The study of digital sexual intimacies presents ethical and methodological challenges, often framed by anxieties around sex, public life, and the internet (Tiidenberg, 2018, 2020). Traditional qualitative methods tend to be extractive and risk-centered. Instead, creative, participatory, and multimodal approaches foster inclusive, reflexive, and non-hierarchical research environments (Knowles & Cole, 2007; Mannay, 2016).

Art-based methods, particularly zine-making, have been used across disciplines to engage marginalized groups (McNicol, 2019; Etengoff, 2015). As self-published, DIY pamphlets, zines offer a non-linear, multimodal space for expression and collective knowledge production (Duncombe, 1997; Lovata, 2007). They challenge traditional data collection by integrating text, visuals, and intertextual elements, making them particularly valuable in queer and subcultural research contexts (Downes et al., 2013).

This study introduces the Research Brave Space (RBS) concept, shifting from ‘safe spaces’ to settings where participants courageously engage with sensitive topics (Arao & Clemens, 2013). Implemented through zine-making workshops with queer young adults in Italy, RBS prioritizes care, adaptability, and agency. These workshops facilitated cognitive, emotional, and physical accessibility, fostering collective engagement and self-representation. Participants reported increased agency and deeper reflexivity, illustrating the method’s transformative potential.

Zine-making as RBS disrupts academic methodologies, advocating for ethics of care and participatory research in digital sexual intimacies. Embracing discomfort and creative non-linearity fosters more inclusive knowledge production, challenging scholars to rethink engagement with vulnerable subjectivities in social sciences.

This paper examines how social media ecosystems have become fundamental workplaces for digital sex work, causing a series of ruptures and changes in the industry. Focusing on Brazilian erotic content creators. It explores how sex workers integrate multiple platforms to sustain their labour and how this ecosystem imposes new forms of governance that shape their working conditions. While social media facilitate visibility and audience-building, they also create structural imbalances, making success dependent on navigating platform policies and adapting to shifting moderation practices.

Grounded in digital labour research and creator studies, the paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork (2021-2024) on Brazil’s most popular sex platforms—OnlyFans and Privacy—alongside social media (Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp and Telegram). It also includes in-depth interviews with 16 erotic content creators, analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Findings reveal that erotic creators strategically assemble a network of platforms, generating interdependent flows of content and audiences and forming a social media ecosystem central to their work. However, this ecosystem demands continuous adaptation and introduces precarious conditions, requiring creators to infer platform guidelines and constantly adapt to shifting moderation policies. Marginalised creators face heightened scrutiny, experiencing disproportionate content removals and account suspensions.

Ultimately, the study argues that digital sex work is shaped by overlapping governance structures—those of social media, sex platforms, and broader regulatory forces—shaping its organisation and regulation. These findings highlight the need for further research into the implications of social media’s governance, particularly in marginalised labour sectors such as sex work.

This paper explores boundary work between pornography and other sexual media among the users of Alastonsuomi (“Naked Finland”), a Finnish-language image gallery dedicated to nudity and sexual self-expression. Building on 31 semi-structured in-depth interviews, it asks how, and in connection to what kinds of content the research participants – who actively engage in sexually explicit self-shooting – evoke the notion of porn. Within this, distinctions become drawn between different platforms, aesthetic qualities, as well as social and personal meanings.

This study examines Pornhub’s relationship to content creators through its software infrastructure. Adopting the information systems and management framework of ‘boundary resources’, I analyze the Modelhub program; a popular set of software features through which verified creators on Pornhub organize and monetize their content since 2018. Through a boundary resource ‘tuning’ approach (Eaton et al. 2015), I articulate how Pornhub both ‘secure’ their system and ‘resource’ their network via Modelhub in a dialectic process to achieve strategic goals. This project identifies Modelhub as a ‘platform tool’ (Mahetaji and Nieborg 2024) developed to encourage the economically productive participation of cultural producers. By documenting platform tool developments via Modelhub, I ground the Pornhub-creator dynamic in material conditions of the platform’s infrastructure. My findings invert observations of boundary resource tuning on other platforms, showing that Pornhub promotes securing efforts (ie: banning content, stricter verification), while de-emphasizing its resourcing of creators. I argue that the maligned cultural status of pornography informs how this platform enacts infrastructural developments which are subject to, and conveyed around, reputation management. Resourcing creators subtly and emphasizing network restrictions in response to anti-porn bias shapes both the functional and conceptual platform-creator relationship around socio-cultural attitudes disparaging pornography.