ABSTRACT
While normalised and taken-for-granted among young people, the risks surrounding privacy in youth sexting culture – in terms of unauthorised distribution of images and the subsequent social shaming and reputational damage affecting ‘exposed’ sexters – are socially contingent. While technology may come with particular affordances that facilitate privacy violations, the nature and impact of these practices are structured in terms of social meanings and cultural norms surrounding gender and sexual and bodily expression, as well as local peer status hierarchies and ‘popularity’ dynamics. Privacy violations are, essentially, social actions chosen and taken in line with systems of reward and value available in young people’s sexual and relational peer cultures. Young people thus collectively give meaning to sexting and produce the normative sociocultural context that shapes unauthorised distribution practices. Understanding and addressing the risk of unauthorised distribution in youth sexting culture therefore necessitates critical deconstruction of young people’s processes of meaning-making and learning both regarding sexting specifically and their sexual and relational cultures more broadly.
