Between Memory and Myth: Reimaginative Resistance and Mediated Imaginaries of Berghain
(2025) MKVM13 20251Media and Communication Studies
Department of Communication and Media
- Abstract
- This thesis investigates how Berghain, a well-known Berlin nightclub, is imagined, mediated, and contested as a queer space in digital environments. Due to Berghain’s strict no-photo policy, direct visual representations are limited. In response, users have turned to storytelling, affective reflection, and symbolic representation to recreate its atmosphere and meaning across online platforms.
While existing research often grounds queer spatiality in embodied, physical experience, this research shifts the focus to mediated practices and their role in sustaining or transforming the meanings of space. Berghain is approached as a hybrid site shaped by both collective narratives and digitally circulated imaginaries. Drawing on user-generated... (More) - This thesis investigates how Berghain, a well-known Berlin nightclub, is imagined, mediated, and contested as a queer space in digital environments. Due to Berghain’s strict no-photo policy, direct visual representations are limited. In response, users have turned to storytelling, affective reflection, and symbolic representation to recreate its atmosphere and meaning across online platforms.
While existing research often grounds queer spatiality in embodied, physical experience, this research shifts the focus to mediated practices and their role in sustaining or transforming the meanings of space. Berghain is approached as a hybrid site shaped by both collective narratives and digitally circulated imaginaries. Drawing on user-generated content from Reddit and Instagram, along with eight semi-structured interviews with queer participants, the research explores how affective and discursive practices generate belonging in platformed settings.
Combining digital ethnography with thematic analysis, the research examines 190 Reddit comments and interview transcripts to trace narrative construction, affective tone, and symbolic tension. The findings reveal that queer individuals engage with Berghain not only through physical access, but also through emotional connections and collective storytelling. In the absence of photographic evidence, platforms become symbolic infrastructures for co-creating spatial meaning. However, these spaces are shaped by platform norms and are not ideologically neutral. Building on this, the thesis reconsiders Foucault’s concept of heterotopia by exploring how its oppositional spatial function is destabilized through processes of mediatization.
To articulate this dynamic, this thesis conceptualizes the form of queer resistance as reimaginative resistance, describing how queer users respond to spatial loss by creatively renegotiating cultural meanings within the constraints of digital media. Rather than erasing queer space, digital platforms become sites for negotiating its meaning and sustaining its presence through shared imaginaries. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9188726
- author
- Zhu, Wanyi LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- MKVM13 20251
- year
- 2025
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- queer space；social media；reimaginative resistance；mediated city
- language
- English
- id
- 9188726
- date added to LUP
- 2025-07-03 16:28:54
- date last changed
- 2025-07-03 16:28:54
@misc{9188726,
abstract = {{This thesis investigates how Berghain, a well-known Berlin nightclub, is imagined, mediated, and contested as a queer space in digital environments. Due to Berghain’s strict no-photo policy, direct visual representations are limited. In response, users have turned to storytelling, affective reflection, and symbolic representation to recreate its atmosphere and meaning across online platforms.
While existing research often grounds queer spatiality in embodied, physical experience, this research shifts the focus to mediated practices and their role in sustaining or transforming the meanings of space. Berghain is approached as a hybrid site shaped by both collective narratives and digitally circulated imaginaries. Drawing on user-generated content from Reddit and Instagram, along with eight semi-structured interviews with queer participants, the research explores how affective and discursive practices generate belonging in platformed settings.
Combining digital ethnography with thematic analysis, the research examines 190 Reddit comments and interview transcripts to trace narrative construction, affective tone, and symbolic tension. The findings reveal that queer individuals engage with Berghain not only through physical access, but also through emotional connections and collective storytelling. In the absence of photographic evidence, platforms become symbolic infrastructures for co-creating spatial meaning. However, these spaces are shaped by platform norms and are not ideologically neutral. Building on this, the thesis reconsiders Foucault’s concept of heterotopia by exploring how its oppositional spatial function is destabilized through processes of mediatization.
To articulate this dynamic, this thesis conceptualizes the form of queer resistance as reimaginative resistance, describing how queer users respond to spatial loss by creatively renegotiating cultural meanings within the constraints of digital media. Rather than erasing queer space, digital platforms become sites for negotiating its meaning and sustaining its presence through shared imaginaries.}},
author = {{Zhu, Wanyi}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Between Memory and Myth: Reimaginative Resistance and Mediated Imaginaries of Berghain}},
year = {{2025}},
}