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Description
The following research outlines various digital manifestations of systemic marginalization and intersectional oppression that have integrally re-defined emerging virtual landscapes during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically focusing on the embodied experiences of adult content creators immersed within a popular revenue-sharing social media platform—OnlyFans. This digital ethnography used online-survey methods, remote ethnographic interview strategies, and a collaborative-action approach to better understand how intersectional dehumanization and structural violence are hegemonically reproduced in 'normative' Western society and imposed upon virtual realities via interconnected mechanisms serving to reify oppressive neocolonial constructs and inequitable neoliberal hierarchization. This thesis argues that the documented instances of specific forms of structural violence experienced by individual OnlyFans Content Creators (unpaid/unprotected virtual laborers) outlined in Chapters 3–5 are not isolated instances or ‘glitches’ in the larger cyber-social network. Rather, discussions of resulting ethnographic research findings will demonstrate that the most commonly reported OFCC issues, hardships, and barriers to success are merely digitally modernized manifestations of traditional hegemonic neocolonial/neoliberal systems of intersectional oppression and hierarchical dehumanization. Furthermore, the knowledge gained as a result of the research conducted during the OnlyFans Content Creator (OFCC) Collaborative-Action Ethnography was adopted as an applied grassroots community project aiming to inspire transformative social progress and enact genuine change on the adult media platform to benefit creators.
