Towards a Theoretical Framework of Image-Based Sexual Abuse

• In Event: Perpetration of Technology-facilitated Abuse: Emerging Frameworks, Methods and Evidence

Abstract

he field of tech-facilitated violence and image-based sexual abuse research is rapidly expanding, but theoretical developments explaining their causes have not kept pace with the empirical scholarship. Most research treats image-based abuse as an extension of unequal gender relations into digital spaces, which provides context for what sanctions such behavior, but does not theorize the motives of the perpetrators of abuse. Scholars working on IPV and coercive control have more fruitfully identified control and power as the goals of perpetrators, but their framework too is limited in its application to dating and intimate partner relationship contexts. Yet image-based abuse is a growing practice among populations of all kinds, including friends, school mates, and even strangers, with new apps and AI technologies making it increasingly easier to partake in such abuse. In this paper, I argue that we need a more robust theoretical intervention on image-based abuse, one that accounts for the social aspects of this phenomenon, and detail how centering identity, performance, and social capital might offer a more productive frame of analysis.

Author

• Anna Gjika, SUNY New Paltz