I have identified a number of challenges in collecting and analysing an extensive range of multimodal data: organising data from diverse sources such as magazines, interviews and web pages, capturing data in enough detail to be useful, managing large digital files that require even larger digital resource, and making good use of the visual elements in ‘texts’. In the same way that SPSS, and its kind, is used for statistical analysis (Pallant, 2007; Salkind, 2007), Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) is described as an
effective and efficient way to manage qualitative analysis (Gibbs, 2002; Howitt, 2010). I am a staunch believer that technology can be used better to help qualitative researchers and from the outset I was keen to employ a digital strategy to capture, organise and analyse my data;
however, this turned into a project in and of itself.
I started to use NVivo for the analysis of both my visual and interview data. The NVivo Version 7 software was useful for my interview coding, but could not be used for visual images. I used it to store and play-back recorded interviews, create, code and annotate
transcripts, create a research diary, and organise a plethora of notes and references from other sources. It has been excellent for written and audio material, but I did not find it suitable for doing visual analysis on individual small advertisements (n=982). I note that during the course of my research, the NVivo software has since been developed to enable researchers to capture visual images and web pages (from NVivo Versions 8, 9 and at the time of re-writing, Version 10). The software (in its current version) still requires the researcher to adopt a relatively linear approach and it is still limited in its application to visually analysing relationships between codes – the limits being the ability to see more than one screen at a time, and more than one code at a time. I sought solutions elsewhere which I describe later in this chapter.
Based on Baker’s (2003) work, I hoped entering the individual ads into a database would be useful for identifying collocates (word pairings) but – in the early stages – was stuck at how to analyse the visual data without re-constructing it as verbal text. My assertion was, and remains, that visual data can be analysed usefully – and perhaps more meaningfully – by employing visual tools (Reavey (ed.), 2011; Rose, 2007, 2012). For me, this includes
theoretical ‘tools’ such as semiotics and software applications that incorporate appropriately designed user interfaces for analysis of spatial and structural elements within visual signs.
Early on, I attempted an analysis by transcribing the verbal data and entering visual data using text descriptions to a database. This proved both inefficient and unproductive given the volume of ads (n=982) and the diverse content and form. It also meant that all visual data was converted to limited descriptions. On one hand, I saw this as an initial coding. On the other hand, a level of richness of detail from the actual images was immediately lost.
A further problem I had in designing a computer-assisted framework for my analysis was that I was not sure what elements I wanted to look for in the images, outside of (the rather
vaguely defined) ‘representation of identity’ and (more specifically) depictions of faces, bodies, and ‘sexual content’. In retrospect, this might have been enough given the size of the corpus, but as with all grounded theory, at the early stages it was unclear to me what data would be important. This feature of grounded theory makes using CAQDAS difficult. My uncertainty at the early stages further disrupted my plan to use database software, where – as I discuss earlier – it was unclear whether a meaningful ‘text’ or ‘unit’ would be the individual ad or whole pages.
From my analysis, a database of individual ads would have some benefits such as automated searches (albeit after ads are coded by the researcher). Using a database to analyse individual ads would require an additional code to show that ads appeared on the same page. Additional fields could be added – if the memory and programming resources were available – to add fields that would show collocate (adjoining) advertisements, to allow researchers to address how meaning is made not by individual units, texts or signs, but also by reading them in conjunction with each other. Future work can be done to develop these resources for researchers in academia and industry.
Digital stationery workspaces
Whilst software developers catch up with progress in visual analysis theory and methods, I explored and settled upon the solution of using graphic design software. This is the same type (if not brand) of software that will have been used to create the advertisements and page layouts in the first place! My aim was to replicate the intuitive and hands-on processes that researchers describe when they use ‘pen-and-paper’ methods. I refer to as ‘virtual stationery coding’. Some qualitative researchers playfully refer to having ‘a stationery fetish’ (e.g.
Brown, 2012) and advocate that hands-on, pen-and-paper processes can’t be replicated in software. My standpoint is not ‘can’t be replicated’ but ‘haven’t yet been’ for reasons outside this discussion; that is, except to note that researchers recognise and enjoy a number of the benefits of technology in other processes of academic production, such as word processing and file sharing, where digital technologies were once derided or unimagined .
