New Hope or Old Power: Democracy, Pornography and the Internet

Abstract

New communication technologies in general and the Internet in particular have led some scholars to speculate that we are ushering in a new era of pluralistic and democratic communication. This article takes a critical look at this optimistic view. Using textual analysis and a feminist theoretical framework, the authors examine pornography sites on the World Wide Web to illustrate how the Internet seems to be reifying existing power structures (i.e., male dominance and the exploitation of women). The authors determined that these sites reinforce traditional constructions of men's power over women, and this may cause us to pause as we consider how new communication technology will be used in the future.