Mapping the Issue of Sex PositivityOn Twitter and Instagram

Let’s Talk About Sex Baby: Mapping the Issue of Sex Positivity on Twitter and Instagram

Maria Świerblewska 12370363 MA New Media and Digital Culture

Supervisor: Stijn Peeters Second Reader: Davide Beraldo

Abstract

This thesis provides an insight into the concept of sex positivity, which for the sake of the research is studied as a social issue originating from feminist theories. By grounding the concept in theories of feminism, activism and hashtag studies, the study aims to contribute to the definition of sex positivity. By taking Instagram and Twitter as case studies, the methodological process of issue mapping of sex-positive related hashtags is applied, where the publics of the sex positivity are detected in the issue networks and their dominant voices are analysed. The research discusses the similarities and the differences between the studied issue publics and relates the findings to the feminist and activits theories. The study concludes the issue mapping process with a set of sub-issues which are defining the digital discourse of sex positivity of the studied platforms.

Keywords

Sexpositive, Instagram, Twitter, feminism, activism, issue mapping

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.INTRODUCTION 5 1.1 Defining sex positivity 5 1.2 Role of social media 6 1.3 Research question 7 1.4 Research structure 7

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 10 2.1 Sex positivity concept 10 2.2 Feminism and activism 12 2.3 Hashtags and their publics 14

3. METHODOLOGY 17 3.1 Twitter and Instagram as case studies 17 3.2 Issue mapping 18 3.3. Finding the dominant voice 22

4. FINDINGS 25 4.1 Twitter’s sex positivity issue network analysis 25 4.1.1 Twitter’s ‘pornography’ cluster 27 4.1.2 Twitter’s ‘body positivity’ & ‘queer’ clusters 28 4.1.3 Twitter’s ‘bdsm’ cluster 29 4.1.4 Twitter’s ‘swinging’ cluster 31 4.1.5 Twitter’s ‘sex education’ cluster 32 4.1.6 Twitter’s ‘sex toys’ cluster 34 4.2 Dominant voice analysis in Twitter 34 4.2.1 The dominant voices of ‘pornography’ cluster 37 4.2.2 The dominant voices of ‘body positivity’ and ‘queer’ cluster 38 4.2.3 The dominant voices of ‘swinging’ and ‘bdsm’ clusters 39 4.2.4 The dominant voices of ‘sex toys’ and ‘sex education’ clusters 40 4.3 Instagram’s sex positivity issue network analysis 41 4.3.1 Instagram’s ‘body positivity’ cluster 43 4.3.2 Instagram’s ‘sex education’ and ‘health’ clusters 44 4.3.3 Instagram’s ‘sex & pleasure’ cluster 47 4.3.4 Instagram’s ‘feminism’ cluster 49 4.3.5 Instagram’s ‘art’ cluster 52 4.3.6 Instagram’s ‘queer’ cluster 54 4.4 Dominant voice analysis in Instagram 56 4.4.1 The dominant voices of ‘body positive’ cluster 58 4.4.2 The dominant voices of ‘sex education’ cluster 59 4.4.3 The dominant voices of ‘sex & pleasure’ cluster 60 4.4.4 The dominant voices of ‘health’ subcluster 61

4.4.5 The dominant voices of ‘queer’ cluster 62 4.4.6 The dominant voices of ‘feminism’ cluster 63 4.4.7 The dominant voices of ‘vibrators’ subcluster 64

5. DISCUSSION 66 5.1 Gendered publics 66 5.1.1 Gendering of ‘body positivity’ public 66 5.1.2 Gendering of ‘queer’ public 67 5.1.3 Gendering of ‘sex education’ and ‘sex toys’ 68 5.1.4 Gendering of ‘pornography’ public 69 5.2 Sex positivity as a feminist issue 70 5.2.1 Feminism and pornography 70 5.2.2 Feminism and pleasure 72 5.3 Sex positivity as activism 72 5.4 Impact of policies on the issue space 74

6. CONCLUSION 77

REFERENCES 80

APPENDIX 86

The following points present the necessary information to recreate the datasets used for this research. 86

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Defining sex positivity

“PSA: ‘Sex positive’ is not a synonym for slutty or highly sexual. Sex positivity is about nonjudgmental embracing of sexual diversity; regardless of your own sexual desires or life choices. You can be slutty and sex negative. And you can be asexual and #sexpositive.”1 - tweets dr. Zhana Vrangalova, a well-known researcher, speaker, writer and coach within the area of sexuality studies, actively using Twitter and Instagram to promote her research and opinions on the topic of human sexuality. The same hashtag, which @Dr.Zhana employed in her tweet, is used also in a recent Instagram post depicting an image with inscription “Against abortion? Have a vasectomy!”2, shared recently by an online clothing shop @calibournelive.shop, right after the controversial anti-abortion bill was signed into law in Alabama, US (Kelly). One might ask, how does a professional sex therapist and a pro-abortion commercial post are found under the same “hashtag umbrella” of sex positivity? Once searched on the internet, the variety of definitions and topics included under the topic can be overwhelming, what one feminist blogger summarized with “put two feminists in a room together and you’ll have three definitions of the term sex positive’” (Mogilevsky).

According to the definition by International Society for Sexual Medicine, the sex-positive approach means “having positive attitudes about sex and feeling comfortable with one’s own sexual identity and with the sexual behaviors of others”, including variety of attitudes and behaviors, like accepting different sexual orientations or practices (ISSM). The idea of sex positivity however is not just another new popular topic, as it has its historical roots in the feminist movement and was influenced by various contributions form sexuality studies, with the discussions regarding potential positive and negative implications of the sex-positive approach prevailing for decades (Mosher, 489-493). Various voices in the sex positivity discussion emphasize different aspects of the concept, some praise sex positivity as beneficial to sexuality education, preventing sexual abuse and improving relationships, while others see the movement as a media slogan which promotes commodified version of sexuality or suppresses development of knowledge regarding sexual pathologies (Ivanski & Kohut, 216). The disparities in understanding the movement are resulting also from the historical perspectives, with example of pornography being criticised by radical feminist

1 https://twitter.com/DrZhana/status/1089191259607101445 2 https://www.instagram.com/p/BxkPZ7wJzXy/

scholars during ‘sex wars’ times when they claimed it is degrading to women and advocated for state regulation of the matter, in comparison to nowadays, when porn can be considered by sex positive activists as liberalization and empowerment of sexuality (Ivanski & Kohut, 216). As there are various meanings emerging and new paradoxes are being constructed within discussion of sex positivity, the need to define the ideology more precisely emerged, as without defining it it is not possible to understand if the movement is underway and furtherly, where is it going with its consequences for the society (Ivanski & Kohut, 217).

1.2 Role of social media

As the sex positivity movement evolved over the years, the social media platforms were among the media that help advance its agenda and pave the way into more mainstream discourse. As Locke et al. argues, social media platforms enabled specific groups like feminists to advance their political agendas as they can easier connect with like-minded actors, spread their ideas, shape new discourses and perform new versions of activism (4). Depending on the platform, there is a specific set of affordances and features that allow both the movements to be constructed as well as studied; this research aims at understanding the sex positivity movement by utilizing the hashtag feature and what it connotes. Employed by various social media platforms, hashtags are a way to mark a conversation, used as both clerical and semiotics indexing system, allowing at the same time fast retrieval of information on specific topic (Bonilla & Rosa, 5). Hashtags became a way to demonstrate certain ideas and spread, often activist, messages in the digital discourse, with an example of ‘hashtag activism’ as a term for “discursive protest on social media united through a hashtagged word, phrase or sentence” (Yang, 13). Different movements and communities connected to feminist ideas were able to expanding thanks to social media platforms, with a prominent example of the ‘#metoo’ campaign, which was described as “a time when sexual assault survivors everywhere turned the internet into a platform for their voices and perspectives to be heard and respected” (Curtis). As more similar movements are appearing, it is an opportunity to explore how these social campaigns are being shaped in the online realm compared to their offline or historical ideals, as well as how the online platforms influence these movements, how do they enable construction of certain meanings, while possibly resisting others (Locke et al., 4). Regarding the sex positivity ununified concept, scholars argue that some of the discrepancies in the definitions may be attributed to different perspectives and needs of the educators, academics, writers and activists who use the term and construct its meaning (Ivanski & Kohut, 217). As sex positivity discourse is now disseminated and circulating in the realms of the web space, it can be useful to explore the

meanings and definitions that people identifying with this approach are creating through these platforms.

1.3 Research question

As there are still many different or even diverging definitions of sex positivity, the research undertaken in this thesis paper aims to contribute to fill the gaps within the sex positivity definitions, taking an approach to define it through the online social media discourse, focusing on investigating the public of the sex positivity online. It investigates how the sex positivity concept is being represented and discussed on the platforms by its audiences, who associate themsleves with the idea of sex positivity by the tagging behavior on particular platforms. It will help to define whether the sex positivity ideology can be conceptualized as a unified movement or rather set of independent publics with separate goals and interests and in conclusion, what do these publics discuss while using sex-positivity-related hashtags. Once the publics of the sex positivity concept are discovered and evaluated how they understand and re-interpret the sex positivity meaning, it will be additionally grounded in the theory of feminism and activism, in order to fully understand and ground the representations of sex positivity through its publics. By asking a supportive sub-questions of ‘Who are the publics of sex positivity?’, ‘What kind of dominant voices are creating the discourse of its publics?’ and ‘How are the sub-themes of sex positivity relating to each other?’, the final and main research questions of this thesis will be answered: How is the issue of sex positivity defined by its publics in social media platforms?

1.4 Research structure

In order to examine how sex positivity is being defined in the social media platform’s discourse, the research will take one of the digital methods approach, meaning it will employ the methods of the medium in order to repurpose its outputs for social research (Rogers, 92). In particular, the method used is the issue mapping, meaning the sex positivity is taken as an object of study in order to deploy, describe and visualize the objects, actors and substance of this social issue, ultimately producing a narrative and visual mapping for its interpretation (Rogers, Issue Mapping for an Ageing Europe, 9-10). In the process of mapping the sex positivity as an issue, the research intends to find the thematic clusters, which will reveal the issue publics and will be further critically evaluated in terms of their dominant discourse, conceptualized as the dominant voice, considering “the specific actors that give voice to the issue with the greatest strength” (Rogers, Otherwise Engaged, 7). In

order to have a greater overview on the issue, the research undertakes a cross-platform analysis approach, meaning the social movement is studied among various platforms, being a deliberate strategy where each platform is evaluated separately according to its specific opportunities and qualities, however the results are interpreted together to tell the same story (Rogers, Digital Methods for Cross-Platform Analysis, 7). The two platforms examined in the course of this research are Instagram and Tumblr, both prominent social media platforms with ongoing discourse regarding the sex positivity issue, which additionally both share the same feature of tagging content using hashtags. The object of hashtag will be the starting point for the issue mapping process, which will be based on the the co-hashtag analysis for the sex positivity-related hashtags in both platforms. As Sanchez-Querubin argues, “co-occurrence of hashtags can be read as discourse and capturing the vocabularies, actors and URLs attached to them can help deploy networks of entangled actors and objects” (99), what in case of this research will reveal the network of related topics and actors that will help understand how these concepts constitute the issue of sex positivity in the digital discourse.

Instagram and Twitter were chosen for variety or reasons, one being the feature of hashtag enabling the same type of methodological approach to the issue mapping process. Apart from it, both of the platforms may provide some slightly different insights on the topic of sex positivity due to the different characters of their main discourse. Instagram is largely associated with the idea of visual representation and identity curation, whereas Twitter is known for its politically-charged discussions, what can render an interesting comparative case for the issue of sex positivity. Additionally, both platforms have different policies regarding content moderation, especially with regards to “adult content” which is assumed to appear rather often in the issue space. All things considered, both platforms constitute an adequate database for the research, as they are relevant case studies for the topic and provide meaningful dataset for analysis. Findings from both of the platforms will guide the findings of how today’s social media publics define the sex positivity and further discuss it in relation to its origins.

The thesis is divided into a couple of chapters, with the first significant one being the theoretical framework, in which the main theoretical concepts are introduced, serving as a base for the methodological approach for the research and situating the researched issue in its wider context. The main subparts of the theoretical framework explore the history, current definitions on sex positivity and its position within the feminist discourse; explain the characteristics of feminist movements online and finally, characterize the hashtag as an

object enabling the study of issue publics which is used for the reserach of sex positivity online. The methodology section focuses on justifying the choice of platforms taken as case studies for the reserach purpose, as well as explains the two parts of the methodology applied for both platforms - issue mapping, the process by which the publics of sex positivity are discovered, and dominant voice finding, which characterizes the most vocal types of actor in the discourse. Next, the findings part describes the main observations made in the course of the research, showcasing them based on a particular platform and separately for each part of the methodology. Afterwards, the discussion chapter will comment on the most important findings, taking into consideration both similarities and differences found in both platforms, situating them in the context of feminism and activism in which the sex positivity concept is rooted. The similarities between the platforms are the base to give the answer to the research question, while the differences are commented on with respect to possible explanations within the platforms themselves. Finally, the conclusion will summarize the main arguments and suggest possibilities for further research.

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

2.1 Sex positivity concept

In order to study the sex positivity concept online, first this chapter will provide a general overview of the origins of this idea and how it evolved over time, how it relates to other movements and where is its positioned within the wider feminist discourse. The concept of sex positivity became more identifiable and louder in the recent years as more scholars, media, acitvists and general publics started to discuss it, what is confirmed by increase in searches of the term “sex positive” after year 2008, corresponding to increased discussions about the positive effects of sex positive approaches (Ivanski & Kohut, 216). Although it became more trendy topic now, the sex positivity movement has a long history rooted in various fields of study, mainly with constructs about sex, sexuality and and sexual behaviors, which developed as part of burgeoning scientific method in the late 19th century. The scholastic approaches towards understanding and defining the sex-positivity concept were heavily influenced by feminist theories and often correspond to the historical four waves of feminism, starting from challenging the heteronormative view on human sexuality and finishing with today when scholars aim to explore societally and culturally diverse narratives of sex and sexuality. The construction of the sex positivity narrative can be seen as a reaction and result of context in which human sexuality was discussed, what is defined as sex-negative dominant discourse (Mosher, 489-493). Sex negative approach towards sex and sexuality sees them as set of behavioral functions and skills, focused on reproduction while restricting sexual expression and seeing any other sexual activity apart from heterosexual marital sex as abnormal or deviant (Wodda & Panfil, 583). Sex positivity therefore can be understood as a “cultural philosophy that understands sexuality as a potentially positive force in one’s life”, celebrating sexual diversity, different relationship structures and desires, and consent-based individual choices regarding one’s sexual life (Queen & Comella, 278).

