The Invisible Girl, is a multi-disciplinary research project in which power relations, gender, online youth culture and learning are the primary objects of study.

The vast bulk of research on young girls' and boys' internet use over the last fifteen years has had a top-down, adult perspective, with very little or no intention at all to give voice to young people. There have also been tendencies to over-emphasize the generation gap and exoticisize young people's actions (Herring 2008). We also find the presence of discomforting gender blindness, e.g. the use of boys' knowledge as a norm in the sense that girls should develop the same interests and competences as boys (ITU, 2008). Furthermore, girls' digital competence is often made invisible through lack of adequate terminology (Enochsson, 2005).  Similarly, we do not have adequate words to describe girls' aggressions, which leads to difficulties in discussing the question (Simmons, 2004). Parallel, in the media discourse, we see the girl as an educational winner. Or as a girl in crisis. (Nielsen, 2010)

Trying to find out what these inequalities of the research field consist of we found an important blind spot, both from a societal and a research point of view, which has led us to call our project The Invisible Girl. The name is inspired by Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man (1952). Just like Ellison portrays black Americans as being invisible, it is possible to view girls as invisible on the internet in the sense that their actions cannot be described with the existing male oriented terminology.

Another inspiration is the philosophy behind Magritte's (1929) painting "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" [This is not a pipe], often interpreted as pointing out that the painting is not a pipe but an image of a pipe. The same metaphor illuminates the philosophical essence of The Invisible Girl:  For instance, when girls are being labelled gamer girls or their actions are being called abusive, we have to ask ourselves whether these things reflect the girls' own views of their reality or whether they should rather be interpreted as images of it.

Prejuduced practice are often routine features of our everyday life (Erdur-Baker & Ozgur 2010; DeCuir et. al. 2004: Delgado 2001; Essed 1991).  We believe this "routine" acts as a barrier to an in-depth problematisation. Consequently, girls are let down and left on their own to deal with this. Thus, the invisible girl's position has to be recognized, critically explored and analyzed. With an aim to identifying power structures at the intersection of age and gender (Edling & Liljeros, 2010; Dummer 2009, Eriksson 2008; Alderson 2005; de los Reyes & Mulinari, 2005), the invisible girl has to be given a place and voice in the research on online youth culture and learning environments.

Therefore, our main research questions are: How do girls define themselves online? How do girls express their identities online? How do girls express their competences online? Who gets to have a voice regarding girls' identities, competences and online work on relations?

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