As a solution, I used a digital scanner and Adobe Photoshop to scan the Trade pages of the first issue (Boyz, 4 July 1991), the first issue where the ‘Escort & Masseurs’ ads first appeared (01 August 1991) and every issue for the rest of that calendar year where Escort /and Masseur ads appeared. From there, I scanned the first issue of each new calendar year.
Boyz now publish digital copies of the magazine that can be viewed online or downloaded as
portable document files (.pdf), but did not keep digital archives until more recently because of the large file sizes. Where that content was available, in particular for issues that were published during my research, I used Adobe Reader and Photoshop to archive the digital copies directly off the internet.
(Figure 4.3, Screenshot of Adobe Illustrator’s layers interface. See Appendix Q for more detail)
Adobe’s interface uses a structure of layers. On top of the scanned pages I created separate layers for each of my codes. Each layer covers all of the previous layers. Layers can be rearranged and linked together, and data can be moved from one layer to another. This allowed me to code my data in a non-linear path, using a non-linear coding strategy. Each code (on its own layer) was given a unique colour and a shape that was useful for
representing its signified data. For example, faces are coded in blue ovals, bodies are coded in orange rectangles, and penises are coded in red oblongs. Shapes can be modified for
variations: solid oblongs are a revealed face or penis, dotted shapes signify hiding or
covering. Codes could be combined or separated, allowing the iterative flexibility advocated and required in qualitative analysis, and particularly grounded theory. Annotations and memos are made on the pages for separate codes or specific years, as required, and copied to NVivo for analysis alongside the interview data (or pasted directly into chapter drafts in Microsoft Word).
The Adobe Illustrator coding structure is able to be applied to verbal, photographic and graphic texts, allowing analysis amongst and between them and making (literal) patterns
instantly visible within and between individual advertisements and across the history of the publication. This allowed me to make ‘maps’ of whole pages of ads and reveal for example, that in 2006, escort ads were laid out with the least ‘sexual’ content (faces) at the front and progressively more graphic content (full-frame penis close-ups) towards the back, and that magazine advertisements have become less explicit since then. See the images below for examples of my workspace in Adobe Illustrator.
(Figure 4.4, Faces and Penises in 2006 and 2011)
Future analysis and coding can also be applied to other titles and media, to make the analysis more multidimensional.28 Using the Adobe software to create a digital stationery workspace allowed me much greater flexibility than conventional graphic tools and stationery. Future research can draw on the findings of this (early) polytextual analysis of body-sex-work
28 Multi-page internet media still presents a challenge to organise in Adobe Illustrator, but future research might employ webpage content design software to analyse webpage visual content in the same way graphic design software has been used to analyse content of the printed page.
advertising by deploying methods that are more focused on pre-defined criteria, informed by some of the possible directions outlined here and in the following chapters. Future
researchers might choose to compare the ads between different parts of a year to look for patterns and determine whether the early January issues are representative of patterns across the whole year. (Certainly, Christmas themed ads provided an interesting insight into the creativity of the advertisers, and in one case helped to identify the advertiser had placed more than one ad within the issue, which was a common trend and an interesting finding (see Chapter 5.)
4.3.5. Limitations
I fully acknowledge that my sample is as not intended to be representative of all men who sell sex in London, or even all men who advertise to sell sex in London. My requests for interviews were either refused or ignored by most of the men I contacted online or by telephone29. Several men did agree to be interviewed on one of three conditions: the first – perhaps most obviously – was that I pay them their working rate for their time. One potential participant phrased it thus, ‘It don’t [sic] matter if you want to talk or fuck. The price is the same’ (Field notes). When I would explain that I had neither the permission nor the resources to pay more than travel expenses, I was refused or ignored.
The second, possibly more interesting and certainly more surprising terms of agreement were requests for sex with/from me. Other men who have done research with men who sell sex report that some men may use this as a possible method of shifting power in the relationship between the research subject and the researcher (Walby, 2012, 2010). Again, explaining that this was not an option, I was usually refused or ignored. Conversely, on two occasions, men who agreed to be interviewed (with no suggestion of sex) still greeted me when we met with
29 I admit I failed to keep an accurate record of how many people declined to take part or the total number of people I contacted which would have provided some context to the relative challenges (or opportunities) I had for recruiting participants.
the expectation that I was seeking sex. In both cases, we mutually apologised for the misunderstanding and they agreed to go ahead with the interview.
