Pornography, Trans Visibility, and the Demise of Tumblr

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Bronstein
Keyword(s):  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Positive Representation ◽  
The Media ◽  
Self Discovery

Abstract The December 2018 adult content ban instituted by the social media and microblogging site Tumblr had far-reaching effects. The ban cost the platform its user base, and its economic value plummeted. Purchased by the media conglomerate Verizon as part of a $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo's internet business in 2017, Tumblr was sold in August 2019 for less than $3 million. This article reviews the factors that led to the adult content ban, including Verizon's plan to eliminate pornography to attract more advertisers to Tumblr, heightened concern about sexual harassment lawsuits in the wake of #MeToo and Time's Up, and the passage of two new federal laws, SESTA and FOSTA, aimed at combatting sex trafficking online. It analyzes the critical role that Tumblr played in connecting and supporting marginalized sexual communities, especially trans communities, and others whose livelihood depends on freedom of sexual speech, such as sex workers, and discusses the centrality of online communication to processes of sexual self-discovery and self-actualization. Corporate control of sexual speech, and pornography bans, which are increasing as platforms like Facebook institute ever-tighter community standards, pose a direct threat to queer individuals and limit the possibility for authentic, positive representation of trans bodies and trans sexuality.

scholarly journals Social Media Influencer’s Reputation: Developing and Validating a Multidimensional Scale

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 631
Author(s):  
Eun Ah Ryu ◽  
Eun Kyoung Han
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Reliability And Validity ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Measurement Tool ◽  
Opinion Formation ◽  
Consumption Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media

Since the introduction of smartphones in 2009, social networking services (SNS), which have seen a surge in users, facilitated changes in the media environment along with social influence that has increased the economic value and political influence of SNS. In particular, as consumers’ media use and consumption behavior change around digital media, social media plays a very important role in consumers’ lives. From this perspective, influencers who influence not only consumers’ consumption behavior, but also decision-making and opinion formation based on social media are attracting attention. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop items to measure an influencer’s reputation as a new source of information in the SNS environment; no previous researchers have presented generalized measurement items for an influencer’s reputation. We intended to identify what dimensions and items in the existing literature could effectively measure a social media influencer’s reputation and to verify each item’s relevance as a measure of a social media influencer’s reputation. Based on in-depth interviews with 30 experts and empirical findings from 557 adults, this study identified dimensions that impact on a consumer’s perception of a social media influencer and developed a scale. The results showed that the social media Influencer’s Reputation scale comprises four distinctive dimensions: Communication skills, influence, authenticity, and expertise. Additionally, the reliability and validity of the scale were assessed, using exploratory and confirmatory analyses and construct validity. The findings confirmed that the social media influencer’s reputation scale measurement items, in this study, can be used as a consistent measurement tool for each dimension. It is also important to develop value in favor of the marketing strategy by increasing value through the influencer’s reputation.

Echoes of victimhood: on passionate activism and ‘sex trafficking’

2019 ◽  
pp. 146470011988130
Author(s):  
Sealing Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Sex Workers ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
The State ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Moral Outrage ◽  
Transnational Activism ◽  
Feminist Discourse ◽  
The Media ◽  
Symbolic World

The sexually violated woman has become a salient symbol in feminist discourse, government policies, the media and transnational activism at this historical juncture. In this article, I seek to understand the conviction of anti-prostitution activists that all women in prostitution are victims (despite evidence to the contrary), and their simultaneous dismissal or condemnation of those women who identify as sex workers. The analysis identifies the centrality of victimhood to the affective logic of women activist leaders in the anti-prostitution movement, and its embeddedness in discourses of suffering and redemption in Korean nationalist historiography. Sexual victimhood thus acquires the power to incite moral outrage, compel consensus and inhibit dissent. Sex workers further come to bear the historical and political burden of righting all that is wrong with the nation, making their elimination essential for the nation’s rescue. Critiques of capitalism and the state become footnotes and silences in this process. In effect, the victimhood of ‘prostituted women’ allows women activists to circulate effectively in the affective economy of the nation as well as in the global anti-trafficking campaign. The passionate activism of anti-prostitution women activists may say less about the state of prostitution than about the activists’ subjectivity as historical and global subjects, and the symbolic world that they locate themselves in.

