'Communal pornography': Stealing and sharing women you may know

Abstract

Festering on Internet message boards, “communal pornography” is a phenomenon whereby members of an online community share and view images of women, typically without their knowledge and consent. Though celebrity nude hacks appear to be well known, girls and women worldwide are subject to this form of abuse daily. Victims depicted in this stolen content can be clothed or nude and known and unknown to users. Unlike its distant relative ‘revenge pornography’, ‘communal pornography’ does not necessarily transpire out of past relationships and unrequited love. Images are transmitted for an array of reasons and, although available on the surface web, go relatively unnoticed. Therefore, this work aimed to create a more inclusive term and advance work in the field on online communities by providing an understanding as to who users participating in this act really were. Using a qualitative approach, live thread comments were unobtrusively collected from /b/, a subforum of 4chan. Analysis was then conducted through techniques associated with grounded theory and hermeneutics, allowing a sense of meaning to emerge. From this investigation, I make three key contributions. First, it was found that users have become dissatisfied and disillusioned with adult entertainment streaming sites and their accessibility. ‘Communal pornography’ provided something that traditional hubs were missing; an interactive experience where men could deem a woman’s worthiness, degrade her, and effectively take ownership of her without her knowledge. Second, the ‘communal pornography’ world allowed participants to indulge in ‘flexible deviancy’ where they could share stolen images and craft violent pornographic narratives whilst being free from offline constraints and condemnation. Third, unlike the common portrayal of sophisticated hacker or ‘neckbeard’, ‘communal pornography’ members could be almost anyone. Findings highlighted a variety of individuals who were together as a community but expressed differences in their level of skill and offline occupations. Overall, this thesis provides insight into who participates in ‘communal pornography’, what norms, values, and rationalisations inform this practice, and what the functions are for those who engage in it. It is recommended that similar qualitative studies continue to be conducted in order to lift the veil on individuals who commit abhorrent acts on the Internet.