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A HyperLink Network Analysis of

the UK Mobile Porn Industry

Steven McDermott Institute of Communications StudiesUniversity of Leedscssem@leeds.ac.uk

Abstract

The Internet is optimistically regarded as a force for democracy and at the same time

another mechanism by which the poor and weak become further disempowered

(Calhoun, 1998). Computer mediated communication enhances the current power

structures while reinforcing the exploitation of those who are most vulnerable. By

recognising the dominance of online pornography, Internet Service Providers and the

communications industry are willing to accept the profits generated in working with

the porn industry while ignoring the price being paid by the most visible, and yet

voiceless agents. In doing so the Internet is awash with easily accessible pornographic

imagery with mobile phones viewed as an even bigger market. With the demand for

such material being the driving force for broadband usage and with the expansion of

the use of mobile phones for downloading videos, I will ask; ‘which United Kingdom

companies are the keyplayers? Are there structural holes within the networks,

ensuring ‘deniability’ for the larger industrial players?’ I target online websites of the

‘adult entertainment’ industry in the UK using HyperLink analysis in order to extract

the social network. This then enables me to conduct social network analysis

uncovering the keyplayers of the UK porn industry with higher levels of “closeness

centrality” and “betweenness centrality” (de Nooy et al., 2005). Closeness centrality

and betweenness centrality are regarded as measures of power within a given

network. This paper is an exploratory analysis of the dominant players shaping the

UK mobile porn industry, searching for tentative links between the providers and the

industrial players that have enabled the distribution of the material via the Internet and

mobile phones.

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Introduction

The proliferation of new communications and information technologies are

facilitating the continued exploitation of women and girls (Hughes, 2002). People can

now easily buy and sell images and videos that are pornographic. The pornography

industry operates as any other industry does under capitalism. It is constantly seeking

new markets and where none exists, creating one.

The so-called ‘free stuff’ offered on the Internet;

is either a product that gets you hooked on to another one or makes you just consume more time on the net. After all, the goal of access people and telecoms is to have users spend as much time on the net as possible, regardless of what they are doing. The objective is to have you consume bandwidth. (Horvarth, 1998 cited in Terranova, 2004)

The paper is concerned with the mainstream space of flows of a highly commercial

activity on not just the Internet but mobile devices, the production and distribution of

pornography. The pornography industry is heavily reliant on the mainstream media

for the dissemination of their material. Where once the consumer of pornography had

to traverse a terrain that was policed, prohibited, regulated and hidden in the

periphery of spaces; now the consumption of digitised pornographic imagery is

achieved via fibre optic cable linked to personal computer terminals. With the advent

of portable video devices, from the 3G mobile phone to the iPod, this paper examines

the developing mainstream network of producers and distributors of pornography, its

limits and the next wave of distribution of pornography via ‘free stuff’ mobile sites or

“mini-porn” (Musgrove, 2005). This distribution takes place while the corporations

make assertions about their levels of social responsibility.

The United Kingdom (UK) Internet pornography industry is defined here as any adult

orientated website that is accessible to anyone online or via mobile phone, and the

businesses and companies that help or aid in the distribution of such content. It does

not cover newsgroups or peer-to-peer exchange of pornographic material. The

geographic location of this industry is not determined by the location of the servers

but by the business strategies employed by global pornographers in targeting the UK.

The pornography industry is regarded as one of the most advanced in terms of

utilising technology and now major corporations are attempting to profit from this

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industry without being seen to be associated with the production process and

exploitation that accompanies it (Devaney, 2002). In 2002 Penthouse was said to be

on the brink of bankruptcy (Devaney, 2002). The industry that was once dominated

by magazines has seen revenue drop and is fighting for survival. Their declining

profits made via the exploitation of women may be about to see a turn-around.

A survey conducted by the British ISP Homecall, found that 23 per cent of UK

residents are getting broadband in order to access pornography, and it is the most

important factor when getting broadband (Orlowski, 2004). The pornography industry

is important to the Internet because of its consumption of bandwidth (Zook, 2003).

