“Competing narratives and strategies: understanding the discursive economy around sexcamming platforms”

The presented paper aims at proposing some avenues for the analysis of metadiscourses surrounding sexcaming digital platforms. These latter provide – and build – ways of mediating live performances – frequently including a sexual component as well as forms of commodification. Our main hypothesis is that these discourses manufacture products and markets for consumers – as well as for all the actors concerned within the industrial sector. How do these metadiscourses fit into the broader set of the mediatization of sexuality? What place do they draw for the sex media industries within the cultural and communication industries as a whole? 

To begin to analyze the construction of this industrial sector, of its markets and the enunciative strategies surrounding it, we have relied on three empirical dimensions. First, an analysis of discourse and content from a newspapers and news websites corpus (Canadian, English and French-speaking, 2000-2017). This first corpus is echoed in some of the discourses brought by workers, which we have observed on two specialized digital forums, verifying also several results seen in the scientific literature. Finally, we will present the results of a first participant observation and interviews conducted during a professional trade show.