scholarly journals Transformations in the Social Impact: Politics, Media, Social Networks

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-75
Author(s):  
Svetlana Alexandrova
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Communication Environment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media

The article analyzes the role of political elites and the media in shaping public opinion and the direction of public attention. Focusing on the transformations in the social impact under the influence of network culture in the online communication environment, it examines how the role of traditional structures of power is transformed, and how this affects political culture, the formation of public opinion, and its participation in socio-political life. Social networks are a means of dialogue and organization, and this requires political elites and the media to consult and comply with active public opinion in the online communication environment.

Becoming cosmopolitan women while negotiating structurally limited choices: The case of Korean migrant sex workers in Australia

Organization ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bronwen Dalton ◽  
Kyungja Jung
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
International Labor ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Capitalist State ◽  
International Labor Mobility

International labor mobility holds the promise that one can become a cosmopolitan citizen of the world. But this interpretation of mobility rarely features in research and media focused on Asian women who travel and engage in sex work. In both arenas, the dominant narrative is that migrant sex workers are poor, the victims of sex trafficking, and pose a risk to public health. This narrative is laced with Orientalist overtones of the Asian sex worker as the alluringly exotic ‘other’, passive and particularly vulnerable, and in need of rescue. However, the interviews of 11 Korean women sex workers based in Sydney, Australia, challenge this narrative. These women engaged in a transnational quest to become cosmopolitan citizens of the world, albeit making logical choices from structurally limited options shaped by their multiple identities as women, sex workers, and Korean, and their relative precarious position in the Australian labor market. Their stories highlight how migration and work can be an agentic process of self-expression and self-actualization of identity. This identity has emerged against the backdrop of shifting meanings and practices of social reproduction in Korea, a country that has experienced a highly compressed transition from developing, to modern capitalist state. Theoretically, the article draws on post-colonial feminist theory to shed light into the conflicting views on migrant sex workers in existing research, by focusing on the women’s voices, which have been neglected or silenced.

scholarly journals Poverty as covered in the election bulletins during the 7 June Elections7 Haziran Seçimleri’nde parti bildirgelerine yansıyan yoksulluk

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 2323
Author(s):  
Kaan Taşbaşı
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dominant Ideology ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Policy Suggestions ◽  
Cultural Order ◽  
The Media

Media has been the sole instrument of construing, representation and discussion of the economic and political issues. That is why it has a critical role in constituting the social and cultural order. In this context, this study starts from the premise that media has also a role in framing poverty and its social perception. While social problems are framed in the media within the confines of the dominant ideology, handling of the poverty issue cannot be taken out of the portrayal. Poverty finds itself a place in the media mostly through stereotyping, and there exist a view that poverty stems from the poor themselves. Personalizing poverty in the framework of individual stories, makes the whole that the poverty is embedded invisible and eliminates the context.To further investigate this role, firstly, election bulletins prepared by the political parties which participated in the June 2015 elections in Turkey are reviewed in terms of the parties’ policy suggestions to solve the problems of the poor and/or poverty. Then the review is expanded by screening of Hurriyet, Sabah and Cumhuriyet dailies. ÖzetMedya, ekonomik ve siyasal alana verilen anlamların, temsilinin ve tartışılmasının yegâne aracı sıfatını taşımıştır. Bu nedenle de, medyanın toplumsal ve kültürel düzenin oluşumunda da kritik bir rolü olmuştur. Bu bağlamda medyanın yoksulluğun çerçevelenmesi ve toplumsal alımlanmasında da belirleyiciliği vardır. Toplumsal sorunlar, medyada egemen ideolojinin çizdiği sınırlar içinde yer alıp çerçevelenirken, yoksulluğun ele alınışı da bu genel çerçevenin dışına çıkamamaktadır. Yoksulluk medyada stereotipleştirmeler üzerinden karşılık bulmakta, yoksulluğun kaynağının bizatihi yoksulların kendileri olduğu yönünde bir kabul ve bakış bulunmaktadır. Yoksulluğun bireysel öyküler çerçevesinde kişiselleştirilmesi, yoksulluğun boy verdiği geniş zemini görünmez kılmakta ve bağlamını ortadan kaldırmaktadır. Bu çalışmada öncelikle yoksulluk tanımlamaları ele alınmış ve Türkiye'de yoksulluk meselesi özetlenmiştir. Daha sonra yoksulluk-medya ilişkisi açıklanmış, 7 Haziran Seçimleri'ne katılan ve Meclis'te grubu bulunan partilerin seçim bildirgelerinde yoksulluk meselesinin yer alış biçimi ve seçim bildirgelerinden günlük ulusal gazetelere (Hürriyet, Sabah, Cumhuriyet) yansıyanlar incelenerek, iki veri kümesi arasında bağlantı kurulmaya çalışılmıştır.

