Chapter 23: Introduction

The four chapters in this section focus on technology-facilitated violence and abuse (TFVA) in the contexts of domestic and family violence, as well as between intimate partners. Together, they provide rich insights from survivors and from the advocates and practitioners who support them. They highlight the double-edged sword of technology in both perpetuating and combatting these forms of TFVA, as well as the necessity of taking an intersectional approach to gender-based violence. As Crenshaw (1991) so ably demonstrated, failure to take into account the impacts of intersecting forms of oppression on women experiencing violence is likely to result in policy and services that fail to meet the needs of women from the most marginalized communities, such as immigrant and refugee women, as well as racialized and Indigenous women, and women living in remote and rural areas. From an international perspective, the Global-North's domination in published research has meant that the narratives and experiences of women in the Global-South have received too little consideration on the world stage (Barberet & Carrington, 2018). The chapters in this section help to address some of the existing gaps in the literature by giving voice to the lived experiences of women living in remote areas of Australia (Bridget Harris & Delanie Woodlock), and those of advocates and practitioners supporting women experiencing domestic violence in Singapore (Laura Vitis), young women experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) in Brasil and Australia (Lopes Gomes Pinto Ferreira), and culturally and linguistically diverse women in Australia (Yee Man Louie).

The section opens with Harris and Woodlock's chapter that acknowledges how the spacelessness of digital coercive control allows IPV perpetrators to create an overwhelming sense of omnipotence, but also emphasizes the continuing relevance of spatiality. Harris and Woodlock conducted individual interviews and a focus group with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women living in rural areas of New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria (31% of whom were born outside of Australia). Their findings highlight both the significance of intersectionality in research in this area, as well as the double-edged sword of digital technology in the fight against IPV. While technology played a role in amplifying (ex) intimate partners' coercive control over their participants because of their remote locations, it was also sometimes their only point of connectivity with the outside world.

Vitis' chapter addresses the gap in the existing empirical research on TFVA against women in South East Asia by providing insights from interviews with frontline workers about the ways technology is shaping the dating, domestic, and family violence experiences of women in Singapore. Vitis' results support the need to include TFVA in future quantitative surveys in Singapore and for further qualitative research with women survivors of TFVA to gain a better understanding of the role of technology in Singaporean women's experiences of violence. She argues that research grounded in lived experience could play a crucial role in formulating meaningful policy responses.

Lopes Gomes Pinto Ferreira' chapter also reports on findings from interviews of those working on the front lines to address IPV. In this case, however, the advocates are based in the Global-South – Brasil and Australia – and their work focuses on IPV and young people. Approaching her research through a Southern Feminist framework, the results of Lopes Gomes Pinto Ferreira' interviews with 14 Brasilian and five Australian advocates emphasize both the negative and positive roles played by technology in the context of IPV among youth. Noting other findings suggesting a normalization of IPV in young people's relationships, as well as their own observations of the use of technology to perpetrate IPV among the young people they work with, Lopes Gomes Pinto Ferreira' participants also identify the important role that social media, websites, and/or online games can play in raising awareness about healthy relationships and signs of IPV among this highly digitally connected population.

Finally, Louie's chapter helps to address the gap in the domestic violence literature with respect to the experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse women. Her interviews with 13 domestic violence practitioners from a variety of sectors who had experiences working with culturally and linguistically diverse women, specifically provide insights with respect to victim-survivors of Chinese descent, with eight of her participants having worked with women in this demographic. Louie's results demonstrate both the importance of intersectionality, as well as the double-edged sword of technology in the domestic violence context. Similar to the research participants reported on in other chapters in this section, Louie's participants confirm the role of technology as both a facilitator of and a response to IPV. However, they also note the importance of ensuring the accessibility of technology-based responses in terms of meeting the linguistic needs of victim-survivors and using the platforms they are most likely to access.