About the project
This project examines how youth and young adults experience, understand, and respond to image-based sexual abuse in digital environments. The project focuses in particular on how these experiences are shaped at the intersection of formal law and the rules, algorithms, and reporting systems of digital platforms. In practice, digital platforms both enable and regulate harms, yet responses are often inconsistent due to unclear policies, technological limits, and user responsibilisation.
Method
The project is qualitatively oriented through digital ethnography and interviews. Further, platform policy documents, such as terms of service and community guidelines, will be analysed to assess how IBSA is defined and quasi-regulated by digital platforms.
Objectives
The project aims to explore what tensions, frictions or gaps emerge between experiences with image-based sexual abuse, platform rules and formal legal categories, and what this reveals about the limits of law in digital contexts. Collaborating with the research project 'Digitizing sexual violence', this project seeks to understand people's legal consciousness in relation to technology-facilitated sexual violence.