Murder with Impunity: The Construction of Arab Masculinities and Honor Crimes

1970 ◽  
pp. 38-45
Author(s):  
May Abu Jaber
Keyword(s):  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
Male Authority ◽  
Cultural Networks ◽  
Gender Specific

Violence against women (VAW) continues to exist as a pervasive, structural,systematic, and institutionalized violation of women’s basic human rights (UNDivision of Advancement for Women, 2006). It cuts across the boundaries of age, race, class, education, and religion which affect women of all ages and all backgrounds in every corner of the world. Such violence is used to control and subjugate women by instilling a sense of insecurity that keeps them “bound to the home, economically exploited and socially suppressed” (Mathu, 2008, p. 65). It is estimated that one out of every five women worldwide will be abused during her lifetime with rates reaching up to 70 percent in some countries (WHO, 2005). Whether this abuse is perpetrated by the state and its agents, by family members, or even by strangers, VAW is closely related to the regulation of sexuality in a gender specific (patriarchal) manner. This regulation is, on the one hand, maintained through the implementation of strict cultural, communal, and religious norms, and on the other hand, through particular legal measures that sustain these norms. Therefore, religious institutions, the media, the family/tribe, cultural networks, and the legal system continually disciplinewomen’s sexuality and punish those women (and in some instances men) who have transgressed or allegedly contravened the social boundaries of ‘appropriateness’ as delineated by each society. Such women/men may include lesbians/gays, women who appear ‘too masculine’ or men who appear ‘too feminine,’ women who try to exercise their rights freely or men who do not assert their rights as ‘real men’ should, women/men who have been sexually assaulted or raped, and women/men who challenge male/older male authority.

Disruptive Fixation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christo Sims
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
New Media ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Middle Schoolers ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Conventional Type

In New York City in 2009, a new kind of public school opened its doors to its inaugural class of middle schoolers. Conceived by a team of game designers and progressive educational reformers and backed by prominent philanthropic foundations, it promised to reinvent the classroom for the digital age. This book documents the life of the school from its planning stages to the graduation of its first eighth-grade class. It is the account of how this “school for digital kids,” heralded as a model of tech-driven educational reform, reverted to a more conventional type of schooling with rote learning, an emphasis on discipline, and traditional hierarchies of authority. Troubling gender and racialized class divisions also emerged. The book shows how the philanthropic possibilities of new media technologies are repeatedly idealized even though actual interventions routinely fall short of the desired outcomes. It traces the complex processes by which idealistic tech-reform perennially takes root, unsettles the worlds into which it intervenes, and eventually stabilizes in ways that remake and extend many of the social predicaments reformers hope to fix. It offers a nuanced look at the roles that powerful elites, experts, the media, and the intended beneficiaries of reform—in this case, the students and their parents—play in perpetuating the cycle. The book offers a timely examination of techno-philanthropism and the yearnings and dilemmas it seeks to address, revealing what failed interventions do manage to accomplish—and for whom.

