“This is Not a Slippery Slope” Versus “The Queer Sex Panic is Just Beginning”: Discourse About FOSTA-SESTA in Ideologically Diverse U.S. Mass media,2017

Abstract

This research analyzes mass media coverage of The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and Stop Enabling Online Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), two landmark 2018 bills that changed how sexual content is moderated by internet service providers in the United States. Using critical discourse analysis, I compare the framing of 101 news stories about FOSTA-SESTA published in mainstream U.S. newspapers, feminist media, and LGBTQ magazines over the course of 7 years. Findings describe coverage of online sex work, online child sexual exploitation, and free speech concerns that preceded and followed the landmark ruling from 2017 to 2023. I show FOSTA-SESTA's progression as a topic of discourse during the 2020 presidential election and compare differences between coverage in ideologically diverse U.S. media. While mainstream news originally supported FOSTA-SESTA's efforts to restrict the tech industry and prevent online child sexual exploitation, alternative media tended to present skeptical arguments that supported sex workers and other marginalized communities. Journalism industry interventions are discussed.

Keywords

alternative journalism censorship media & sexuality critical discourse analysis internet law

Introduction

FOSTA-SESTA is the acronym given to a legislative package called the “Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act” and “Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act,” signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2018. For the first time in the internet's history, FOSTA-SESTA made exceptions to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, holding websites and social media legally responsible for online sex trafficking and other adult content. Marketed by political leaders as a moral imperative to limit child sexual exploitation on Backpage.com, FOSTA-SESTA had wide support across party lines. FOSTA passed in the House of Representatives with a vote of 388-25 and SESTA passed in the Senate with a vote of 97-2 (Musto et al., 2021). The joint package has been celebrated as a “moral consensus” with limited political opposition from either party (Chapman-Schmidt, 2019). FOSTA was written through “complex negotiations between legislators and industry organizations” (Salter, 2023, p. 405), to broadly penalize websites that “unlawfully promote and facilitate prostitution” as well as “websites that facilitate traffickers in advertising the sale of unlawful sex acts with sex trafficking victims.”¹ Despite politicians’ promises that FOSTA would reduce instances of online child sexual exploitation, there is no evidence that FOSTA has done so (Blunt & Wolf, 2020). Two years after it became law, only one case had been prosecuted under FOSTA's criminal provisions (Albert et al., 2020).

However, secondary impacts are well documented. FOSTA created a restrictive environment for web service providers, which faced financial penalties and 25 years in federal prison for each illegal sex act facilitated. Due to FOSTA's broad scope, Big Tech responded with a heavy hand. Scholars agree that “the vague wording of FOSTA/SESTA made censoring sexual expression the path of least resistance for platform companies” (McDowell and Tiidenberg, 2023, p. 2). The feminist media scholar Carolyn Bronstein observed in Porn Studies that FOSTA had nearly immediate impacts, such as chilling online sexual speech, harming sex workers, and pushing sex trafficking underground (Bronstein, 2021). According to Bronstein, “each iteration of censorship on social media has reduced the ability of sex workers engaged in consensual adult work to connect with clients and access safety-related information” (p. 371). In partnership with the advocacy organization Hacking/Hustling, the independent scholars Danielle Blunt and Ariel Wolf (2020) collected data from 98 sex workers through online participatory action research. Their research found that FOSTA harmed sex workers financially, limited their ability to screen clients, isolated them from online support networks, and restricted their use of virtual banking platforms (Blunt & Wolf, 2020). Although activists and feminist scholars have documented FOSTA's fallout in marginalized communities, efforts to explore FOSTA's impacts on sex workers have died in Congress. A bill investigating the law's efficacy was introduced in 2022, first by California congressman Rho Khanna as H.R. 6928 (2022) and later by Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren as S. 2758 (2022). Neither received a vote.

Study Objectives

This study sets out to understand the social and political contexts in which FOSTA became law. To do so, I investigate how the U.S. press covered FOSTA and its impacts on diverse stakeholders including sex workers, queer people, and the tech industry. While some research has been published about U.S. news coverage of FOSTA's impacts on online child sexual exploitation (Salter, 2023) and online sex work on Craigslist (Reynolds, 2021), empirical research about FOSTA's media framing are just emerging. What scholars do know is this: Dehumanizing stereotypes are common in mainstream reportage about online sex work and sex trafficking (Reynolds, 2021), and journalism is “one of the key sites where stigma against sex workers is reproduced, negotiated, and can be resisted” (Easterbrook-Smith, 2022, p. 1007). While reportage has historically portrayed prostitution as a deviant crime, emerging analyses suggest that U.S. journalism may be more sympathetic to sex workers than ever before. The Australian criminologist Michael Salter found that U.S. media have covered FOSTA “as an example of a punitive attack on sex worker rights, to the point where journalists are reframing Backpage as a public good and its prosecution as an example of state over-reach” (Salter, 2023, p. 405). To my knowledge, little if any research has yet investigated portrayals of FOSTA in the alternative press. Media scholars generally understand that “alternative is about contestation and difference. It defines media/journalism against mainstream media/journalism” (Waisbord, 2022). Alternative media may produce counter-hegemonic messages that contest dominant political discourse, but that is not always the case (see Ono & Pham, 2009).

