Michael D. Metha and Dwaine Plaza
We examined the nature and content of 150 ramdonly selected pornographic images available in Usenet newsgroups on the Internet in April 1994. Using content analysis, we identified themes that appear most frequently and explored differences in the type of material posted by commercial and noncommercial users. Results suggest that commercial vendors are more likely to post explicit pornographic material in public access newsgroups to attract new customers to private, pay-per-use bulletin board services.