Perdue (cited Zook, 2003) estimates that the pornography industry pays US $1.9

billion for bandwidth charges per annum. Developments in new media can be the best

thing to happen to old media (Orlowski, 2004).

Only twenty days after the launch of the video iPod on the 12 th of October 2005, the

firm Apple announced that it had sold 1 million videos and television shows at $1.99

each. Podcasts can also be downloaded via Apples ITunes Music Store. According to

Bakker and Taalas (2007), within 24 hours of launching, 500,000 video clips were

downloaded from Suicidegirls website (suicidegirls.com) which offers short ‘adult’

movies. After 3 days, 1 million short movies had been downloaded from the website

(Kahney, 2005). The Sony created Playstation Portable, is also making pornographic

material available, although they describe the development as undesirable and insist

that it is the open source nature of Universal Media Discs (UMDs, an open source

format for digital movies). Niizumi believes the company has learned from the

Betamax and VHS debacle, “that adult-oriented movies can significantly affect the

expansion of a new media format” (Niizumi, 2005). Consequently, third generation

mobile phones (3G) are expected to contribute to the dissemination of pornographic

content and generate large revenues for the businesses concerned.

The claims of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by the industrial players needs to

be something other than hollow assertions of misguided virtue (Henderson, 2001).

It is the paramount duty of the Board of Directors to oversee the CEO and other senior management in the competent and ethical operation of the Company on a day-to-day basis and to assure that the long-term interests of the shareholders are being served. To satisfy this duty, the directors will take a proactive, focused approach to

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their position, and set standards to ensure that the Company is committed to business success through maintenance of the highest standards of responsibility and ethics.(http://www.apple.com/investor/)

Recent developments in the distribution of pornography and alleged profits to be

made show the emptiness of such assertions. A report titled Mobile Adult Content

2008 Securing revenue from adult entertainment published in July of 2008 targeting

UK consumers by Visiongain views the dissemination and profiteering from

pornography as a “success story”. Any moral issue is reduced to a ‘relative’ matter

with the financial rewards far out–weighing any moral imperative:

On the internet, pornography has been one of the few success stories in terms of revenue generation. Pornography is increasingly becoming available on mobile around the world. Can you afford to ignore mobile adult content? […]Opinions on adult content will continue to differ, from person to person, from country to country. Nevertheless there is no doubting that mobile adult content can reap rewards for mobile operators, content producers, aggregators and distributors. There are though a number of moral issues that must be taken in to account such as content filtering and age verification. Laws and regulations in different countries are also having an effect on what services can be offered. (Available at http://www.visiongain.com/Report.aspx?rid=271 viewed 13/08/2008)

According to Schalken (2000), the Internet would contribute to democracy as a public

sphere. It would enhance civil liberties (Percy Smith, 1995), increase accountability

(Hague & Loader 1999), increase associational activity (Klein, 1999), and

participation (White, 1997; Lenk, 1999 cited Hague & Loader, 1999). When making

such grandiose predictions the best approach to theory building is as Howard (2001)

states, “[t]heories in social science tend to come from rich detailed investigation and

only later are tested on simplified aggregated data.” While much of the research

conducted on the Internet tends towards the exaggerated claims of its democratising

effect, Hughes (2002) argues to the contrary:

The use of new communication and information technologies for the sexual exploitation of women and children is creating a crisis for women and children’s status, rights and dignity all over the world. Pimps, traffickers, stalkers, and users of pornography and women and children in prostitution have adopted new technologies to further their abuse and exploitation of women and children.(Hughes, 2002:146)

Bohman (2004) asserts that the hope that the Internet would replace sound-bite

television with an electronic democracy has failed. Sunstein and Shapiro (Cited

Bohman, 2004) argue that the Internet has undermined the sort of public sphere and

political interaction needed to engender genuine democratic deliberation.

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Not acknowledging that Internet technology and technology in general is embedded in

the social context leads to technological determinism. As Calhoun (1998) asserts, the

Internet may do a little to undermine the prevailing domination of elites, be they

classified as male or ‘corporations’ but it does manage to do rather a lot to ensure the

continued domination of the weak by the powerful.

