Digitizing Sexual Violence examines the emerging challenges and opportunities arising from rapid technological development, particularly related to smartphones, artificial intelligence, and associated technologies, in the context of sexual offences. These technologies have transformed social relations and modes of interaction, enabled new forms of sexual violations, and reshaped traditional forms of abuse. This creates new demands on legal instruments and on the police in their efforts to identify and prosecute such acts.
The project investigates how new technologies influence sexual offences and their harms, how they change processes of investigation and prosecution, and how the legal framework is applied to regulate digital sexual violations. The main objective is to contribute to the establishment of a research field at the intersection of law and technology related to sexual offences, by examining how the police and the courts increasingly rely on technology in the investigation and prosecution of such offences, while simultaneously facing new challenges associated with technology-enabled crimes.
The research combines document analysis, qualitative interviews, and surveys, and is organised into three work packages focusing on: 1) changes in legislation and legal practice related to digital sexual violations; 2) investigation and prosecution of such cases; and 3) public knowledge, attitudes, and conceptual understanding of digital sexual offences.
