Nudes, gender negotiations and community

A qualitative study of young people’s sexualized digital practices involving imagery of peers

Abstract

The article is based on the PhD dissertation, ”Traveling Imagery – a qualitative study of young people’s use and sharing of sexualized digital imagery of peers”, de-fended at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, in January 2022. The aim was ‘to explore how differentiated sexualized digital practices involving image-ry of peers are enacted and to analyze how they make sense to young people aged 15–20’. More specifically, the dissertation examined how the imagery is produced, used, spread, and contested, what kinds of social and gendered norms and position-ings are being produced and negotiated, and how these practices are facilitated and invited by the technology.
Drawing on posthumanism and new materialism, combined with concepts from phi-losophy, poststructuralism, postphenomenology, and affect theory, and through re-search material produced via digital ethnography, analogue fieldwork and cases from a helpline, the dissertation addresses the social and technological dynamics contributing to produce young people’s sexualized digital practices involving image-ry.
The analyses show how young people’s sexualized digital imagery travels in volatile and boundless social networks across both analogue and digital contexts. This seems to blur the distinction between young people’s everyday sexualized digital practices involving imagery and their more abusive and criminal practices. For some young people (mainly boys), the sexualized imagery is used to pursue sexual desires and obtain sexual excitement, yet for most, it functions as a valuable currency for obtain-ing status and recognition through social and gendered negotiations among friends and acquaintances in, and across, analogue and digital spaces.

Keywords:

­Sexting, image-based abuse, young people, gender, social media, new materialism