Online Communities for Sex Buyers: A Cross-National Critical Discourse Analysis

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Abstract

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Among the issues explored in my PhD thesis, I seek to explore how sex buyers represent themselves in online communities for men who pay for sex, how they represent the women they pay for and whether there are commonalities or differences across national boundaries. Through the use of Critical Discourse Analysis, as a methodological framework, this qualitative research project will provide additional insight into online communities for sex buyers by analysing potential commonalities and divergence among cross-national online communities for sex buyers and to discuss the consumer discourse of these communities within the framework of the current prostitution debate.

I will collect the data from four online communities for sex buyers. The first two sites are in English and the last two are in Spanish. I seek to examine the consumer discourse within online communities for sex buyers and to investigate what these findings could represent in the larger framework of prostitution debates.

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Research Questions

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In my PhD thesis, I aim to provide additional insight into online communities for sex buyers by analysing potential commonalities and divergence among cross-national online communities for sex buyers and to discuss the consumer discourse of these communities within the framework of the current prostitution debate.

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The research questions of this dissertation are:

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RQ1. How do sex buyers represent themselves in online communities for men who pay for sex?

RQ2. How do sex buyers represent the women they pay for sex?

RQ3. How do sex buyers engage consumerist discourses when paying for sex?

RQ4. Is there sufficient data to suggest that online communities for sex buyers share distinct key features?