Technology-Facilitated Violence: Harms, Attitudes and Victimisation Experiences

Session Submission Type: Pre-arranged Panel

Abstract

Technology-facilitated violence (TFV) is a global problem with social, economic, physical, psychological and health consequences. Research suggests perpetrators are commonly engaging in this form of abuse to harass, monitor, stalk, and emotionally and psychologically harm victim-survivors. The term TFV is wide ranging, but generally refers to the use of mobile and digital technologies in perpetrating both online and face-to-face harms. This may include various forms of online harassment, monitoring and control, emotional abuse and threats, domestic and family violence, and sexual and image-based abuse behaviours. This panel brings together scholars from Australia and Europe to examine emerging forms of TFV, including sexualised deepfake abuse, digital domestic violence, dating abuse, and sextortion, and seeks to provide empirical and conceptual frameworks for better understanding TFV, with a key focus on gender. Drawing from a mix of qualitative interviews, an online quantitative experiment across three nations, focus groups, a national survey, and case study analyses, the panel includes discussions of victim-blaming and harm minimisation attitudes towards sexualised deepfake abuse based on race and gender, young people’s understandings of sexualised deepfakes, digital domestic violence forms and impacts, sextortion victimisation experiences, and the safety work engaged in by (predominantly) women to avoid online and face-to-face harms when using dating apps.

Subtopic

• Topic 3: Crime Correlates / Gender and Crime (Gender, Crime and Justice WG)

Chair

• Asher Flynn, Monash University, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

Individual Presentations

• Disrupting sexualised deepfake abuse: Exploring young people's postdigital sexual ethics - Ruby Sciberras, Monash University, CEVAW

• Gendered and racialized perceptions of sexualised deepfake abuse in three nations: Victim-blame and the minimisation of harms across Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States - Asia Eaton, Florida International University; Asher Flynn, Monash University, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women; Adrian J. Scott, University of Goldsmiths; Anastasia Powell, RMIT University

• Increasing male victims of sexual offences: An analysis of sextortion cases - Edel Beckman, Clinical Criminologist at PermessoNegato APS

• Navigating safety on dating apps: The hidden labour of ‘safety work’ - Elena Cama, University of New South Wales

• The role of gender in victimisation of digital domestic violence - Michel Walrave, University of Antwerp; Wim Hardyns, Ghent University, Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law; Koen Ponnet, imec-mict, Department of Communication Sciences, Ghent University; Catherine Van de Heyning, University of Antwerp; Mona Giacometti, University of Antwerp; Aurelie Gilen, University of Antwerp