Digital Desire: Commercial, Moral, and Political Economies of Sex Work and the Internet

ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates the relationships among changing public attitudes toward sexuality, the rise of the Internet as a site of commercial sex production and consumption, and public opinion toward and media portrayals of sex workers. In light of increased cultural acceptance of changing sexual practices and identities, I ask, has there been increased acceptance of commercial sex work and sex workers as measured in public opinion, sex workers’ experiences, popular films, and news media portrayals? In order to answer this question, I reviewed and interacted with more than 100 sex work bloggers on Tumblr.com, and conducted interviews with 36 sex workers, to determine the effect of the Internet on their work and their experience of acceptance or stigmatization in their personal and professional lives; attended two commercial sex industry conferences to observe the impact of the Internet on different aspects of the industry; conducted content analysis of the top 50 films annually from 1990-2013 to examine changes in the depictions of sex workers from the beginning of the Digital Age to the present; and analyzed 353 English-language newspaper articles on prostitution and sex work during the period October 21, 2012-December 5, 2012 to determine how sex work was portrayed in the news – as criminal or commercial activity. I found that sex work and sex workers remain deeply stigmatized in American society. This is despite sex worker activism and increased availability of pornography and other commercial sex products. I conclude that the persistent stigmatization of the commercial sex industry and those who work within it results from occupational structures within the commercial sex industry, continued criminalization of sex work, the entertainment industry’s negative depiction of sex workers, and news media reports of sex workers as criminals, especially the conflation of “sex trafficking” and sex work