Consent, Coercive Control and Technologically-facilitated abuse: Co-building policy and digital toolkits for the elimination on online violence against women and girls

The project will co-design a digital literacy toolkit to influence public pedagogy and policy around consent and coercive control in technologically-facilitated abuse, including intimate surveillance (e.g. GPS, self-tracking technology). We will establish an expert working group to enhance cross-sector collaboration. These activities follow recent co-produced research on the Online Safety Bill (Balfour, Evans et al. 2023). Recommendations included the need for digital intimacies literacy, and additional cross-sector work between stakeholders. Underpinning research includes the AHRC Postdigital Intimacies Network (Evans PI), which exposed cyberflashing, rape culture, hate speech, and abuse in online environments, and a Policy Support Fund project (Balfour PI) focusing on gender-based violence and feminine technologies. We have published extensively on digital intimacy and intimate technologies (e.g. Balfour, 2023, 2022; Evans & Riley, 2023, 2022).