Often, a third condition that potential participants made was that the interview should take place immediately, sometimes without even allowing a realistic amount of time to travel. I missed the opportunity to interview at least two men who ‘agreed’ to be interviewed, one because I could not meet him within half an hour, the other because I had other commitments later that afternoon (Field Notes). Neither of those men responded to future contact. Other men agreed in principle to be interviewed in the future but later declined. Apart from disappointment, I did not interpret this with a particular motivation apart from the usual
‘busy-ness’ of Londoners; although, in hindsight, this could have been a hedging strategy to defer me without explicitly rejecting me, on the chance that I might not be one of the ‘time wasters’ I heard about in interviews.
The value of this sample as presented is it is a wider, better representation of the histories and channels of sex work and selling sex than I had anticipated or than perhaps I would have found had I only made cold-calls to the men who are visible in the current escort ads. My research also demonstrates a richer understanding of how ‘sex’ and ‘sex with men’ is defined, accessed, and offered. This disrupts distinctions and boundaries between ‘sex work’ and
‘body work’30and demands broadening or rethinking those definitions or distinctions. Where my research question seeks to specifically address the diversity of subject-positions when gay men advertise to do body-sex-work, this sample has proved very beneficial. I argue the relative homogeneity of my sample has both advantages and disadvantages, and hope that further research can be done with different recruitment criteria.
30 Body work is defined as ‘paid work on the bodies of others’ (Twigg et al., 2011, p.171). It is used to describe a range of services including massage, acupuncture, hairdressing and emphasises the both bodies and labour in diverse ‘treatment’ settings. Here, I use it to denote a narrower range of services that men provide such as massage and touch that is not marketed as explicitly sexual.
4.4. Summary
In this chapter, I have attempted to provide a detailed rationale and description of what I hoped to actually do, some of the challenges I have had to address, and what I have finally done. As a very brief recount of my methodology, I have used multiple forms of data collection: semi-structured interviews, archived magazine advertisements, contemporary online profiles, and personal observations recorded in field notes. I refer to my ethnography as ‘queer’ in regards to its subjects and content, as well as its narrative (characters, timing, settings and structure). My methodology is very much a typical grounded theory in so far as I had come to the subject of sex work with as little experience, involvement, or understanding of it as is perhaps possible. My ambitious design to incorporate multiple data sources
certainly fit the notion that ‘everything is data’. Whilst this created several challenges for me, my solutions were found in my own immersion in the data, and the constant comparison across my ‘data sets’. Even my adoption of – or my realisation that – my grounded theory is valid as a constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006; Mills et al., 2006) emerged from my analysis of the data. My reflections on the queerness and fractal properties of sex work (and grounded theory itself) were grounded in that process of memo writing and constant comparison, including a return to the literature and the concurrent production of new texts.
In the following chapters, I describe the development and evolution of commercial sex advertising in gay scene media, specifically Boyz Magazine and Gaydar.co.uk from 1991 to 2012 and consider these advertisements as spaces of meaning-making, as well as sources of historical and sociological data (Chapter 5). In Chapter 6, I focus my analysis on semiotic readings of advertisements and triangulated with interview data to explore the constructive interrelationship of queer scene advertising and embodiment for gay and bisexual men. I draw on selected themes (the visual, ageing, ethnic identity, and ‘agencies’) and explore how
identities and representations mythologise M$M in London. In Chapter 7, I draw on more interview data and participant-observation data to discuss how selling sex is rationalised as sex that is not unlike the sex that many men in London’s gay scene are having, and in Chapter 8 I go on to examine payment phenomena and attitudes to money. I look at how commercialising sex is rationalised and executed, from the perspective of men offering sex and sexualised body work services. In the Discussion (Chapter 9), I illustrate how my findings on queer scene advertising, queer sexual cultures, and market ideologies
problematise the use of typological models to understand men’s experiences of selling sex in contemporary London. I go on to outline a more relational model that aims to better address the multiple subject-positions of men who sell sex to men by interpreting the significance of their actions which Address Scarcity, Define Performativity, Utilise Embodiment, Locate Contact(s), and Think Temporally.