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    Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Feminist Media Studies on 26/04/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14680777.2017.1316754

    Accepted author manuscript, 365 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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(Un)ethical practices: intimacy and Internet in the media coverage of the Ashley Madison hack

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

E-pub ahead of print
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>26/04/2017
<mark>Journal</mark>Feminist Media Studies
Number of pages16
Publication StatusE-pub ahead of print
Early online date26/04/17
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

In the summer of 2015, the “cheating website” known as Ashley Madison came under scrutiny, as a group calling itself the Impact Team revealed users’ private information. This case study explores the controversy’s Canadian media coverage and sheds light on the main discourses about intimacy and the Internet that were made visible during this event. It interrogates how cheaters, hackers, and the company were represented. To varying degrees, the mainstream press condemns the cheaters, the hackers, and the company for their behaviour. The article also addresses the ways intimate practices are politicized and commercialized in the digital context, including a discussion of the emphasis on “privacy.” To conclude the article, I discuss the transparency and privacy issues implicated in digital intimacies and the power–knowledge (im)balance implied by hackers’ online anonymity.

Bibliographic note

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Feminist Media Studies on 26/04/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14680777.2017.1316754