PhD Oral Exam - Rebecca Holt, Film and Moving Image Studies

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

(In)Visible Sex: A History of Pornhub, is the first in-depth academic study of Pornhub’s company history from 2006 to 2023. Using qualitative methods drawn from screen studies and media industry studies—including aesthetic analysis, discourse analysis, and digital ethnography—I examine the transformation of adult media in the personal computer age. This project is historically situated during the proliferation of pornographic content on the Internet and the sexual paranoia this entails. Nevertheless, I shift the focus away from issues of representation, and towards the invisible technologies that platforms like Pornhub helped formalize. To this end, I coin the term (in)visible sex to describe how Pornhub’s use of data collection, surveillance technology, platform governance, and artificial intelligence, among others, has resulted in a rearticulation of the aesthetic and genre-specific traditions native to pornography. In each chapter, I track this tension between visibility and invisibility through key phases of Pornhub’s company history—from its founding as a tube website, its growing monopoly of ‘free’ pornography as a platform, and its formalization as a corporation. My analysis bridges scholarship on the production, distribution, and reception of porn film/video with recent work on streaming platforms, critical data studies, and social media. Taken together, this project offers new perspectives on contemporary video practices and Internet cultures, tracing how sex and sex media “show up” in the era of participatory culture.