Through critical discourse analysis of 101 news stories published between 2017 and 2023, my research traces coverage about FOSTA-SESTA in U.S. mainstream news, LGBTQ media, and feminist media from 2017 through present day. Using a comparative framework, this project investigates whether alternative media presented more nuanced reportage about FOSTA's impacts on online sex work than did “mainstream” news outlets. My findings show that initial reportage on FOSTA-SESTA tended to focus on legal opposition from the tech industry and free speech advocates, while more recent coverage has proposed policy responses and called attention the harms done to marginalized communities. Coverage focused on the progress of legislation through the U.S. court system while illuminating the law's impacts on Big Tech, politicians and presidential candidates, sex workers and queer people. As expected, mainstream news portrayed FOSTA in a more positive light than LGBTQ and feminist media. Alternative media focused on sex workers’ rights and sexual speech implications on the internet, which balanced newspaper reportage with political and social critique and advocated for policy changes. My research confirms that alternative journalism tends to “embrace advocacy and mobilization (instead of straight information) and focus or favor particular political parties and ideologies, issues, and sources” (Waisbord, 2022, p. 1434). However, alternative media are disappearing; two feminist media outlets closed during the sample timeframe. The contemporary media economy may silence emancipatory discourses that mobilize political opposition.

A Moral Crusade Against Child Sexual Exploitation

FOSTA's passage in Congress must be contextualized within 20th century concerns over child sexual exploitation. Historically, harm to children has been the last stronghold of arguments for censorship of sexual content. According to scholars of censorship, the need to protect children from harmful images and words dates back to at least the Victorian era (Mintcheva, 2006). Since the mid-1900s, lawmakers have regulated distribution of violent, sexual, and profane content to kids. By the 1970s, social anxiety around child sexual exploitation emerged as the gay rights movement gained momentum, leading to a “moral panic” that discursively linked pedophilia with homosexuality (Youmans, 2016). In 1977, congressional hearings about child sexual exploitation, including testimonials about child sex abuse and child prostitution, resulted in federal legislation known as the Protection of Children Against Sexual Exploitation Act, which criminalized the production, distribution of child pornography, but not other sex acts (Youmans, 2016). The New York State v Ferber case in the U.S. Supreme Court found in 1982 that child pornography need not be considered obscene in order to violate First Amendment protections, meaning that all representations of children's sexualities would be held to strict scrutiny (New York v. Ferber, 1982). Scholars have argued that censoring sexual content in favor of protecting vulnerable children is a “political goldmine” that “no politician or public official can afford to be on the record as refusing” (Mintcheva, 2006, p. 167).

The early internet era further catalyzed efforts to prevent the exploitation of minors, as online pornography became widely available. A 2001 essay published in Columbia Law Review argued that “child pornography law is the least contested area of First Amendment jurisprudence” (Adler, 2001, p. 210). Using a Foucaultian framework, the author argues that the “moral panic” around child pornography in the late 1990s and early 2000s enabled the proliferation of discourse about children's sexuality as well as the production of child pornography. “Talking about censorship becomes another way of talking about what is censored,” she writes (Adler, 2001, p. 270). The sociologist Ronald Weitzer (2020) uses the term “moral crusade” rather than “moral panic” to describe the political zeitgeist about sex trafficking. When political positions have little public opposition, Weitzer argues that moral crusades may elicit favorable media coverage, alarm the public, justify public shaming or carceral treatment of culprits, and generate new legislation (Weitzer, 2020). While online sex trafficking was not a primary concern of legislators or pundits in the 1990s, news reports of the early 2000s covered prosecutions for online child sexual exploitation, which grew in number with the expansion of online technologies (Gillespie, 2012; Salter, 2023). Alongside public interest in court hearings, child sexual exploitation became more prominent in news discourse. Since the 1970s, news coverage has “oscillated between factual crime reporting and editorialising on the significance of the phenomenon, with a distinct strain of sceptical comment” that has recently critiqued “sexual neurosis and scapegoating” (Salter, 2023).

Coverage of Sex Work and Sex Trafficking

Societal concerns about child sex trafficking have avalanched conversations about sexual economies more broadly. As a result, the public and the press tend to conflate consenting sex work with coercive sex trafficking (Chapman-Schmidt, 2019; Musto et al., 2021), and news journalists tend to present sexual labor as exploitative, violent, or morally reprehensible whether it is consensual or not (Reynolds, 2021). According to a recent discourse analysis published in the Journal of Sex Research, “national U.S. newspapers have largely reported on sex trafficking and related policy issues within a dominant representational paradigm that dehumanizes sex workers and demonstrates news journalists’ position as normative moral authorities in a transitioning media landscape” (Reynolds, 2021, p. 1). The Australian sociologist Benjamin Chapman-Schmidt coined the phrase “epistemic violence” to describe the scapegoating of sex workers by the press (Chapman-Schmidt, 2019). This is problematic because journalism is a primary source for information about sex work, and reportage contributes to public perception about sex workers, especially for members of the public who do not interact with sex workers in daily life (Hallgrimsdottir, 2006). Indeed, “discourses about sex work are how meaning is made of the industry in the popular, nonsex working, consciousness” (Easterbrook-Smith, 2021, p. 414). Contrary to U.S. public perception that journalists are ideologically “to the left” of center (most journalists do identify as Democrats or liberals), scholarship has shown that there is no liberal media bias in terms of story topic selection for mainstream news reportage (Hassell et al., 2020). Some have argued that U.S. newspapers tend to privilege “state-officiated perspectives, despite public perceptions that journalism amplifies ‘liberal’ public policy” in sex work coverage (Reynolds, 2021, p. 691). Others, such as Salter, have argued that FOSTA “increasingly features in reporting as an example of a punitive attack on sex worker rights, to the point where journalists are reframing Backpage as a public good and its prosecution as an example of state over-reach” (Salter, 2023). This study in part investigates whether news coverage of online sex work is in the midst of a paradigm shift.

