Industry & Economics

Open Access: No.

Abstract

In turning to the user-generated pornography market and its mainstreaming sexual violence against women, this paper looks to uncover why women are increasingly participating as self-producing content creators. Specifically, we ask how the institutional logics perspective can help uncover more disguised market dynamics encouraging and coercing women to (re)produce their own abuse through self-produced pornographic content creation. With an institutional logics analysis of archival data from five user-generated pornography websites, our findings uncover how social logics act to disguise market logics. We show that a logic of activism is mobilised through two prominent feminist, social justice imperatives of: (i) the representation of diversity and (ii) appeals to environmentalism, which function together to construct a compliant and duty-bound imperative for women’s content creation. In doing so, this paper introduces a concept of moral market compliance: a dark market dynamic that functions to fem wash and (re)produce market violence against women.

Relevance

“From our analysis of five websites in the user-generated pornography market, we found a dominant logic of activism. We set out the following finding section by tracing the way a logic of activism functions to disguise the user-generated pornography market’s abuse of women. We show that a logic of activism is mobilised through two prominent feminist, social justice imperatives of: (i) the representation of diversity and (ii) appeals to environmentalism.”

In closing, this paper has conceived a dark market dynamic in the fem washing of market violence against women: a dynamic we conceived as moral market compliance. Through this developing conceptualisation, this paper has been significant in showing how the appropriation of logics can do more than (re)produce market inequalities and harm, logics can be weaponised to disguise market compliance as resistance, as well as creating a moral (i.e. social and civic) duty for women to (re)produce their own subordination and violation through content creation. To address the original conundrum of how a market steeped in sexual violence against women sells itself to women to encourage their participation, this paper reveals how a logic of activism disguises the market’s requirement for woman abuse, while mechanising pornographic content creation as a feminist and feminised imperative for women.”

Citation

McVey, L., Gurrieri, L., & Tyler, M. (2024). Moral market compliance: How a logic of activism is used to ‘fem wash’ market violence against women in the user-generated pornography market. Marketing Theory, 25(3), 471-496. https://doi.org/10.1177/14705931241279268