Social Network Analysis

It is rarely that we find a community that is absolutely isolated, having no outside contact. At the present moment of history, the network of social relations spreads over the whole world, without any absolute solution of continuity anywhere. This gives rise to a difficulty which I do not think that sociologists have really faced, the difficulty of defining what is meant by the term ‘a society’. They do commonly talk of societies as if they were distinguishable, discrete entities…Is the British Empire a society, or a collection of societies? Is a Chinese village a society, or merely a fragment of the Republic of China? (Radcliffe-Brown, 1940:224)

In adherence with Nadel (cited Cavanagh, 2007) the important factor is to not to

arbitrarily select a unit of analysis to study. The network is discovered through

empirical evidence rather than imposed by the researcher at the beginning. In this

instance I am allowing the network to be uncovered by the business industry report

rather than the process of HyperLink network analysis.

So what is a network? According to Cavanagh (2007) there are five core features of

social network analysis’s networks. Networks act to constrain the actions of

individuals, networks are in principle universal, networks do not affect the identity of

the individual components of them, networks are formed voluntarily but patterns

remain culturally specific, networks are not reducible to the aims of the actor involved

and social network analysis uses networks as a method of studying networks rather

than arguing “that they are a structure in their own right.”(Cavanagh, 2007:29)

Social Network Analysis has developed into a formal, mathematical technique of

analysing relational data. It is concerned with the contacts, ties and connections, group

attachments and meetings (Scott, 2000:3). “The relations are not the properties of the

agents themselves, but of systems of parts; these relations connect pairs of agents into

larger relational systems.” (Scott, 2000:3). The appropriate method for the analysis of

relational data is network analysis which is made up of qualitative measures of

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network structures. The emphasis is placed on the ‘structure’ of social action.

“Structures are built from relations” (Scott, 2007:4). Social meaning is actively

constructed by the group members of the network based on the perceptions and

experiences of the context in which they are operating. Paths of connections or

geodesics run between the groups and these paths divide the groups into distinct

regions. Regions are separated from each other by a lack of paths (Scott, 2007:11).

Paths run within the regions but not between the regions. It is these regions that are

viewed as constraints or boundaries. These boundaries are regarded as the ‘forces’

that determine group behaviour.

American Social Network Analysis on the other hand prefers to work with the concept

of the ‘network’ as a geographical metaphor instead of a structural metaphor.

Emphasis is placed on the communicative aspect of the network therefore seeing the

ties as facilitators and not constraints or boundaries. The communicative basis of the

network leads to the erosion of the distinction between organisational networks and

interpersonal ones (Scott, 2000:33-36). It is more concerned with ‘intensity’ and

‘strength’ not ‘reciprocity’ and ‘durability’. The focus is on a form of social capital

which facilitates action while at the same time arguing that individual components

retain their pre-existing identities (Cavanagh, 2007).

Actor-Network theory defines the social as a series of conduits or bridges that

facilitate the flow of information, resources and ideas around a society. Actor-

Network theory is primarily concerned with an investigation of power. It is concerned

with the way that ideas and beliefs are formed and developed in a society. Power

emerges from interaction which, similar to society and the social order is something

that is always in process. This is different to the anthropological concentration on

structures that are fixed and rigid over time. For Actor-Network theory society is

temporarily situated, it can be activated and de-activated and is in a state of constant

creation and re-creation. Actor-Network theory is not so much a theory rather it is a

set of procedures to aid in the investigation of the social. It is a methodology not a

method. The points or nodes in a network are regarded as potentially equal with

regards to power. The ‘forces’ that shape the interaction and the network are

themselves generated by the network in the interplay of the component parts that

comprise the network (Cavanagh, 2007:33-34). The power of a network resides in the

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interactive and generative mechanism of the network itself. The network according to

Actor-Network theory behaves as if it is a thing, a separate phenomenon from the

component parts that make it up. Actor-Network theory networks are not only

comprised of people and personal connections but also texts, objects and a diverse

array of material. The network as a whole, the materials, the nodes, the links, and the

images do not possess fixed properties so agency is a property of the initial goal that

resulted in the creation and formation of the network (Cavanagh, 2007:37).