Aims and Purpose

Adding context to an emerging body of research about online sex work and online child sexual exploitation, this study contributes descriptive and interpretive findings about how journalists from diverse ideological positions have covered FOSTA. It contributes empirical data that illuminates the relationships between antisex trafficking legislation, journalism, and public policy. Two research questions guided the research process:

RQ1: How has U.S. mass media discourse about FOSTA evolved since it was proposed in Congress in 2017?

RQ2: Regarding coverage of FOSTA, have mainstream U.S. news outlets framed sex work and sex trafficking differently than “alternative” LGBTQ and feminist media? If so, how?

Research Methods

I use a critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework for qualitative coding of mass media coverage about FOSTA from 2017 to 2023. CDA is a lens for conducting qualitative research that can be used to analyze “media representations of social issues” and “the discursive construction of events, problems and positions by social actors” (Carvalho, 2008, p. 161). Sometimes described as a method in its own right, I prefer to think of CDA as a set of assumptions about the politics of language in social action (see Fairclough & Wodak, 1997). Drawing on best practices for CDA-driven research, I use a comparative approach that codes for frames, sources, and ideological positions across high-circulation newspapers and “alternative” LGBTQ media and feminist publications (see Reynolds, 2019). Special attention is paid to how sex workers’ rights are positioned in contrast to the interests of political elites or internet service providers in Silicon Valley.

Sampling Strategy

To analyze discourse about FOSTA, I sampled and coded English-language news stories and editorials from leading news outlets across diverse U.S. media markets over the course of 7 years. I used the keywords “FOSTA,” “SESTA,” “FOSTA-SESTA,” “SESTA-FOSTA,” “Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act,” and “Stop Enabling Online Sex Traffickers Act” to identify relevant articles on the U.S. Newsstream database and news outlets’ websites. All duplicate stories were deleted, as were media roundups and PR pieces. In total, 101 stories were sampled from the following publications:

- Mainstream U.S. news outlets (N = 27):

The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times.

- LGBTQ magazines (N = 48):

Out.com, The Advocate.

- Feminist magazines (N = 26):

Ms. Magazine, Bitch magazine, Feministing.com.

Although I initially included The Associated Press in the sample, the AP did not publish any stories about FOSTA. Responding to financial pressure, Feministing.com folded in December 2019, and Bitch magazine folded in April 2022. No stories were sampled after these close dates.

Coding Procedure

Coding was conducted using Google sheets and the qualitative data analysis software NVivo. I coded the sample in two cycles: first cycle, or code development, and second cycle, or code synthesis (see Saldaña, 2015). As recommended by Saldaña (2015), I began with precoding by scanning each news article and logging its publication name, publication date, and story title in a spreadsheet. In the first cycle, I examined each story's headline and lede to code for story topics (holistic codes). I also logged whether the story predominantly used positive, negative, or balanced framing of FOSTA-SESTA. Positive framing included messages that, on a whole, supported regulation of Big Tech and presented FOSTA as a means to prevent child sex trafficking. Negative framing of FOSTA included messages that, on a whole, criticized FOSTA for limiting free speech, stifling online communities, or harming adult sex workers. Neutral framing included balanced perspectives or strictly reported on FOSTA legal status. In the second cycle, I used thematic coding at the paragraph level, analyzing topics of coverage, key sources and subjects, ideological biases, and tensions between subjects, for example, “versus frames” (Saldaña, 2015). After each paragraph was coded for themes, I used a historical-diachronic (Carvalho, 2008) and comparative approach (Reynolds, 2019) to analyze differences in coverage over time and across media genres. I also noted topics of discourse that were omitted or erased from coverage (Hjelm, 2021). Images were not considered for analysis.

Positionality Statement

I have never worked in the adult entertainment industry. However, as a queer woman and former journalist in community with many sex workers, my research is in alignment with the emancipation of sexual speech and the decriminalization of sex work. I do not, in any way, support the sexual exploitation of minors or nonconsenting adults. This manuscript underwent member checking by a Los Angeles-based sex worker before publication.

Research Findings

U.S. mass media reported on FOSTA as a legal outcome of the moral crusade against online child sexual exploitation, and as a necessary restriction on the powerful tech industry. Across mainstream and alternative news, coverage chronicled FOSTA's progress through the U.S. court system. Policy and regulation were the primary frame used, while other stories focused on the law's impacts on the adult industry and tech industry. Fewer stories covered FOSTA from the perspective of free speech, LGBTQ communities, or arts and culture. A summary of story topics is presented by outlet type in Table 1. Key sources included politicians, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and nonprofit workers, free speech advocates, celebrities, and sex workers impacted by FOSTA. Reporters shifted blame for the purported sex trafficking crisis from tech companies to the adult entertainment industry to politicians, never agreeing on a root cause of the issue. Coverage of FOSTA underscored a dominant representational paradigm around sex trafficking—a “sex panic” LGBTQ media linked with increasing sexual censorship online.

Table 1.
Stories Published About FOSTA-SESTA by Primary Story Topic.

Primary topic Mainstream news LGBTQ media Feminist media Totals

Adult Industry 5 5 10 20

Arts & Culture 0 2 6 8

Free Speech Issues 4 0 1 5

LGBTQ Activism 0 8 0 8

Policy & Politics 9 25 3 37

Tech Industry 7 8 3 18

Misc. (e.g., sports, health, crime) 2 0 3 5

27 48 26 101

Primary topic	Mainstream news	LGBTQ media	Feminist media	Totals
Adult Industry	5	5	10	20
Arts & Culture	0	2	6	8
Free Speech Issues	4	0	1	5
LGBTQ Activism	0	8	0	8
Policy & Politics	9	25	3	37
Tech Industry	7	8	3	18
Misc. (e.g., sports, health, crime)	2	0	3	5
	27	48	26	101

FOSTA=Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act; SESTA=Stop Enabling Online Sex Traffickers Act.

