Sexual Violence and Digital Society: Understanding the human and technosocial factors

As digital modes of communication and participation become further enmeshed into everyday lives, so, too, do these technologies feature in shifting enactments of sexual violence. Over many decades, research has examined various aspects of sexual victimization, as well as its extent, gendered nature, and impacts. However, scholarly examination of the ways in which digital technologies contribute to both the cultures and practices of sexual violence has been slow to develop in comparison to the rapid pace of the technologies themselves. Moreover, although the cybercrime scholarship has examined the role of technology in creating new opportunities and tools for criminally motivated offenders in general, less attention has been paid to the development of conceptual frameworks for understanding the role of technologies in gender-based violences. In this chapter, we move beyond a conventional analysis focused on technology as a mere facilitator of sexual offending, towards a more conceptual framing of the intersection of human, social, and technical factors that contribute to technology facilitated sexual violence (TFSV).