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Cancel culture claims, narratives and practices now play out in predominantly platformed spaces, spanning from progressive publics and accountability practices to reactionary/anti-woke/far right publics. We argue that platform affordances, architectures and cultures serve as a nodal point to bring together a disparate set of practices, discourses and ideological positions to facilitate polarized, reactionary, and or strategic networked publics in the context of digital politics and the (re)emergence of culture wars. Papers within this special issue speak to our argument in varying ways. They explore the mechanisms, sentiments, tolerances, and practices in local and global contexts. They consider how certain practices manifesting as social justice interventions apply to negatively impact marginalized groups, theorize the role of and power of platforms in propelling cancelations, and track the rituals associated with cancel culture on platforms. In doing so we encompass perspectives and case studies from the global majority to inform what has to date been a largely Western area of focus and scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the incongruence within Netflix's corporate practice: while on the one hand the streamer promotes trans inclusion along with trans talent development in Netflix's production culture, both on and off screen, on the other hand its industrial practices and representational output demonstrate a different approach. This article argues that, while the streamer positions itself as a champion of inclusion and diversity in the television industry, Netflix is invested in transness as an economic frontier rather than in adopting anti-transphobic practices. In making this argument, this article fosters a three-pronged approach to explore the treatment of trans identities by Netflix. Firstly, the article analyses Netflix's corporate practices in relation to promotion of its limited series, Tales of the City. Secondly, the article explores the media event of Dave Chappelle's comedy special The Closer and the subsequent trans employee walkout. Thirdly, it performs on audit of Netflix's website and corporate materials to highlight how Netflix has developed a response to trans inclusion in relation to the walkout. Exploring these facets through Aron Kundnani's (2023) critique of the diversity industry, this article argues that, on a policy and corporate performativity level, Netflix's approach to trans inclusion can be defined as transliberalist (Raha, 2015), so that its practices result in a platform catalogue that is simultaneously at best trans-affirming and at worst transphobic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Birth certificate data has been identified for its centrality in providing complete and accurate information on demographics, particularly as it relates to families. Often, however, these forms of data collection, are very much hetero-centric, re-embedding normative conceptualizations of identity, particularly as it relates to sex, gender and sexuality. Modes of demographic data collection, such as that of the birth certificate, do not allow for the fluidity and multiplicity of gender and sexual identities that characterize the lived experience of many LGBTQ families. This article will explore the significance of the birth certificate for LGBTQ Irish families, particularly in light of the varying inequalities that emerge from the data gaps they create for both parent and child. In exploring these facets, this article draws upon qualitative semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ parents, exploring how they see the data gaps that emerge on birth certificates and the effects these gaps have on them as an LGBTQ family. Through exploring the ways in which the data gaps and omissions on the Irish birth certificate creates inequalities, this article uses the findings to build on the work of Ruberg and Ruellos (2020) who call for shifting how we see and understand queer identity through data. Through these findings, we argue that systems of data collection, data structures and certification must be changed to build data for queer parenthood and that it is necessary to recalibrate how we design birth certificates to more accurately represent LGBTQ-parent families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public Service Broadcasting in Europe and its centrality to cultural diversity has been established in relation to race, multiculturalism and gender, but LGBT+ sexual identity remains relatively absent from research. This article aims to address this gap by fostering a historical approach to examine the ways in which LGBT+ identities emerged on Public Service Broadcasting within Western Europe, specifically in Ireland and Flanders during the 1950s–1990s. Through a small-scale comparative case study analysis between these two regions, this article contends that the emergence of LGBT+ visibility is intrinsically linked to Public Service Broadcasting in both landscapes. Specifically, the article argues that this emergence shares two distinct structural qualities in the emergence of this LGBT+ visibility. First, the comparison points to the ways in which Public Service Broadcasting production cultures incorporated external expertise regarding LGBT+ diversity, presenting itself as a practical operationalisation of the social responsibility of publicly funded media in both regions. Second, later parallels in the introduction of LGBT+ characters to television fiction series illustrate how Public Service Broadcasting responded to various forms of competition from international and commercial broadcasters, engendering particular implications for the visibility of same-sex desire. While contributing to historical treatments of LGBT+ visibility familiar within Queer Media Studies, this article goes against the Anglo-American dominance of the field by examining more local contexts outside the US/UK centric paradigm, diversifying the contexts in which Queer Media Studies research takes place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Ireland's 2015 Marriage Equality referendum, emerging trends, variances and understandings of LGBTQ identities have begun to emerge on Irish television. At the crux of this post-marriage equality queer visibility lies a friction between the assimilation of queerness to an acceptable homonormative alternative to monogamous heteronormativity versus broader representations of indeterminate variety and fluidity. In exploring the dynamic between assimilation and representation, the article makes a two-pronged argument. On the one hand, post-marriage equality television becomes a site of containment, performing a regulatory function configuring queer visibility through a homonormative paradigm, reflecting the mainstreaming evident in the marriage equality campaign. On the other, post-marriage equality Irish television has enabled cultural scripts to emerge pertaining to the challenges still remaining for the gay community in response to more intersectional, complex understandings of diverse LGBTQ experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]