Longitudinal Analysis

In response to RQ1, “How has U.S. mass media discourse about FOSTA evolved since it was proposed in Congress in 2017?,” this research found that news media became more sympathetic to sex workers over time. While initial reportage tended to cover legal opposition from the tech industry and free speech advocates, recent stories proposed policy interventions and reported harms to marginalized communities. Support for antitrafficking efforts dominated early mainstream news coverage, however, all news genres had shifted toward a more skeptical discourse by 2023. Across the sample, 87 (86%) of the stories were published between 2018 and 2020 (see Table 2). Most centered on policy positions during the 2020 Presidential election. Coverage of FOSTA has slowed in recent years.

Table 2.

Stories Published About FOSTA-SESTA by Year and Outlet Type.

Publication year	Mainstream news	LGBTQ media	Feminist media	Totals
2017	2	0	0	2
2018	9	10	8	27
2019	3	33	8	44
2020	9	2	5	16
2021	1	3	4	8
2022	1	0	1	2
2023	2	0	0	2
	27	48	26	101

FOSTA=Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act; SESTA=Stop Enabling Online Sex Traffickers Act.

Free Speech and Child Safety

The earliest reportage in this sample was published in The New York Times in 2017. Two stories used tech framing and free speech concerns to introduce FOSTA to readers. These stories reported on Facebook, Amazon, and Google, which opposed FOSTA when it was introduced, arguing that it “jeopardizes bedrock principles of a free and open internet” (“Pressure Is Growing To Rein In Tech Titans,” September 21, 2017, New York Times). Nicholas Kristof, an opinion columnist for the Times, critiqued Google's position, writing that Big Tech has “a vague, poorly grounded fear that closing the loophole would open the way to frivolous lawsuits and investigations and lead to a slippery slope that will damage its interests and the freedom of the internet.” Tech companies eventually leveled with legislators and reportedly withdrew their criticism for FOSTA as a PR tactic. Kristof emphasized that FOSTA was necessary to protect vulnerable children. “I write about this issue because I'm haunted by the kids I've met who were pretty much enslaved, right here in the U.S. in the twenty-first century,” he wrote (“Google and Sex Traffickers love Backpage.com,” September 2017, New York Times).

Alternative Media Advocacy

Congress voted affirmatively on FOSTA in February 2018. Within days, feminist and LGBTQ media began to balance the pro-FOSTA newspaper coverage, reporting on the potential harms to sex workers. The Advocate, an LGBTQ magazine, launched in with first-person coverage of the queer sex working community. One article focused on gun rights and antipornography laws in Florida, zooming in on FOSTA as an example of the ways that “legislation will censor and silence trafficking victims—and, once again, cut off vital web platforms for escorts” (“Congress Is Preparing to Harm Queer Sex Workers Like Me,” The Advocate, 2018). LGBTQ and feminist media pointed out that laws like FOSTA “have quietly passed without much attention from the public” (“Being Sex-Positive in a World of Brett Kavanaughs, Donald Trumps,” The Advocate, 2018). At the same time that FOSTA evaded public attention, activist voices increased in opposition. Feministing.com reported that “The chorus of voices opposing antisex work legislation FOSTA-SESTA is growing” (“Sex Workers Know What Will Keep Them Safe. It's Time We Started Listening,” Feministing.com, 2018). Even second-wave feminists agreed. In the only story Ms. magazine published on the topic, a columnist argued that FOSTA was “unlikely to solve the complex problem of youth involvement in the U.S. sex trade” (“The Politics of Fighting Child Sex Trafficking in the U.S.,” Ms. magazine, 2018). Feminist and LGBTQ media hired sex workers to write from first-person perspectives, while the mainstream news retained a politically neutral perspective. The New York Times and Los Angeles Times primarily reported on FOSTA as an inflection point for Big Tech. Reporters predicted that tech companies would need to “police their users’ activities with a heavy hand, deploying algorithms that casually sweep up any posts that contain the wrong keywords” (“Free expression, squeezed; When the government pushes, private companies forget the 1st Amendment,” LA Times, 2018). Alternative media tried to hold Big Tech accountable with feature stories like “The Vanilla Internet: How Instagram Is Failing Queer Sex Workers” (Bitch.com, 2019) and “Workplace Discrimination and Sex Work Bias Threaten Our Community” (The Advocate, 2019).

2020 Presidential Election

By 2019, in-depth analysis had given way to political coverage in advance of the 2020 presidential election. LGBTQ media uniquely emphasized FOSTA-SESTA as a political action item in the presidential primaries with stories like “Bernie Sanders Bravely Asks Us to Consider a Straight President” (Out.com, 2019); “Elizabeth Warren Unveils Plan For LGBTQ + Equality” (Out.com, 2019); and “Pete Buttigieg Says ‘It's Time’ to Discuss Decriminalizing Sex Work” (Out.com, 2019). At least 10 stories focused on Kamala Harris's positions on FOSTA. Out.com reported that “Harris led the effort to shut down the adult personal ads on Backpage, a classified advertising website that sex workers say provided an affordable, accessible, and far safer alternative to street-based sex work. Harris later said she was ‘proud to support’ the 2018 passage of FOSTA, because it would ‘make it possible for victims and state prosecutors to hold online sex traffickers accountable’” (“Will 2020 Hopeful Kamala Harris Address Past Hostility to Sex Workers?” Out.com, 2019). The New York Times reported that politicians had changed their views on FOSTA. “…As the real-world effects of the sex-trafficking change take hold, some experts and politicians say the results are not all positive,” reported The Times. “And even some lawmakers who have championed a crackdown on Big Tech are now calling to revisit the change.” (“Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed It Underground,” New York Times, 2019). Around the same time as the political change in opinion, sex workers advocates started to be quoted in the mainstream press.