Although the sex positivity is rooted in the feminist movement, its history within feminist ideology like the movement itself, they don’t have a unified view on the sexuality and its politics. The brief history of feminism can be divided into four waves which were emphasizing major changes in how the movement and its ideologies were evolving. The first one can be traced back to early 20th century, where the first signs of opposition took place, regarding

women’s role in society, especially with respect to property ownership and suffrage. It continued with the second wave feminism, which expanded the advocacy to examine wider impact of sexism and patriarchy on daily lives of women, as well as started breaking gender stereotypes and point out the importance of feminism for men (Munro, 22). The most important period however to understand the how the sex positivity ideology emerged, is the transition between second and third waves of feminism, referred to as the period of ‘feminist sex wars’ which divided the feminist community. The ‘sex wars’ refer to series of discussions and political battles within the feminist community, which touched upon various topics, among others: legal protections for queer people, regulation of pornography, matters of sex education or reproductive rights and freedom for women (Duggan, 1). The two main camps opposing each other were the libertarian feminists, who see sexuality as a potentially liberating force by exchange of pleasure by consenting partners, supporting any kind of sexual behaviors based on consent, like sadomasochism, pornography and other transgressive forms of sexual behavior. On the opposite side, the radical feminists rejected such practices posing potentially a risk of violence towards women and as ones perpetuating the male dominance in the patriarchal society they were opposing to (Ferguson, 106-107). Although the two groups were disagreeing fundamentally about the role of female sexuality, they still were sharing the ideology of personal emancipation, making the freedom of sex one of the fundamental feminist goals (Glick, 22). The debates persisting throughout the feminist sex wars can be potentailly still observed within the feminist movement, confirmed with lack of clear definitions of sex positivity nowadays.

Whether conceptualized as the sex positivity movement, or pro-sex arguments, such views persisted throughout feminist debates in the next decades and they contributed to various fields regarding sexuality, like decriminalization of sex work, expanded representation in pornography, development and public embracement of “sexual enhancement” devices’, comprehensive sexual education and overall embracement of sexuality as healthy and normal (Fahs, 268). Although the movement contributed to major improvements in depathologizing, especially female, sexuality, there are still aspects in which its politics could be advanced, especially in the case of advocating for ‘freedom from’ still existing oppressive structures for women, what Fahs sees as deprioritized, comparing to politics of ‘freedom to’, focused on expansion on sexual rights and freedoms (272-273), in a manner of what once libertarian feminists were advocating for. Currently, various groups like academics, educators, activists and writers attribute different levels of importance to various aspects within sex positive claims, what results in sex positivity definitions lacking homogeneity in the

framing of whether it is a belief, a movement or a philosophy. It is stated by most though, that it is an approach that people should strive for (Ivanski & Kohut, 217), hence the need for more unified understanding of sex positivity was the reason for this research to be undertaken.

2.2 Feminism and activism

The previous chapter has mentioned how sex positivity has emerged as the feminist movement was transitioning from the second into third wave of its development. The third wave, representing mostly the 1990’s era, introduced the queer theory and its academic investigations, focusing more on the personal emancipation aspect, however it is the conceptual fourth wave of feminism that is the most crucial period this research has to take into consideration when understanding the sex positivity movement today. The fourth wave distinguishes itself mostly with the role that internet plays in spreading its ideas and it is constantly debated whether nowadays feminist practices deserve a separate label. It is a fact though that feminism online enabled creation of the feminist ‘call-out’ culture, where cases of misogyny and sexism in everyday situations can be immediately shared, backed up by the feminist community and brought up to a greater discussion in the society (Munro, 23). Such approach to the usage of technology can be referred to as ‘cyberfeminism’, which is defined as “a woman-centered perspective that advocates women’s use of new information and communication technologies for empowerment” (Hawthorne & Klein, 3). This definition gets along the understanding of what fourth wave of feminism is bringing to the movement, however what the ‘cyber’ is bringing (‘cyber’ in Greek meaning ‘governor’) is the questioning of the digital discourse being governed by the dominating male perspective, producing inequalities, on the other hand, seeing the new technologies as potentially liberating from patriarchal oppression (Hawthorne & Klein, 2-3). As in the case of previous generations, cyberfeminism still can’t be reduced to a single theory or a movement with clearly defined political agenda, it is rather a range of debates, practices and theories about the relationship between digital culture and gender, which can be different for various races, sexual orientations, sharing the common idea of questioning the patriarchy and confronting the top down with the bottom up approach (Daniels, 102).

Cyberfeminism is considered a genre of the digital activism, which is defined as set of activist practices based on and facilitated by digital networks. The term is argued to be widely used to variety of social campaigning movements that make use of digital

technologies, however what is the key factor in such understanding of the concept is the reliability, scale, speed and low cost of the digital networks that enable the contemporary activists to reach a wider audience and increase the scope of their activity. In such form of activism, digital technologies become the infrastructure, while the social, economic and political factors affect how people make use of those technologies with regards to activism (Joyce, 2-8). As the feminist movement started to disseminate into the web spheres, the emergence of digital platforms renewed the feminist politics and offered great potential for dissemination and shaping of new modes of feminist discourse about gender and sexism, enabling connection to various constituencies and allowing new modes of protesting to emerge. This digital feminist activism, as part of fourth wave of feminism logic, can be considered a turning point for feminist politics in several ways, including: the emergence of feminist memes as a chance to create greater awareness of feminist issues in the wider public sphere and promoting engagement with feminism; digital feminism engaging more with issues of access, difference and privilege, where feminists can create a network for exchanging experiences and learning from each other, contributing to building intersectional approach to feminism; and finally, interplay between feminist protests and female bodies creates an interesting space for emerging feminist politics which move away from relying on traditional legislative channels (Baer, 18). All these new modes of feminist protest are considered by Baer as a way of “redoing feminism for a neoliberal age”, where a crucial factor is the interplay between platforms, providing a disembodied discussion space, and local, offline protests which draw attention to embodiment of feminism into female body (19).

A variety of examples of such movement exists, where another way of conceptualizing some parts of the feminist movements is the hashtag activism, specifically hashtag feminism, which enabled the creation of virtual spaces where victims of inequality can provide mutual support and organize themselves in the process of advocating their rights (Dixon, 34), at the same time establishing new modes of communication and starting new types of feminist conversations, both online and offline (Baer, 18). The concept however faces a lot of criticism about whether the contested social change is actually happening, what is often referred to as ‘slacktivism’, describing mostly social media campaigns gaining great public support but not bringing an effective change or not addressing the pressing issues, potentially being the case of the feminist online campaigns (Munro, 24). Whether effective or not, the feminist virtual campaigns have a long history, with prominent examples such as the #freethenipple movement, pointing out the unequal standards of acceptance of nudity between genders, which first became an offline movement which translated into widespread hashtag campaign (Faust, 166); or German Twitter movement #aufschrei (‘outcry’), which

emerged in a response direct discriminations and violence again women, translating into debates among journalists and politicians (Baer, 28). They serve as examples of how social media platforms may afford certain feminist campaigns to evolve, however as much as they can contribute to advancement of the feminist agenda, they also have the means to sabotage it. Social media platforms, with example of Instagram, may act as a “hostile environment for feminist art practices” (Olszanowski, The 1x1 Common, 232), creating the conditions and forcing feminist community to re-negotiate constantly the policies and how they navigate those spaces. An example can be the owners of feminist art accounts in Instagram, whose self-imagining practices go against the draconian censorship laws of the platform, creatively circumventing the content policies while staying true to their sexually charged aesthetics (Olszanowski, Feminist Self-Imaging and Instagram, 84). In this way the platforms may be a paradoxical space, where feminists gather as community to pursue their goals using affordances of social media, but trying to challenge their politics and subvert them at the same time. For the analysis of the sex positivity concept online, it is crucial to understand how it is placed within the wider feminist discourse; how it becomes a form of activism while being disseminated into web spheres and finally; how sex positivity as activism is enabled by the social media platforms and what are their constraints.

2.3 Hashtags and their publics

As mentioned in the intorduction, the research applies the method of issue mapping, where the key objects being evaluated are hashtags connected to sex positivity issue. This section will provide an overview about understanding of hashtag as a digital object, its brief history and various definitions, as well as different cases of how and by whom it is being employed in social media platforms, introducing the idea of ‘hashtag publics’ and how this contributes to the overall mapping of sex positivity.

The concept of hashtag as such can is rooted in IRC (Internet-Relay-Chat) channels and the phenomenon of user-generated tagging systems of Web 2.0, which got popular among user-generated content platforms by 2007, with platforms like Flickr or del.icio.us being the most prominent examples. On Twitter, hashtags were introduced for the first time as channel tags, with the aim of allowing people to contribute and follow conversations regarding particular topics (Bruns & Burgess, 16). Technique of tagging was also popular among platforms like Evernote, where tags were being employed as tools to describe content, retrieve and archive it, what changed with Twitter changing the role of tag to filter and promote the content; tag became part of message broadcasting (Rocheleau & Millette, 244).

The hashtags started to become more and more popular in variety of platforms, while the academia started to conceptualize it as more than just a feature, but rather as technosocial events in the media ecology that are entangled in various networks and help to understand them (Rambukkana, 2). For the sake of this research, it is important to understand how the sex positivity-related hashtags are placed within the existing literature in order to explain how they represent the publics in the sex positivity issue networks.

The hashtags this research is interested in, which represent the studied issue, are mostly #sexspositivity and #sexpositivie. There are various scholastic concept describing types of hashtags, which some of the most accurate for this case are described below. Bruns and Stieglitz described such tags as recurring ones, as they are being used to contribute to certain topics and debates in repeated manner (97). Additionally, Sauter and Bruns conceptualize them as the topical hashtags, which can be reactionary to different discussions or events, but they have to aim at contribution to a particular topic (62). With such hashtags, users can easily exploit them as a tracking mechanism for the topics they are interested in, but once they reuse them, it becomes also a relational marker, which actors use to relate either to others or themselves, described also as a “technology of engagement” (Sauter & Bruns, 52). Burgess et al. introduced this notion of engagement of public by hashtag as ‘hybrid forum’, basing it on understanding forum as open space for discussion of the collective interest, and hybrid considering the heterogeneous nature of the public involved (63).

Through its affordance of marking conversations and facilitating dialogue, hashtags fulfill another role, which is focused on engaging users who employ them and hence shaping the communities around particular topics. Usage of particular hashtags may be interpreted as a community affiliation or user’s desire to belong (Burgess et al, 62), however it is debatable to what extent a group of people involved in a hashtag can be described as a community. On one hand, notion of community implies that the participants share specific interests and are deliberately engaging with each other, which can, but doesn’t have to always be the case and whether a particular user considers himself a member of a community is a very individual matter. On the other hand, it is proved that hashtags facilitate the process of ‘audiencing’ as they bundle together content on a common, unified topic and that translates often into engagement of those posters outside of the platforms or enable a participant in a hashtag stream act as a community as they retweet or repost the each other’s content. This suggests that the participants do not engage only with the hashtag but also what other

members of the community are posting behind it, thus forming a collective discourse around it (Bruns & Burgess, 21).

In case of the public's behind the hashtags of sex positivity, as the topic is highly controversial and does not have a homogenous definition, it may be assumed that the audience behind it is also rather heterogeneous set of various actors who build up the sex-positive community. In this way the community is constituting a network of issue publics, as they are mediated public spheres in which hashtags take a coordinating role for each issue public (Bruns & Burgess, 18). The sex positivity community emerges in various platforms, however it may be facing different obstacles from their policies, what can be considered an important factor why they continue to push back and continue the discourse, what can be reffered to the notion of ‘intimate publics’. According to Olszanowski, it is a produced public sphere, within which members can freely exchange their ideas and opinions, that are already partly shared due to common worldview and emotional bond derived from broadly shared historical experience (The 1x1 Common, 232). Since the sex positivity issue is rooted in feminism, it is potentially an accurate concept for its publics. Adding the perspective of Antonakis-Nashif, the sex positive community in social media may act similarly to a feminist movement #aufschrei in Germany, which is conceptualized as a ‘subaltern counterpublic’. Such hashtag public emerges as a reaction to a mainstream discourse, in which particular group does not considers to be heard, thus it regroups and withdraws from general public sphere and starts to produce its own alternative knowledge to raise its voice (103). By applying this concept, the sex positive movement online may be seen as a issue public opposing to the mainstream discourse in the platforms. All aforementioned concepts of the publics are rather a hypothesis of how the publics of sex positivity, formed around hastags, can exists in the studied platforms, what will be examined by the fidnings and discussion chapters.

3. METHODOLOGY

3.1 Twitter and Instagram as case studies

Given that this research aims at understanding the concept of sex positivity through its publics, the main goal of the methodology was to employ a framework that would determine the main sub-groups of the general audience and analyze what are the main perspectives on sex positivity that they are representing. The research was designed based on the digital methods approach, meaning it will follow the methods of the medium in interpreting the web data to analyze the studied social issue (Rogers, Digital Methods, 1). Such approach could take into consideration various digital objects and data sets, however in pursuit of studying sex positivity issue, the research was be focused on realizing issue mapping on particular social media platforms in order to answer the research question. The process of issue mapping was divided into two parts: first, the issue network analysis in order to proceed with finding the main issue publics; secondly, finding the dominant voices within the main sub-publics to understand in-depth the main narratives that are given the greatest authority within the networks.

