The essays contained within Irish Digital Cultures: Identity, Contexts, Space form an accessible and largely comprehensive look at the contemporary digital landscape, as tied to notions of Irishness and digital representations of the island as a whole. Deirdre Flynn and Mary McGill introduce the reader to a contemporary digital context in which the large jump in Ireland-based online users since the COVID-19 pandemic has merged with an increasingly online Irish diaspora. This increasingly online Irish culture has drawn an academic interest towards the “modes of digital cultural production concerned with expressing, reproducing, questioning and circulating ideas of Irish identity” (Flynn and McGill 2026: 2). What follows in this book is comprised of two sections. The first section, titled “Culture and Identity”, focuses on contemporary representations of “Irishness” online. The book’s second section, “Contexts and Spaces”, looks to the physical and digital spaces of Irish cultural production that have been reimagined amidst our contemporary digital landscape.

“Section One: Culture and Identity” makes up the more accessible section of the book. This collection of essays covers a wide range of interesting cultural topics whose appeal goes beyond the strictly academic toward anyone interested in aspects of Irish and digital culture.

The first chapter, “Podcasting, Emigration, Return Migration and ‘Middle Ireland’ in the Wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis” by Marcus Free, charts the neoliberal turn towards the need for self-branding as experienced by the podcasters of the Irish diaspora. Analysing three podcasts by Jarlath Regan as a case study, Free explores the mass emigration from Ireland following the 2008 Financial Crisis as a launch point to discuss how emigrant podcasters have gradually shifted from content based on discussing their own emigration towards a more marketable form of self-branding, in line with a global shift towards neoliberalism.

In chapter two, “Negotiating Black and Irish Identity in the Digital Space”, Sandrine Uwase Ndahiro and Eric Ehigie use first-hand interviews to explore conversation surrounding what constitutes “Black and Irish” identity in a digital context. The interviewees express concern over monolithic constructions of blackness and convey that to be “Black and Irish” can mean different things to different people. I found that the interviews provided a refreshing and insightful change of pace in an academic collection.

Shannon Lawlor’s “Jacksepticeye Irishness, Branding, and YouTube Gaming” focuses on the brand of Irishness put forth by Irish content creator Seán McLoughlin, known to the world as Jacksepticeye. Lawlor notes that McLoughlin’s performance of caricatured Irishness on YouTube enabled him to stand out amongst other gaming channels at the time of his debut. McLoughlin’s caricature presented the Irish as simplistic, harmless and cheerful. However, this self-created mould dictated that McLoughlin was required to avoid controversy and ignore Irish political issues in order to maintain this persona.

In chapter four, “Global Ireland and Digital Diversity: Creative Entrepreneurialism and the ‘Soft Power’ Platforming of the Diversity Ambassador”, Kelly Davidson focuses on digital diversity in a global Ireland. Davidson spotlights the young women of colour who perform the labour of presenting Ireland as a “good country” on their digital platforms, as aligned with the government’s goals of Global Ireland 2025 (2026: 59). These women provide personal stories that construct new imaginings of the nation as “diverse, inclusive, humanitarian and innovative” (Davidson 2026: 62). Davidson effectively explores the pressure faced by these women to self-consciously present the self in positive terms, to appear “grateful” and stroke the national ego rather than express anger or pain (2026: 65).

Chapter five, “‘Hot Asian Boy Summer!’ Performing Asian Irish Masculinities on TikTok” by Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain, considers a sample of young Asian Irish TikTokers who are leveraging TikTok’s grouping of Asian content creators into a pan-Asian monolith to their advantage. By tapping into K-pop’s world dominance, these creators are garnering large followings despite not being Korean themselves. When TikTok lumps Asian creators together despite their cultural differences, these creators use that reach to find followings all over the world, by virtue of being Asian in Ireland (the sample group is mostly Chinese and Filipino). They adopt the clothing and performance of soft masculinity often seen in K-pop groups. The added “bonus” of being Irish and having an accent adds to their sexual appeal, making Irish Asian masculinities more visible online as a result (King-O’Riain 2026: 91).

Chapter six, “Representations of Ireland and Irishness on Alt Tech Platforms: Forty Shades of Green, but Just One Shade of White”, is presented by Niamh Kirk and J. Clark Powers who seek to analyse the in-grouping language used to define Ireland and Irishness on alt-right media platforms. The platforms assessed include the microblogging platform Gab and video-sharing platforms Bitchute and Rumble. These platforms draw alt-right discourse due to their lack of content moderation, which users deem to be an indicator of the platforms’ privileging of freedom of speech. While most research aims to assess the language of othering used in these sites as defining “we” (Irish) from “they” (foreign peoples), this study instead looks at how “we” (good Irish) are defined apart from “they” (bad Irish) in these Alt-right channels. The results are shocking, contradictory, and well worth a read by themselves.

Chapter seven, “Hopeful Mobilities in Irish Creator Cultures”, constitutes the final chapter of section one and explores the notion of “hope labour” as dictated by Tugce Bidav (2026: 114). Bidav assesses Irish creators who perform creational labour across social media platforms, in the hope of eventually being able to financially support themselves full time through such work. Bidav defines the goal of this will to perform labour in the hope of an escape from financial precarity as “hopeful mobility” (2026: 115). In recognising the financial precarity of producing social media content in Ireland, many creators use their online content as a means of developing skills that they may then use to gain full time employment in various other media sectors. This chapter caps off an entertaining and wide-reaching exploration of Irish identity in the current digital age and marks a transition into the book’s second section.