COVID-19

In 2020, coverage started to slow, and news outlets linked FOSTA to COVID-19 and the U.S. presidential election. The New York Times continued with its policy angle, reporting on Kamala Harris's positions on sex work. Opinion writer Farah Stockman included the passage of FOSTA-SESTA in a September 2020 listicle called “A Fact-Checked List of Trump Accomplishments” (New York Times, 2020). One LA Times feature delved into the lives of sex workers who were at risk for COVID exposure as they were “pushed” onto the streets due to FOSTA (“Coronavirus fears haven’t stopped the sex trade on Los Angeles streets,” April 15, 2020, Los Angeles Times). Another LA Times story considered coronavirus's effects on a Los Angeles strip club, whose dancers faced new challenges due to FOSTA-SESTA as they moved their shows online (“Jumbo frown, upside down; With the Hollywood hipster spot closed, business at strippers’ web ‘club’ is taking off,” October 6, 2020, Los Angeles Times). Feminist media also critiqued FOSTA's role in pandemic life, in stories like “Sex Workers Have Always Known That Zoom Is Anti-sex. Now, the Public Knows Too” (Bitch, May 19, 2020). Political coverage of politicians’ voting records continued through the 2020 election.

No One Listened

Only 12 stories (12% of the sample) were identified between 2021 and 2023. Seven stories were published in 2021, five of which focused on content regulation on OnlyFans, eBay, and TikTok. The remaining articles, published in Bitch, were essays about the problems of enforcing human trafficking laws and FOSTA's unfair targeting of the consenting adult porn industry. By 2022, stories across genres reflected on the impacts of FOSTA, including the “overall sexual sanitization of the internet” (“Access Denied: How ASMR Redefines Digital Intimacy,” April 1, 2022, Bitch) and the “heavy-handed moderation on Instagram and Facebook” which led to censorship of nonsexual content (“Why Did Instagram Pause This Play? Its Creators Still Don’t Know,” New York Times, September 11, 2022). The most recent story sampled affirms what feminist media had reported for years: “All along, sex workers were saying it's not going to reduce sex trafficking and it’ll make their work more dangerous and harder. But no one listened” (“The author of ‘The Pornography Wars’ thinks we should watch less and listen more,” Los Angeles Times, April 5, 2023). No follow-up coverage of FOSTA appeared in the LGBTQ press in 2022 or 2023.

Framing Sex Work and Sex Trafficking

In response to RQ2: “Regarding coverage of FOSTA, have mainstream U.S. news outlets framed sex work and sex trafficking differently than ‘alternative’ LGBTQ and feminist media? If so, how?” there were notable differences in coverage observed between newspapers and feminist and LGBTQ media. Newspapers and LGBTQ media framed stories primarily through a policy angle, illuminating FOSTA's progression through the courts or politicians’ positions on big tech and sex work. Feminist media focused on FOSTA's impacts on the adult industry and harm to sex workers’ livelihoods. LGBTQ media uniquely included coverage about LGBTQ activism, for example, how the community could address FOSTA's impacts on transgender mental health and HIV transmission rates. As expected, mainstream news coverage of FOSTA presented the law in a more favorable light than did coverage in alternative media. While 52% of newspaper stories reported on FOSTA from a positive or neutral angle, pro-FOSTA framing was not present in the LGBTQ or feminist media samples. Pro-FOSTA coverage lauded the bills for preventing child sex trafficking or regulating the bloated tech industry, while negative coverage of FOSTA-SESTA focused on the political or social harms associated with the law. Neutral coverage presented balanced coverage or did not present a clear ideological position on FOSTA. Nearly a quarter (23%) of stories in LGBTQ media used neutral framing. However, stories published in feminist media were universally critical of the legislation. LGBTQ and feminist media often used first-person reporting from the perspectives of impacted community members such as sex workers. This was not the editorial strategy employed by mainstream news outlets.

Exploitation of Minors versus Marginalized Adults

Many stories were framed in terms of most-impacted communities. Two dominant frames emerged between newspapers and alternative media: (1) rationalizing FOSTA to prevent harm to children and (2) critiquing FOSTA to prevent harm to already-marginalized sex workers and queer people. Early on, mainstream news outlets relied on the former frame. In coverage from The New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof compared preventing child sex trafficking with preventing copyright infringement. “That's a constraint on internet freedom that makes sense, and it hasn't proved a slippery slope,” he wrote. “If we're willing to protect copyrights, shouldn't we do as much to protect children sold for sex?” (“Google and Sex Traffickers Like Backpage.com,” September 2017, New York Times). A year later, the New York Times reported that 90% of child sex trafficking occurs online, primarily on Backpage.com, which was targeted by FOSTA-SESTA. Sex trafficking prevention organizations and survivors’ groups reportedly “praised the legislation as a significant advance in their fight against the practice” (“Craigslist Drops Personal Ads Because of Sex Trafficking Bill,” March 23, 2018, New York Times), and FOSTA was “hailed as a way to catch up to the reality that the bartering of children and adults had moved from the streets to the web” (“Stamping Out Online Sex Trafficking May Have Pushed it Underground,” December 17, 2019, New York Times).