Finally, according to Castells (2000) networks are comprised of personal contacts,

places, technologies and functions. The elements within the network have been

carefully selected and therefore there is exclusion. Networks are exclusionary and

particular, therefore not universal. The network is therefore regarded as an actor in its

own right and yet it is still dependent on all parts according to Castells (2000). The

heterogeneity of all the parts is vital for its continuation. Networks are said to operate

globally and are patterned by global imperatives making them globally orientated in

order to maintain the dominant interests of the elite.

HyperLink Network Analysis

Social network analysis seeks to trace the flow of information that passes through a

network of relations. Garrido and Halavais argue, “A map of the communication

network is roughly isomorphic to the structure of the relationships among the users

(2003).”

Creating a Website, the webmaster ties their own efforts to those with similar interests

using hyperlinks. Designing and placing a hyperlink is an act that requires a certain

level of hypertext mark-up language (html) knowledge and as Adamic and Adar

(2001) state, a form of cognitive, social or structural connection between the websites.

Jackson (1997) and Kling (2000, cited in Garrido & Halavais, 2003) indicate that,

“Hyperlinks represent reasonable approximations of social relationships.”

In hyperlink analysis, the unit of analysis can be a Website or a hyperlink. In this

instance, the unit of analysis are websites and the hyperlinks contained within them.

Hyperlinks allow actors or groups of actors to form social and communicative

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relations. Jackson (1997) suggests that the methods of social network analysis maybe

useful in understanding the relations of computer mediated social processes (Garton,

Haythornthwaite & Wellman, 1997). Hyperlinks are not just technological tools but

social channels. Web sites are actors with hyperlinks among websites representing a

relational link (Park, 2003). A hyperlinked system exchanges information and

cooperates around a given shared background, interest or project.

In this paper, the focus is on websites that are connected with the production,

aggregation or dissemination of pornographic material and so-called ‘adult

services/entertainment’. Using the tools of social network analysis applied to

hyperlinks I use measures of closeness centrality and betweenness centrality to assess

which websites are more ‘important’ to the flow of information. The closeness

centrality score of a particular website indicates the number of other websites divided

by the sum of all distances (the shortest path or geodesic between two websites)

between the website and all other websites (de Nooy et al., 2005). A website’s

position indicates whether it has access to information and better opportunities to

spread information. In a highly centralised network, information spreads easily but the

centre is indispensible for the transmission of information. As the network of websites

becomes less centralised the possibility of the information flow being distorted

increases. Closeness centrality is based on how easily a website is reachable in the

network (de Nooy et al., 2005). Another method, the betweenness centrality, of

assessing the ‘importance’ of a website in the network is to measure how large a role

it plays as an intermediary (de Nooy et al., 2005). How many flows of information are

disrupted by a website becoming inaccessible or inactive? If a website is removed

from the network how many detours are required to access other websites, which

websites control the flow of information because of their position in the network? To

paraphrase de Nooy et al. (2005) “The betweenness centrality of a [website] is the

proportion of all hyperlinks between pairs of other [websites] that include this

[website].”

Data Collection

The companies listed in the Mobile Adult Content 2008 – Securing Revenue from

Adult Entertainment’ industrial report, are the starting points of the data collection. I

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searched for and retrieved the URLs for 171 of the 179 companies listed. The list

includes movie production companies, distributers, mobile infrastructure companies,

magazines and a small number of child protection agencies. This list of 171 URLs

was then entered as the seeds for the Hyperlink network extraction. As this research is

in its initial stages this paper focuses on the network generated by the original list of

seed URLs. The boundaries of networks are a contentious methodological issue

within social network analysis and anthropological studies of networks. These

methodological considerations are not the focus of this research paper. However

insight into the nature of the flows of information can be gained from a limited

awareness of the methodological debate.