Two platforms were chosen to serve as a base for the case study: Instagram and Twitter. Each of these platforms has its unique set of affordances and is used by its participants for various purposes, what has to be taken into consideration while analyzing the findings. What they both have in common though is the same feature they employ, that is also the key object in this research - they all deploy hashtags. In Instagram, tags are a function that accompanies the photo by describing, classifying and expressing feelings connected to it (Ye et al., 386), moreover, it can be seen as more than just a marker, as it facilitates reading the intended message that is contained and expressed through the images (Olszanowski, The 1x1 Common, 236). For Twitter, which is mostly known for its opportunity of microblogging, the hashtags are a vital part of the platform as they are constituting a part of the message itself, primarily used to mark the tweet’s content and signal its affiliation to general topics and themes, serving also as a coordinating discussion mechanism (Bruns & Burgess, 13). Although the studied platforms are focused on different types of content and initially could have different ideas of what function the tagging behaviour might serve, as the social media platforms and hashtags are becoming more and more popular, their usage is

being adapted re-created by the platforms’ users, hence it can be considered comparable, as they all mark specific topic being presented or debated within the studied discourse.

As Rogers points out, analysis of collective actions, social movements and “connective actions” requires more exhaustive approach then analysing only one platform, hence the cross-platform analytical approach is recommended, where each platform is evaluated according to its unique research opportunities and features it deploys, however the findings are compared and combined in order to explain a social phenomenon (Rogers, Digital Methods for Cross-Platform Analysis, 7). In this manner, each platform will serve as a case study for the sex positivity issue research, their findings will be reflected on considering the specific “cultures of use” (8), hence each of the platforms will be treated as a separate issue space and a separate issue public to study. The findings from each public are treated as an input to answer collectively the research question How is the issue of sex positivity defined by its publics in social media platforms?, based on the commonalities found in both of the platforms. On the other hand, the comparison between Instagram and Twitter gives an opportunity to spot the differences in its publics and their discourse defninig the sex positivity issue. Although this research is not a platform study, these differences triggered some interesting observations regarding the platform’s influence on the issue publics and therefore are commented on with respect to each of the platform’s specifics in one part of the discussion section.

3.2 Issue mapping

The method used to detect the publics of sex positivity online is the issue mapping, which is a range of techniques and strategies that help in understanding an issue and its communication. The issue mapping approach takes a current affair as an object of study and employs various techniques to describe, deploy and visualize objects, actors and the substance of a social issue. Issue mapping is mostly interested in the topics that are considered unstable, fluid and potentially a sphere of misunderstanding. Considering the lack of unified view on definition of sex positivity, it renders it a good topic of study. Moreover, issue mapping seeks to reveal how the actors involved in those matters are constituting those issues by relating to each other and creating alliances with unified views, referred to as issue publics. The ultimate goal of the method is to produce a mapping of a network, in both narrative and visual way, in order to trace and identify the relations between actors involved in the issue (Rogers et al., 9-10).

There are multiple ways of conducting the issue mapping, among which is the concept of social cartography, rooted in the actor-network theory by Bruno Latour, who challenges the way of how ‘social’ is being understood. According to Latour, the idea of social shouldn’t be understood as static, pre-given or ordered, instead, the social should be seen as movement of various actors in the constant process of constituting the social. In his understanding, actors involved in a social issue constantly perform the social and thus define the state of affairs, which later can be analysed as an issue, however focusing on the movement and the struggle between the performers. Based on this theory, the social cartography treats the social as a trail of connections, constantly re-associating and re-assembling, resulting in the society being what these connections produce. The traces of new associations are the only visible elements a researcher can map in order to map the social issue itself (5-16). While proceeding with an issue mapping by applying social cartography, the publics that are found in the process of mapping explain how the issue of sex positivity is being constituted by the actors involved in creation of its discourse in the social media platforms.

According to Latour, the social controversies should be the starting point of an issue mapping process, what was developed by Tommaso Venturini in framework of how to explore them using the actor-network theory. According to Venturini, social controversies are “the crucible where collective life is melted and forged” (Venturini, Diving in Magma, 264) and they exist in a magmatic state, what serves as a metaphor for their constantly changing state as the social is being constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed. Conceptualizing controversy, he refers to a simple definition, which explains them as matters of shared uncertainty or situations where actors disagree, additionally listed the conditions which a controversy should fulfill in order to be suitable for mapping (261-263). Thay are applicable to the issue of sex positivity is as follows:

1) it involves all kind of actors, including non-human actors - various groups within feminist discussion and not only participate in the sex positivity issue, additionally, platforms themselves may act as actors; 2) displays the social in its most dynamic form - as it is assumed that within the issue publics new, surprising alliances and connections between them are being formed, as the discussion is heterogenous and multi-sided; 3) is reduction-resistant - meaning that the controversy in being constantly a site of disagreement, impossible to reduce to one simple questions, what in case of sex positivity is true, looking at its history and position within the feminist discourse;

4) is it debated - as more and more subtopics within the controversy is being discussed over time, in sex positivity an example can be new debated related to ethical porn being brought up, what can be considered a relative novelty for this issue; 5) is a conflict - where controversy is a struggle to solve the social inequalities, while being influenced by distributions of power - in this case study the assumption is that the struggle may occur between various publics involved with issue, but also between the public and the platforms that host them.

Additionally, it is advised to avoid cold, past, boundless and underground (meaning closed from public debates) controversies as an object of study (263). As sex positivity is neither of the aforementioned types of controversy, it is considered an appropriate social controversy to apply social mapping to.

The research takes sex-postivie-related hashtags as a base of the issue mapping process, treating each platform and its hashtag network as a separate case study. Treating the hashtag as a starting point of detecting a network of associations was proposed by Sanchez-Querubin, who suggests that hashtag stream produces new issue space and therefore be interpreted through the lens of ‘politics of association’, similarly to mapping with hyperlinks.. Once hashtags occur together in the same message, those associations enable to trace the topical mobility between different positions, hence, in this analysis the co-occurrence of hashtags should be read as a discourse, where capturing the vocabularies and actors can help in deployment of network of entangled objects and actors (96-99). The hashtag associations reveal the main publics and their discourse of sex positivity, hence contribute to definition of the issue itself.

For each platform, the hashtags chosen for analysis are the ‘sexpositivity’ and ‘sexpositive’, based on the fact that they are the most generic ones relatively to the topics thus they allow for capturing biggest amount of discourse related to sex positivity. In order to create the needed dataset based on respective hashtags, the method of scraping was employed, which is a web technique applied to online content that allows for collection of large amounts of data (Rogers, ‘Introduction: Situating Digital Methods’, 1). As each website or platform have different specifics and affordances, scraping of the platforms should also be conducted in a tailored manner (Weltevrede, 30), therefore for each platform in this case study different tool was employed in order to obtain the dataset of the hashtags. Each of the tools chosen for scraping of the platforms were developed by the Digital Method Institute (DMI) and they are

publicly available on their website. They were suitable to use due to their flexibility regarding customization of the date range and particular hashtags to be scraped.

For Instagram research, the Instagram Scraper3 was employed, which “interfaces with the API of Instagram to retrieve overviews of posts for a given set of usernames or hashtags” (Instagram Scraper), in this case scraping two aforementioned hashtags. Regarding the Twitter platform, datasets was produced by the TCAT tool4, which “captures tweets and allows for multiple analyses” (TCAT). All the tools provide their output in the form of .gdf file which contains a co-tag dataset, meaning tags which appear together and including determined weight indicating how often they appear together (Instagram Scraper). The .gdf file was further processed in the Gephi, a network visualisation tool, where various optimizations were applied in order to enhance the aesthetics aspects of the graph and facilitate analysis. The spatialization of the nodes and edges of the graph was deployed using on of the most popular force vector algorithms in Gephi - ForceAtlas2 - which enabled to give relative positions to all data points (Venturini, Visual Network Analysis, 3). The co-existing tags in the network are represented by nodes, where the bigged the node the more often it appears in the dataset, and their edges which constitute the relations between the hashtags. With the issue network visualised in for of a graph, the network clusters can interpreted to understand the different perspectives and views entangled in the issue being analysed (Burgess & Matamoros-Fernández, 82). For all the tools used, the data were collected in the time frame from 7.04.2019 till 7.05.2019. The dataset proved to be big enough to collect the findings, as both of the produced networks are based on more than 1000 nodes and 9000 edges each.

The produced network graphs are interpreted according to the aforementioned framework proposed by Venturini of how to explore the controversies following the actor-network theory. First, he suggests to start with statements, understood as collection of arguments in the debate, and demarcate them into existing literature discourses, following with identifying the actors involved in the production of these arguments (266), what is the focus of the analysis aiming at discovering the issue publics. Next, as the researcher should move towards identification of the networks those actors and their arguments constitute and move from networks to cosmoses that represent the underlying ideologies that the different voices in the debate represent (267), it is represented by the discussion section where the findings of issue publics and their sex positivity definitons are grounded in the theories.

3 https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolInstagramScraper 4 https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDmiTcat

3.3. Finding the dominant voice

The second part of the methodology is based on the issue network analysis described in the previous chapter, but focused on examining in-depth the thematic clusters found during the issue network analysis, in order to find the dominant voices within those issue publics. The notion of dominant voice was proposed by Rogers as a part of framework which repurposes the social media space from the once user for self-presentation into one that mobilizes publics of social issue; and treating the vanity metrics for social networks as the metrics for analysing the issue networks. Vanity metrics is a term developed for the business studies, concerned with counting the likes, page views and other metrics in social media platforms that indicate “success in the hit and like economies” (Otherwise Engaged, 1-2). Rogers proposes to use the vanity metrics for the process of critical analysis applied to the social movement online, where the metrics build up the social issue work. One of the critical metrics he proposes is the ‘dominant voice’, which indicate the most impactful source (though not necessarily the most credible) within the studied issue space. The questions one may ask while looking for the dominant voice within a network analysed is which sources are present in the space, and among those, which ones are dominating the discussion, while others are being marginalized (7). The dominant voice identification is a process of identifying the actors who are producing the knowledge and opinions within the issue space (20) and this is the main concern in the second part of the research.

Dominant voice was chosen among the other vanity metrics to contribute to the research objective as it enables to find the actors who are being a representation of the whole public’s discourse due to reach that they have within the issue space. As the dominant voices will be detected by their visibility, measured by tweets amount or likes amount, they can be seen as the main representatives of the discourse of each public, meaning the dominant voices due to their reach can be considered the ‘defining’ voices of their publics, hence they will best contribute to the answer of how these publics define the issue of sex positivity. To apply the concept of the dominant voice to mapping of an issue network in social media platforms, it had to be decided first which vanity metrics would be taken into consideration for the critical analysis. Instagram and Twitter enable various features for users to engage them in activity on the platform therefore for each platform one metric had to be chosen, which could be comparable to the ones in other platforms and indicate user engagement in an issue space.

Twitter allows its users to perform a variety of activities, but the most basic one is simply sharing a status message, that can contain both text caption and associated hashtags. A

previous research suggests that the platform is mostly content-oriented, where networks are constructed around subject and topics, signalized by tags, rather than individual users and their conversations (Anger & Kittl, 1). Knowing this, following the topics indicated by hashtags are the first step to determine who are the main voices expressing them. For this reason, the TCAT tool was used again, where the full tweets dataset with their IDs was matched with another TCAT data set, containing all tweets IDs with the hashtags and usernames they are associated with. By pairing up these data, another set was created, presenting the statistics of how many times each user mentioned particular hashtag in the issue space. The most actively tagging users for each of the tags were determined, what was followed with categorization of those accounts by their thematic and source type (explained in more detail in the findings section).

Instagram is the platform thus is referred to as an ‘image machine’, where users present their bodies through images and relate to each other with a set of practices to give and gain attention. The engagement in the platform may take various forms, among which the most popular and common ones are liking and commenting of the posts (Carah, Nicholas, Shaul, 70-71). From these two metrics, the ‘like’ is the quantitative one, which can be easily compared among variety of posts and this is why it was employed in the research as the indication of the dominant voice. The Instagram scraper enables downloading a file containing all the metadata of the scraped posts, including also the likes per post what was the focus of analysis. Using the overall data .csv file, it was also possible to count the hashtag frequencies in order to determine the most used ones and additionally, match the most liked posts with users who employed the most frequent tags, in this was the dominant voices in Instagram were detected, followed by categorization and analysis like in Twitter case.

To sum up, the first methodological step for both platforms was to map the sex positivity issue based on their co-hashtag connections, and with analysis detect the main clusters representing the main publics of the issue. This helped to answer the question of Who are the publics of sex positivity? Once they were detected, the clusters were matched with the most frequently used hashtags to narrow down the research and followed with matching process of those hashtags with the dominating users who are representatives of the discourse within each of the issue spaces. As users were analysed and categorized, it enabled to answer the question of What kind of dominant voices are creating the discourse if its publics? By combining findings of both questions, comparing and consolidating them in a

cross-platform manner, it enables to understand how these publics contribute to the emergence of sex positivity issue online and how its publics define it.

4. FINDINGS

4.1 Twitter’s sex positivity issue network analysis

Figure 1: Twitter’s sex positivity issue network graph with main clusters labelled

The network of the sex positivity issue in Twitter produced by scraped data in the time period of one month, from 7th of April till 7th of May 2019, is based on 1349 nodes, representing the hashtags co-related to ‘sexpositivity’ and ‘sexpositive’ hashtags, and 9402 edges, representing the connections between them. Considering the scale of the graph, the network analysis of the issue is focused on the main nodes, meaning the most frequently used hashtags, and the main clusters and sub-clusters formed around them, which will allow to discover the publics of sex positivity in Twitter platform. The complete issue network graph visualised in Gephi, with main areas for interpretation, is presented in Figure 1, where certain visual ranking settings in Gephi were applied. The colour of nodes represents the degree of how many times a particular hashtag has been used, meaning that the darker the node is the more this hashtag has been mentioned in the issue space in the tweets collection. The same logic was applied to the size of the nodes, the bigger the node the

more frequently the hashtag was used. The darkest, central node represents the hashtag ‘sexpositive’, which is the most frequently used one and serves as a reference point in other graphs in order to situate the clusters.

