Our life in the World Wide Porn

01. April 2015: The university email postboxes get a message with the ominous header „Sexuality & Online Pornography: A survey“. No Spam. No April Fool. Pure seriousness. More than 2,300 interested persons participate in the survey within a short period of time. Time, thus, to publish the main findings of the study.

The way to getting the online survey started was an intensive and briefly even stony. At the beginning of the year, the future graduate Christine Rathay considered how the topic of the coming master thesis could take up the one of her bachelor thesis „New Nice Sex“. The theoretical work has already dealt with sexuality in the digital age. The young student now working in market research also aimed at implementing a quantitative methodological study. Together with Clemens Langner from the Chair for Sociological Theory and Theory History, her supervisor again, she developed the idea to work on the consumption of film online pornography and its relevance for the sexuality in the contemporary society.

The subsequent period brought a lot of office hours spent on intensively discussing and optimizing the latest survey versions in intensive brainwork. One unexpected problem was that other parties raised the question if pornography is a sociological topic at all. In fact, this science works on social issues and resulting phenomena, so that the emerging and consumption of pornographic contents is doubtless a part of it. The discussion ended after a short period of time. The topic got a lot of confirmation and support here, so that the work was continued. The topic approached by another student soon after – „PorNoSex“ – was implemented by conducting interviews at the set respectively with protagonists and no longer a point of discussion.

The fine-tuning of the survey was completed, the sending of an email to all recipients at the University of Rostock approved and an inviting message plus ominous headline was written, so that the investigation could be started by email and Facebook in time, on 1 April 2015. Still, it was not quite considered that some recipients considered this as an April Fool at this particular day. Indeed, it could have been a laughing stock, but still: To plan a complete and usable survey only for a good laugh seems to be disproportionately extensive. This is not the »neoMagazin Royale« – and even this is about more than making people laugh. #varoufake #verafake

The starting signal sounded and the click counter had immediately work to do as moe and more people quickly participated in the survey. The topic raised attention. This was also demonstrated by incoming emails of persons who commented on the survey and showed interest in the expected results. The promise to give an insight shall be fulfilled now. The very normal circumstances – job, job, job – resulted into completing the summary of the main findings only now. Still, the work on the topic pornography is continued: Recently, additional results were presented on the gender conference »Popular culture – Gender – Spaces of Action«. Furthermore, they were turned into literature in the fan fiction »Polizeiruf 110: Herzeleid«.

Many thanks to all interested persons and all participants in the survey. More than 2,300 survey participants is a fantastic result for a study. Special thanks to Christian Helbig from the Institute of General Medicine, who enriched the project with social science-methodology competence. What role film online pornography actually plays in our life can be read here: World Wide Porn

First published at heuler online on 23.06.2016.

Author: Clemens Langer, M.A.