Sexual Violence in a Digital Age

Abstract

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Technology-Facilitated Stalking and Unwanted Sexual Messages/Images in a College Campus Community: The Role of Negative Peer Support

“…Twenty-one percent (n = 633) received unwanted sexual messages/images, including pornography. Again, comparing this figure with those uncovered by other studies is difficult because of methodological differences, but it is consistent with those found by studies of similar harms using female samples in the same age group (Powell & Henry, 2017). Moreover, Table 5 shows that women who reported receiving pro-abuse informational support were two times more likely to report technology-facilitated stalking than female respondents who did not receive such support.…”

“…Thus, in addition to doing more empirical and theoretical work on technology-facilitated forms of abuse, it is necessary to develop new prevention and intervention strategies. The growing number of experts in the field are collectively emphasizing the importance of avoiding simplistic solutions and the value of a multipronged approach involving legal reforms, education and awareness programs, survivor support services, perpetrator reeducation, and corporate efforts to combat digitized means of gender violence (Clevenger, 2016;DeKeseredy, Dragiewicz, & Schwartz, 2017;Hall & Hearn, 2018;Powell & Henry, 2017). There are, for sure, other initiatives that could be discussed here.…”

Rape in the Nordic Countries

“…The few studies that have been conducted on image-based sexual abuse offenses to date have focussed on the affordances of technology (Langlois & Slane, 2017) or on the problematics of masculinity (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2016) as having impacts on men who share digital sexual images non-consensually. Technological and gendered dynamics are often seen to work together to exaggerate the tendencies of online rape culture (Powell & Henry, 2017). Our study contributes to this discussion by emphasising that although offenders are predominantly male, self-control and situational factors are relevant in explaining who commits image-based sexual abuse.…”

“…By defining image-based sexual abuse as the 'non-consensual creation and/or distribution of private sexual images', McGlynn and colleagues (2017, p. 27) conceptualise a continuum of different kinds of sexual violence related to digital images while also linking such violence to other kinds of sexual violence. The term 'abuse' conveys harm to victims/survivors rather than evoking connections to child exploitation, as found in Henry and Powell's closely related definition of 'image-based sexual exploitation' Powell & Henry, 2017). Henry and Powell's definition (2018) is a sub-concept under the term 'technology-facilitated violence'.…”

“Tailored pornography”

“…Th is can be seen in cases where sexts are shared non-consensually on websites for commercial porn (Maddocks, 2018). Th e crossover from sexting to pornography by way of non-consensual sharing has been researched by, for example, Powell (2015, see also Powell &Henry, 2017b) and Amundsen (2019). However, in this article we take a step back to ascertain if and how the consensual practices of sexting and pornography are interlinked.…”