Figure 2: Table with top 25 most frequently used hashtags in the issue space

As the co-hashtag dataset was processed by the appropriate software, the network was produced and then interpreted. In most of the network graphs, their spatial setting can reveal various regions of assembled nodes, where the main aspect that matters is the clustering of the network, meaning “the relative position of the nodes, their agglomeration and their separation” (Venturini, Visual Network Analysis, 4). Depending on the network, the boundaries of clusters are not necessarily easily detectable, however it is easiest to detect the “structural holes” between them and the nodes that act as “bridges” which connect them and indicate connections (10). The Twitter’s sex positivity issue network is not easily divided into clusters due to huge amount of connections meaning hashtag co-relations, hence apart from only spatial analysis, the clusters reach was detected by analysis of the nodes label in order to match them thematically. As the network is huge, where not all the clusters are adding value to the analysis of sex positivity issue, the network analysis was focused on choosing clusters corresponding only to the most commonly used hashtags in the dataset, which are presented in Figure 2. Following the described logic, only the most discussed

topics through hashtags were chosen to answer the research question to define the issue of sex positivity, given the following clusters: ‘pornography’, ‘body positivity’, ‘queer’, ‘BDSM’, ‘swinging’, ‘sex toys’ and ‘sex education’, marked also in the Figure 1. Under most of these clusters, smaller subclusters are also formed, which will be described in spearat parts of findings, together with deeper analysis and explanation of cluster’s meanings for the definition of sex positivity.

4.1.1 Twitter’s ‘pornography’ cluster

Figure 3: Central ‘pornography’ cluster

First cluster to be analyzed in the central, ‘pornography’ cluster [Figure 3], which contains most of the most frequently used hashtags in the issue space and additionally is positioned very closely to the central, dark node representing the starting point of the graph - the ‘sexpositive’ tag. The proximity to the central node indicates the strong hashtag correlation between the nodes, meaning that the themes described by them are also core to the definition of sex positivity given by the Twitter public. Some of the hashtags are very generic and non-related to the studied issue, however most of them is related to direct sexual content and pornography-related themes, like ‘hotwife’ or ‘naughtygirls’, hence the cluster is labelled as ‘pornography’. Some of the tags are generic, like ‘adult’, however considering the issue space studied and its relation to other tags, it is certain they refer to adult, porn-related content in Twitter. Some of the tags are also connected to more feminist ideas, like

‘sexualempowerment’, what poses the question of how all these hashtags are thematically related being contained within one cluster, however the explanation may be the fact of high frequency of them, thus the probability they appear together is greater. Additionally, the thematic character of the central cluster indicates the overall character of the whole network, what will be examined again in the upcoming sections.

4.1.2 Twitter’s ‘body positivity’ & ‘queer’ clusters

Figure 4: The ‘body positivity’ and ‘queer’ cluster

Apart from the centrally-located hashtags around the sex positivity node, the next frequently used tag in the network is the ‘bodypositive’, located very close to the main node, around which there is a small cluster formed, containing hashtags like ‘nudity’ or ‘nudemale’ [Figure 4]. The body positivity approach became a very vocal topic in the mainstream discourse over the past decade, expressing mostly an approach of accepting one’s own body and changes it undergoes, ultimately resulting in greater one’s self-acceptance and self-esteem (Schreiber & Hausenblas). The absence of female-related tags implies that the body-positive public represented by this hashtag is mostly male-dominated and expressing the body positive identity through nude-related content. The ‘bodypositive’ node is also connected to the close hashtags ‘gay’ and ‘queer’, accompanied by other queer-related nodes like ‘trans’ and ‘bi’, which are considered to be their own queer-themed sub-cluster [Figure 4]. The nodes are very closely connected, this is why although thematically different, the two clusters are presented together. Queer stands for the theoretical model focusing on the mismatches between sex, gender and desire, however being commonly used to describe the assemblage of culturally marginalized sexual self-assigned orientations, what emerged as a concept from gay and lesbian studies (Jagose, 1-3). It explains the coexistence of the tags in

the cluster, where nodes are comprised of various hashtags, with focus on gay nudity, photography and art, like ‘artisticnude’, ‘malebody’ or ‘gayphotographer’. The ‘bodypositive’ node is connected also to most of these hashtags, implying that the body-positive public of Twitter is mostly queer-dominated, what can be understood as the linkage between the artistic expression of body nudity and the body acceptance, as the cluster’s hashtag meanings suggest.

4.1.3 Twitter’s ‘bdsm’ cluster

Figure 5: The ‘bdsm practices’ subcluster

Figure 6: The ‘club culture’ subcluster

Another big cluster representing a certain public of sex positivity formed in the network is the ‘bdsm’ cluster, which is relatively big in comparison to other clusters, as shown prevously in the Figure 1. It is formed around the main node of hashtag ‘bdsm’, which is the 30th most frequently used hashtag in the issue space, and can be divided into smaller thematic sub-clusters. BDSM stands for the community of people who are “interested in bondage (B), domination (D), submission (S), sadism (the same “S”) and masochism (M)”, often referred to as “kink” by its practitioners (Bezreh et al., 38), which is another commonly used hashtag in the space and included in the cluster. The two main sub-clusters of the bdsm sphere can be distinguished, starting with the ‘bdsm practices’ one [Figure 5], including tags related to common practices of bdsm community, like ‘blindfolded’, ‘gagged’ or ‘bondagegirl’. The subcluster can be interpreted as the bdsm public who actively engages with bdsm and discusses its practicalities in the platform. The second sub-cluster is the ‘club culture’ one [Figure 6], in which all the nodes are also connected to another frequently used hashtag in the issue space - ‘fetish’. The tags like ‘club’, ‘swinging’, ‘dance’, ‘party’ or ‘techno’ interpreted together refer to the connections of BDSM scene to clubbing culture, as the BDSM community usually performs its practices in territorialized places like clubs, where they can enjoy their lifestyle away from public gaze (Zambelli, 476-478). The BDSM

sub-public of this cluster can be interpreted as the people connecting the idea of sex positivity to the freedom of practicing BDSM in the club clulture institutions.

4.1.4 Twitter’s ‘swinging’ cluster

Figure 7: The ‘swinging’ cluster

The ‘bdsm practices’ subcluster is connected to the node ‘kink’, being also a frequently used tag, ranked at 74th place, which links to another cluster, placed in a separate part of the graph, however being thematically connected to the ‘bdsm’ cluster - the ‘swinging’ cluster [Figure 7]. The main node of this cluster is ‘swingers’, ranked at 27th place in the list of most commonly used tags, what emphasized the importance of the public represented by it for the whole issue’s public. The hashtags contained in the cluster describe the nature of the swinging approach, like ‘openmarriage’, ‘openrelationship’, ‘sharedwife’ or ‘nonmonogamous’, which accurately explain the approach of swinging being mostly employed by married couples who agree to exchange partners for sexual purposes (Jenks, 507) and constitute an important and vocal sub-publics of sex positivity within the studied issue space.

4.1.5 Twitter’s ‘sex education’ cluster

Figure 8: The ‘sex education’ cluster

Figure 9: The ‘masturbation’ subcluster

The 25th most commonly used hashtags in the sex positivity issue space is the tag ‘sexeducation’, which forms another important public in the central part of the graph. The cluster includes nodes like ‘sexpositions’, ‘sexcoach’ or ‘ sexualwelness’, referring to general idea of sharing knowledge about sexual experiences and practices in an open manner. The ‘sexeducation’ node is connected also to similar tag represented by node ‘sexed’, ranked 47th in the issue space, which links to the thematically connected part of the graph. The ‘sexed’ node connects to tags like ‘sexualfreedom’, also frequently used one, or ‘masturbation’, between which a ‘masturbation’ subcluster can be found [Figure 9]. It includes tags like ‘sexplore’, ‘masturbationmonth’, ‘sexualbehaviour’ and ‘femalemasturbation’, what can imply that the sub-public of this cluster is slightly more female-gendered. This node is also connected to the ‘feminism’ node, however no significant cluster is being formed around this node, with the hashtag being ranked only at 139th place in the issue space, this is why for Twitter it is not analysed as a separate issue public. The topic of sex education and masturbation seem to be tightly connetced, hence discussed together in this one section. The whole sphere which diverges from the main ‘sexeducation’ node shows the main interests of the sex education public, being the sexual health and the open, informative approach towards the idea of masturbation, which is still a taboo topic in various societies, while the sex educators are calling for destigmatizing it through initiatives like “Masturbation Month” in order to increase awareness about need of self-pleasure (Lloyd). This explains why masturbation is treated as a matter of sexual education. Moreover, the female-gendered hashtags suggest the female public playing an important role in the sex education discourse, however judging by the size of the cluster, not necessarily in the general Twitter’s sex positivity discourse itself.

4.1.6 Twitter’s ‘sex toys’ cluster

Figure 10: The ‘sex toys’ cluster

The last main cluster found in the issue space is the one formed around the hashtag ‘sextoys’, also located closely to the main ‘sexpositive’ node [Figure 10]. The cluster contains tags like ‘safesex’, ranked on 67th place, and ‘intimacy’, ranked 52nd, and other sex toys-related tags, mostly connected to lubricants as commonly used sex products. The cluster is not big, however the tags within it are some on the most frequently used ones, what may imply that people using or interested in sex toys are an important public within the sex positivity discourse and find the topic of using sex-enhancement devices as a sex-positive behavior. As for the rest of the graph which was not discussed in this section, the more distant subclusters formed in the peripheries of the graph are not taken into consideration for the analysis as they are not representing a commonly used hashtags thus they are not considered relevant for the research purpose.

4.2 Dominant voice analysis in Twitter

The the second part of the sex positivity issue space findings are guided by the dominant voice analysis, meaning that for each of the sex positivity sub-public the dominant accounts are determined, followed by categorization of those accounts by subjective labels, which help to understand what type of accounts they are hence what kind of knowledge sources are given the power in the issue space to define it (Rogers, Otherwise Engaged, 7). Basing on the tweets dataset and previous findings of the main publics’ clusters, the main tags for

each cluster are chosen, being the most frequently used ones within the space, and then the accounts which are using them the most often are found.

Figure 11: Categories of the dominant accounts in Twitter

Depending on the tag, the number of accounts determined as the dominant ones is different, as it depended on the amounts of tweets which each account shared within the issue space. The overall range of number of tweets per particular hashtag was examined, following choosing the top accounts which tweeted the most, usually top 3 accounts, however if the 4th account had similar number of Tweets, it is also considered as dominant account, similarly is treated the 3rd account which has drastically lower amount of tweets contained in the issue space - then only 2 accounts are taken into consideration. Such approach enables to focus on particular accounts in order to analyze each of them in detail, at the same time looking at the ones with the greatest reach within the issue space, what translates into dominating power to define the discourse.After finding the dominant accounts using the scraped hashtags, the categories presented by Figure 11 were developed, based on diversity of the user accounts. It additionally shows how many accounts belong to each of the categories. In many cases, it is hard to assign only one category to a user, as they may serve various functions, thus some of the accounts have more than one category assigned, however for the sake of having clear statistics, the first, main category is always counted.

As indicated in the Figure 11, the majority of the accounts are categorized as ‘pornography’ ones, followed by the second most popular category of ‘sex shops’, which content-wise are often related. It corresponds to the analysis of the main, centrally located cluster, described previously in part 4.1.1, in which the majority of hashtags is being employed by the dominating accounts categorized in the same way. The thematic dominance of the

porn-related hashtags, together with the dominance of porn-categorized types of accounts emphasizes again the character of the Twitter’s sex positivity issue space. These types of accounts are usually oriented towards certain types of sexual products or services. It contrasts with very low number of ‘personal’ accounts among the dominant voices of Twitter’s sex positivity public, which presumably would be the ones which discuss sex positivity in more personal or activist manner. The top accounts of each of the publics could be summarized by only 5 categories, which is relatively little, compared to the amount of categories ascribed to the dominant accounts of Instagram’s issue space (discussed in section 4.4). It indicates that the issue space is rather homogenous in its discourse, regarding the types of actors that dominate and in majority create how the sex positivity issue is being discussed.

Figure 12: 10 top dominant accounts in Twitter’s issue space

Looking at the top 10 dominating account in Twitter’s issue space meaning they published the biggest amount of tweets, the overall impression of the issue space can be complemented. Figure 12 presents the accounts with corresponding number of tweets and the category, some of these accounts are described more in details regarding the publics they belong to in further sections. The dominating category of the main accoutns is the ‘sex shop’, not the generally dominating ‘porn’ one, however ‘sex shop’ is the second most popular overally in the publics of sex positivity in Twitter, what again emphasizes the importance of this types of accounts for creating of the discourse of sex positivity. The interesting observation however are the 2 accounts categorized as ‘author / blog’, which are mentioned in the course of analysis - due to the fact that by hashtags they relate to, they are not associated with any of the publics of sex positivity in Twitter. The accounts are

@BelleRosada - a feminist blogger asoociated with the tag ‘amwriting’, which is the 18th most used one in the issue space, however is not thematically connected to the sex positivity, therefore doesn’t form any relevant cluster and public. Another account is @sololoner2, user discussing issue of celibacy and the stigma around it created mostly by, as he claims, christian ideals of marriage and parenthood. Both accounts are some of the most vocal in the issue space hence they must have an impact on the discourse of the issue space, however they don’t belong to any of the formed subpublics detected in the network analysis part, therefore this research doesn’t consider them to be important for detecting the publics of sex positivity issue. The main categories and top accounts indicate the overall thematic character of the public and the dominant types of accounts, however there are exceptions and in order to discover which voices really dominate the main subpublics of sex positivity, a more focused approach on particular clusters is needed, described in the following paragraphs.

