Irish Digital Cultures explores how questions of Ireland and Irishness are represented in online environments, and what these phenomena say about contemporary Irish identities both within the country and globally.
Bringing together interdisciplinary scholars and media studies professionals from across Ireland, this collection investigates how Irish life, culture and identity are impacted and evolving with the increasing reliance on digital platforms and tools. Emerging and established scholars at the cutting edge of Irish cultural research offer chapters that speak to the diversity of the digital in the Irish cultural sphere. The Culture and Identity section explores issues of representation, digital re-imaginings of ‘Irishness’, the discursive interplay of ‘old Ireland’ versus ‘new Ireland’ online, and Irishness as a self-brand and marketable commodity in the digital commons. From Irish gamers on YouTube to popular Irish podcast production, this section examines interconnections of culture and identity, exploring how these are reimagined and articulated in digital spaces. Building on these themes, the Contexts and Spaces section introduces scholarship on Irish cultural memory and the digital archive, protest and visibility in Irish digital spaces, artistic practice and performance, and the policing of ‘Irishness’ online.
This volume will interest Irish Studies researchers and scholars, particularly those working at the intersection of Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology, Race, Gender, Identity, and New Media, as well as students studying Irish culture across the humanities and social sciences.
This book explores how questions of Ireland and Irishness are represented in online environments, and what these phenomena say about contemporary Irish identities both within the country and globally. It will interest Irish Studies, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology, Race, Gender, Identity, and New Media.
Introduction Part 1: Culture and Identity
1. Podcasting, Emigration,
Return Migration and Middle Ireland in the Wake of the 2008 Global
Financial Crisis: Jarlath Regans An Irishman Abroad (2013-),;
2. Negotiating
Black and Irish Identity in the digital space;
3. Jacksepticeye: Irishness,
Branding and YouTube Gaming;
4. Global Ireland and Digital Diversity:
Creative Entrepreneurialism and the Soft Power Platforming of the Diversity
Ambassador;
5. Hot Asian Boy Summer!: Performing Asian Irish Masculinities
on TikTok;
6. Representations of Ireland and Irishness on Alt Tech Platforms:
Forty Shades of Green, but Just One Shade of White;
7. Hopeful Mobilities in
Irish Creator Cultures Part 2: Contexts and Spaces
8. Developing a critical
feminist approach to digitally preserving reproductive health activism on
the island of Ireland;
9. Whatever we did get, we fought tooth and nail
for: Irish Independent and DIY Music Scenes in the Pandemic;
10. Digital
Dramaturgies: Irish Theatres Pandemic Response;
11. Non-human subjects,
artificial intelligence, and the lyric voice in Irish poetry of the digital
age: encounters with skin-and-bone cousins;
12. Globally Spread Eco-videos
and Regionalised Appeals: Digital Audiences in Ireland and Uruguay;
13.
Ireland, we are at war: Conor McGregor, Mixed Martial Arts, and Far Right
Populism in Ireland;
14. CODA: Homegrown: Redefining digital Irish content,
cultures and audience
Deirdre Flynn is an inaugural member of Young Academy Ireland at the Royal Irish Academy and a lecturer in 21st Century Literature at MIC Limerick, Ireland. She has published widely on precarity, Irish Studies, migration. Her most recent co-edited collection The Routledge Handbook to Motherhood on Screen, with Dr Susan Liddy was published in 2025 with Routledge.
Mary McGill is a researcher at the University of Galways School of Law, Ireland, currently working on the Horizon Europe funded EMMELO Project: European Men, Masculinity and Extremist Leadership Online. She lectures at the Centre for Global Womens Studies in the University of Galways School of Political Science and Sociology.
