Jeffrey Nagy
Ph.D. Student in Communication, admitted Autumn 2015
All Publications
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Pink Chat Networked Sex Work before the Internet
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE
2021; 62 (1): 57–81
Abstract
New network technologies were often seen as contributing to a feminization of labor. Early online sex work complicates that argument. The early online sex work examined in this article masculinized what was traditionally women's work, while training workers and clients in the fluid, feminized communication skills that became a cornerstone of technologically-mediated office work. In the 1980s and 1990s, France's state-run videotext network, Minitel, connected millions to a wide array of public and private services. Its erotic chatrooms were among the most popular, profitable, and prominent. Throngs of citizens paid by the minute to chat anonymously with each other or, unwittingly, with mostly male professional hosts who tailored their digital personas to indulge their clients' sexual proclivities. This article reconstructs the chat hosts and their labor at the nexus of gender ideologies and emerging network technologies. These online self-presentations provide instructive parallels to today's shadow labor on digital platforms.
View details for Web of Science ID 000625963600003
View details for PubMedID 33678665
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The Selling of Virtual Reality: Novelty and Continuity in the Cultural Integration of Technology
COMMUNICATION CULTURE & CRITIQUE
2019; 12 (4): 535–52
View details for DOI 10.1093/ccc/tcz038
View details for Web of Science ID 000510164900006