersect in school contexts? We applied narratives produced by young people themselves in Austria with the objective to let them speak with their own voice when describing their experiences and involvement with (cyber)bullying. Even when bullying practices themselves seemed to be restricted to digital spaces, they are still entangled within the spatialities of participants’ relations, practices, identities and life-worlds that stretch across inseparable socio-material and technological spheres. The results reflect how the ontogenesis of socio-technological developments shapes the opportunities for, types of, frequencies and harshness of bullying attacks.

Graduating during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Digital Media Practices and Learning Spaces among Pupils Taking Their School-Leaving Exams

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly changed educational and qualification experiences among young people. When the pandemic spread in 2020, schools worldwide were required to switch to remote learning. Through a qualitative multi-method, partly mobile, in-situ research approach, we accompanied pupils in the final year of their secondary education as they prepared for and finalized their school-leaving exams to investigate the following questions: What did pupils’ socio-material-technological learning spaces look like during this period? How did they adapt their digital media practices to cope with learning remotely? How did their situatedness in these learning spaces influence their learning experiences? Building on existing research in the field of digital and children’s geographies as well as learning spaces, through a combined content and narrative analysis, this article situates pupils’ learning spaces and experiences of graduating during the pandemic in the context of family relations, socio-material home spaces, polymediated learning environments and the accessibility of outdoor spaces. We debate the wide spectrum of media practices—ranging from indulgence in digital media, to balanced media use, to attempting to withdraw from using digital media—used by pupils to navigate through inextricably entangled socio-material-technological spaces during the pandemic. The further digitization of education prompted by the pandemic must be used in ways that empower pupils to engage in responsible and active use of digital media, thus allowing them to become mature and resilient digital participants in society.

Producing In Situ Data From a Distance With Mobile Instant Messaging Interviews (MIMIs): Examples From the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract: Researching people in their chaotic and complex everyday lives is challenging for researchers at any time but especially during the application of social distancing measures. In this article, we ma...

City-Life No More? Young Adults' Disrupted Urban Experiences and Their Digital Mediation under Covid-19

Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic temporarily, yet significantly, reshuffled the position, functions and (mediated) constructions of cities and urban places. The national lockdown, implemented by Austria on 16 March 2020, turned cities overnight from centres of hybrid cultural, economic, social, political life and power to places where urban life(styles) were put on hold. This article begins by presenting first key results of a longitudinal study with young adults studying in educational institutions in the state of Tyrol through the harshest country-wide lockdown measures and their gradual withdrawal. We analyse how participants coped with the disruption of their urban lives and lifestyles and the strategies they employed to compensate. We highlight three main insights. First, participants who had originally migrated to the city from their (often rural) hometowns largely returned to join their families. From there, no longer being an object of physical experience, the city became a digitally imagined, constructed and communicated place, reiterating public discourses that condemned the city as a place where lockdown measures were breached, and the virus spread unchecked. Second, where possible and adapted to the affordances of digital media, students shifted their previous lifestyles to digital space as well as created innovative ways of socialising digitally—thus producing alternative digital forms of urban lifestyles and digitally-mediated urban experiences. Third, during the lockdown period, the importance, use intensity as well as a variety of digital media peaked tremendously. This trend, however, was short-lived as yearned-for offline sociability largely returned to the city once measures were relaxed, leaving those in rural homes detached from their urban peers.

University students' perception, evaluation, and spaces of distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria: what can we learn for post-pandemic educational futures?

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic caught societies worldwide unprepared in 2020. In Austria, after a lockdown was decreed on 16 March 2020, educational institutions had to switch to a patched-up distance learning approach, which has been largely maintained to date. This article delivers empirical insights from an interdisciplinary mixed-methods research study that investigated university students’ perceptions of and experiences with distance learning as well as their educational (home) spaces during the pandemic in Innsbruck, Austria. It combines results from a quantitative survey conducted with 2742 students in early 2021 with a qualitative multi-method and longitudinal research study that accompanied 98 students throughout four data-collection phases in 2020. Results show a significant improvement since spring 2020 with both teachers and learners adjusting to the distance learning formats and the use of digital tools, yet students urgently desired a return to face-to-face teaching and university life, particularly for its social benefits. Strikingly, more than half of the participants wanted to maintain the option of overall distance education after the pandemic. Based on the perspectives of students, it is appropriate to demand significant changes in post-pandemic education adapted to the era of the post-digital, for which this article gives short-term as well as medium-term recommendations.