Titolo della tesi: Il discorso mass mediale sul lavoro sessuale. Analisi comparativa su due corpora di testi giornalistici
The twenty-first century has been marked by various crises: economic, ecological, health-related, humanitarian, and neoliberal (Rottenberg, 2020). These crises are reflected in citizens’ increased demand for information, related to the classic concept of the “Need for Orientation” (Lewin, 1943): issues like human rights, which appear unrelated to recent crises, may receive lower priority on the media agenda, as seen with the rights of sex workers. This study conducts a comparative analysis of media discourse on prostitution in Italy and Belgium, exploring potential narrative differences in European countries with contrasting legislation on sex workers’ rights. In fact, prostitution is not recognized as a legitimate profession in Italy, while Belgium fully decriminalized it in June 2022. The analysis focuses on 20 Belgian newspaper articles (in Flemish and French) and 20 Italian articles from January 2020 to December 2023. The specific goals of this study are: (1) to provide a shared definition of sex work; (2) to understand the most common narratives about sex work used in the Italian and Belgian national press; (3) to categorize the representations of sex workers that emerge from these narratives. The research considers the impact of the economic crisis and the changes in relational dynamics due to lockdowns, which, according to academic literature, have contributed to increased user interest on sex industry platforms and a shift in media narratives (Jones, 2022).
The project adopts a constructivist approach to analyze discourses on sex work, focusing on those in the press in recognition of the profoundly mediatized society in which we live. The aim is to identify the identities represented by newspapers through their narratives, drawing on Foucault and Butler’s perspectives on the relationship between discourse and power in generating subjectivities. Agamben’s concept of biopolitics also informs this analysis. Given that media portrayals tend to describe sex workers as women, recent discussions on female subjectivities in contemporary society are included in the theoretical framework (Banet-Weiser, 2018; Gill, 2018; Rottenberg, 2016; Arruzza et al., 2019).
The analysis also considers Weitzer’s (2009) paradigm of oppression and empowerment, which emerges in the data and is reinterpreted through a polymorphic paradigm that contemplates the diversity among the subjectivities of sex workers. Content analysis was applied to newspaper headlines retrieved from online archives using keyword selection. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was then used to collect and examine the data. Within this context, Rottenberg’s concept of ideal female subjectivity in Western neoliberal society is relevant, where the ideal female subject is defined as a woman who successfully balances her career with social reproductive roles, including self-care and family care.
The forty selected articles were analyzed using a combined qualitative approach of content analysis and CDA. Content analysis was applied to the headlines and subheads of the articles to select the most relevant ones via keywords (OnlyFans, sex work, prostitution). Critical Discourse Analysis (Richardson, 2007) was chosen as the method for examining the articles within their social context, exploring and cross-referencing the following categories: news value, tone of voice, stereotypes, references, rhetorical devices, and ideological framework. The texts were grouped into thematic clusters, and, following the study’s aim of understanding the main narratives about sex work in the two countries, the data and analyses of the three most frequent clusters were reported: “Interviews with sex workers,” “Crime and sex work,” and “Risks for young people.” These data enabled the identification of three identity representations of sex workers: visible sex workers, grievable and ungrievable victims, and young people associated with risk and uncertainty platforms.
There are no major differences in narratives about sex workers in the Belgian and Italian press regarding risks for young people, as the subjectivities of young people are evolving. Similarly, the identities of sex workers interviewed in the press show no substantial difference because they are visible subjectivities and therefore accepted in a way that increases capital, rendering them “worthy” subjects. However, distinctions emerge in the crime cluster, as legal differences between the two countries render the Italian sex worker an “exposed” body due to the suspension of certain rights. In this way, the biopower of sovereignty becomes evident through the figure of the sex worker.
The comparison of media narratives between these two European countries offers a significant point for reflection regarding attention to human rights during times of social crisis. Italy, in its policies, seems to be less attentive to the rights of minorities, including LGBTQIA+ individuals, women, and migrants. Sex workers often belong to these groups and experience substantial public stigma, with media narratives appearing to align with the limited institutional attention. Conversely, in Belgium, a country more attentive to the civil rights of minorities, media narratives are less stereotyped, offering a more complex identity to sex workers.