Digital Media and Sexuality

SEX......here we go, clear the throat and get ready to think on your feet teachers, this is the mothership of health classes where anything can happen. But does it have to be this way? Lets discuss. 

SEXTING.... adults often work in a reactive manner toward negative incidents, scrambling to put out the fire of the situation. Adults will then stake claims that sexting is a serious crime and be avoided by all young people. Reflecting back to voice and participation, students may take the adults claims and rebel against strict opinions. Young people are aware, Albury suggests rather than focusing on the positive and negative we invite openness to our discussions with young people in an attempt to reduce the fear and shame that opposition can create. Schools do need a reactive plan in place for serious incidents.

Image; Selfie from my backyard completing
essay's with a coffee.
BODY Image... Due to the over sexualisation of today's media young people both male and female are told what is beautiful. Educators have an opportunity to raise broader issues of consent and respectful relationships, and think with young people about how they represent, and are represented as, ‘sexual’ via social media practices (Albury et al 2013). Looking back at the health messages we send our students is important. Kath Albury used encoding and decoding strategies to analyse what is portrayed in an image and the different perspectives.

SELFIE....throughout a workshop Kath asked us to create a selfie, 'felfie' or 'shelfie' of something other than our face that people could recognise us by. The ask the question of why it is something you feel recognised by? 



Image result for the circuit of culture
Image; Circuit of culture.
Then we were asked to take a selfie of ourselves showing our face, this was in response to analysing a tinder example. Three images of the same woman sending completely different messages. The 1st being overly sexual, 2nd being cute but sexually playful and the third portraying more of a 'wifeable' image. Using this example with current students is a fantastic way of informing young people about the messages we are putting out there through image. The 'Circuit of culture' by du Gay is an excellent resource for interpreting uses of media.




Potential challenges faced by teachers.

Differentiating different forms of media is important for educators:
  • Mass media
  • commercial media
  • User generated media
Understanding that that young people who are sexually active/ curious are also likely to engage with mediated forms of sexuality and sociality (see Guy, Patton, and Kaldor 2012). 

NOT- watches porn= becomes pornstar.


Sexual violence and harassment in schools and at home: participatory research has looked at the effect of 'photovoice'. Photovoice aims to create photographs that represent problems in their communities in order to discuss these issues and collectively develop solutions (Wang and Burris 1997). 

The last issue I see for educators, is not demonising media, smart phones and internet at school, embrace safe use and respectful use. We have been gifted the ability to access information and we can't deny our students that. Due to the recent information about young people seeking sexuality information from different media outlets rather than their parents or teacher we need to stress the use of reputable sources, and where to find them.


Reference list.

Albury, K. (2013). Young people, media and sexual learning: Rethinking representation. Sex Education, 13 (1), S32–S44. 

Albury, K,. Hasinoff, A & Senft, T. (2016).  From media abstinence to media production: Sexting, young people and education. The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education. 528- 542.
du Gay et al. (1997). Doing Cultural Studies: The story of the Son Walkman. Milton Keynes: Open University; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Guy, Rebecca, George Patton, and John Kaldor. 2012. “Internet Pornography and Adolescent Health.” Medical Journal of Australia 196 (9): 546–547.

Individuals wishing to contribute to their ongoing pedagogy initiative are welcome to visit their site at www.selfieresearchers.com. 

 Wang, C., & Burris, M. A. (1997). Photovoice: Concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs assessment. Health Education & Behaviour, 24 (3), 369–387. 

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