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This chapter examines the phenomenon of internet users attempting to report and prevent online child sexual exploitation (CSE) and child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in the absence of adequate intervention by internet service providers, social media platforms, and government. The chapter discusses the history of online CSE, focusing on regulatory stances over time in which online risks to children have been cast as natural and inevitable by the hegemony of a “cyberlibertarian” ideology. We illustrate the success of this ideology, as well as its profound contradictions and ethical failures, by presenting key examples in which internet users have taken decisive action to prevent online CSE and promote the removal of CSAM. Rejecting simplistic characterizations of “vigilante justice,” we argue instead that the fact that often young internet users report feeling forced to act against online CSE and CSAM undercuts libertarian claims that internet regulation is impossible, unworkable, and unwanted. Recent shifts toward a more progressive ethos of online harm minimization are promising; however, this ethos risks offering a new legitimizing ideology for online business models that will continue to put children at risk of abuse and exploitation. In conclusion, we suggest ways forward toward an internet built in the interests of children, rather than profit.

While there has been a significant amount of research conducted on growth hormone (GH) in the field of medicine, very few studies have actually examined the experience from the vantage point of adults who were treated for short stature as children. On the basis of in-depth interviews with three women and two men, I explore the experiences of those who have firsthand knowledge of such treatment. What becomes clear in these narratives is that GH serves as both a normalizing and a stigmatizing force for the recipient. More broadly, this study seeks to contribute to the growing body of research on issues of physical appearance that plant the seeds for unequal treatment of individuals by society.

While digital technologies have led to many important social and cultural advances worldwide, they also facilitate the perpetration of violence, abuse and harassment, known as technology-facilitated violence and abuse (TFVA). TFVA includes a spectrum of behaviors perpetrated online, offline, and through a range of technologies, including artificial intelligence, livestreaming, GPS tracking, and social media. This chapter provides an overview of TFVA, including a brief snapshot of existing quantitative and qualitative research relating to various forms of TFVA. It then discusses the aims and contributions of this book as a whole, before outlining five overarching themes arising from the contributions. The chapter concludes by mapping out the structure of the book.

This story tells a version of my life as an ethnographer and symbolic interactionist. From an early age, I was intrigued by how people interacted and created meaningful worlds for themselves and by my own motives, actions, thoughts, and feelings. Later, as a student of sociology, my eyes were opened to the macro forces that constrained, liberated, and influenced actions, identities, and performances. Eventually, I located myself on the margins of sociology, as I experienced the constraints of mainstream sociology and how this perspective limited what and how I could study and write. I was drawn to a wider interdisciplinary community of scholars who examined experience more concretely and emotionally, and I began to work comfortably in the spaces between social science and literature, self and other, research and story. I now view myself more as a writer communicating heartfelt stories for the purpose of opening up and evoking conversations and emotional responses from readers than a reporter giving an account of what she has seen, heard, and analyzed from a distance, a researcher who works with others rather than one who collects data on them. In my current collaborative witnessing project with Holocaust survivors, I have come full circle, connecting macrohistory and structure with personal storytelling and integrating my sociological eye with a communicative heart.