“Section Two: Contexts and Spaces” offers a denser selection of essays by exploring various physical and industrial spaces that may be initially unfamiliar to the reader. In chapter eight, “Developing A ‘Critical Feminist’ Approach to Digitally Preserving Reproductive Health Activism on the Island of Ireland”, Maeve O’Brien looks at the necessary changes seen in online archivism surrounding reproductive health and the history of the Eighth Amendment on the island of Ireland. O’Brien acknowledges the challenges that have been faced in the archiving of women’s history, due to archived materials being hidden in institutional repositories. O’Brien instead turns an eye to grassroots organisations who are working to digitally preserve the history of the Eighth Amendment online. This chapter acknowledges that attitudes surrounding what materials are deemed worthy of preservation by the mainstream should be challenged.

Ciarán Ryan writes in chapter nine, “‘Whatever We Did Get, We Fought Tooth and Nail for’ Irish Independent and DIY Music Scenes in the Pandemic”, about the struggles faced within trans-local music scenes in Dundalk and Limerick during the pandemic. As live venues closed, these DIY music scenes availed of different online methods of performance and music distribution, to various levels of success. Ryan highlights the success found by certain artists during this era who used the internet to grow a fanbase, namely Limerick hip-hop artist Chalia and Dundalk’s The Mary Wallopers.  Ryan also acknowledged the mixed feelings shared by his interviewees towards the financial government aid offered during the pandemic, with some feeling that government support hinders the artistic development of local musicians and scenes. The chapter also acknowledges a general feeling from the interviewed musicians towards waiting for a return to the live in person scene in place of further relying on the internet for promotion and distribution, a trend seen in the responses from multiple industries in this section of the book.

Chapter ten, “Digital Dramaturgies: Irish Theatre’s Pandemic Response”, details Ciara L. Murphy’s discussion of Irish theatres pandemic response through the case studies of two digital theatre productions that were exhibited during lockdown. Murphy acknowledges the inadequacy of the term “live streaming” during a time in which the only live element was the audience watching filmed theatre in real time. Murphy instead analyses two productions that sought to recreate the live experience of an unmediated boundary between the cast and the viewer. As seen in chapter nine, there is once again a confirmation that these experiments were quickly abandoned amidst a mass return to the “real” live theatrical space.

Anne Karhio presents “Non-Human Subjects, Artificial Intelligence, and the Lyric Voice in Irish Poetry of the Digital Age Encounters with ‘Skin-and-Bone Cousins’” in chapter eleven, which investigates AI and the lyric voice in Irish poetry. This chapter examines poetry as a testing ground for “what it would mean for machines to think, perhaps even to feel (Beals 2018: 157)” and what it means to imagine AI as “other-than-human personhood” (Karhio 2026: 176). Karhio notes that AI poems generate questions about the current meaning of “I” as a signifier of first-person subjectivity. I found that this chapter placed less emphasis on Irish contexts than the other chapters of the book, and the shifting discussion from poems about AI to poems written by AI may leave readers unsure as to where discussion of robot speakers as imagined by people ends and actual speaking robots discussing themselves begins.

Chapter twelve, “Globally Spread Eco-Videos and Regionalised Appeals: Digital Audiences in Ireland and Uruguay” from Victoria Gómez Márquez, details the similarities and differences in the reception of a selection of environmentally themed YouTube videos, by focus groups in Ireland and Uruguay. The study found many similar preferences between both focus groups. Both groups had a preference for videos that used direct, personal address towards the viewer. Both groups also preferred videos that talked about global impacts on the environment rather than videos about local issues. Themes of environmental justice and the “cult of wilderness” were preferred by the Irish focus groups (Gómez Márquez 2016:193). The Uruguay groups preferred themes of eco-efficiency, followed by environmental justice.

Chapter thirteen, “‘Ireland, We Are at War’: Conor McGregor, Mixed-Martial Arts and Far-Right Populism in Ireland”, comes courtesy of Conor Heffernan, who situates Irish fighter Conor McGregor’s gravitation towards far-right politics within the historical context of the sport to which he owes his fame, the UFC. The sport’s neoliberal “warrior” ethics have fed into an anti-authoritarian mindset that has rewarded McGregor with fame and fortune for his trash-talking and “trolling” behaviour. With his fame rooted in such a conservative and outwardly far-right sport Heffernan argues that it was inevitable that McGregor would eventually use social media to echo Irish far-right talking points while simultaneously wrapping these points in the language of American “culture war” politics that appeal to the far-right abroad.

Chapter fourteen is titled “Homegrown: Redefining Digital Irish Content, Cultures and Audiences”. This chapter, from Eleanor O’Leary, acts as a concluding analysis in place of a traditional conclusion section within the book. Here, O’Leary notes that, in her tracking of student media consumption over ten years, the time spent by students watching television has dwindled significantly. As the TV has become decentralised in the home during the internet age, scholars are now struggling to track and research the myriad of screen activities engaged in by youth populations for hours each day. O’Leary calls for more investigation into how Irish themed content engages audiences, particularly youth audiences, and how we may research screen reception in Ireland in the future.

Both sections of Irish Digital Cultures work to paint a detailed picture of the current online landscapes navigated by Irish people at home and abroad. While I found the first section to be more accessible overall, this does not detract from Section two’s equally thorough but more densely written examinations of spaces and contexts. Overall, the book is a thoroughly engaging read, that I can thoroughly recommend to anybody with even a remote interest in contemporary Irish culture and digital spaces.