Forthcoming
Publications

Policy Interventions

Public Scholarship

Invited Talks
& Workshops

Conference
Presentations

MacDonald, Maggie. 2025.  “Porn scholars coming together: founders reflect on 10 years of the SCMS Adult Film History Scholarly Interest Group.” Porn Studies, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2024.2433451.

Webber, Valerie, Maggie MacDonald, Stefanie Duguay, and Fenwick McKelvey. 2023. “Pornhub and Policy: Examining the Erasure of Pornography Workers in Canadian Platform Governance.” Canadian Journal of Communication 48, no. 2 Policy Portal: Regulation (June 1, 2023): 381–404. https://cjc.utpjournals.press/doi/10.3138/cjc.2022-0044.

Karsgaard, Carrie, Maggie MacDonald, and Michael Hockenhull. 2021. “Rename and Resist Settler Colonialism: Land Acknowledgements and Twitter’s Toponymic Politics.” First Monday, January. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v26i2.11454.

Karsgaard, Carrie and MacDonald, Maggie. 2020. “Picturing the Pipeline: Mapping Settler Colonialism on Instagram”  New Media and Society, Special Issue: Understanding the Social in a Digital Age.  22.7. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1461444820912541.

McKelvey, Fenwick and MacDonald, Maggie. 2019. "Artificial Intelligence Policy Innovations at the Canadian Federal Government." Canadian Journal of Communication: Policy Portal, Towards a Canadian Digital and Data Strategy, 44.2. 43-49 https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2019v44n2a3509

Hill, Steph , Hanne Stegeman,  Valerie Webber, Zahra Stardust, Kath Albury, Carolina Are and Maggie MacDonald. 2022. “Integrating Sexual Expression into the Model Regulatory Framework for Platforms” Response to The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)'s proposed regulatory framework for online platforms. Comments from invitees and select members of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). November 30, 2022.

MacDonald, Maggie, and Valerie Webber. “Brief for the Department of Canadian Heritage - Digital Citizen Initiative.” Submission to the Department of Canadian Heritage for public consultation on proposed approach to address harmful content online. September 25, 2021. Read the Full Report here.

MacDonald, Maggie. 2018. “Automation, Precarity, and Canada’s Innovation Plan” Brief in Media, Labour Rights, and AI Innovation in Canada, a Memorandum for Action presented to The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Global Affairs Canada at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, April 18, 2018.

Age-Verification Won’t Save Kids from Harm - But It Will Invade Our Privacy The Globe & Mail, April 9, 2024.

Pornhub Creator Consultations: Report ECP Canada What We Heard Project. November 22, 2023.

Porn, Platforms & Sex Panic YouTube. September 22, 2023.

Complex Pleasures: Selections from the Erotic Film Collection co-curated with Camille Inston. The Bonham Centre’s Sexual Representation Collection, University of Toronto. August 4 - November 30, 2022.

Why are Sex Workers Forced to Wear a Financial Scarlet Letter? The Walrus. September 26, 2022.

Eradicating Sexual Exploitation in Porn Should Not Be at the Expense of Sex Workers with Dr. Rebecca Sullivan & Dr. Val Webber. The Conversation, July 4, 2021.

The Double Exploitation of Deepfake Porn The Walrus. June 10, 2021.

Faking It: Deepfake Porn and Moral Panic Pause Button Issue 5: Whose User Experience? August 1, 2018 [archived]

“Platform Scopophilia: Data, Surveillance, and Pornhub Insights.” Closing Keynote for CAIS2024 the 52nd Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science / l’Association Canadienne des Sciences de l’Information, June 6, 2024.

“Adult Industry Scholars Panel.” XBIZ 2024 Adult Industry Conference. Kimpton Everly Hotel, Los Angeles, CA. January 18, 2024. 

“Media Engagement for Adult Professionals.” XBIZ 2024 Adult Industry Conference. Kimpton Everly Hotel, Los Angeles, CA. January 17, 2024. 

“Success in Graduate Scholarship” Panel for the Centre for Graduate Professional Development, University of Toronto, January 4, 2024. 

“Peeping Platforms: Data, surveillance & Pornhub Insights” for Civic Tech Toronto: HackNight Series. Myhal Centre, June 6, 2023. 