The LGBTQ and feminist press focused instead on the law's more insidious effects. A writer at Feministing.com decried Backpage.com while predicting the inevitable: “As a sex worker myself, I know that these sites preyed on people's desperation, can’t say I’ll miss then,” a writer called AK laments. “But while FOSTA-SESTA represents a mere bump in the road for the historically resilient sex industry, its true cost will be measured in the lives and livelihoods of the most vulnerable among our communities of sex workers” (“Mourning on International Whores Day,” June 1, 2018, Feministing.com). According to one story in The Advocate, “In the week after SESTA/FOSTA passed, Trans Lifeline's call volume went up 97 percent.” (“Transgender Suicide is More Than a Mental Health Issue,” September 25, 2018, The Advocate). Another story in The Advocate one year later reported on one sex worker's suicide prior to FOSTA's passage. Bitch magazine reported that sex workers “have become homeless because of SESTA/FOSTA” (“Robots Replacing Sex Workers is a Labor Issue,” December 17, 2018, Bitch) and that “clients are now demanding more services for less money because they know sex workers are more desperate” (“One Year Later, FOSTA-SESTA Throws Sex Workers Back into the Fire,” December 17, 2019, Bitch). Unlike readers of mainstream news, the material impacts on consenting adults engaged in survival sex work would have been immediately clear to readers of alternative media.

Deeper Underground and Onto the Streets

Mainstream and alternative news found common ground in reporting secondary consequences of FOSTA, which include pushing sex workers into more dangerous working conditions. In Spring 2018, Feministing.com reported that “Twitter and Instagram started suspending or limiting sex workers’ accounts” and some sex workers had gone missing (“Sex Workers Know What Will Keep Them Safe. It's Time We Started Listening,” May 1, 2018, Feministing.com). The New York Times reported that antitrafficking organizations were “not united in their support” for FOSTA because “the bill would only drive voluntary sex workers further underground” (“Craigslist Drops Personal Ads Because of Sex Trafficking Bill,” March 23, 2018, New York Times), while the Los Angeles Times reported that “law enforcement officials have said it has made it harder for them to root out sex trafficking, because it drove perpetrators further underground, and interfered with posts aimed at warning consensual sex workers away from dangerous situations or clients” (“Column: Trump's Attack on Twitter is a Complete Fake,” June 1, 2020, Los Angeles Times).

For sex workers whose work moved from online-mediated work to street-based sex work, the conditions were dire. The Advocate reported that many consenting adult workers were forced “back to more dangerous forms of street-based work” (“Workplace Discrimination and Sex Work Bias Threaten Our Community,” October 7, 2019, The Advocate). Bitch quoted an impacted sex worker who was “terrified” of street-based work. Her business had decreased by 75% since FOSTA shut down 20 + sites dedicated to adult content. Loss of screening capabilities was another leading topic in feminist media. Bitch reported that “Online, workers can set sexual boundaries; decide the location, date, time, and length of sessions; and use various methods to weed out dangerous clients” (“One Year Later, FOSTA-SESTA Throws Sex Workers Back into the Fire,” December 17, 2019, Bitch). Feminist media linked the targeting of sex workers with the moral crusade against online child sexual exploitation: “[Sex workers’] working conditions are less safe and their income compromised, and the looming specter of human trafficking makes it easier for them to be arrested in law-enforcement sting operations” (“Super Bowl Sex Trafficking Myths Have Consequences,” February 5, 2020, Bitch).

Deplatformed and Shadowbanned

Many stories reported that technology companies were forced to moderate online sexual speech or face financial penalties and other legal consequences. According to the Los Angeles Times, “the law encourages sites to crack down indiscriminately on all sorts of sexual discussions—including, ironically, online spaces where sex workers share information that helps them protect themselves against abuse” (Los Angeles Times, 2018). In addition to preventing client screening, increased content moderation limited sex workers’ ability to advertise and find support resources. It was predicted that increased social media surveillance would create “irreparable harm to free speech and the internet economy” (New York Times, 2018). Within a year of FOSTA-SESTA passing, two new terms emerged to describe the phenomenon of tech industries removing adult content: Shadowbanning and deplatforming.

Feminist media called shadowbanning “the act of blocking a user's content on social media sites in such a way that the user doesn’t know it's happening until they see its impact on their account metrics” (Bitch magazine, 2019), while deplatforming refers to the outright removal of an account from a social media platform. Sex workers reported reaching fractions of their followers online, and having photos taken off social media sites even when they did not feature explicit content. While shadowbans are usually associated with Meta brands like Facebook and Instagram, “…Skype, Twitter, and Craigslist all happily censored and mitigated content that they deemed inappropriate through shadowbanning, actively suspending the accounts of people who’ve been reported too many times, and using AI technology to surveil people” (Bitch, 2020). Because human content moderation would be too cumbersome, AI was used to create “bans on a wide range of material Instagram's algorithm classifies as risqué, not just in the U.S. but around the world” (New York Times, 2022). Stories in the LGBTQ press also pointed to FOSTA-SESTA's impacts on hookup apps like FetLife and Scruff, which “announced heavy-handed changes to its profile picture guidelines—no underwear allowed and no sexual acts, which include no kissing or hugging” (The Advocate, 2018).

