Researching Young People’s Sexualized Digital Practices Involving Imagery: : A Transmethodological Approach

Young people constitute and negotiate their gendered identities and belonging, as well as their romantic and erotic relationships, through sexualized digital practices involving imagery. Most of these practices are unproblematic, but sometimes they take forms that are more abusive and lead to (particularly) girls being visually exposed online. Such practices are commonly referred to as sexting or revenge pornography and have been subject to much discussion in research, in the media and among practitioners. These discussions, however, sometimes fail to acknowledge the diversity, volatility and ambiguity of the practices. This article discusses whether the approaches used in research on young people’s sexualized digital practices involving imagery are sufficiently refined and sensitive in order to grasp comprehensive complexity and messy constitutions of such practices. Based on analyses of the studies’ conceptualizations, perspectives and methods, I suggest that future research production might benefit from a more transgressive and flexible approach that learns from the full array of approaches in the previous studies and takes the instability and multiplicity of young people’s practices into account. Such an approach should entail an openness towards ambiguous conceptualizations, a more processual perspective that includes both individual, social and technological aspects and the use of multiple explorative methods across on- and offline spaces

Sexualized, platformed female bodies in male online practices: Negotiating boundaries of masculinity, gendered positioning and intimacy

Sexualized images of the bodies of girls and young women – in some cases taken without the knowledge of those depicted, in other cases exchanged as part of erotic or romantic interactions – sometimes turn up in closed groups on social media and on websites and other online platforms. In their efforts to mark and prove masculinity, the (presumably) male participants in these fora share, trade, and evaluate such imagery. The young women depicted are generally commented upon in condescending ways. Based on a combination of digital ethnography and analogue fieldwork and interviews at a vocational school in Denmark, this article explores how boys and young men use sexualized female bodies to negotiate boundaries of masculinity, gendered positioning, and intimacy. Through new materialist and poststructuralist perspectives, we attend to the entanglements of social and technological phenomena enacting these practices

Traveling imagery: Young people’s sexualized digital practices

How is the sexualized digital imagery that young people engage in enacted and spread? How are negotiations of normativity reshaped by analogue-digital involve- ment? This study travels through shady as well as easily accessible parts of the web, combining insights with analogue research approaches in trying to contemplate these questions in new ways. We use digital ethnography, analogue fieldwork, inter- views, and helpline cases to study how young people’s sexualized imagery moves through and transforms across boundless networks, and also across digital and analogue space. Thinking with new materialist analytics, we show how these move- ments blur the distinction between mundane and abusive practices, and how the opaque and indeterminate character of the material functions as a game changer and affects what it means to be young in gendered communities. Although the effects vary among different young people and among different social groups, in all cases they infiltrate conditions for becoming, positioning, and relating

Young people’s sharing of sexualized digital imagery: Processes of acceleration in human-technology interactions

The ubiquity of smartphones and social media has introduced new ways of being connected and engaged in digitally mediated spaces, including the possibilities of exchanging private sexualized digital imagery – a practice known as ‘sexting’. In this paper, we study the ways in which young people’s engagement in both consensual and non-consensual sexting practices is facilitated – and sometimes even accelerated – by technology. Our study is based on focus group interviews with young people aged 16-21, 6 months of digital ethnography on social and digital media, and posts concerning sexting written by young people on Danish counselling websites. We draw on perspectives from postphenomenology and new materialism in order to focus on human-technology interactions and how digital technologies shape social processes and interactions when young people exchange sexualized digital images and videos. We attend to the ways the affordances of social media (e.g., spreadability, ephemerality and persistence) facilitate and mediate young people’s sharing of sexualized imagery and how the affects emerging through these processes produce intensities, fantasies and intimacies, which both motivate and accelerate these practices. Our analyses seek to refine current understandings of young people’s production and sharing of sexualized digital imagery. Moreover, we argue that there is a need for further development of psychological concepts and analyses that can adequately grasp the nuances of the complex digital and visual intimate, social, sexual processes of young people’s lives and advance the research field of sexting among young people

Nudes, gender negotiations and community : A qualitative study of young people’s sexualized digital practices involving imagery of peers

Artiklen baserer sig på Ph.d.-afhandlingen ”Traveling Imagery – a qualitative study of young people’s use and sharing of sexualized digital imagery of peers”, som blev forsvaret på Danmarks Institut for Uddannelse og Pædagogik på Aarhus Universitet i januar 2022. Formålet var at undersøge ‘hvordan unges forskelligartede seksuali-serede digitale billeddelingspraksisser er konstitueret og at analysere, hvordan de giver mening for unge i alderen 15-20 år’. Mere specifikt fokuserede afhandlingen på, hvordan billederne produceres, spredes, bruges og diskuteres, hvilke sociale og kønnede normer og positioneringer, der produceres og forhandles, samt hvordan praksisserne faciliteres og inviteres af de teknologiske muligheder. Med teoretisk udgangspunkt i posthumanistisk og nymaterialistisk tænkning, kombi-neret med begreber fra filosofi, poststrukturalisme, postfænomenologi og affekt teori, udforskede afhandlingen således de sociale og teknologiske dynamikker, der med-konstituerer unges involvering i seksualiserede digitale billeddelingspraksisser. Det-te blev muliggjort af forskningsmateriale produceret via digital etnografi, analogt feltarbejde, interviews samt cases fra en rådgivningslinje. Analyserne viser, hvordan unges seksualiserede digitale billeder bevæger sig i nogle ret ustabile og grænseløse sociale netværk på tværs af både analoge og digitale kon-tekster. Dette synes at sløre distinktionen mellem de unges hverdagslige billedde-lingspraksisser og mere krænkende og kriminelle praksisser. Selvom billederne af nogle unge (primært drenge) bruges til at forfølge seksuelle længsler eller opnå sek-suel ophidselse, fungerer de for de fleste unge som en værdifuld valuta, der bruges til at opnå status og anerkendelse gennem de sociale og kønnede forhandlinger blandt venner og bekendte i og på tværs af den analoge og digitale verden. Nøgleord: Sexting, digitale sexkrænkelser, unge, køn, sociale medier, nymaterialisme The article is based on the PhD dissertation, ”Traveling Imagery – a qualitative study of young people’s use and sharing of sexualized digital imagery of peers”, de-fended at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, in January 2022. The aim was ‘to explore how differentiated sexualized digital practices involving image-ry of peers are enacted and to analyze how they make sense to young people aged 15–20’. More specifically, the dissertation examined how the imagery is produced, used, spread, and contested, what kinds of social and gendered norms and position-ings are being produced and negotiated, and how these practices are facilitated and invited by the technology.Drawing on posthumanism and new materialism, combined with concepts from phi-losophy, poststructuralism, postphenomenology, and affect theory, and through re-search material produced via digital ethnography, analogue fieldwork and cases from a helpline, the dissertation addresses the social and technological dynamics contributing to produce young people’s sexualized digital practices involving image-ry.The analyses show how young people’s sexualized digital imagery travels in volatile and boundless social networks across both analogue and digital contexts. This seems to blur the distinction between young people’s everyday sexualized digital practices involving imagery and their more abusive and criminal practices. For some young people (mainly boys), the sexualized imagery is used to pursue sexual desires and obtain sexual excitement, yet for most, it functions as a valuable currency for obtain-ing status and recognition through social and gendered negotiations among friends and acquaintances in, and across, analogue and digital spaces. Keywords: ­Sexting, image-based abuse, young people, gender, social media, new materialis