“What Does it Mean to be Critical?: A Multidisciplinary Discussion.” for The Learning Hub, University of Toronto Faculty of Information. November 15, 2022 . 

“Fast Forwarding Porn: Digitization and Its Discontents” archival workshop with Dr. Patrick Keilty, Dr. Cait McKinney and Ferrin Evans. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. University of Toronto. July 7, 2021.

“What’s the Harm in Child Safety?” panel dialogue for #RightsCon2025, Taipei Taiwan February 26, 2025.

“The Great Platform Purge: Boundary resource tuning on Pornhub” at Global Digital Intimacies. University of Amsterdam, NL. June 28, 2024.

“Monstrous Moderation: Pornhub protocols around non-human animated content” for the organized panel Playing (With) Sexy Beasts: Transgression and Monstrosity in Popular Culture at Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference, Boston, MA, March 16, 2024.

“Prudish Payment Processors: Reputation Management and Content Moderation on Pornhub” for the organized panel Pornhub and Beyond: Sexual Politics, Platforms, and Payment Processing in the Public Sphere at American Studies Association (ASA) conference. Montreal, QC. November 3, 2023. 

“The Algorithmic Moderation of Sexual Expression: Pornhub, Payment Processors, and CSAM” at the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference. Philadelphia, USA. October 20, 2023.

“Platform Perversions” at Global Digital Cultures Doctoral Workshop, University of Amsterdam, NL. July 3, 2023.

“Peeping Platforms: Scopophilic surveillance on Pornhub Insights” for the organized panel Domestic Defences: Contextualizing Surveillance in the Private Sphere at Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference, Denver, CO, April 14, 2023.

“Rename and Resist: Twitter’s Toponymic Politics” with Carrie Karsgaard and Michael Hockenhull at Indigenous Resistance in the Digital Age, #InRes2021 digital conference, University of Naples, October 27, 2022.

“Fake Bans & the Fans: Deepfakes on Pornhub” for Sex Tech and the Erotic Imaginary: Mediating Intimacies Online and Off, with L. Comella, Holt, R. and Berg, H. Society for Cinema and Media Studies SCMS 2021, March 17-21, 2021. 

“Rename and Resist: Twitter’s Toponymic Politics” with Carrie Karsgaard and Michael Hockenhull at the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference, October 27 - 31, 2020 (Deferred - COVID-19). 

“Payments, Performers, and Pornhub: Exploring webcam business models” with David Nieborg at Global Digital Cultures, University of Amsterdam Center for Globalization Studies, June 17-18 2020. (Deferred - COVID-19)

“Mapping Toponymic Politics on Twitter in a Settler Colonial State” with Carrie Karsgaard and Michael Hockenhull at Canadian Communications Association, Congress, Western University, London, Ontario June 2 - 5, 2020. (Deferred - COVID-19)

“You won’t last five minutes! An aspirational platform study of Nutaku.net” with Alexander Ross at Canadian Communications Association, Congress, Western University, London, Ontario June 2 - 5, 2020. (Deferred - COVID-19)

“Distributed Intimacies: Changes in Cultures of Online Pornography” at Sexuality Studies Association, Congress, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC. June 2, 2019. 

“Platforms and Pornography: A Walkthrough Approach” at Canadian Communications Association, Congress, June 3 - 6, 2019, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC. June 3, 2019. 

“Faking it: Fan Expressions and Platform Responses to Deepfakes” at Theorizing the Web, April 12-13, 2019, New York, NY. April 12, 2019.

“The High Cost of Free Porn: Platformization of Pornography as a Culture Industry.” at Insidious: Communication Graduate Caucus conference, March 20-21, 2019, Carleton University, Ottawa ON. March 21, 2019.

“Mapping (Anti-)Colonial Issue Publics on Instagram” with Carrie Karsgaard at Understanding the Social in a Digital Age: An Interdisciplinary Conference in Media, Technology, and the Social. University of East Anglia, Norwich UK. January 8, 2019.

“High Stakes Deepfakes.” at Access Points\Points d'Accèss, April 20-21, 2018, Concordia University, Montreal, QC. April 21, 2018.