Platformed sociality has become an elemental part of existential processes and struggles. Previous research has shown that digital contexts offer lifelines of support and a sense of belonging based on shared vulnerabilities. By combining phenomenological and ethnographic approaches, this article explores involuntary childlessness (IC) online in so-called trying-to-conceive (TTC) contexts on Instagram and in blogs. The analysis is driven by the following questions: What are the particularities of digital lifeline communication in the context of IC? Can lifeline communication shape what is coming into being in the context of wished-for children and/or motherhood? Can (digital) life be challenged, extended, or created in this context? Drawing on interviews and online posts from 260 Instagram accounts and three blogs, I argue that digital lifeline communication in TTC environments facilitates digital existence and “digital life” as the notions of motherhood and longed-for and lost children attain a form of digital materiality through posts and discussions.

This study offers insights into the motif of monstrous corporality in a transmedia environment, through the vampire and zombie characters. Different narratives of corporeal transformation surround us constantly. On one hand, discourses of self-improvement in late modernity (Giddens 1991/2008) and ‘makeover culture’ (Johansson, 2006; 2012; Miller, 2008; Weber, 2009) demand a ‘creation of self’ through change and development, often in relation to physical appearance and bodily traits. On the other hand, numerous narratives of monstrosity and bodily change through destruction are also evident. This study takes on this double focus on corporality, against the backdrop of a late modern mediascape that has enabled people to imagine lives and possibilities different from their own through electronic mediation (Appadurai, 1996). As narratives now move between media platforms, new dimensions are brought to the imaginary, as different platforms interact differently with audiences.

The aim of the study is to examine monstrous corporality in popular culture both in relation to media texts and audience practices through analyzes of representation, consumption and performance. The study examines medial and corporeal transformation through: concrete bodily change (the monstrous body), shifts between media platforms (transmedia) as well as the transmission of affect between media material and viewer (embodied spectatorship). These dimensions are explored in four empirical chapters, which examine two television series (True Blood and The Walking Dead) through textual analyses, the promotion of these series, audience participation (in online fora) and also participatory practices (Live action role play and zombie walks) through focus group interviews.

The results indicate that the theme of monstrous corporeal change in TB and TWD reflects corporeal change in late modernity in several ways. Both transformations are focused on ‘before’ and ‘after’ and change of the monstrous body is connected to particular traits or parts of the body, which are also prominent in makeover culture narratives, such as skin, teeth and weight (appetite). The televisual narrative offers representations of bodily interiors and bodily harm that affect the viewers in a physical way, through an embodied spectatorship. The analyses of transmedia environments connected to the series indicate that the promotion of the programs use dimensions that emphasize the corporeal address, by bridging the gap between diegetic and actual reality. This is done through media environments (posters, websites and the like), and by introducing diegetic elements as actual, tangible objects in the actual reality of potential viewers. The analyses of posts on televisionwithoutpity.com show that participants use forum discussions as strategies to prolong and widen the media experience, and share it with others. Interviews with larpers and participants in zombie walks indicate that practices that stage the monstrous, also function as deepened embodied narrative experiences. Performances such as larps and zombie walks are interpreted as both conscious acts, and as strategies to handle unconscious performative (Butler, 1991/2006) dimensions of late modernity. Taken together, the zombie and vampire embody the pressures, risks and paradoxes connected to late modern makeover culture, and the mediated form they are presented through, tie them closer to those who engage in narratives about them.

This article engages with communities that invite monstrous characters to come to life and invade three-dimensional spaces through real-life bodies. Through focus group interviews with participants in live action role-play (LARP) and zombie walks in Stockholm, this text explores the ways in which participants engage in physical encounters with monstrosity and the surrounding narrative worlds. First, I address how monstrous corporeality not only functions as fiction or escape but most concretely taps into contemporary discourses connected to corporeal change. Through Butler’s performativity and becoming and in connection with discourses of makeover culture, I argue that both LARPs and walks function as both performances and performative acts in which demands connected to idealized corporeal transformation may be concretized,reenacted and renegotiated. Second, the monstrous body here functions simultaneously as an embodied narrative device and a medium. Participants compare the emotional and physical experience of LARPing and zombie walking to that of consuming popular cultural texts in horror or thriller films and television. However, an aspect of zombie walks and LARPs is the concrete physical transformation of those who participate. Furthermore, the use of masks, clothing and jewelry all add tactile dimensions to (or enhance these dimensions in) an embodied experience of a story-world of monsters.

Both contents and narrative form reflects that Skam is situated in a media environment of constant connectivity where “television” is no longer easily defined and in no way limited to the television set. This extended abstract proposes an approach exploring the ways in which touch and tactility adds to the viewing experience of Skam. Inspired by the concept of "tactile transmedia" I explore how viewers are addressed in a manner which creates proximity and intimacy. This is done through a narrative presentation that combines channels close to viewers everyday life and social interaction, such as social media platforms, and devices close to the viewers bodies, such as tablets and smartphones. The proposed study will thus explore the ways in which the transmedia address of Skam interconnects the fictive story world with the everyday world of the viewer. The concept of "an embodied viewing position" is here developed by paying attention to the way in which embodied knowledge also applies to the logic of social media and handheld digital devices, which are central to the Skam narrative.

In their efforts to find others who share their experiential reality and existential struggle, many involuntarily childless women turn to Instagram to engage and participate in the practice of trying-to-conceive (TTC) communication. Through the conceptual lens of digital existence, where the digital and online are regarded as constitutive of existential transition, we draw on ten interviews and an online ethnography to explore some of the struggles that involuntarily childless women experience with and through technology. We find that TTC communication can be constitutive of coming to terms with the status of involuntary childlessness. In particular, this study illustrates that TTC communication, for involuntarily childless women, is both a site of struggle and a safe space as they transition to nonmotherhood in an existential terrain where they share an intimate journey.

Couple relationships and money practices are intimately connected. Money can often cause disagreement and conflict within couples and represents symbolic values and expectations between partners. This study adopts a practices approach to exploring money practices among Swedish couples in the third age (60–80 years old) through 17 semi-structured interviews. We focus particularly on how money practices constitute and are constituted by dimensions of ‘being and doing couple’. We find that money practices both reflect and constitute couplehood. Our analysis has revealed that money practices are interlinked with couplehood through the primary themes of togetherness, fairness and trust, independence and finally, a reluctance to imagine oneself outside of couplehood, for other reasons than widowhood.

Online contexts offer an important source of information and emotional support for those facing involuntary childlessness. This article reports the results from an ethnographic exploration of TTC (trying-to-conceive) communication on Instagram. Through a new materialist approach that pays attention to the web of intra-acting agencies in online communication, this article explores the question of what material-discursive bodies (constructs of embodiment and medical information) emerge in TTC communication as the result of shared images and narratives of bodies, symptoms, fertility treatments, and reproductive technologies. Drawing on a lengthy ethnographic immersion, observations of 394 Instagram accounts, and the close analysis of 100 posts, the study found that TTC communication produces collective, unruly, and becoming bodies. Collective bodies reflect collectively acquired, solidified, and contested medical knowledge and bodies produced in TTC communication. Unruly bodies are bodies that do not conform to standard medical narratives. Becoming bodies are marked by their shifting agency, such as pregnant or fetal bodies.