Search results

Polyvictimization means looking at multiple victimizations of different kinds that one person has experienced. Virtually, all of the work in this field focuses on the effects of childhood trauma and victimization on currently distressed children, and empirical and theoretical work on the intertwining of adult female offline and online abuse experiences is in short supply. Recently, however, some scholars are starting to fill these research gaps by generating data showing that technology-facilitated violence and abuse are part and parcel of women's polyvictimization experiences at institutions of higher education. This chapter provides an in-depth review of the extant social scientific literature on the role technology-facilitated violence and abuse plays in the polyvictimization of female college/university students. In addition to proposing new ways of knowing, we suggest progressive policies and practices aimed at preventing polyvictimization on the college campus.

Bystander apathy has been a source of debate for decades. In the past half-century, psychologists developed theoretical frameworks to understand bystander activity, commonly referred to as bystander intervention models (BIMs). More recently, BIMs have been modified to facilitate initiatives to prevent various forms of online victimization. This chapter begins with a review of BIMs and recent applications of bystander intervention research to online environments. We also present several future directions for research along with applications for reducing technology-facilitated violence, including programming recommendations and theoretical development.

This integrative literature review aims to explore themes within higher education that may be applicable to leadership education including: descriptions of trauma, trauma-informed practices and trauma-informed practitioners.

Integrative, systematic literature review.

The results suggest that trauma and trauma-informed practices may have a place in leadership education pedagogy.

There is no work being done in trauma informed practice in leadership education. This study provides future direction for both research and practice.

In the early 2010s, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) became increasingly concerned about incidents of academic workplace “bullying” on the campus, and in 2014–2016 created policies designed to address such behavior at the University. The new policies and accompanying initiatives were implemented in 2017, defining a new term to describe these behaviors as “hostile and intimidating behavior” (HIB). We use data from three sources to explore the outcomes of the new HIB policies and initiatives to date. Evaluation data from training sessions show the importance of educating the campus community about HIB, providing evidence that the training sessions increase HIB knowledge. Data from two campus-wide surveys measure incidence of HIB for different groups on campus (e.g., analysis by gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability status, rank, job duty, and/or the intersection of these characteristics), as well as changes in the knowledge about HIB as reported by faculty and staff. These data show that UW-Madison faculty and staff are increasing their knowledge of HIB as a problem and also increasing their knowledge about what to do about it. Underrepresented groups who more commonly experience HIB agree that this culture is improving. At the same time, we are seeing slow and uneven progress in reduction of actual incidence of HIB at UW-Madison. We close with some “lessons learned” about instituting such a sweeping, campus-wide effort to reduce HIB, in the hopes that other campuses can learn from our experience.

Building on work that explores the relationship between individual beliefs and ability to recognize discrimination (e.g., Kaiser and Major, 2006), we examine how an adherence to beliefs about gender essentialism, gender egalitarianism, and meritocracy shape one’s interpretation of an illegal act of sexual harassment involving a male supervisor and female subordinate. We also consider whether the role of the gendered culture of engineering (Faulkner, 2009) matters for this relationship. Specifically, we conducted an online survey-experiment asking individuals to report their beliefs about gender and meritocracy and subsequently to evaluate a fictitious but illegal act of sexual harassment in one of two university research settings: an engineering department, a male-dominated setting whose culture is documented as being unwelcoming to women (Hatmaker, 2013; Seron, Silbey, Cech, and Rubineau, 2018), and an ambiguous research setting. We find evidence that the stronger one’s adherence to gender egalitarian beliefs, the greater one’s ability to detect inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment while gender essentialist beliefs play no role in their detection. The stronger one’s adherence to merit beliefs, the less likely they are to view an illegal interaction as either inappropriate or as sexual harassment. We account for respondent knowledge of sexual harassment and their socio-demographic characteristics, finding that the former is more often associated with the detection of inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment at work. We close with a discussion of the transferability of results and policy implications of our findings.

Technology-facilitated violence against women (TFVW) is readily becoming a key site of analysis for feminist criminologists. The scholarship in this area has identified online sexual harassment, contact-based harassment, image-based abuse, and gender-based cyberhate – among others – as key manifestations of TFVW. It has also unpacked the legal strategies available to women seeking formal justice outcomes. However, much of the existing empirical scholarship has been produced within countries like the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, and there has been limited research on this phenomenon within South East Asia. As such, this chapter maps how technology is shaping Singaporean women's experiences of gendered, sexual, and domestic violence. To do so, it draws upon findings from a research project which examined TFVW in Singapore by utilizing semistructured interviews with frontline workers in the fields of domestic and sexual violence and LGBT services. Drawing from Dragiewicz et al.’s (2018) work on technology-facilitated coercive control (TFCC), I argue that victims-survivors of dating, domestic, and family violence need to be provided with support that is TFCC informed and technically guided. I also suggest that further research is needed to fully understand the prevalence and nature of TFVW in the Singaporean context.

The reality of domestic violence does not disappear when people enter the digital world, as abusers may use technology to stalk, exploit, and control their victims. In this chapter, we discuss three unique types of technological abuse: (1) financial abuse via banking websites and apps; (2) abuse via smart home devices (i.e., “Internet of Things” abuse); and (3) stalking via geo-location or GPS. We also argue pregnancy and wellness apps provide an opportunity for meaningful intervention for pregnant victims of domestic violence.

While there is no way to ensure users' safety in all situations, we argue thoughtful considerations while designing and building digital products can result in meaningful contributions to victims' safety. This chapter concludes with PenzeyMoog's (2020) “Framework for Inclusive Safety,” which is a roadmap for building technology that increases the safety of domestic violence survivors. This framework includes three key points: (1) the importance of educating technologists about domestic violence; (2) the importance of identifying possible abuse situations and designing against them; and (3) identifying user interactions that might signal abuse and offering safe interventions.