4.2.1 The dominant voices of ‘pornography’ cluster

Figure 13: Dominant accounts of ‘pornography’ cluster

The first cluster analysed was the central one, previously named as ‘pornography’ cluster, which is formed around the ‘sexpositive’ node. It contains a lot of hashtags which have the highest usage frequency, so in order to focus the research scope, the top 3 were analysed: ‘goddess’, ‘nude’ and ‘adult’, which accurately represent the thematic content of the cluster. Figure 13 presents the main accounts for each of the tags in the analysed cluster, with various accounts being present for same hashtags in the issue space. Accounts like @CirenV and @DirtyDouche6 are dominant voices for each of the tags, confirming how the ‘pornography’ central cluster is interconnected withing itself with varius users. Most of the dominant accounts in this cluster are the accounts of women who use their Twitter accounts to share sexually explicit, nude and sexually straightforward content of themselevs, especially their bodies, therefore they were categorized as ‘pornography’ category, based on

definiton of pornography being “printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate sexual excitement” (Lexico). Basing on the qualitative analysis on those accounts’ content, the category reflects accurately the character and goals of such dominant voices within this public. Also, some of these accounts belong to the top accounts of whole issue space, like @CirenV being one of the most active users in the whole issue space, placed as third most active account [Figure 12], what is also emphasized with a separate hashtag ‘cirenv’ being the second most frequently used one in the dataset [Figure 2]. The only non-pronography-categorized account is @jonathan_saiz_, a ‘personal’ account instead, as he presents himself as a sex-positive and homosexual, but without sexually explicit content in his profile. An additional interesting fact is that while the analysis was being carried out, some of the accounts were blocked, like @uss_avenger, which didn’t get a chance to get categorised before being hidden, however it can be assumed that it could be categorized as ‘pornography’ as this was most probably the reason for being blocked; aditionally some other accounts contain notes about being blocked previously. Summing up, almost all of the accounts in the cluster share a very straightforward pornographic content of mostly female bodies (although not all of them belong to female users), and although they tag their content as ‘sexpositive’, they give an overall impression of being focused just on promotion of pornography, but not discussing or explaining how it belongs to the sex-positive approach, being more related just to the ‘sex’ part of this concept.

4.2.2 The dominant voices of ‘body positivity’ and ‘queer’ cluster

Figure 14: Dominant accounts of ‘body positivity’ cluster

Figure 15: Dominant accounts of ‘queer’ cluster

The next public within which the dominant voices are analysed is the ‘body positivity’ cluster, in which only the tag ‘bodypositive’ was checked, as it was the main node and used much more frequently than any other within the cluster. The dominant accounts were again the

blocked ones - @jonathan_saiz_ and @uss_avenger, with addition of @hornyhomo user [Figure 14], which is a personal account, however promoting mostly the online sex shop dedicated for homosexual people, hence tagged as ‘sex shop’ category. It implies that the body positivity public in Twitter is tightly linking this ideology within sex-positive approach to body nudity and connecting body positivity online to expression sexual content. Another cluster analysed was the ‘queer’ one, based on nodes ‘gay’ and ‘queer’, where the dominant accounts are @jonathan_saiz_ and @uss_avenger and @hornyhomo, where again the possibilities for analysis are limited [Figure 15]. In the issue network, the ‘body positivity’ and ‘queer’ clusters are tightly connected, what explains why the dominant accounts overlap, however it also shows that the Twitter’s queer public is identifying itself with the body positivity movement and vice versa, the body positive community is either queer-dominated or at least open to its public.

4.2.3 The dominant voices of ‘swinging’ and ‘bdsm’ clusters

Figure 16: Dominant accounts of ‘swinging’ cluster

Figure 17: Dominant accounts of ‘BDSM’ cluster

Moving to another main sex positivity cluster, the ‘swingers’ hashtag was examined, representing the swinging subpublic. The two main accounts representing it are @Two4Real4U, which is a business account, organizing events and retreats for swingers couples and @SwingwithTnB, account of a swinger couple who record their own podcast related to their lifestyle, promoting also swinging events, the assigned categories are presented in Figure 16. The dominant voices analysis suggests that the discourse of the public is dominated with business-oriented, event-organization accounts, aiming mainly at the promotion of a lifestyle, but potentially less engaged with the factual discussion. The cluster closely connected to the swinging one was the greater ‘BDSM’ cluster, with nodes ‘bdsm’, for which the dominant accounts connected are presented in the Figure 17. None of these accounts was dominating the previously described clusters, indicating a separate

character of these two clusters, however within these subpublics some of the users are thematically connected between each other, with example of @TruthKrazy, a podcast page dedicated for discussion of swinger lifestyle, although found in the ‘BDSM’ cluster. It confirms the connection of swinging public to the BDSM one, moreover, the business character of the majority of accounts again indicates the popularity of commercial type of discourse within this public, as ‘sex shop’ or ‘events’ categories are the main ones.

4.2.4 The dominant voices of ‘sex toys’ and ‘sex education’ clusters

Figure 18: Dominant accounts of ‘sex toys’ cluster

Figure 19: Dominant accounts of ‘sex education’ cluster

In the smaller, sex toys cluster, the dominant voice is expressed by two main accounts related to all main hashtags, these are @WetPlatinumMan and @WetTogether, categorized as ‘sex shop’ [Figure 18]. Both of the users are connected, the first one is the private account promoting the latter one, a gay-oriented sex shop producing mostly lubricants. Drawing a conclusion from this, the sex toys public is dominated again by the promotional discourse of a business or business-related accounts, additionally being presumably dominated by the queer community. Similar situation exists in the sex education cluster, where the dominating accounts are connected to one account @Kikilove_ikyg, a user describing herself as “sex enhancement specialist”, but promoting an online sex store, therefore categorized accordingly. It again emphasizes the business-related discourse in the sex positivity issue space in Twitter, where especially the topics of sex education or therapy could be expected to differ in its discourse.

Figure 20: Percentage distribution of dominant accounts’ categories

To summarize all the dominant voices within the main clusters of sex positivity issue space, Figure 20 shows the summed up percentages of the categories assigned to the analyzed accounts. It presents that the dominant voices in the Twitter discussion of sex positivity, mediated by ‘sexpositive’ and ‘sexpositivity’ hashtags, are mostly related to pornographic content and promotion of sex enhancement commodities, most of the times being commercial types of accounts. These conclusions of the dominant voice analysis in Twitter will be further compared with same analysis in Instagram and debated in the discussion section.

4.3 Instagram’s sex positivity issue network analysis

Figure 21: Instagram’s sex positivity issue network graph with main clusters labelled

Figure 22: Centre of Instagram’s sex positivity issue network

The issue mapping of sex positivity in Instagram was applied in the exact same manner as for Twitter, using Gephi to visualize the issue network and following the same analysis logic to demarcate the main clusters representing the sex positivity issue publics. The sex positivity issue space in Instagram was visualised applying the same setting as the Twitter one, from the data scraped from the platform in the same time span. The Instagram co-hashtag network is based on 9236 nodes and 43717 edges, presented by Figure 21 with marked main clusters that are described in this section. In comparison to the Twitter network, it already shows that the discourse of sex positivity is greater in Instagram. Like in Twitter network, the central node is the tag ‘sexpositive’, from which smaller, thematic clusters are formed and the most important ones, based on more frequently used hashtags, are described in this section of the findings. As the issue network is bigger, Figure 22 presents the centre of the graph to give impression of the central part of the graph (in Twitter’s network it was a separate cluster). The main clusters discovered in the Instagram’s sex positivity issue space are: ‘body positivity’, ‘sex education’, ‘health’, ‘queer’, ‘sex & pleasure’, ‘feminism’ and ‘art’. As the main clusters were associated with the most frequently used hashtags in the issue space, Figure 23 presents the top 25 ones.

Figure 23: Table with top 25 most frequently used hashtags in the issue space

4.3.1 Instagram’s ‘body positivity’ cluster

Figure 24: The ‘body positivity’ cluster

The second most frequently used tag in the issue space, after the ‘sexpositive’ is the tag ‘bodypositive’, located very close to the main graph’s node, from which a smaller cluster is formed [Figure 24]. The main tags contained by the cluster are related to body acceptance and fat positivity, being a part of body positive movement, additionally, the cluster is

connected, and ideas of mindful and healthy eating, mentioning also the issue of eating disorders with tags like ‘eatingdisorderrecovery’. The assemblage of tags in this cluster suggests that the discourse of the body positivity public is more focused on the psychological effects and aspects of the body positive approach and also the societal norms that the movement is aiming to challenge. It also connects further to the ‘health cluster’, which is described further in the next section.

4.3.2 Instagram’s ‘sex education’ and ‘health’ clusters

Figure 25: The ‘sex education’ cluster

Figure 26: The ‘sex therapy’ subcluster

Figure 27: The ‘health’ subcluster

Figure 28: The ‘mental health’ subcluster

The 3rd most frequently used hashtag in the sex positivity space is the ‘sexeducation’, to which similarly-themed nodes are connected [Figure 25]. The other common hashtags in this sphere are ‘sexed’, which is just a commonly used shortcut for the same topic, and ‘sextherapy’, around which a more distinct cluster is formed [Figure 26], relating mostly to health aspects connected to sexual practices. The sex education tags relations are not spatially visible, however they are thematically connected, with most of them relating to sex education as a matter of knowledge about anatomy, achieving pleasure or facilitating communication. Both ‘sexeducation’ and ‘sexed’ nodes are connected to big tag of ‘sexualhealth’, ranked at 6th place in the issue space. It constitutes a ‘health’ subcluster [Figure 27], with various tags related to mostly women’s anatomy and health matters. Another subcluster of ‘mental health’, with main tags ‘women’ and ‘mentalhealth’, is also part of the public, dedicated to raising mental health awareness (‘mentalhealthawareness’ tag), containing also motherhood-related tags (‘redefiningmotherhood’) [Figure 28]. This implies that the one of sub-publics of sex positivity is focused specifically on the health aspects, including aspects that are not directly related to matters of sex, moreover, the tags suggest that the public is female-gendered.

4.3.3 Instagram’s ‘sex & pleasure’ cluster

Figure 29: The ‘sex & pleasure’ subcluster

Figure 30: The ‘relationships’ subcluster

Close to the health cluster, a zone dedicated to ‘sex & pleasure’ cluster can be discovered [Figure 29], inside which there are smaller subclusters formed. In the ‘sex & pleasure’ cluster, the main hashtags are: ‘selflove’, ranked as 4th most frequently used tag in the issue space; ‘love’, the 5th one; ‘pleasure’ at 10th place; ‘sex’, ranked as 7th; and ‘masturbation’ at 22nd place, but still being one of the main nodes in the cluster. All the hashtags are interconnected, however there are not many smaller nodes around them, what indicated that a lot of discourse of sex positivity is formed solely by them. The only smaller subcluster of this sphere that can be distinguished are presented in Figure 30 - the ‘relationships’ subcluster, closely connected to nodes ‘sex’ and ‘love’, which depicts well the theme of its tags - most of them are describing emotional aspects of relationships, by hashtags like ‘emotional’ or ‘brokenheart’, but also physical, sexual aspects of them, with tags like ‘orgasm’ or ‘lust’. Another node worth focusing on is the ‘masturbation’ one, which also doesn’t have a distinct cluster formed around itself, however it is connected to various tags in the bottom of the graph, where more masturbation or self-pleasure themes can be observed. Masturbation node connect to another bigger one ‘selfpleasure’, to which a lot of different tags are connected, including ‘womenmasturbate’ or ‘masturbationmay’, representing the initiative of promoting masturbation as healthy sexual practice and improving society’s awareness about it. It is hard to call it a ‘masturbation’ cluster, however a lack of centrality of the thematically connected nodes may be explained by the fact that in Instagram, hashtag ‘masturbation’ is a banned one, meaning that the public that associates with it may be hesitant to employ it in its posts out of caution not to have their content blocked.

4.3.4 Instagram’s ‘feminism’ cluster

Figure 31: The ‘dating’ subcluster

Figure 32: The ‘vibrators’ subcluster

Figure 33: The ‘burlesque’ subcluster

Figure 34: The ‘feminist porn’ subcluster

The masturbation node is linked to the two main nodes representing the feminist publics - ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’, ranked on 14th and 21st place of most frequently used hashtags respectively. From the ‘feminism’ node there are couple of scattered nodes, like ‘intersectional feminism’ which constitute the feminist zone of the graph, additionally, a smaller ‘dating’ subcluster is formed next to it [Figure 31]. The main tag within it is ‘dating’ and overall, it includes hashtags connected to podcasts and dating, with focus on anti-slut shaming, also indicating the black public of the cluster by tags like ‘blackgirlmagic’. The experience of slut-shaming is to be labelled as sexually promiscuous (as a “slut” or a “ho”) and be socially punished for such given identity, although the practice is sexist as is most of the societies men are being appreciated for the same type of sexual behaviours and practices (Tanenbaum). The dating subcluster clearly implies, with tags like ‘whore’, ‘slut’ (which after qualitative analysis of the disocurse are confirfmed as a positively-used ones) and ‘datingadvice’, that the discussion of dating practices while preventing being stigmatized is a part of the wider feminist discourse in the sex positivity issue network. The ‘feminism’ tag is also connected to another relatively big node in the cluster, ‘sextoys’ ranked at 25th place,

which doesn’t form any particular subcluster around itself, however is connected to another thematically connected subcluster, centered around node ‘vibrators’, ranked in 41st place [Figure 32]. The cluster includes tags like ‘adulttoys’, ‘lubricants’, ‘sexstore’, aditionally ‘blackbdsm’ and ‘blacksexuality’, what similarly to dating cluster, implies the the female and black public of the ‘vibrators’ subcluster. The second main node of the greater feminism cluster is ‘feminist’, which has couple of related smaller nodes around itself, like ‘smashthepatriarchy’ and ‘genderequality’, but also ‘sexworkers’, moreover, it connects to some smaller subclusters: ‘burlesqe’ cluster [Figure 33], where tags relate to the sexual dance performances of burlesque artists; or small ‘feminist porn’ cluster [Figure 24], with tags like ‘poyres’, ‘porn’ and ‘ethical’, which stand for Poryes Festival, a first european feminist porn movie festival promoting feminist, ethical pornography and sex-positive feminism to challenge the current norms of erotica and sexism in pornography (Newton). This suggests that feminist public is interested with the idea of sex work or sexual performances being an expression of feminist ideas, additionally bringing the feminist perspective on pornography, what implies that sex workers or sex-work supporters are also a part of the sex positivity publics.

4.3.5 Instagram’s ‘art’ cluster

Figure 35: The ‘art’ subcluster

Figure 36: The ‘vulva art’ subcluster

Another very popular tag of the network, also connected to ‘feminist’ node, is the ‘art’ hashtag, placed at 29th spot of frequent tag list. It doesn’t form a particular subcluster around itself, however it is a bridge to smaller subclusters of anime-related, kink-positive digital art [Figure 35], but also to a greater node ‘vulva’, referring to female genitals, ranked at 75th place. ‘Vulva’ tag connects to a subcluster with tags like ‘vulvaart’ or ‘bodyart’ [Figure 36] , connected also to ‘feministart’ hashtag. It confirms the existence of an art-oriented public of sex positivity, which is tightly connected to the feminist public, or maybe even contained within it. Moreover, the focus on art showing intimate female body images implied the female-gender nature of the public.

