Behind the screen : commercial sex, digital spaces and working online
Cunningham, Stewart and Sanders, Teela and Scoular, Jane and Campbell, Rosie and Pitcher, Jane and Hill, Kathleen and Valentine-Chase, Matt and Melissa, Camille and Aydin, Yigit and Hamer, Rebecca (2018) Behind the screen : commercial sex, digital spaces and working online. Technology in Society, 53. pp. 47-54. ISSN 0160-791X (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2017.11.004)
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Abstract
The rise of the internet and related digital technologies has had a profound impact on many aspects of people's working and social lives, including the buying and selling of sexual services. In addition to providing new ways to advertise for sex workers who provide services to clients in person, the internet has also seen the development of completely new forms of commercial sex (like webcamming) that take place entirely in an online environment. Using the largest datasets created in the UK/Europe, this article explores how sex workers use the internet and digital technologies to facilitate the range of different services that they offer. We identify the ways in which the internet has improved the ability for sex workers to organize and professionalize their services, with increasing profit and safety being core objectives. At the same time, we explore some of the challenges and potential (new) harms that arise for sex workers working online. In this paper, we aim to explore the diversity of ways in which sex workers interact with online and digital technology. This paper advances knowledge by: a) demonstrating how the shift to online working developed for sex workers and their views on the importance of the internet to their working lives; b) exposing the different marketing strategies adopted by sex workers, including the use of social media and personal websites in building an online brand; and c) discussing the impact of online reviews and the wider culture of reviewing commercial sexual services.
ORCID iDs
Cunningham, Stewart ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9873-1420, Sanders, Teela, Scoular, Jane ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6686-6494, Campbell, Rosie, Pitcher, Jane ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6098-2208, Hill, Kathleen, Valentine-Chase, Matt, Melissa, Camille, Aydin, Yigit and Hamer, Rebecca;-
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Item type: Article ID code: 62826 Dates: DateEvent31 May 2018Published29 November 2017Published Online28 November 2017AcceptedSubjects: Law
Social SciencesDepartment: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) > Strathclyde Law School > Law Depositing user: Pure Administrator Date deposited: 11 Jan 2018 11:56 Last modified: 12 Sep 2024 21:00 Related URLs: URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/62826