NSFW

<b>An exploration of how and why social media content is tagged as &#147;not safe for work&#148; and an argument against conflating sexual content with risk.</b><p>The hashtag #NSFW (not safe for work) acts as both a warning and an invitation. NSFW tells users &#147;We dare you to click on this link! And by the way don't do it until after work!&#148; Unlike the specificity of movie and television advisories (&#147;suggestive dialogue&#148; &#147;sexual content&#148;) NSFW signals nonspecifically sexually explicit content that ranges from nude selfies to pornography. <i>NSFW</i> looks at how and why social media content is tagged &#147;not safe&#148; and shows how this serves to conflate sexual content and risk. The authors argue that the notion of &#147;unsafety&#148; extends beyond the risk of losing one's job or being embarrassed at work to an unspecified sense of risk attached to sexually explicit media content and sexual communication in general.<br><br>The authors examine NSFW practices of tagging and flagging on a range of social media platforms; online pornography and its dependence on technology; user-generated NSFW content&#151;in particular the dick pic and associated issues of consent desire agency and social power; the deployment of risqu&#233; humor in the workplace; and sexist and misogynist online harassment that functions as an enforcer of inequalities. They argue against the categorical effacement of sexual content by means of an all-purpose hashtag and urge us to shift considerations of safety from pictorial properties to issues of context and consent.</p>