4.3.6 Instagram’s ‘queer’ cluster

Figure 37: The ‘queer’ cluster

Figure 38: The ‘clubbing’ subcluster

A distinct cluster in the graph is dedicated to the LGBTQ community, with the tags ‘lgbtq’ and ‘queer’ being the main nodes, ranked at place 12th and 15th respectively. The whole area contains some other dominating nodes, like ‘gay’, ‘bisexual’, ‘lesbian’, ‘transgender’ and others which represent the queer identities, from which smaller subclusters are formed, with example of ‘queer’ subcluster [Figure 37], containing some of the aforementioned tags, and also tags like ‘pansexual’ or ‘qtpoc’, standing for ‘queer and trans people of color’. These hashtags show the diversity of the queer public in the sexpositivity issue space regarding variety of sexual orientations, as the space includes also node ‘asexual’, which stands for people with no or limited sexual desire, what sex positive approach also supports. The LGBTQ space is relatively big and includes various smaller subclusters, like the one dedicated to clubbing culture [Figure 38], which includes various tags connected to dancing culture and implies, similarly to Twitter public, that queer people participation in such public is significant. What is also interesting, this subcluster contains also tags like ‘demisexual’, which stands for orientation where one doesn’t feel sexual attraction unless a strong emotional bond is formed (Lord); or ‘sapiosexual’, a tag connectiong the clubbing cluster with other parts of ‘queer’ one, meaning people who are attracted by a potential sexual partner’s intelligence (Raab). The variety of the sexual orientation tags in thequeer cluster suggests

that the public is active in its sex positivity issue participation, reflecting the complexity of its various identities in the sex positivity discourse.

Summing up, as the Instagram’s sex positivity issue network is very large, the analysis focused on main clusters and zones that are formed by and around most frequently used hashtags. The network analysis outlined some main clusters which represent certain publics of sexpositivity, within which most of the times smaller sub-publics are formed. All publics are closely interconnected, what implies that the sex positive community in Instagram is quite united thematically, additionally from analysis of the biggest clusters it can be assumed that most of the publics is female-gendered, what will be further debated in the discussion section.

4.4 Dominant voice analysis in Instagram

Figure 39: Categories of the dominant accounts in Instagram’s issue space

Following the same logic of analysis, after finding the main clusters in the sex positivity issue space, the main tags associated with these clusters were determined, basing on the previous network analysis, in order to match them with the dominant accounts of the issue space. For Instagram dataset, once the posts were associated with the respective hashtags, the most liked posts were chosen and hence the most popular accounts were found. Similarly to Twitter’s dominant voice analysis, top liked accounts per hashtag were taken into consideration, with number of determined accounts ranging between 3 and 9, due to various spectrums of amount of likes, what was always treated individually per cluster. Those

accounts are referred to as the dominant voices of the studied issue space, and analogically to the Twitter research they were labelled with categories, however due to greater variety in the types of accounts additional categories were added to cover the whole spectrum for the dominant accounts found, presented in Figure 35.

Looking at the categories’ statistics, it can be easily observed that the variety of types of dominant accounts in Instagram's issue space is greater in comparison to Twitter. It can be interpreted that the discourse created by the publics in Instagram is more varied regarding the type of sources that are given the authority to define it, hence the discussion of sex positivity is more heterogenous. Similarly to Twitter’s accounts statistics, one of the dominating types of accounts is the ‘sex shop’ ones, however the same number accounts is cateorized as ‘art’ ones, what provides an seeming dissonance in the dominant voice analysis. On one hand, the ‘sex shop’ accounts indicate a more commercial characer of the discourse, on the other, the art accounts are usually of more activist character, what again confirms the ore varied nature of Instagram’s publics and their way of discussing the sex positivity issue. The other dominating categories that are present among dominant voices only in Instagram’s issue space are the ‘author / blog’ and ‘therapist’ ones, which confirm the diversity among the discourse.

Figure 40: 10 top dominant accounts in Instagram’s issue space

Figure 40 indicates, the top 10 dominant accounts, meaning that their posts reached the greatest number of likes within the issue space, with numbers of likes their top posts gained. These accoutns represent adequately the main categories assigned to them that also dominate the particular issue publics, as the top 5 accounts are categorized as either ‘sex shop’ or ‘art’ category. From the main categories, only the ‘audiovisual’, ranked at 2nd place

[Figure 39], is not represented by any of the top 10 accounts, however it means that the less popular accounts, but more important for particular clustered subpublics, are constituting this category as relevant representation of the issue. Among the top 10 accounts, there are two which don’t appear in the analysis of particular publics as they don’t belong to any of the thematic clusters in the issue network: @realglamazontyomi, a sexologist and a blogger, and @jamienelson6, a professional photographer. The former one most probably doesn’t belong to any publics due to specific hashtags that she uses and that were not popular in the studied issue space, however thematically the user’s content corresponds to some of the publics of sex positivity in Instagram. Regarding @jamienelson6, the user reates himself to the tag ‘sexpositive’, however content-wise it is not very corresponding hence it was not found in any of the particular publics in further analysis. In comparison to Twitter’s overall dominant accounts which were not found in the clusters, the ones of Instagram are more thematically connected to the general discourse fo the sex psotivity public, representing more consistent meaning that the public ascribe to the issue. In the following paragraphs main publics with their dominant voices will be explained in order to complement the definition of sex positivity on Instagram.

4.4.1 The dominant voices of ‘body positive’ cluster

Figure 41: Dominant accounts of ‘body positive’ cluster

The first cluster analysed is the one the tag ‘bodypositive’ being the main one representing it, at the same time being one of the most frequently used ones in the whole issue space. The most liked posts with this hashtag, all of them having minimum 1000 likes, were shared by users mentioned in Figure 41. Three out of four accounts are categorized as ‘audiovisual content’, while the account of @brianhaugen, an actor and model, seems to have very little in common with the sex positivity issue and seemes to be present in the issue space only becasue of the usgae of the tag and the wide reach of the user. The analysis focuses then on the other three accounts, where aside from the same type of account, the users share also an activist spirit of their content, thus the secondary category of these accounts could be also ‘activist’ one. @Fiercefatfemme is a queer body positive and fat positive activist and

influencer; @thehoephase is a podcast account dedicated especially for black feminist community, discussing and criticising issues of slut-shaming and supressing female sexuality; while @mr_letstalkaboutit is also a podcaster and activist, focused on general sex-positive and motivational messages. These dominant accounts demonstrate a unified character of the body positivity’s discourse, where the subpublic of body positivity gives greatest authority to the actors who create the discourse by sharing their podcasts or Youtube content, aditionally focusing on explaining body positivity and sex positivity from an activist point of view.

4.4.2 The dominant voices of ‘sex education’ cluster

Figure 42: Dominant accounts of ‘sex education’ cluster

The next public investigated is the one of sex education, based on tags ‘sexeducation’ and ‘sexed’. The accounts and their categories are presented in Figure 42, where it is visible that many accounts overlap for both of the hashtags, what is explained by their interchangeable character within this subpublic. All of the posts had over 600 likes, with the top account @lovecrave, a sex-positive sex shop, which describes itself as feminist and inclusive for all sexual orientations and needs. The ‘sex education’ cluster introduces new types of categories of the accounts to the analysis, which were not present in Twitter also - ‘therapist’ and ‘art’ categories. With examples of @drlauriemintz, offering sexual counselling and discussing the topic of orgasm gap in her Instagram page, or @unfold_project, an artistic account promoting self-acceptance and body-acceptance through ‘vulva art’, it shows more diverse discourse of this public and how various actors withing it understand the sex positivity as a approach emphasizing need for sex education. Other interesting accounts is for example @thatwokeladki, a queer activist focused on education for preventing sexual

abuse, categorized also with a new label ‘activist’. The presence of ‘art’ and ‘activist’ accounts especially sheds a new light for the ‘sex education’ subpublic, where the discussion of sex positivity is enriched by fully non-commercial voices, emphasizing the activist roots of the issue. Additionally, the presence of art accounts which in non-direct way share the sexually-suggestive content (like ‘vulva art’) for educational purposes, may be present due to Instagram’s content policies, which activists may try to circumvent by art, what will be discussed further in the discussion section. As there are no majorly dominating types of accounts in this cluster, the public can be interpreted as an example of a varied space for discussion of the sex positivity issue, where many different actors contribute to creation of the discourse.

4.4.3 The dominant voices of ‘sex & pleasure’ cluster

Figure 43: Dominant accounts of ‘sex & pleasure’ cluster

The next cluster which contained some of the most frequently used tags in the whole issue space is the ‘sex & pleasure’ one, where tags ‘selflove’, ‘selfcare’, ‘sex’, ‘pleasure’ and ‘masturbation’ were examined, as the cluster constitutes a big part of the sex positivity issue

network. As these tags are some of the most frequently used ones [Figure 23], also the number of accounts, which gained wide reach within the issue space in the form of likes, is greater than in other supublics, presented in Figure 43. The tag ‘selflove’ is the most frequent one from tags in this cluster, associated with various types of accounts, from which the top one is @noussommesfraiches, a french feminist online magazine / blog, categorized as ‘author / blog’. This category is also a new one in comparison to Twitter issue publics, categorizing usually authors of books or blogs talking about sex positivity and related issues. Some of the more interesting accounts of this public are @mahogany.ng, which is a sex-positive educational online platform, blog and shop offering sex toys and other sex-enhancement commodities for women; or @imperfectpress, an online sex-related shop for raising awareness of sexualtinty and mental health. The latter one, although labelled as ‘sex shop’, shares very different content if compared to simmilarly-labelled accounts in Twitter, extending its mission to promote mental health and focsing less of typical sexual content. Aditionally, it is the top account of the sex positivity issue space in Instagram overall [Figure 40], what also emphasizes the importance of the ‘sex & pleasure’ public and the meaning it gives to the sex positivity issue in Instagram. The majority of the accounts in this cluster are self-declaring to be a feminist accounts, and are directed towards female public. The three dominating categories within this cluster are ‘therapist’, ‘audiovisual content’ and ‘sex shop’, which often promote certain businesses or services, however still contribute to the informative, professional, inclusive (based on the number of queer-related accounts) and activist (as such accounts are also present) sex-positive discourse.

4.4.4 The dominant voices of ‘health’ subcluster

Figure 44: Dominant accounts of ‘health’ cluster

Another subcluster that was correlated to the ‘sex & pleasure’ one was ‘health’, with tags ‘mentalhealth’ and ‘sexualhealth’ examined, which were ne ot the top-mentioned in the issue space, hence analysed separately [Figure 44]. The top accounts that are associated with

them were often connected also to other subpublics, with the main account @imperfectpress present again, empahsizing the importace of the connection between sex positivity and mental health. Again the variety of types of accounts is big, with slightly dominating ‘author / blog’ one, what can be understood as a reliable source of creating the discourse regarding health-related topic with respect to sex positivity. There is also a new category introduced here, with the account @thesafeapp, account labelled as ‘business’ as it promotes a mobile app promoting STD/STIs (sexually transmitted diseases & infections) testing and awareness. Although the accounts can be thematically labelled, it is still interesting to see the variety of topics they are focused on within one category, like sex positive parenting end empowerment discussed by @kristinbhodson, or positive ageing as part of sex popsitivite introduced by an activist @oshunsweetnsour.

4.4.5 The dominant voices of ‘queer’ cluster

Figure 45: Dominant accounts of ‘queer’ cluster

The queer public’s dominant voices, represented by the cluster of the same name, were found by follwing the hashtags ‘lgbtq’ and ‘queer’ and are presented in Figure 45. Some of these accounts were already present in other clusters, just as the queer-focus of various accounts is prominent in the sex positivy issue space in Instagram. The main accounts, domiant for both of the tags, are @fiercefatfemme - a queer body positive and fat positive activist and influencer; and @blackqueerlove - podcasters focused on queer relationships in the black community. What again shows the interconnected character of the subpublics. The main dominating categories in this public is the ‘audiovisual content’ and ‘art’, which may imply that the queer community within the sex positivity movement gives the authority to these two types of knowledge sources. As the matters of sexual orientation and race are rather delicate topics, which both are dominating in this public, the use of podcasts or artistic projects is an interesting choice of possibly circumventing the potential controversies that could be posed by discussing the topics more directly in the platform.

4.4.6 The dominant voices of ‘feminism’ cluster

Figure 46: Dominant accounts of ‘feminism’ cluster

In Instagram’s sex positivity isse network, various clusters and accounts are related to the ideology of feminism, however the main ‘feminism’ cluster was detected based on two main hashtags, ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’, which are associated with accounts presented in Figure 46. By summarizing the dominant voices’ categories, it is visible that many of these accounts belong also to the aforementioned publics, like ‘sex & pleasure’, ‘sex education’ or ‘body positivity’. Additionally, the variety of accounts’ types is great, with no distinct category dominating, showing that the feminist public of sex positivity is very inter-connected with other themes and publics and empowered by different types of voices within the issue space, what also brings us back to how widely discussed is the sex positivity within feminism and how it is rooted in feminism itself. It aslo shows how important this subpublic is for defining the sex positivity issue in Instagram. A particularly interesting cases of the dominant voices within the feminist public is the account of @debaydelux, a burlesque performer and a model, self-described as influencer and a feminist, categorised as the only account withing this issue space as ‘sex work’. The label is a controversial topic and even within the burlesque community it is widely debated where on the spectrum between art and sex work they belong (Smith), especially within its presence within the social media platforms, where the presence of sex workers is often unwanted and meets consequences of the strict policies. Another related account is the @swopbehindbars, which stands for ‘sex workers outreach project behind bars’, an NGO which serves as a community network “dedicated to the fundamental human rights of people who face discrimination from the criminal justice system due to the stigma associated with the sex industry” (SWOPBehindBars). It is the only account in the analysis that is categorized as ‘NGO’, additionally as ‘activist’. These two sex

work-related voices suggest the increasing role of sex workers within the sex positivity discourse and emphasize the variety of the feminist understanding of sex postivity by Instagram public, what corresponds well with the findings from network analysis.

