This book examines the visual-sexual turn in social media discourses in the field of online activism with a particular focus on the extraordinary protest years of 2018–2020.Presenting a socially engaged theory of "tit-for-tat media" and including case-studies on activist movements such as the Euro-American alt-right, the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, and revolutionary artists in China, this study reveals how visual cultures, including gendered or sexualized imagery, are util...

Netporn delves into the aesthetics and politics of sexuality in the era of do-it-yourself (DIY) Internet pornography. Katrien Jacobs, drawing on digital media theory and interviews with Web porn producers and consumers, offers an unprecedented critical analysis of Web culture as digital artistry and of the corresponding heightened government surveillance and censorship of the Internet. Netporn features Web users who question the goals of global commercial porn industries-...

Pornography’s impact on transnational models of media aesthetics and governance has been well documented from a Euro-American perspective. This book contributes to the field of pornography studies by rethinking the cultural impact of pornography as audio-visual and online media from an East Asian perspective. It focuses on pornographies made and consumed in and across Japan, Korea, China, and Hong Kong. The chapters examine under-reported East Asian cultures of pornography, not only to unc...

The boys love (BL) genre was created for girls and women by young female manga (comic) artists in early 1970s Japan to challenge oppressive gender and sexual norms. Over the years, BL has seen almost irrepressible growth in popularity and since the 2000s has become a global media phenomenon, weaving its way into anime, prose fiction, live-action dramas, video games, audio dramas, and fan works. BL’s male–male romantic and sexual relationships have found a particularly receptive home in oth...