WHY DO MINORS PUBLISH THEIR SELF-GENERATED SEXUAL IMAGES IN DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT? REPLIES FROM RUSSIA

The paper explores the topic under study on ground of international practice and focuses on Russian national state of affairs. The research hypothesis states that the activities under study, while being individual and emotional steps at the beginning, further go beyond individual wishes ad tend to be a sort of organized activities which use the material under study for further pressure. The research goal is to consider cases of youngsters who reveal that they publish their self-generated sexual resources in digital environment with the view to identify the target audiences' reasons for such activities. The above goal is reached through the consideration of the following research questions, related to statistics, minors' cases, psychologists' point of view. Research materials include data from academic publications, law enforcement, official social media. The research methods rest on a qualitative paradigm. The study combined theoretical analysis of statistic data and academic publications, empirical analysis of teens' first hand stories about their sexting experience. The research used ground theory principles and inductive method to implement case-based analysis of particular data from those who survived harm of sexting.