Sex Work Awareness (SWA) has been named the United States country research partner for the Exploratory Research on Internet & Sexuality (EROTICS) research project, funded by the Association for Progressive Communications. Other research teams are from Brazil, Lebanon-Egypt, South Africa, and India.
We are investigating the use of content filters on library and college computers with Internet access. The priority research areas are access to information about sexuality and sexual reproductive health. We need help with this work, and request that people all over the United States visit their local public library or their college and do some simple searches using the computers provided there. In places with filters, the items that are filtered are not standard across systems. Filtering today cannot be fine-tuned to exclude only pornographic or violent content rather than health information. For example, in a large east coast city, only the word “anal” seemed to be filtered, which prevented people from gaining access to information about anal cancer as well as any potential sexual content.
We hope you will participate and pass on this link to your friends and colleagues throughout the United States! There is the possibility that this site will be blocked by your library or college – to prepare for that possibility, we have made the survey form available as a Word document (click here to download). You can also email us to request the form within the body of an email.
If you have any questions or comments about our research project please email us at research@sexworkawareness.org