According to Park (2003), data on hyperlink networks can be gathered using two

methods. The first involves the researcher observing the sites and the second uses

computer-assisted measurements. The use of human coders in the observational

method does allow error to enter the process; it would also involve high labour costs

if a large network were to be assessed. During this particular study it was also felt to

be inappropriate for the researcher concerned, especially as the data was gathered

using a shared public access personal computer. I used the second method of

computer-assisted measurements for this research, namely Issuecrawler1. An initial

list of companies associated with the United Kingdom pornography industry was

obtained via a list compiled for the ‘Mobile Adult Content 2008 – Securing Revenue

from Adult Entertainment’ industrial report.2 From this list I was able to compile a list

of website addresses or URLs to be used as seeds for the hyperlink analysis in August

of 2008. The parameters were set as follows; number of iterations 2, crawl depth 2,

co-link analysis by site and privileged starting point was on. The sociomatrices was

generated using Netdraw. I also used the data to conduct social network analysis

focusing on betweenness centrality, closeness centrality and degree.

This list of 171 URLs was then entered as the seeds for the HyperLink network

extraction; this yielded a network containing 970 nodes or websites, as the following

figure shows:

11 http://www.issuecrawler.net/index.php22 http://www.visiongain.com/Report.aspx?rid=271

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Figure 1 Results of crawl of 171 seed URLs resulted in a network of 970 nodes.

I then manually removed all 835 nodes/websites that were not part of the initial seed

list of 171. I also left the obviously pornographic URLs of websites (such as Hustler)

on the list and then conducted a betweenness and closeness centrality test on the

remaining 135 nodes. These can be seen in the following figure:

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Figure 2 UK Mobile Porn Industry, 135 nodes with paths. Colour of node depicts core grouping. Nodes grouped vertically to the left are not connected but appeared in the original list 179 companies.

The most ‘important’ 21 websites of the UK mobile porn industry with higher levels

of closeness centrality and betweenness centrality are listed below in Table 1.

ID DegreeBetweenness Centrality

ClosenessCentrality

apple.com 20 1798.407 5011

sonyericsson.com 8 1202.451 5020

ipcmedia.com 6 962.358 5090

vodafone.com 10 881.174 5004

ofcom.org.uk 10 817.146 5023

timewarner.com 5 736.25 5166

symbian.com 12 693.345 5010

aol.com 7 667 5251

opera.com 10 641.4 5030

mbill.biz 7 457.215 5022

o2.co.uk 9 426.642 5036

att.com 7 401.817 5032

nttdocomo.com 9 344.389 5022

eplus.com 6 324.47 5067

mxtelecom.com 9 316.006 5063

t-mobile.co.uk 5 295.907 5043

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verizonwireless.com 3 291.733 5103

nokia.com 6 279 5050

motorola.com 9 261.621 5021

newscorp.com 4 241.655 5092Table 1 List of Top 21 Industry leaders by Betweenness Centrality

Results

All information presented in this section regarding the nature of the businesses was attained

directly from their respective websites. The top 21 companies, according betweenness

centrality measures, facilitating the distribution of pornographic material, including images

and video, as well as their mainstream ‘ethical’ content are Apple Inc. Apple however,

promotes itself as a provider of digital music. It boasts of having sold over 110

million iPods and over three billion songs from its iTunes online store, which also appears in

the network and is reputed by others to facilitate the downloading of pornography from third

parties. The second company to appear on the list is SonyEricsson. Their mission, according

to their website (sonyericsson.com), is to ensure that SonyEricsson becomes “the most

attractive and innovative global brand in the mobile handset industry”. IPCMedia, which is

owned by Time Warner Inc., is a leading UK consumer magazine publisher with 80

magazines including Woman & Home, Ideal Home, Loaded and Nuts. Time Warner Inc’s

business includes interactive services (including AOL), cable systems, filmed entertainment,

television networks and publishing on a global scale. IPCMedia claims that almost “two in

every three UK women and over 45% of UK men read an IPC magazine. That's almost 27

million UK adults”. Another distributer is Newscorp, who create and distribute “top-quality

news, sports and entertainment around the world”.

