Sexting as media production: Rethinking social media and sexuality

Abstract

Many of the responses to teen sexting are ineffective and unjust: authorities sometimes blame the victims of nonconsensual sexting, use harsh child pornography laws against minors, and give teenagers the advice to simply abstain. While some scholars champion girls’ media production practices, mass media coverage of girls’ social media use since the early 2000s emphasizes concerns that girls are creating and sharing sexual content. In this paper, I illustrate and challenge common concerns about the negative effect of digital and mobile media on how girls communicate and who they can communicate with. I argue that thinking about sexting as media production would encourage researchers to pay more attention to the opportunities of social media as well as the risks. Thinking about consensual sexting as an act of media authorship also pushes models of media production to better account for the privacy rights of people who create social media content.