Media, Sexuality and Identity: Thoughts on the Role Text, Audience and Production Play in Cultural Discourse

Abstract

The intersection of media, sexuality and identity produces a rich academic debate, spanning policy, politics, effects, and sexual representation. As a result, scholars employ numerous theoretical and methodological perspectives when asking questions about how media may inform sexuality and identity. Arthurs (2004) observes that media are primary public forums for the regulation of sexuality across fictional and factual genres, and address concerns such as sexual morality in public and private spheres (e.g., Brown 2002; Jaker et al. 1992), changing patterns of family life (e.g., Coontz 1992; Kundanis 2003), and the limits of sexual representation in a deregulated media market (e.g., Becker 2004; Gross 1994; Kim et al. 2007). While scholars in many academic disciplines agree this topic is important, fragmentation and disciplinary narrowing of the study of sexuality and media has often prohibited engaging in academic dialogue about the importance of studying mediated sexualities as meaningful components of individual and collective identity formation. The purpose of this special issue of Sexuality & Culture is for scholars to engage the topic of media and sexuality, with particular focus on the role media play in identity discourses of sex and sexuality. In his seminal work on encoding and decoding, Hall (1980) explains how linear models of media are flawed by the assumption that mediated messages end at passive audience reception. Instead, he argues that mediated ‘‘discourse must then be translated—transformed again—into social practice if the circuit is to be both completed and effective. If no ‘meaning’ is taken, there can be no ‘consumption’ ... the event must become a ‘story’ before it can become a communicative event’’ (pp. 166–167, emphasis original). Hall’s emphasis on communication turned critical scholarship toward interrogating media as a process of text, audience and production. In essence, media is created through a