4.4.7 The dominant voices of ‘vibrators’ subcluster

Figure 47: Dominant accounts of ‘vibrators’ subcluster

The last cluster examined is the one, which was a part of the greater feminist cluster [Figure 32], however its hashtags are very frequent within the issue space, therefore as thematically united, theyir dominant voices are analysed here as well, with ‘sextoys’ and ‘vibrators’ tags being the main representatives [Figure 47]. The main accounts associated are @mr_letstalkaboutit, connected also to ‘sex & pleasure’ and ‘body positivity’ clusters or @wetplatinumguy, who was present also in the queer public. It is not a surprise that the main category among these accounts is the ‘sex shop’ one, as it is directly related to topic of sextoys and surely they create the discourse regarding it. The more interesting observation is however that by looking at the associations of the dominant accounts, the sex toys public is connected to feminist, sex & pleasure and body positivity publics, which once again confirms the interconnectedness of all the publics within the sex positivity issue space.

Figure 48: Percentage distribution of dominant accounts’ categories in Instagram

In order to summarize, Figure 48 presents the distribution of types of accounts according to their category in the whole Instagram issue space. The dominating voices are the ones connected to ‘sex shop’ categories, as well as ‘art’ categories, what gives an interesting, seeming discrepancy, but at the same time the variety of labels and even greater veriety of topics hidden under them gives a lot of insights, especially if compared to the sama analysis in Twitter, what will be explained further in the discussion sections regarding the relation of the sex positivity publics and how they are constituted in social media platforms.

5. DISCUSSION

The findings chapter was divided into four parts in which per each studied platform, Twitter and Instagram, co-hahstag network analysis and dominant voices analysis within the network were conducted. In this discussion chapter, all parts of the analysis of each platform are combined together, looking for similarities between the patform’s publics, but also spotting the differences, in order to answer the research question How is the issue of sex positivity defined by its publics in social media platforms?, by understanding the patterns of the discovered publics and their dominant voices in the issue network discourse. The main discussion points are grounded in the literature regarding the origins of sex positivity idea, its position within the feminist movement, sex positivity as activism, and finally, discussed with regards to each platform’s specificity and policies, which is the additional set of findings which appeared in the course of conducting this research.

5.1 Gendered publics

As mentioned previously, for the purpose of researching the sex positivity issue, Twitter and Instagram were treated as a separate case studies, representing separate publics of this issue, where perhaps some parts of the publics may overlap. By looking at the findings, there are various clusters which represent part of the issue’s public which are the same or similar thematically for both of the platforms. On the other hand, there are some subpublics which are formed exclusively within one of these platforms. Considering that the platforms examined are different by its nature and may attract different users makes it natural to have these kind of disparities, however what this particular chapter will discuss the findings about a pattern that ws found withing most of the publics in both platforms - gendering of the publics of the sex positivity issue. In some cases the gender public is more suggestive, in others very apparent, and it could be found by analysing both the issue’s network and the dominant voices of the public.

5.1.1 Gendering of ‘body positivity’ public

One of the main gendered-public differences appears in the ‘body positivity’ subpublic, which is present and central to both of the issue publics, what can be explained by the historical origins and connections of the sex positivity and body positivity messages, both grounded in

the feminist theories. The body positive movement originates from the fat liberation movement, also named fat acceptance movement which started in the second-wave and gained recognition in the third-wave of feminism, tackling the issue of discrimination of fat bodies and body politics in general (Cwynar-Horta, 40). The sex positivity and body positivity both aim at fighting for freedom of either sexual or body expressions, what explains why body-positive approach constitutes part of the sex positivity discourse and the fact that is it a prominent public in both platforms confirms the sex positivity to include it in its mainstream discourse. What is interesting to oberve is the male-gendering of the body-positiviy public in Twitter, what is clearly visible both in the network analysis, where the tags are male-oriented, the cluster is connected to the queer and gay-dominated public and additionally, the dominant voices of the cluster are all male accounts. On the other hand, the same public in Instagram is rather neutral and neither hashtags nor the dominant voices suggest any specific dominating gender of the public. By looking at the tags and dominant voices of Twitter’s public, the body positivity is understood as a very direct, sexually explicit content through which the body acceptance is being achieved, while in Instagram it is more connected to the mental aspect of the body acceptance and its health benefits. Although its the same concept that defines the sex positivity in both platforms, it is understood in various ways and gendered male for Twitter.

5.1.2 Gendering of ‘queer’ public

The queer public of sex positivity is present in both platforms, however presents a slightly different discourse in each of them. Twitter’s public is smaller, as indicated previously in the network analysis section of findings, it is linked to the body-positive public by the focus on gay nudity-themed tags, and examining all of the hashtags consisting of it, it can be called a male-gendered public as well. It may be considered a bit contradictory towards the scope of the queer identities, including all types of self-assigned genders that would be expected be be included in this public. In Instagram, the queer cluster presents a greater variety of queer identities, suggesting that there is no gender-defined discourse (what in case of a queer-related discussions should be difficult to binary describe anyway), but it is more prominently discussed within the sex positivity discourse, judging by the queer cluster size. Similarly to the body positive approach, sex positivity as a concept was developed on the verge of feminist and queer theories, where the ‘sex positive’ was advocating for liberation of queer and female sexuality (Ivanski & Kohut, 216). The variety of not only different queer identities, but also topics discussed indicated by hashtags, including art, club culture, or

therapy (especially in Instagram network) and represented by various types of dominant accounts types, indicates that the sex positivity is serving as an umbrella movement for the queer community to advocate for their rights of sexual expression in social and legal aspects. The gendering of the public in Twitter is however worth noting, as it is not the only case of male-gendering within its issue public.

5.1.3 Gendering of ‘sex education’ and ‘sex toys’

Regarding the publics interested in sex education and sex toys as a part of the sex positive approach, they are comparable in both of the platforms. In Twitter network, sex education theme is not very explicitly explained by the associated tags or types of accounts (‘sex shop’ category), where the themes circulate mostly around the topic of masturbation, similarly to ‘sex toys’, where focus of discourse is on one type of products, however the topic is a very prominent within the discourse. On the contrary, Instagram network presents more varied topics of sex education, representing both physical but also mental aspects of the sub-publics, dominated by professional therapists, what emphasizes the importance and reliance of the discourse produced by this public. There is again a certain gender-suggestion of the public, however this time it appears in the Instagram’s issue space. There, the sex-toys-related public is strongly connected to feminist discourse and definitely female-gendered as the main hashatg constituting this cluster in the issue network is the ‘vibrators’ one, accompanied by others talking about female masturbation.

As previous researches on meaning of sex positivity confirmed, the aspect of education is brought up often when discussion the sex positivity issue, with respect to variety of topics, like history of sexulity, positive and negative aspects of sex, anatomy, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, abortion and more, presented in an objective manner (Ivanski & Kohut, 221). It corresponds well with the Instagram-based discourse, showing that the sex positivity is based on approach of open sex education. The difference is, Instagram’s public perceives it as a feminist matter, while Twitter’s one doesn’t, what will be further discussed in the seciton 5.2. Additionally, the ‘sex education’ was tightly connected to the ‘sex and pleasure’ cluster, which exists exclusively in the Instagram’s issue space. In that one, the tags contained within the subclusters like ‘health’ or ‘mental health’ were also indicating the female-gendered public, where health was discussed mostly regarding to female anatomy, and mental health with regards to motherhood. Such gendering of this exclusive issue

subpublic in Instagram complements the aforementioned observations about gendering, seeming that sex positivity issue in Instagram is predominantly a wome’s space.

5.1.4 Gendering of ‘pornography’ public

The most explicitly gendered public however, form both of the issue’s publics, is the central ‘pornography’ cluster in Twitter, which can be found only in the Twitter’s issue network (section 4.1.1). The possible reasons for why such public is present in Twitter and not in Instagram will be discussed in the discussion section 5.4, for now however it is important to realize that this public is very straightforwardly gendered male, indicated by both the network analysis and the dominant voice analysis. The content shared in the dominant accounts, although often tagged with female-related accounts, mostly is the sexualy explicit content of women, dedicated for mostly for male audience. The issue of pornography has been one of the main reasons for the sex positivity movement to emerge, as a part of conflict betweeen radical and liberal feminists as explained in the section 2.1, so its presence in the issue space is not surprising, however the important thing to notice is the way the discourse regarding pornography is created and what kind of role it plays within the public. For Twitter, the ‘pornography’ cluster is located centrally in the issue network, aditionally the pornographic accounts are the dominant type of voice, while in Instagram there is no separate subpublic dedicated for this kind of content, the matters of pornography are discussed only in terms of how pornography can be empowering for women and the feminist movement. In Twitter, this issue subpublic seems to be preoccupied with the mainstream pornographic content and dedicated to male audience mostly, as it is either dominanted by male gay accounts or pornographic acocunts sharing mostly female explicit content, which adds up again to the conclusion that the ‘pornography’ subpublic in Twitter is male-gendered, while in Instagram analogical publics just doesn’t exist.

As a summary of the gendered public’s comparison in Twitter and Instagram, it can be concluded that the sex positivity public in Twitter is in great degree gendered as male public, while the Instagram’s one is more gendered female. This discrepancy doesn’t define the sex positivity directly, but makes an important impact on how certain aspect of the concecpt are being discursively discussed and hence define the issue of sex positivity. Even if the sex positivity has certain publics that define it in the same way thematically, the gender of the public influences how exactly they understand the subconcepts of it, especially visible regarding the corelation between the feminist perspective on sex positivity among these

platforms. As feminism is the ground for the sex positivity issue itself, the next section will discuss it in more details.

5.2 Sex positivity as a feminist issue

As explained in the theoretical framework, the concept of sex positivity originates from the period of ‘sex wars’, when feminists were debating the role of female sexuality in the liberation from patriarchal norms, making feminism a key perspective of how the sex positivity can be percieved. This section explores how much feminism is still present in the issue spaces of both platforms and how it defines the sex positivity, as it is very vocal and inclusive in the Instagram’s issue space, while in Twitter’s it is almost absent. Considering the fact that feminist theory is the ground for the concept of sex positivity, it is important to understand not only what the differences in the discourse are, but also what can be the potential reasons for these discrepancies. In Instagram’s issue network, the feminist cluster is relatively large and comprised of many nodes, additionally, feminist-themed nodes are not only contained within it but appear also in variety of other parts of the graph. Feminism is not directly discussed here as a movement itself, but rather serves a role of an umbrella concept which includes variety of topics discussed from a feminist perspective. The feminist cluster, including subcluster of dating is devoted for discussion of toxic practices like slut-shaming, but also parts about sex work and sex performances like burlesque, female pleasure-centered ethical pornography, or masturbation subclusters that link to greater ‘sex & pleasure’ clusters - they all can be explained by the roots of the sex positive idea. Some of the more interesting feminist topics are explained as following.

5.2.1 Feminism and pornography

One of the more controversial topics, which defines the debate of sex positivity is the issue of pornography. In the period of ‘sex wars’, the radical feminists were advocating for absolute condemnation of pornography, seeing it as the process of how men objectify women, while the sex-positive feminist group were in favor of normalizing it, seeing it as a potential way to maximize sexual pleasure for women as long as it is consensual. In the Instagram’s public, two subclusters were found within the issue network - the ‘feminist porn’ and ‘burlesque’ ones, which explain how the controversial issue of pornography can be understood as a part of feminist sex positive approach. According to one of the leading feminist adult-movie makers Erika Lust, feminist pornography is about putting the female pleasure at the centre of the art, putting female directors behind the camera and also making

sure the artists are being recognized and paid fairly for their work, what opposes to what the mainstream pornography is nowadays. As she explains, pornography isn’t just about sex, “it is political; It’s about masculinity, and femininity and the gender roles we play” (Gilmour), and as it was a feminist political statement in the 60s, feminism and porn are still a debate nowadays. The issue of pornography is one of many other types of sex work that were being debated at that point, as well as currently, with the ‘burlesque’ cluster present. Sex work is often seen as a very performative act, where burlesque fits into this definition, as well as other types of sex work mentioned in the issue network and by many feminist it is seen as a way to reclaim the agency of their bodies and sexuality (Martin). Based on the presence of this topic in the sex positivity issue network, theme of sex work adds to the meaning of what sex positivity is about for its public.

As mentioned in the findings, there were no typical feminist clusters found in the Twitter’s issue space, as no feminism-related hashtags were popular within it. The most dominant account, however, was a feminist blogger one (previousy mentioned in section 4.2), however it was the only one from all of the dominant voices and it didn’t belong to any of the publics. It can be concluded that in Twitter, the feminist aspect of sex positivity is not an important or defining one. This can be correlated to the discussion point from previous section, which concluded that Twitter’s public is mostly gendered male, what apparently has an impact on lack of the feminist discourse within it. Again, the dominating feminist perspective of sex positivity can be compared with the aforementioned pornographic character of the Twitter’s issue space, what is confirmed by both network anlaysis and the dominant voice analysis. The central ‘pornography’ cluster of Twitter is populated with tags like ‘creampie’, ‘naughtygirls’ or ‘hotwife’, which imply a certain type of mainstream pornographic content, where the recipient is expected to be a heterosexual male and the content is expected to be catering to the typical male expectations of pornography. Referring this to the historical debates, the radical feminists would presumably fight against it, claiming that such type of pornography is promotign sexual violence against women and promoting patriarchal setting in sexual relations (Ferguson, 107). Although in both of the issue networks the matters of pornography and sex work are present, in Twitter the accounts related to ‘pornography’ cluster are not expressing it or discussing it as an ideological issue, but rather just sharing explicit nude content and promoting sexual services with no relation to the feminist and empowering idea about it. Similarly, the issue of sex work is also not discussed as a concept of potential feminist liberation, but rather just a service which the public is interested in.