While LGBTQ and feminist media reported on threats to internet-mediated speech right away, mainstream news outlets reported on FOSTA-SESTA's snowball effects later in coverage. Bitch noted that FOSTA's “unclear phrasing may have already forced smaller websites, those without the means to conduct close surveillance of online traffic, to shut down” (Bitch magazine, 2019). Out.com called this “the erasure of sex-oriented spaces online” (“It's Happening: Only Fans is Banning Adult Videos This Year,” August 19, 2021, Out.com). Even when online spaces remained online, adult performers and sex workers were forced to remove themselves or face potential deplatforming. Out.com reported that sex workers were leaving Twitter “en masse,” while The Advocate highlighted the importance of software encryption for sex workers operating under FOSTA-SESTA. The impacts of course were not limited to sex workers. In 2022, The New York Times reported that FOSTA has led to a “chilling effect” on all sexual speech online (“Puzzled why Instagram Put Their Play on Pause,” New York Times, 2022).

A Slippery Slope

While alternative media were concerned about impacts on free speech and sex workers’ wellbeing, mainstream news investigated whether FOSTA was a slippery slope for free speech online. The Los Angeles Times reported that “Silicon Valley opposed the law, fearing it was a slippery slope that would make tech companies liable for content” (“Facebook may alter tech's rules; Silicon Valley had largely operated with impunity. Not now,” March 24, 2018, Los Angeles Times). Back when Big Tech still opposed FOSTA, Nicholas Kristof opined for the New York Times that Google had “a vague, poorly grounded fear that closing the loophole [in Section 230] would open the way to frivolous lawsuits and investigations and lead to a slippery slope that will damage its interests and the freedom of the internet” (“Google and Sex Traffickers Like Backpage.com,” September 7, 2017, New York Times). Kristof assured readers that FOSTA had been construed narrowly so not to lead to overzealous policing of online speech. Later, The New York Times quoted Representative Ann Wagner, the Missouri Republican who introduced FOSTA. Wagner said: “This is not a slippery slope. It is a narrow amendment to stop crimes by businesses online that they weren’t able to commit offline.” (“House Passes Online Sex-Trafficking Bill After Big Tech Companies Back Off,” February 27, 2018, New York Times). Wagner appeared to be wrong. By 2021, websites like “CityVibe, Nightshift, Men4Rent, Eccie, VerifyHim, the Erotic Review's U.S. discussion boards, P411, and several subreddits for escorts and FSSW” also shut down (“OnlyFans Isn't the Only Platform Waging War on Sex Workers,” August 23, 2021, Bitch).

Listen to Sex Workers

LGBTQ and feminist media had one refrain from the beginning: marginalized communities need representation. Feminist media especially focused on uplifting sex workers’ voices. Stories in Bitch and Feministing.com insisted that policymakers hear sex workers out for the purpose of harm reduction. One sex worker quoted in Bitch said:

“Sex workers are experts on consent, we’re experts on abuse, we’re experts on harm reduction … We should be listened to on this. Many of us are survivors of abuse and trafficking ourselves—we know that what's needed [is] greater funding for harm-reduction services—i.e., giving people another option to get away from their trafficker, making it possible for people to work safely.” (Bitch, 2018)

Some writers noted that sex workers had predicted the outcomes of FOSTA from day 1. A writer at Feministing.com asserted that “Sex workers knew the devastating impacts that FOSTA-SESTA would have on their lives and communities. And they are the ones working tirelessly now to educate the public and fight back” (Feministing.com, 2018). Another story included a group of sex workers and allies who met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. A sex worker advocate was quoted as saying: “We wanted the representatives to know that sex workers are not an unknown population …They are people you can actually converse with” (“One Year Later, FOSTA-SESTA Throws Sex Workers Back to the Fire,” 2019, Bitch). Headlines at feminist media screamed “SEX WORKERS KNOW WHAT WILL KEEP THEM SAFE. IT'S TIME WE STARTED LISTENING” (Feministing.com, 2019).

A New Sex Panic?

While feminist media fought tirelessly for sex worker rights, LGBTQ media made an intellectual argument that FOSTA is not compatible with the reality of queer life on the internet. “If porn content weren't forced underground, it could coexist with other forms of media and show the different ways nude and erotic content can fit into the fabric of everyday life,” one author opined (Out.com, 2019). Fantasies of a utopian internet were replaced with alarm bells. “Many queer sex workers—myself included—view the ban as the latest bullet point in a disturbing string of events … The unsettling phrase ‘sex panic’ rings truer and truer,” wrote Alexander Cheves for The Advocate. Cheves argued that limitations on sexual speech are “something everyone both inside and outside the sex worker community should be concerned about: It is sweeping censorship on a site used by queer people everywhere and is part of a censorship trend that is disproportionately erasing queer people” (“12 Post-Tumblr Spaces for Sex-Positive Queer Men,” The Advocate, January 18, 2019). In reportage over the coming months, Cheves continued to frame FOSTA-SESTA as an element of a societal “sex panic.” He wrote:

“It's important to realize what exactly is at stake. Our fear has never been ‘I won't be able to find my favorite porn’ or ‘I'll have to change my profile picture on my favorite app.’ We respond strongly to these seemingly small-scale events – the banning of adult content on Tumblr and new profile guidelines on Scruff – because they are bullet points of a larger, worrying trend. They illuminate the reality that dangerous laws like SESTA/FOSTA are slowly making the internet and apps less welcoming for queer people and sexual expression.” (“The Queer Sex Panic Is Just Beginning,” The Advocate, 2019)

LGBTQ media wasted no time as they implored readers to “sound the alarm for a blatant anti-LGBTQ sex panic” (“Sex Panic: New York Bill Attempts to Spread Anti-Porn Myths,” The Advocate, 2019). But the mainstream press waited to call it by its name. In 2023, even the LA Times reported in retrospect that FOSTA was “enacted in 2018 during a congressional panic over online child sex trafficking” (“Column: The bogus, homophobic campaign against Biden's stellar FCC nominee,” Los Angeles Times, February 3, 2023).

