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Designing for pro-social interventions and responses to reduce online harms

Topic Description

Women are at higher risk of experiencing online violence, harassment and sexualised abuse globally. According to the Institute of Development (Hicks, 2021), 16-58% of women have experienced online gender-based violence.

There are many formal and informal interventions and responses to online violence against women and girls, which mainly focus on the traditional model of victim-perpetrator (Tsend, et al. 2022). For example, some intervention and educational programs prioritise women's self-help and protection. However, these generic anti-abuse strategies and tactics are less effective in reducing online harms (Jane, 2016). Many socio-technical factors contribute to such limited effectiveness, for example, the simplistic views of perpetrators as ‘bad actors’ (Bellini, 2024) and limiting the problem of online violence to perpetrators and victims rather than the entire community (Mulla et al., 2022).

This PhD aims to explore how to shift the responsibility for caring about women’s online safety from women (victims) to other actors in the ecosystem and to design and evaluate socio-technical systems or interventions that enhance pro-social responses in a timely and effective manner. Topics could be but are not limited to:

  • Promotion of positive masculinities (Daoud et al. 2022)
  • Tech-enabled social media activism and cyberfeminism
  • Supporting bystanders’ interventions and allyship behaviours
  • Serious educational games for young people
  • Responsible design of safer online spaces for women

This PhD will be done in collaboration with the Centre for Protecting Women Online at the Open University. The student will benefit from the centre's expertise, network and partnerships with external partners.

Skills required

  • Qualitative and quantitative research methods
  • Participatory design and prototyping skills
  • Educational or professional background in Computer science, HCI, or equivalent

 

Background reading

Bellini, R. F. (2024). Abusive Partner Perspectives on Technology Abuse: Implications for Community-based Violence Prevention. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8(CSCW1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1145/3637292

Daoud N, Carmi A, Bolton R, Cerdán-Torregrosa A, Nielsen A, Alfayumi-Zeadna S, Edwards C, Ó Súilleabháin F, Sanz-Barbero B, Vives-Cases C, Salazar M (2022). Promoting Positive Masculinities to Address Violence Against Women: A Multicountry Concept Mapping Study. J Interpers Violence. 2023 May;38(9-10):6523-6552. https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605221134641

Hicks, J. (2021). Global evidence on the prevalence and impact of online gender-based violence. K4D Helpdesk Report. Institute of Development Studies. DOI:10.19088/K4D.2021.140

Jane, E. A. (2016) Online misogyny and feminist digilantism Continuum30(3), 284–297. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2016.1166560

Tseng, E., Sabet, M., Bellini, R., Sodhi, H. K., Ristenpart, T., & Dell, N. (2022). Care Infrastructures for Digital Security in Intimate Partner Violence. CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3502038

Mulla, M. M., Haikalis, M., Orchowski, L. M., & Berkowitz, A. D. (2022). The prospective influence of perceived social norms on bystander actions against sexual violence and relationship abuse: A multiple mediation model. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 37(3–4), NP2313–NP2337. https://doi. Org/10.1177/0886260520933035

 

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