5.2.2 Feminism and pleasure

Based on the connections of clusters in the issue network, it is concluded that masturbation and pleasure are being a feminist sub-issues for the sex positivity discourse in Instagram. It can be explained by the historical struggles of some feminist groups, which tried to challenge the supposed lack of female sexual drive as a patriarchal setting which ignores women's sexual need of pleasure in favor of the male one (Vance, 2). Starting with this approach, some feminist were advocating for recognition of other types of pleasure-giving practices, including masturbation, and recognizing clitoris as a pleasure organ, opposing to the patriarchal ‘phallic’ approach, where only penetrative intercourse is the recognized one, expected to satisfy both men and women (Gerhard, 476). Based on this, the masturbation discourse is a continuation of the feminist ‘women pleasure’ pursuit, which nowadays is discussed as a tool to close the orgasm gap (being the difference between high percentage of men achieving orgasms and low statistics among women) and reclaim agency for women over their sexuality, pleasure and self-acceptance (Horan). This strongly feminist discourse of sexual pleasure as part of sex positivity can be contrasted with Twitter’s ‘masturbation’ cluster in the issue network, where some of the tags were implying a more feminist disocursea and more female-gendered public, however judging by the hashtags frequency and size of the custer, it was not as much significant as in the Instagram’s space.

Summing up, the comparisons between the platforms regardig the feminist sub-issues of sex postivity, like pornography, sex work or female sexual pleasure present in both publics, suggests that their meaning within sex positivity movement is understood very differently in both platforms. As they are both examples of the feminist sub-issues, it shows how much the sex positivity issue evolved, as its understaning regarding its most basic, feminist nature, could be diminished for some parts of its public, in this reserach being the Twitter’s one. Although publics of both platforms share a lot of common themes that define it, this analysis is posing a question: can sex positivity be really ‘positive’ without a feminist perspective to it?

5.3 Sex positivity as activism

Another was of discussing the sex positivity in relation to its origins is the activist perspective, building up on the feminist aspect discussed in previous seciton. Sex positivity is a part of feminist theory and additionally is being conveyed through the use of digital

technologies for empowerment of women, therefore as mentioned in the theoretical framework, it could be referred to as the cyberfeminist issue. It assumes then that the usage of technology is advancing the sex positivity as an activist campaign as a part of feminist pursuit. On one hand, this can be considered true, even by judging the scale of the issue network studied in the span of only one month, together with variety of topics that are included under the “sex positivity umbrella”. On the other hand, however, there exist certain limitations, which will be commented on in detail in the next section, mostly being certain platform’s limitations on the sexually-related content. As sex positivity activism arises, there are also certain differences between the publics of the platforms with regards to how much of activist discourse they mediate.

Looking at the overall statistics of the dominant voices, which give the best insight into the types of accounts, it can be seen that in Twitter the type of discourse is not populated by activist messages almost at all, it is rather focused of promoting different products or services by the theme sex positivity rather than discussing it, as most popular catagories are ‘pornography’ and ‘sex shop’. In Instagram, the discourse is more varied regarding this aspect, including more activist-oriented accounts, having more ‘audiovisual content’ that is positioning sex positivity as a feminist issue, or ‘art’ accounts. The latter ones are a very popular category or dominant voices in Instagram, often representing topics of female sexuality and anatomy in very direct, but still ‘artsy’ way, with an example of popular tag ‘vulvaart’ which stands for drawings, paintings and sculptures of female genitals. This kind of discourse can be understood as a way for feminists advocating for liberation of female bodies and thus circumventing the limitations of showing the female body explicitly, instead portraying it as art. Sex positivity therefore becomes as activist struggle by its message, but also by the mean it tries to keep its discourse in some of the platforms.

The Instagram’s issue space still includes various accounts that are related to business opportunities promotion, like mobile application being one of the dominant accouts, or having ‘sex shops’ category as one of the most prominent ones. The presence of sex shop accounts or accounts which promote them can be slighly confusing, as it means that the commerical initiatives using these platforms for the marketing purposes employ the same concept of sex positivity with hashtags as the activist accounts who create this discourse. It can be considered as a non-organic usage of hashtags, by which the belonging of sex shop acocunts to the isse space can be doubtful at the first sight, however it can also be seen as a way to amplify the message of the sex positivity and related concepts among the

platforms. Although sex shop accounts do promote firstly their products, they also engage with other types of actors in the issue space by using same tagging behavior, which enables them to co-create the discourse and share the content which can be promotional, but educational at the same time. The clusters of ‘sex education’ or ‘vibrators’ in both platforms are an example of how such accounts are promoting certain sex-enhancement devices, but at the same time communicate in their promotional messages the sex positivie message of breaking the tabu connected to topics of masturbation and encourage open discussions about this topic. In this way, the more commercial publics are not separate, but constitute and stimulate the discourse, being the amplifiers of the sex positivity issue within the platforms and enabling it to reach wider publics.

What is more, some interesting activist accounts were found in Instagram’s dominant voices for part of the public, where some of the users were categorized as ‘activist’ or ‘NGO’, meaning that such non-commercial accounts still gained a great reach, comparable to the other commercial users, and confirming the activist character of the public. As the issue of sex positivity was reserached in the two very commerically-oriented platforms, it is not a suprise that such considerations are appearing, as they are companies which create profit based on collective actions, also the social and activist ones (Couldry, 608). This still however enables the social issues like sex positivity to spread in the digital discourse and be defined as a social movement by the publics which decide to use the platform for such purpose.

5.4 Impact of policies on the issue space

The last part of the discussion section is dedicated to observations regarding potential reasons for the differences between the two issue publics studied, especially regarding the gendering of the publics, as well as the dominating discrepancies regarding the ‘pornography’ subpublics or the ‘feminist’ ones. This analysis was not initially intended to be the part of the findings, however it was triggered by the very apparent differences between the issue spaces and thus will be discussed in the following paragraphs, contributing to the better understanding of not only how the sex positivity issue is defined by its publics, but also how the platforms themselves have the influence over the issue’s discourse.

The discrepancy in the sex positivity meaning, where in Twitter it is dominated by the male view on sexuality, in Instagram on feminist approach towards the issue, has to be interpreted

with respect to each of the platform’s specificity regarding the regulations imposed on content related to sex in general. Instagram is well known for its very strict content policies, regulated by the community guidelines, which state that they don’t allow nude content on their platform, including “photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks, it also includes some photos of female nipples” (Community Guidelines). Moreover, in recent months there has been new updated made to the Community Guidelines, according to which Instagram will be able to demote, meaning removing it from hashtag or ‘explore’ pages, sexually suggestive content, even if it doesn’t depict nudity or sex act (Constine). These regulations clearly influence what type of discourse related to sex positivity can be created in the platform, since the content might violate the guidelines directly and be banned as a result, or the voices in the discourse may be hesitant to even share sex-related content in the first place. This creates a certain type of bias as the sex positive approach can’t be expressed fully independently.

Other ‘content violation’ scandals happened as well, with an example of the case of Rupi Kaur, a poet and artist, fully-dressed, but with a blood stain on heer trousers depicted in a photo, which was removed twice from instagram, although didn’t violate any guidelines (Faust, 164). As a public personality, the incident went viral, with Kaur’s statement where she pointed out “Their patriarchy is leaking. Their misogyny is leaking” (Sanghani), referring to Instagram and the underlying assumptions that govern the platform. The photo was intended to serve as an feminist art project challenging the social stigma surrounding the menstruation topic, and although it was still taken under censorship by Instagram, it exemplifies a interesting pattern that was observed also in Instagram’s sex positivity issue network, namely usage of art as a feminist expression to circumvent censorship, mentioned previously as an activis behavior. According to Levin, who studied feminist artists in 1960s, “drive for free expression in art is intimately linked with women’s quest to claim their sexuality, agency and power” (90), what may explain why the sex positive discourse in Instagram, especially the feminist and queer publics, are dominated by artist accounts. As the nudity and body expressions are not allowed even under argument of female empowerment, the feminists found certain tactics to circumvent the censorship while still passing on the message through artistics expression, what on Instagram is often done by covering body parts or ‘becoming a cyborg’ (Olszanowski, Feminist Self-Imaging and Instagram, 89-91), or as observed in the issue space - creating ‘vulva art’ and other types of art pieces aiming to liberate feminist expression in Instagram, since “nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK, too” (Community Guidelines). It shows how the sex positivity

discourse can be affected, especially in Instagram, by the platform’s policies, but at the same time motivated by these challenges to continue the pursuit for freedom of expression. Therefore, the issue of sex positivity is not only discussed by the publics in the platforms, but also re-defined as the platforms pose challenges to the freedom of its discourse.

In Twitter, any type of community guidelines or content policies are much more relaxed, specified in the ‘Twitter rules’ section where adult content is considered to be ”any media that is pornographic and/or may be intended to cause sexual arousal. Twitter allows some forms of graphic violence and/or adult content in Tweets marked as containing sensitive media” (Twitter Rules). It explains the difference of the pornography and nudity-related discourse between both studied platforms, as Twitter allows for direct nudity, sex acts and other explicit content sharing. In this way, defining sex positivity through research on different social media platforms implies different types of public, which may differ not because of different understanding of the issue, but of what particular platform allows them to define about it. In this way the differences between the publics can be explained more thoroughly and take into consideration in the final anlaysis of how the sex positivity is defined by its publics. All things considered, it proves that not only the issue of sex positivity and its social tensions are the reason for considering it a social controversy (like explained in the section 3.2), but also the space where the issue is debated adds up to the controversy itself, confirming the relevance of studying the issue of sex positivity and its impact.

6. CONCLUSION

The issue of sex positivity is not a novelty as it has a long history of being present withing the feminist discourse and has been evolving throughout the time up till today, where it is present among various types of discourses in online and offline sphere. The sex positivity slogan became a popular term to descrtibe different approaches regarding human sexuality and the freedom to express and talk about it freely, however it still lacks a cosistent definiton, which would explain all the nuances and sub-concepts which the issue is covering. This was the reason for this research to be undertaken in the first place, to help define the concept of sex positivity, examine whether its is a unified, cohesive movement or rather a set of various approaches under a common, general conceptual umbrella. The issue of sex positivity is a feminist one by origin and taking into consideration the tensions that are arising around the other feminist issues, especially the ones connected to freedom of women’s body like right to abortion, studying the sex positivity movement as a way to unleash women’s sexual freedom gained even more relevance.

The choice of conducting the research on the web proved to be the right one as the amount of data about the digital discourse of sex postivity enabled to create valuable insights, find commonalities as well as interesting differences between the two platforms studied. By adapting the digital method approach, the process of issue mapping enabled to study the seemingly scattered social movement in the one place that its discourse is present and vocal, and focus on discovering who are the publics of sex positivity that create the disocurse on the social media platforms. By adapting the object of hashtag as a starting point, the analysis of co-hashtag networks and dominant voices within them provided interesting results which unified the digital content into clear conclusion about who are the dominant actors discussing the sex positivity online and hence, how do they understand it and define it. By treating Twitter and Instagram as both suitable spaces to study the issue, but a separate publics who may attract different actors and add various insights, the research question How is the issue of sex positivity defined by its publics in social media platforms? is answered.

The main findings about the defining concepts of sex positivity in the platfroms can be divided into ones which are shared by both Insatgram and Twitter issue spaces, and the ones which differ between their publics. Both of the platforms share partly the activist spirit of

the issue, using the discourse to raise awareness, what is also amplified by some more commercial, however still relevant voices, which popularize the issue and ‘justify the means to meet the end’. The main commonalities which publics of the platforms discuss as the key concepts are the expression of different sexual identities, acceptance of one’s body, sexual preferences, fetishes and pornography, discussed as a matters to accept and openly express. Moreover, the sex psoitvity is understood as a way to educate people about these matters, as well as the sexual and mental health, which result from acceptance of human sexuality, sexual orientation and sexual pleasure, with all the ways it can be achieved. The Instagram’s public is oriented more towards understanding the sex positivity as a feminist struggle of using female sexuality as a women empowerment’s tool, including all the aforementioned sub-issues of pleasure, body, health, sexual preferences and identities. This makes the issue space a more female-gendered, what can be contrasted with the Twitter’s predominantly male-gendered one. In Twitter, the public of sex posivity is more directly connected to the very direct expression of sexual content, making it more pornography related than the Instagram’s one. Combining it with a lack of strong feminist discourse on sex positivity and the male-gendering of the public, it challenges the notion of sex positivity as feminist movement nowadays and poses a question whether the issue is understood in the same way by different genders. It confirms that, although it is the same issue, each platform represents slightly different, heterogenous public which are formed in the platforms around the sex postiive-related hashtags. As discussed previously, these differences are not solely dependent on the publics themselves, but also on the specifics of the platforms regarding sexual content, what made the two platforms an interesting case study and suggests further research.

The research encountered several limitations, among which the most important ones are connected to the platform’s biases regadring the fragile content that sex positivity related discourse is. As mentioned before, the two studied publics yield different results and conclusions, however the digital environment in which the are hosted partly dictates what kind of content they can share and discuss regarding the topic of sexuality. This was considered and discussed while analysing the data, but also caused some parts of data to be unreachable, with an example of blocked dominating accounts in Twitter’s public. Such implications couldn’t be omitted in the research, however it suggests the possibilities for further research to be conducted. As the platform’s policies regarding adult content have apparent impact on the result of the study, it would be a topic worth researching, with respect to Instagram especially, in order to apply the findings to examine the extent of the

impact. Additionally, the findings of gendered publics imply that there is possibly of a platform’s influence on this aspect, or simply a reason in each of the platform’s value propositions and functions that possibly attract different publics. This research didn’t aim to explain such nuances, however it would be recommended to conduct as platform study which could examine whether the platforms have any influence on gendering of the various issue spaces, especially the ones related to gender topics.

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APPENDIX

The following points present the necessary information to recreate the datasets used for this research.

- Time span: 7.04.2019 - 7.05.2018 - Queried hashtags: ‘sexpositive’, ‘sexpositivity’ - Link to Instagram tool: https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolInstagramScraper - Link to Twitter tool: https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDmiTcat

Additionally, under following link to Google Drive a folder containing Gephi files can be found: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Q4wGJ2E_bclDynx_KUQFUxOSjcr3egcS?usp=shari ng

Mapping the Issue of ​Sex Positivity​On Twitter and Instagram

Mapping the Issue of Sex PositivityOn Twitter and Instagram