AT&T, Vodafone Group Plc, o2, T-Mobile, NTT Docomo and Verizonwireless are mobile

phone service providers with a global reach, with mobile telephone networks in Europe, the

Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and the United States. Mbill.biz and mxtelecom.com enable

payments for WAP/XHTML site billing to be made from your mobile phone.

Symbian OS and Opera are the market leading open operating systems for advanced mobile

phones such as 3G. They have created systems that allow the costumer to surf or view the

entire Internet on smartphones, 3G and Personal Digital Assistant (a palmed sized device).

ePlus, enables companies to co-ordinate all aspects of using technology that operate

within a variety of markets including but not limited to Financial Services/Banking,

Utilities, Pharmaceutical Manufacturing and Distribution, Telecom/ISP, Legal, Retail

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and Fortune 500. They also service the Public Sector at the level of local

Government, Federal Government, and Higher Education in the United States.

Ofcom is the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK

communications industries. Ofcom is the only site in the top 21 list of the network that

is not directly profiting from the distribution of pornographic material. Its presence

indicates an acknowledgement of the existence and continued monitoring of the

companies involved. It might also be added that their presence adds a sense of legality

and legitimacy to the exploitation of the women involved.

Discussion

Closeness centrality and betweenness centrality are regarded as measures of power

within a given network. The goal of the telecommunications industry is to have users

spend as much time on the net as possible, whether that is shopping, listening to

music or downloading pornography. Regardless of what they are doing online they

are downloading digital information that is charged to the consumer and the provider.

The objective is to increase bandwidth consumption. Allusions to social responsibility

are simply misguided. The current provider of pornographic material as evident in the

graph is Penthouse, which is one geodesic from Apple Inc., in figure 2. Apple then

openly allows for its vast iTunes ‘music download’ business to facilitate the

distribution of pornographic material from third sources.

Networks are said to operate globally and are patterned by global imperatives making

them globally orientated in order to maintain the dominant interests of the elite. The

fact that the Hyperlink network analysis does not result in a UK centred network is

not a surprise. The network is dominated by companies founded and based in the

United States of America (Apple Inc.) and a mobile phone producer with a global

reach (SonyEricsson), the gateway into the UK market is via IPCMedia which

distributes an old media form - magazines. This is not a surprise with the global reach

of numerous technology companies and the revitalisation of older media as a result of

the Internet.

The business model proposed for the continued distribution of pornographic material

via mobile phones is a model dominated by the mainstream media, which is a model

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that is geared towards increasing the revenue of paid websites, such as Penthouse.

This strategy includes major media producers such as Timewarner, magazines such as

Loaded and Nuts, and mobile service providers such as O2 and Virginmobile. Another

strategy employed not only by the pornography industry is the so-called ‘free-stuff’

and this approach is exemplified in sites such as youporn, pornotube and redtube

(Helmore, 2007). On these sites access to pornographic movies and images does not

require a paid membership. It must be remembered however that the downloading of

such material will use the consumers bandwidth allocation.

The interactive generative relational model amongst a multi-tiered distribution

network, called for by the Mobile Adult Content 2008 – Securing Revenue from Adult

Entertainment’ industrial report is not a surprise. The next step for the continued

creation of a new market for pornographic material is a shift to the ‘free stuff’

pornography model. The membership free model for the distribution of mobile

pornography in order to expand the reach of the industry and attract new customers is

pending. The webmaster of such a site is not dependent on membership for the

generation of revenue but requires the advertising of sites that require membership.

The technology is freely available in the network to convert ‘free’ online pornography

sites to mobile sites. This combined with a ‘culture of acceptability’ of pornography

in the mainstream media heralds the continued expansion of the UK mobile porn

industry.

The presence of Ofcom which focuses on limiting the availability of child

pornography and ‘extreme pornography’ merely indicates an acknowledgement of the

existence and continued monitoring of the companies involved. Ofcom however,

continues to provide legitimacy for the exploitation of women and girls in UK society.

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