Leaked Sex and Damaged Goods: News Media Framing of Illicit and Stolen Celebrity Images

Abstract

New media technologies are changing the ways that we not only go about our day-to-day lives, but also the ways that we sell and exchange our labor within the capitalist economy. These technologies are shaping how we represent and perceive ourselves and others, as well as the ways in which, as we move about the world, our images are taken and circulated with neither our explicit permission, nor sometimes our knowledge (Dovey, 2000; Toffoletti, 2007). Despite the fact that we can no longer viably opt out of visual or technological culture, there remains a strong rhetoric of personal responsibility when such images are used in ways that are unexpected and sometimes extremely damaging (C. Hall, 2015). The growth in incidences of what Clare McGlynn (2017) calls “image-based sexual violence” cannot be divorced from the economic and cultural shifts that are both challenging and reifying dominant power relations in the early 21st century. This doctoral thesis examines the economic and social discourses underpinning news reporting on sexual privacy violations in relation to new media technologies and shifting forms of female celebrity. Using empirical methods to collect and sort U.S. and Canadian news articles at a macro level as well as discourse analysis of news reporting at the micro level, I focus on two particular sites wherein new media celebrity, sexual violence/violation, and political economies converge: the celebrity sex tape scandal and the stolen celebrity nude photo. I examine sexuality and privacy violation in an exemplary economic context, looking at how the “leaked” sex tape or image functions in the gendered sexual economy to undermine claims to meritocratic capitalist success. I focus on two moments of crisis: firstly, the pop culture crisis of 2007-2008, coinciding with the global economic recession as well as the growth in new media technology and social media usage, wherein several high-profile female celebrities undergo dramatic and very public “breakdowns” in proper femininity, ranging from the fairly banal “scandal” surrounding a then-15-year-old Miley Cyrus posing semi-nude for Vanity Fair to the more severe and illegal acts of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton (both of whom were arrested for driving under the influence across this time period). Secondly, I examine the moment of crisis signaled by the 2014 iCloud hacking incident wherein hundreds of female celebrities’ personal private nude photos were stolen and circulated online. I analyze the sex “scandals” that are both discursively constructed by, and circulating through, the news at these moments. The findings point to several notable trends in the contemporary political climate. Firstly, they illuminate the tensions and contradictions in the media’s attempt to reconcile post-feminist sexual “empowerment” narratives with the broader imperatives of neoliberalism, surveillance, and self-commodification. Secondly, this thesis provides a timely analysis of the gendered pathways to success and the gatekeeping that is conducted both within and by the (news) media, which are themselves invested in narratives of meritocracy. Finally, the cynical, meta-commentary circulating in the news reporting on celebrity content – reporting that is increasingly beholden to corporate interests – contributes to the broader erosion of trust in mainstream media. In today’s media environment in particular, studies of heirs-turned-reality stars such as Paris Hilton (whose trajectory is eerily similar to that of U.S. President Donald Trump), are particularly urgent, as are studies that connect the seemingly disparate yet increasingly converging fields of celebrity, journalism, feminism (and sexual violence), and neoliberalism.