Men of Montreal: An Ethnographic Study of the Gay Porn Industry

This thesis is an ethnographic study of the newly-established gay male pornography studio Men of Montreal. Through a business research of Men of Montreal, the thesis dissects an online porn business and describes the influence the Internet has had on the gay porn industry as a whole. The three main chapters focus on the three stages of the online gay porn industry: production, distribution and consumption and how all the three stages are deeply affected by the Internet as a medium. In general, the Internet has amalgamated the different production studios into an entertainment network that funnels online distribution into an organization of affiliates, thereby creating a diverse and global scale culture of consumption. As a result, the Internet has transformed the gay porn industry into a highly niched entertainment market and normalized pornography into an everyday commodity. This thesis broadly recommends that gay pornography industry should be treated as an important object of study that merits more academic attention