SAANZ Conference 2024

Chair: Anna Friedlander

Talisa Pelser
Power, Representation, and Attitudes in TikTok's Online Sex Work Discourse Post-COVID-19.

This research is centred around contemporary attitudes and perceptions of online sex work on TikTok post COVID-19. The arrival of COVID-19 in 2020 propagated communications and socialisations to become primarily digital, inducing a global sense of social and physical isolation. This shift to the virtual spaces gave rise to the short-form social media app; TikTok, a platform that has revolutionised content creation, consumerist culture, digital engagement, and cultural narratives. Concurrently, COVID-19 enabled a pivotal moment in the adult entertainment industry, increasing global pornographic consumption and catalysing online sex work into mainstream markets and media. The emergence of online sex work follows a period of feminist sex work literature that houses prolific debates surrounding its presence, usage, and
consumption, often entangling dynamics of power, agency, and commodification in its discourse. Sex work remains a topic that is embedded in heavily contested ideologies surrounding its moral and ethical implications, concerns of exploitation, and its validity as job under patriarchal capitalism. The perceptions and consumptions of such work and its content is often polarised, ranging in feminist and non-feminist critiques alike. The purpose of this research is to analyse
what narratives exist surrounding online sex work on TikTok; a platform that continues to have a profound and extensive impact on global cultures and disseminations of new, recurring, distinct, and evolving ideologies. My research uses a typology and feminist critical discourse analysis to profile what narratives exist and deconstruct how present narratives are created and sustained through language and broader discourses. Utilising this digital ethnography and critical
examination, my research profiles contemporary narratives within digital spaces and through global perspectives, highlighting narratives that both parallel and diverge from key feminist sex work ideologies. Through this analysis I address key questions of (a) what dominant narratives circulate around online sex work on TikTok, (b) how prevailing narratives operate through regulations within TikTok, and (c) how narratives are sustained and reproduced through
discourse


Lorraine Smith, Sophie Lewis, Karen Willis, Marika Franklin, Maja Moensted
Title: People’s Experiences Of Chronic Illness And Loneliness: How Well Does Australian Healthcare Policy And Systems Deliver Good Care And Support?

Healthcare policy and practice positions chronic disease as requiring personal control and individual self-management. This positioning is problematic for people who are lonely and living with chronic illness. Loneliness isolates people from services, peers, and community. Active participation in social life is hampered by ill-health, problems with mobility, access to services, geographic location, and reduced emotional and psychological resources. Policy statements regarding chronic condition self-management acknowledge the influence of social determinants, but the emphasis remains on personal choice and ignores the multi-layered social problem that is loneliness. In this presentation we examine the complex and sometimes confusing Australian healthcare system, and the government policies and strategic frameworks that over the last 20 years have shaped chronic disease healthcare services offered to Australians. We explore the extent to which these services provide meaningful support to those living with chronic illness and loneliness, providing examples from our research examining the social consequences and people’s capacities for living well with chronic illness. Our learnings presents us with an opportunity to recognise and act on the critical importance of social connection and its impact on health, both short- and long-term, so that more targeted and effective interventions can be developed.

Linda Madden, Penelope Carroll, Karen Witten
States of dis/ability - looking at the past to imagine a new future of dis/ability.

Through Aotearoa’s history, the embodied ‘state of being disabled’ has hinged around the ‘State’ as the primary driver by which the concept of disability is reproduced. Narratives about what disablement means have typically been constructed through legislative ‘state-ments’ (government acts, policies etc.) that define disabled bodies and mediate how dis/ability is understood. As a result, ableist attitudes – largely unseen – permeate most spheres of everyday life in Aotearoa and often remain potent regardless of rhetoric espousing empowerment and inclusion. This paper explores the historical origins and impacts of disability legislation, and implications for community and citizenship. We also address what a new sociology of disability could look like in terms of both resistance to the past and a reclaiming of disabled identities. Finally, we propose that the sociologies of the future shift the onus for change from within the disabled community and employ methodologies designed explicitly to encourage reflection and conscientization among non-disabled individuals who might otherwise be reluctant to change their ableist attitudes.