Irish Digital Cultures

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.

Author Biography

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 Galway’s 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 Women’s Studies in the University of Galway’s School of Political Science and Sociology.