Digital intrusions: technology, spatiality and violence against women

Abstract

Technologies have transformed self-expression, interactions and relationships. Temporal and geographic boundaries have been tested and overcome by instantaneous and borderless contact, communication and monitoring. Unfortunately, this has provided new channels and opportunities to extend and exacerbate gendered violence and other forms of hate. We contend that the unique features of digital harms warrant attention, but ultimately online harms cannot be divorced from those which occur offline. Drawing on what Kelly (1987; 1988; 2012) conceptualised as a ‘continuum of violence’ (and what Stanko, 1985, refers to as climates of ‘unsafety’), digital violence is, we suggest, part of the spectrum of harm to which women are exposed throughout their life-worlds. The industries that create technologies do not exist in a vacuum, and we explore how the workforce, design and management of platforms not only reflects but reinforces ‘offline’ inequalities and facilitates violence. There are challenges in harnessing technology but, in closing, we explore ways that women can claim and create digital spaces to resist violence and seek ‘justice’.