SAGE Journal Articles

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Journal Article 1: Primack, A. J. (2017). Youth sexting and the First Amendment: Rhetoric and child pornography doctrine in the age of translation. New Media & Society, 20, 2917–2933.

Abstract: Sexting has become a common mode of communicative sexual expression in the United States. Youths who sext with their peers are sometimes charged for the crime of producing and distributing child pornography. Such charges are inconsistent with the intent of American child pornography law, which is to protect children from abuse and exploitation. Understanding sext messages as a type of media content, this essay offers rhetorical translation as one strategy for identifying resources in Supreme Court doctrine to help distinguish between youth sexts and child pornography. Through rhetorical translation, this manuscript finds resources in four opinions concerning child pornography and the First Amendment for distinguishing sexting from child pornography. These distinctions pertain to how the two types of media are produced and distributed as demonstrated in a three-part interpretive model: motive and consent, privacy and consent, and market.

Journal Article 2: O’Rourke, A., Pyman, A., Teicher, J., & van Gramberg, B. (2018). Old wine in new bottles? Regulating employee social media use through termination of employment law: A comparative analysis. Common Law World Review, 47, 248–271.

Abstract: The explosion in social media usage and ease of access to instant communication provided by new technologies presents employers and business with benefits and problems. The literature on new technologies and the workplace is replete with employer unease about employee use of social media. The most prominent of these apprehensions concern what has been described as ‘cyberslacking’ or ‘cyberloafing’, and reductions in concentration and workplace productivity. The most common employer response to these concerns is often to engage in employee surveillance or termination of employment. This article examines the latter response. It explores whether new legal principles are emerging from Courts, Tribunals and Commissions adjudicating social media and email dismissal cases or whether they are merely reframing existing laws to adapt to novel workplace situations. We use a comparative approach to address this question, comparing legal cases in Australia, Britain and America. The purpose of this article is to assess if there are any commonalities emerging between the three jurisdictions, or by contrast, whether the law is being shaped by the unique features of each jurisdiction.