The effectiveness of Social Media Instagram as a Promotion of Agricultural product of fruits. (case :Instagram TaniHub Indonesia, Pasar Minggu, Jakarta Selatan)

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 866
Author(s):  
Nensy Yohana Natalia Pasaribu
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Media Exposure ◽  
Agricultural Product ◽  
Marketing Activity ◽  
Feedback Message ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media

Agriculture produces processed product which is perishable, so that the agricultural product should be distributed immediately. Processed product can be promoted to attract consumers to buy the product. One of the media that can be used to promote processed agricultural product is social media. Social media is needed to ease the marketing activity on the product. Social media is viral and can be delivered directly and personally to the consumer. Indicators are used to know the effectiveness of the social media as promotion media with AIDA concept. The results showed that promotion through Instagram has not been effective in the stages of attention (attention), interest (interest), desire (desire), and action (action). This study also explains that there is a relationship between the characteristics of gender followers and the level of social media exposure to the frequency of messages. In addition, there is also a relationship between the frequency of message feedback, message attractiveness, and intelligence in delivering messages with the interest stage. 

Empathy not quarantined: Association between people’s empathy to others and the COVID-19 pandemic situations based on a national survey study (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhibin Jiang ◽  
Fan Yang ◽  
Bu Zhong ◽  
Xuebing Qin
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Social Media ◽  
National Survey ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Affective Response ◽  
Survey Study ◽  
Income Levels ◽  
The Social

BACKGROUND The Covid-19 pandemic had turned the world upside down, but not much is known about how people’s empathy might be affected by the pandemic. OBJECTIVE This study examined 1) how empathy towards others might be influenced by the social support people obtained by using social media; and 2) how the individual demographics (e.g., age, income) may affect empathy. METHODS A national survey (N = 943) was conducted in China in February 2020, in which the participants read three real scenarios about low-income urban workers (Scenario I), small business owners in cities (Scenario II), and farmers in rural areas (Scenario III) who underwent hardship due to COVID-19. After exposure to others’ difficulties in the scenarios, the participants’ empathy and anxiety levels were measured. We also measured the social support they had by using social media. RESULTS Results show that social support not only positively impacted empathy, β = .30, P < .001 for Scenario I, β = .30, P < .001 for Scenario II, and β = .29, P < .001 for Scenario III, but also interacted with anxiety in influencing the degree to which participants could maintain empathy towards others, β = .08, P = .010 for Scenario I, and β = .07, P = .033 for scenario II. Age negatively predicted empathy for Scenario I, β = -.08, P = .018 and Scenario III, β = -.08, P = .009, but not for Scenario II, β = -.03, P = .40. Income levels – low, medium, high – positively predicted empathy for Scenario III, F (2, 940) = 8.10, P < .001, but not for Scenario I, F (2, 940) = 2.14, P = .12, or Scenario II, F (2, 940) = 2.93, P = .06. Participants living in big cities expressed greater empathy towards others for Scenario III, F (2, 940) = 4.03, P =.018, but not for Scenario I, F (2, 940) = .81, P = .45, or Scenario II, F (2, 940) = 1.46, P =.23. CONCLUSIONS This study contributes to the literature by discovering the critical role empathy plays in people’s affective response to others during the pandemic. Anxiety did not decrease empathy. However, those gaining more social support on social media showed more empathy for others. Those who resided in cities with higher income levels were more empathetic during the COVID-19 outbreak. This study reveals that the social support people obtained helped maintain empathy to others, making them resilient in challenging times.

Prostitution

2019 ◽  
pp. 644-660
Author(s):  
Carly Daniel-Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sexual Ethics ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Social ◽  
Female Prostitutes ◽  
Female Prostitute ◽  
Negative Representation

This chapter shows how slavery informed the social realities of and rhetoric about prostitution and prostitutes, which informed the negative representation of female prostitutes in early Christian sources. Following Paul’s rhetoric, many Christians used sexual virtue to legitimatize themselves and bolster their triumphalist claims over others in the Roman Empire. To this end, they employed the degraded and debased female prostitute as a powerful symbolic figure as that which stood outside communal boundaries or as a threat that could undermine boundaries from within. In so doing, they marginalized prostitutes and enslaved persons, who could not, by virtue of their enslavement, sustain the sexual ethics that early Christians were promoting. The chapter concludes with debates about contemporary sex workers, arguing that it is critical for feminist historians to resist the rhetoric of the early Christian texts, which obscure the presence of prostitutes (and vulnerable slaves) in ancient Christ-believing communities.

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