Abstract
Dobson argues for an orientation of research into intimate and sexual media practices around power and social justice. She frames intimate and sexual media practices in terms of their potential social and economic value, rather than in terms of risks and pathologies. Dobson, however, points to the limits of understanding sexting and other kinds of intimate media practices as ‘agentic media production’, through a careful consideration of research into girls’ and young women’s digital media cultures. To understand self and media production as an individual act is to ignore the ways in which it is socially and technically conditioned, she argues. A social justice orientation becomes imperative in a techno-social context where personal relations have been rapidly monetised through digital media platforms in ways that work to propose a new version of ‘the social’ centred around quantified hierarchies of visibility and status.
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Notes
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One possibility I have suggested elsewhere is to critically question further the articulations of girls ’ ‘sexual attention seeking’ that seem to arise repeatedly in discussions with young people about sexting and other kinds of digital sexual media and self-production (Dobson 2015, p. 92). Seeing as this is one of the limited ways it appears girls ’ desire and sexual agency is discussed, could sexual and appearance-related ‘attention seeking’ be further explored, and reframed somehow in our discussions with youth and adult stakeholders as normal/acceptable/positive rather than shameful or ‘slutty’?
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Sincere thanks to Nicholas Carah and Michael Salter for reading and providing astute suggestions on this chapter.
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Dobson, A.S. (2018). Sexting, Intimate and Sexual Media Practices, and Social Justice. In: Dobson, A.S., Robards, B., Carah, N. (eds) Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media. Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97607-5_6
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