Date of Award
8-2026
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School
Communication
Committee Chair
L. Paul Strait
Committee Chair School
Communication
Committee Member 2
Mohammed Rashid
Committee Member 2 School
Communication
Committee Member 3
Laura Alberti
Committee Member 3 School
Communication
Committee Member 4
Amonia Tolofari
Committee Member 4 School
Communication
Committee Member 5
David R. Davies
Committee Member 5 School
Communication
Abstract
This dissertation examines how pornography is constructed and negotiated as a discourse in U.S. legal and cultural contexts, with a particular focus on Southern states where anti-pornography legislation has recently intensified. Rather than treating these developments as entirely new, the study approaches the conceptualization of obscenity through a genealogical lens to suggest that contemporary anti-pornography discourse rearticulates longer-standing strategies of moral regulation, revealing (dis)continuities in how pornography is framed and governed. Focusing on recent initiatives such as age-verification laws, the project analyzes how legislative discourse draws on rhetorical strategies to define pornography as a cultural threat, reconfiguring older anxieties for the digital age. At the same time, the study explores how individuals in the Southern United States interpret and negotiate pornography and its regulation through surveys and interviews, revealing broader moral and cultural formations while highlighting tensions and continuities between legal discourse and lived experience. The dissertation adopts a multi-level design that combines the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) within Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), qualitative methods, and rhetorical analysis, to examine anti-pornography discourse at two interconnected levels: first, institutional discourse, through a study of 19 contemporary anti-pornography bills from Southern U.S. states as legal and rhetorical artifacts; and second, public perception, through an analysis of how individuals interpret pornography and its regulation. The empirical materials include legislative texts, 88 survey responses, including 63 sets of open-ended responses, and 13 semi-structured interviews, which together allow the study to trace how meaning circulates between institutional authority and lived experience, identifying points of continuity, tension, and contestation. The findings suggest that contemporary anti-pornography discourse frequently reframes longstanding moral concerns through the language of public health, child protection, and technological risk, while public responses simultaneously reproduce, negotiate, and challenge these institutional framings in uneven ways. By bringing together rhetorical, discursive, and qualitative approaches, this dissertation aims to provide a more holistic account of how anti-pornography discourse operates across legal and cultural domains, showing how regulatory efforts are shaped by and continue to shape ongoing transformations in digital environments and everyday experiences of sexuality.
ORCID ID
0009-0006-8493-0767
Copyright
Fernanda Veiverberg
Recommended Citation
Veiverberg, Fernanda, "“Not your Daddy’s Playboy”: Mapping (Dis)Continuities in Contemporary Anti-Pornography Discourses" (2026). Dissertations. 2490.
https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/2490
Included in
Communications Law Commons, Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Genealogy Commons, Internet Law Commons, Sexuality and the Law Commons, Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons