My research is concerned with the digitally mediated practice of creating, sending and receiving private sexual images – an activity that is also known as ‘sexting’. More specifically, I examine (1) how notions of intimacy are expressed in and through adults’ sexting practices, and (2) how sexting creates novel opportunities for the establishment of emotional closeness, as well as a heightened level of social and technological risk, like the risk of being hacked by unknown others or the risk of the non-consensual distribution of one’s private sexual images. In conducting this research, I am particularly interested in exploring how the use of new media and digital technology to perform intimacy informs the ways in which adults understand and experience this concept.
