“Why Internet Doesn’t Necessarily Matter”: Constructing Sexual Citizenship through Pornographic Literacies

Abstract

Twenty years after their broad diffusion in most Western countries, digital technologies are still considered a media space that holds risks for users and primarily young users. Experiences with content considered potentially harmful such as mediated sexual content or sexting falls within a context of public and academic concerns but also within a context of moral panics about the ethical deprivation and loss of childhood. In this article I revisit data from a qualitative project undertaken between 2010-2012 addressing young people’s accounts of experiences with mediated sexual content. I attempt to provide a broader analytical framework for young people’s constructions of sexuality and mediated sexual content, one that acknowledges their agency to talk and negotiate the topic in social, cultural and ethical terms. My objective is to demonstrate that young people’s constructions of sexuality through accounts of mediated sexual content contribute through a development of sets of porn literacies to further negotiations of sexual citizenship.