An Exploration of Fetish Social Networks and Communities

Online Social Networks (OSNs) provide a venue for virtual interactions and relationships between individuals. In some communities, OSNs also facilitate arranging offline meetings and relationships. FetLife, the world’s largest anonymous social network for the BDSM, fetish and kink communities, provides a unique example of an OSN that serves as an interaction space, community organizing tool, and sexual market. In this paper, we present a first look at the characteristics of European members of Fetlife, comprising 504,416 individual nodes with 1,912,196 connections. We looked at user characteristics in terms of gender, sexual orientation, and preferred role. We further examined the homophilic communities and find that women in particular are far more platonically involved on the site than straight males. Our results suggest there are important differences between the FetLife community and conventional OSNs

Computers Can’t Get Wet: Queer Slippage and Play in the Rhetoric of Computational Structure

This dissertation takes up the argument that computers are rhetorical structures that can be queered. Using cross-disciplinary methods, it examines the interplay that occurs between the layers of the computational stack – focusing in particular on the slippage between materiality, code, interface, and the resulting software – and analyzes the narratives that each layer perpetuates individually and in tandem. It applies a multi-faceted approach to queer theory in order to reveal the ways in which anti-normative computer users critique, resist, and subvert these narratives. When computers are approached as always already queer, the possibilities for disruption that exist within their limits materialize and present themselves as opportunities for intersectional exploitation. Praxis is at the heart of this project. In it, the author strives to interact with, build, and embody the technology that also serves as the object of study

Antecedents of brand tribalism and its influence on purchase intention in the luxury housing market

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in Strategic Marketing 19 June 2017The purpose of the study was to determine the antecedents of brand tribalism and its influence on purchase intention in the luxury housing market. A research conceptual model was developed to assess the potential relations between luxury brand preference, corporate philanthropy, social identity, brand fetish, brand tribalism and luxury brand purchase intention. The research objectives and proposed hypothesis were also based on the above-mentioned variables. The study adopted the positivist approach whereby it was quantitative in nature. Research data was collected from 267 willing participants from the Gauteng province in various industries. Their selection for the study was based on convenience sampling. In order to analyse the data the structural equation modelling approach was utilised in which SPSS 24 and AMOS 24 were used. Numerous findings were observed from five hypotheses that were developed for the purposes of the study. The proposed hypotheses were found to be supported and significant except for one. The relationships not significant were those of social identity and brand tribalism. This was also the weakest relationship and suggested that to identify socially; one did not need to be part of a brand tribe. Lastly, recommendations for marketing practitioners, housing market government officials and academicians were provided in the study.MT201