A tale of girl-sends-nudes-to-boy? Unscripting sexting in a Dutch school

Abstract

Most studies of sexting attempt to delineate its main characteristics, to define it and quantify its prominence and its effects. This article studies sexting within a specific ethnographic case. Based on an ethnographic case of a girl’s nude picture being disseminated in a secondary school in the Netherlands, this paper argues that sexting is scripted through media and scientific reports, influencing the way it comes into being and is dealt with in practice. The script emphasizes the girls’ responsibility in sending the picture, taking it to signal a lack of self-confidence, and emphasizes her guilt in its dissemination. On the other hand, it erases several elements, notably the different networks of friends that were tapped into by the actors, and the ‘economy of pictures’ that the picture was part of. Focusing extensively on the days immediately after the picture was spread, as well as on reflections on the event several months later, shows how the sexting script not only describes the phenomenon of sexting, but also prescribes how it is dealt with in practice, and, to a degree, how it produces sexting.