Sex and the Internet

Reflection

Outline of project

For my second assignment, I chose the week 7 question, ‘In what ways are romantic and/or sexual relationships constructed within the virtual world?’. I wanted to investigate the positive and negative ways that society is affected when people consume entertainment or information regarding sex on the internet. I wanted to highlight the ways that mainstream porn can depict negative and/or unrealistic representations of sex, femininity, and female pleasure. To contrast with this issue, I wanted to highlight the ways that online communities can offer useful information on sexual issues. Also, they help to connect and validate individuals who do not fit into the heteronormative sexual mode.

Strategies regarding scholarly sources

Firstly, I re-read the week 7 study notes to refresh my knowledge of the topic and to begin to narrow down what I wanted to talk about and focus on. I decided on the research question; ‘What are the positive and negative aspects of people viewing sexual related material on the internet?’, When beginning a research assignment, I find it useful to start with a textbook that covers the topic broadly. I then use academic journals to find specific examples and research. Lastly, opinion pieces from reputable news journal sites can be useful if they contain analytic responses to questions related to the topic or cite related studies, population surveys, or research. On reflection, I think that I made my research question too broad. If I did the assignment again I would select a research question such as; ‘How is female sexuality represented on the internet?’. I was mildly unsatisfied on the completion of my script, as I felt I only touched on the topic, with limited in-depth discussion.

Use of creative commons, my own content and reflection on video production

Creating a scholarly video on the topic of internet porn was a challenge in terms of coming up with ideas for appropriate content for a university assignment. I underestimated the time it would take to research and plan my video’s content, so my options became limited.

I decided to use creative commons material from Vimeo for the majority (basically all) of the video in order to illustrate my discussion. I am a film student and have edited a few videos before. In those cases they had been a narrative piece and I had had the story planned out, own content filmed and had a good idea of how I wanted the end product to look well before the editing process began.

For this video essay, I became rushed and a bit lost as to how I could present my assignment more creatively. I should have approached this assignment the way that I do with those in film units. Firstly, getting an image in my head of how I would like the finished product to look and work my way back from there. Instead, I focused on writing the script and assumed I would find creative ways of illustrating my points after the fact.

The genre of video essay interests me and is something I would like to pursue further. I think that a mistake I made was not doing enough research into the way ‘successful ‘video essays are made. I am a big fan of the YouTube channels, Feminist Frequency and Every Frame a Painting. I am kicking myself now that I did not study the techniques they use to effectively illustrate their points.

SCHOLARLY SOURCES

Cooper, A & Griffin-Shelley, E 2002, ‘The internet: the next sexual revolution’, in Cooper, A (ed.), Sex and the internet: a guidebook for clinicians, Taylor and Francis, retrieved 4 February 2018, ProQuest Ebook Central.

Doring, NM 2009, ‘The internet’s impact on sexuality: a critical review of 15 years of research’, Computers in Human Behaviour, vol.25, no.5, pp.1089-1101, retrieved 7 February 2018, ScienceDirect.

O’Dwyer, E 2014, ‘Celebrity nudes, online porn – we need to watch ourselves’, The Conversation, December 12, retrieved 6 February 2018, https://theconversation.com/celebrity-nudes-online-porn-we-need-to-watch-ourselves-35153

Seto, MC 2013, Internet sex offenders, American Psychological Association, retrieved 4 February 2018, PsychBooks.

Tsatsou, P 2011, ‘Gender and sexuality in the internet era’, in Ross, K (ed.), The handbook of gender, sex, and media, Wiley-Blackwell, pp.516-532, retrieved 4 February 2018, Wiley Online Books.

VIDEOS

Porn Chic (https://vimeo.com/101160631) by Natasha Smith (CC BY 3.0)

Sexy Fingers (https://vimeo.com/49383403) by Lord of Barbes (CC BY 3.0)

The Sex is in the Heel (https://vimeo.com/47961416) by Brian Atwood (CC BY 3.0)

Sexy Lingerie (https://vimeo.com/192458691) by Yesid426 (CC BY 3.0)

Sexy Pillow Fight (https://vimeo.com/80921467) by Seba Krapp (CC BY 3.0)

Gay Sex (https://vimeo.com/18707532) by Jong & Out (CC BY 3.0)

Sex is unavoidable (https://vimeo.com/54684083) by Veronica Gonzalez (CC BY 3.0)

Sex Life (https://vimeo.com/159287192) by Big Bang Productions (CC BY 3.0)

The Azerbaijan A/V Club – “Sex, Power and Death in a small Hungarian Town” (https://vimeo.com/55875056) by VJ Fuzzy Bastard (CC BY 3.0)

Mo’Better Blues (https://vimeo.com/43369245) by Luke James (CC BY 3.0)