Discussion

This research offers an analysis of news discourse about FOSTA, focusing on coverage of online sex work, online child sexual exploitation, and free speech concerns that preceded and followed the landmark ruling from 2017 to 2023. This study contributes a media history of how sex work became enmeshed with coverage of sex trafficking, and how adult entertainers and queer communities responded to this “intentional obscuficating (sic) of sex trafficking with adult media” (The Advocate, 2019). Previous research has shown that news coverage of FOSTA has either scapegoated sex workers (Reynolds, 2021) or provided defenses for the tech industry in the face of child sexual exploitation charges (Salter, 2023). Some scholars have found that mass media lead a moral crusade against sex work (Weitzer, 2020) using dehumanizing discourses as a form of epistemic violence against sex workers (Chapman-Schmidt, 2019). Many in academia and the press have referred to this as a moral panic. However, little research has been conducted on representations of online sex work outside of mainstream news like newspapers and broadcast television. Building on scholarly calls to compare framing of sex work in the mainstream and alternative press (Reynolds, 2021), this study shows that coverage of FOSTA changed substantially over time, and that alternative media reported on FOSTA using different discursive frameworks than mainstream news reportage.

Alternative media contested dominant narratives about FOSTA, demonstrating the power of “emancipatory communicative practices that citizens use to resist domination and oppose power” (Waisbord, 2022, p. 1435). Contrary to decade-old scholarship that claimed “the simple mention of the prostitute invokes melodramatic and moralistic stories about exploited and exploitable female bodies” (Galusca, 2012, p. 6), alternative media in this sample aimed to empower sex workers while sounding the alarm bell for free speech concerns. However, coverage of FOSTA was overshadowed by competing news stories, such #MeToo, COVID-19, the overturning of Roe v Wade, and the 2020 presidential election. Getting lost in the news cycle had huge implications for free speech and online content moderation. For example, the respected feminist magazine, Ms., only published one story about FOSTA. And despite FOSTA's policy relevance, The Associated Press published zero stories about the law. The lack of coverage in reputable outlets such as Ms. and the AP may contribute to the symbolic annihilation (see Tuchman, 1978) of FOSTA as a policy concern for the general public. As the Los Angeles Times reported: While sex workers’ voices got louder, “no one listened.”

In a recent study of FOSTA reportage, Salter (2023) observed that “there is an established strain of journalism which ignores and erases the harms of (child sexual exploitation) in discussions about civil liberties” (p. 406). Based on coverage of FOSTA in mainstream and alternative media between 2017 and 2023, I believe media skepticism about FOSTA has become more widespread as harms to marginalized communities become more clear. This should be seen as a positive shift in an otherwise dehumanizing discourse. And while a moral crusade against sex trafficking and sex workers is certainly evident in the U.S. Congress, more research should be conducted to analyze whether news coverage of FOSTA met the tests of concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality, and volatility necessary to be considered a moral panic in the academic sense of the term (see Goode & Ben-Yahuda, 2010).

Professional Implications

While reporting on sex work and sex trafficking, journalists must acknowledge and resist the “bureaucratic procedures and institutional influences that imprint the industry with its normalizing and deviance-defining logics” (Reynolds, 2021). In order to avoid conflating consensual sex work with online child sexual exploitation, reporters should provide legal context about definitions for “sex trafficking.” While sex workers and LGBTQ folks are often wary of reporters, journalists across the ideological spectrum should endeavor to include sources and subjects outside of the typical “authorized knowers,” for example, politicians, NGOs, and spokespeople for various nonprofits and advocacy groups (Schudson, 2012). Journalists must understand that queer people and sex workers are often the first communities impacted by online policy changes and restrictions on free speech. This study underscores the ways alternative media portray sex work and sex trafficking with more nuance, including empathy for marginalized communities. But against the backdrop of economic precarity and antijournalistic discourse, alternative media are closing shop. During the sample timeline, both Feministing.com and Bitch magazine folded. During this inhospitable climate for alternative media, mainstream news journalists have an ethical duty to fill the hole by intentionally providing policy solutions and resources that benefit society's marginalized groups. Reporters could learn to contest dominant narratives through the “politics of voice, claims-making, participation, advocacy, and repair” (Waisbord, 2022, p. 1435), which are typically present in alternative media and absent in mainstream news outlets.

Limitations and Future Research

This research offers an analysis of reportage on FOSTA over time and across media genres. Although I used a robust sampling framework representing diverse media across the ideological media spectrum, my sample is certainly not exhaustive or representative of all narratives about FOSTA. An initial survey of XBIZ.com and AVN, two leading adult industry news websites, showed that these outlets cover FOSTA with much more intensity than did mainstream U.S. newspapers or LGBTQ and feminist media. While I sampled 101 articles from newspapers and “alternative” media for this study, another 218 stories matched the search criteria in adult industry publications. Future research should investigate news coverage of FOSTA in adult industry publications, Wall Street media, and tech industry publications.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Chelsea Reynolds

Notes

Author Biography

Chelsea Reynolds, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Communications and Human Communication Studies at California State University, Fullerton, where she conducts research on the intersections of journalism, sexuality, and public policy. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on qualitative research methods, media ethics, sexual communication, and diversity in media. Dr. Reynolds serves as a member of the AEJMC Publications Committee. She is Past-Head of the AEJMC LGBTQ Interest Group.

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“This is Not a Slippery Slope” Versus “The Queer Sex Panic is Just Beginning”: Discourse About FOSTA-SESTA in Ideologically Diverse U.S. Mass media,2017–2023