Dehumanizing and Excluding: A Research on the Social Perception of Online Sex Work
Maria Laura Bettinsoli (University of Padova)
The literature shows that sex work is often associated with high levels of stigma and dehumanization. Although online sex work—particularly on platforms such as OnlyFans—is becoming an increasingly common form of digital labor, relatively few studies have explored these dynamics in online contexts. The present study aims to address this gap by examining social perceptions of online sex work, focusing on moral threat, victim blaming, and dehumanization. Participants were presented with the same description of a female target across two experimental conditions, which differed only in the platform used for content creation: Instagram or OnlyFans. A total of 580 participants from the general population evaluated the target on measures of perceived deviance, dehumanization, and secondary victimization. The findings indicate that the “OnlyFans” condition (compared to “Instagram”) was associated with higher levels of perceived deviance, dehumanization, and blame attribution, highlighting the persistence of stigmatizing narratives in online environments. These results are discussed in light of the literature on dehumanization as a key precursor to social exclusion.
English 
Italiano