Abstract:

In January this year more than thousand adolescents were charged with distributing child pornography after sharing a non-consensual sex video on social media and through Messenger. Since then there has been heavy interest in the Danish public around digital sexual assault and around the ways youth use digital media in practising their sexuality. My project steps into this debate. I study the experiences of digital assault victims and their relations and attitudes to digital media. For the last year I have been working closely together with a group of young women, who have experienced DSA, and through writing, reading and group conversations, they have tried to explore, understand and convey their experiences. In my research, I aim to give voice to these young women, whose diverse perspectives are rarely heard in the public debate.

My presentation will introduce an overview of the different kinds of digital sexual assault, we (the participants and I) have identified, and point to how several of these are often or completely overlooked in todays literature on digital sexuality and in the public debate. Going back to Gilligan and the notion of ‘voice’, I will present my methods for working with digital assault victims in a way that allows them to be heard. I will try to show the strength of their individual voices, while also presenting some initial findings based on our collective analytical efforts to understand the digitally intertwined experience of digital sexual assault.

About the speaker:

Signe Uldbjerg Mortensen, Department of Scandinavian Studies and Experience Economy