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
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - (Un)ethical practices
T2 - intimacy and Internet in the media coverage of the Ashley Madison hack
AU - Gauthier, Maude
N1 - 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
PY - 2017/4/26
Y1 - 2017/4/26
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Ashley Madison
KW - digital intimacy
KW - privacy
KW - news media
KW - hacking
U2 - 10.1080/14680777.2017.1316754
DO - 10.1080/14680777.2017.1316754
M3 - Journal article
JO - Feminist Media Studies
JF - Feminist Media Studies
SN - 1468-0777
ER -