Privacy violations in youth sexting culture

Hetero-sexting as mediated intimacy work: ‘Putting something on the line’

“…That is to say, while the materialisation of risk remains cast as a negative, potential outcome, the very engagement in risky activities is perceived as a positive activity due to it being understood as potentially profitable. Introducing a more positively loaded conceptualisation of hetero-sexting risk, this article has made an important contribution to the existing research on how people respond to risk discourses with regard to sexting, wherein sexting risk is generally cast as a negative possibility that those who engage in it seek to avoid (Amundsen, 2019a; Renfrow and Rollo, 2014; Setty, 2018). In bringing in this new conception of sexting risk, the findings presented in this article are also in line with those presented in other articles on online sexual cultures by, for example, Marijke Naezer (2018) and Matt Hart (2017).…”

“…Finally, the third subset of the literature on sexting and the various risks associated with potential further non-consensual sharing of the sexting material, is particularly concerned with how people, and especially women, respond to risk discourses with regard to sexting, especially by engaging in risk mitigating practices (Setty, 2018). For example, this literature describes how risk mitigating activities can include careful considerations of which potentially identifying characteristics to depict in their private sexual images (Renfrow and Rollo, 2014).…”

“…In my interviewees’ accounts, this sexting risk and associated notions of sexting-induced vulnerability were not strictly cast as something negative that they should mitigate and avoid – they were also cast as a resource for intimacy . 2 In providing an alternative, more positive account of the role of risk in women’s heterosexual sexting practices – here forth referred to as ‘hetero-sexting’ 3 – this article expands on existing conceptions of the risk that sexting material might be shared publicly and non-consensually, as they occur in the existing literature on sexting and risk (Amundsen, 2019a; Renfrow and Rollo, 2014; Setty, 2018).…”