ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which online child sexual exploitation and related legal reform have been framed in the news media. After two decades of celebratory accounts of technological progress, a “techlash” is underway as the mass media provides expanded coverage of the failings and hypocrisies of the technology industry. Online child sexual exploitation has emerged as one of the most serious examples of online harm, albeit one that has been overlooked by industry and media alike. The chapter explores news coverage of two key online child protection reforms in the United States: SESTA-FOSTA and the EARN IT Act. The chapter considers the colliding rights claims evident in news coverage, in which the sexual and gendered harms of OCSE are occluded by alternative claims of gendered and sexual harms for sex workers and LGBTIQ+ people. The chapter illuminates the libertarian underpinnings of this argument, its implied support for an unregulated private sector and the positioning of child safety at odds with the safety of sexual and gender minorities.
