Abstract:
University crush pages are a type of informal user-ended media in which a subjective turn overflows these communication channels, where facts and data seem of less importance than feelings, introspection, and action. This study aims to understand how participation in these pages actually “crushes” institutional and hegemonic power. It questions how anonymity in student-run social media develops, claiming the impossibility of “networked anonymity”. Using a qualitative content analysis, this paper studies the Facebook crush pages of four universities in Ecuador, during two months of quarantine in 2020. Through a thematic analysis, posts were categorized into two non-mutually exclusive topics: subjectivity and participatory communication, and into two cross-cutting categories: anonymity and COVID-19. The outcomes suggest that crush pages do not demand legitimacy at an institutional level; however, they become universities’ notice boards, promoting a new trend of power in participatory communication. Subjectivities are found in the interplay of crush pages. The data show that there is no full anonymity in these networked sites. Reconsidering the meaning of “crush” leads us to consider how the temporality of love is lived. There are further unanswered questions that merit analysis of the anonymity and traceability of relationships on the virtuality.