Social Media Use Among Women Who Create Adult Online Content: Community Building and Social Media Affordances

This research investigates how women-identified adult content creators use social media platforms to form peer communities. Adult content creators are people who use the Internet to sell erotic materials (photos, videos, or text) that involve their images or performances. Adult content creators, including sex workers, have long used the Internet to connect with peers and extend mutual support. Although some research suggests that online communities are crucial for their well-being, hardly any studies have explored them. This project applies the theory of affordances. Affordances are action opportunities resulting from the relationship between a technology and its user. I pursue a social-justice-oriented approach to affordances, informed by a critical feminist lens. This approach acknowledges the political power that infuses social media platforms, which shape what these platforms afford, to whom, and under what conditions. I pose three research questions: (1) What community practices exist in adult content creator social media communities? (2) How do social media platforms afford adult content creator communities’ organization? (3) Under what affordance conditions do adult content creators use social media for community building? I conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 15 women-identified adult content creators from Canada, the U.S., and Germany, and analyzed social media content from adult content creator communities. The data was analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. There were four community practices (RQ1): skills and advice sharing, forging mutually beneficial business partnerships, keeping each other safe, and “water cooler talk” (covering various topics like emotional support, political advocacy, and humour). The creator communities’ organizational characteristics (RQ2) were that members were carefully selected based on trustworthiness and expected contributions, that different sets of people were integrated (including business contacts, physical-world contacts, and customers), and that various social media platforms were used for different affordances they offered. I identified two affordance conditions (RQ3), which I call “content reduction and removal” (content reduction means reduced visibility through content moderation systems) and “safety and privacy at risk.” This research’s significance lies in its contributions to research about adult content creators, online communities, and the critical questioning of the policies governing sexual speech on social media.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph D

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Media Studies

Grantor dc:publisher

The University of Western Ontario

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Nau, Charlotte

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Quan-Haase, Anabel

• Adult content creators
• Social media
• Online communities
• Social media affordances
• Feminism
• Content moderation.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14721/38987

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uwo.scholaris.ca:20.500.14721/38987