Your ideas at Mozfest for developing survivor-centric responses to technology-facilitated gender violence
End Cyber Abuse and Chayn are no strangers to supporting survivors experiencing TGBV be it threats of the leaking of intimate images, stalking or online harassment. TGBV is a broad spectrum of online behaviours perpetrated by one or more people where digital tools and technology is used to harass, intimidate, surveil, and inflict violence upon victims. Such behaviours can have both online and offline consequences for victims. They can be carried out by one person but sometimes also in a systematic coordinated fashion in an ongoing targeted campaign. This includes image-based sexual abuse, doxxing, deep-fakes, cyberstalking, and more.
Last year, thanks to a grant from Robert Bosch Stiftung, we started working together to research and document ideas for survivor-centred and trauma informed interventions to TGBV. We’ll be producing a global field guide (called “Orbits”) with guidance on how to design intersectional, trauma-informed, survivor-centered responses to TGBV. At Mozfest, we turned to you and asked the same sets of questions we’ve been thinking about. In this blog, we share the responses.
Survivors often describe how their experiences of getting support and justice retraumatizes them. People with marginalised identities face further structural barriers when accessing government and non-governmental support. Through Orbits, we will explore the application of an intersectional lens in the context of policy development and lay out how governments can better understand and tackle systemic inequality using this lens.
This Mozfest workshop created a participatory space for participants from across civil society, tech, and policy spaces to input into the process of creating this field guide.
The session started with participants looking at three key questions:
- What would an inclusive policy look like? We encouraged participants to think about design principles and creating a roadmap for trauma-informed, intersectional policies and legislation. This involved thinking about examples of good and poor legislation from across jurisdictions and ideating around what a framework for creating trauma-informed, survivor-centred policies for TGBV could look like.
- What would inclusive research read like? Here, we thought about responsible data collection. There’s been a growing interest in data feminism and design justice at the collection and use of data. We explored examples that showed how data can pose harm to women, thinking about gender-disaggregation and intersectionality, data minimalism and getting affirmative consent.
- What would an inclusive technology product feel like? Here, we ideated around what meaningful co-creation of technology would look like. We thought about practical ways co-creation could be done with survivors as opposed to tokenistic involvement. We looked at how to partner with marginalised and under-represented identities and better center diverse survivor experiences.
Building our understanding together
What would inclusive policy look like?
Participants suggested that an inclusive policy should aim to be co-created with survivors, civil society actors and key stakeholders to ensure it contains key concerns of the marginalised group(s) it is aimed at addressing. They also discussed how policies should be designed with a tailored approach in mind, allowing bespoke application and not a one-size-fits-all model. In addition to this, we looked at how policy should be easy to understand and free of excess jargon. It is important to remember that if a policy doesn’t make sense to an ordinary person, then this needs to be rethought and clarified, in order to be accessible — not exclusionary.
Other key areas of note were ethical data collection which is collaborative, aims to reduce harm, and redistributes power. The main theme that emerged from this question was the idea that people-centered design should always be championed first and foremost, over capital and profits.
What would inclusive research read like?
Here, we spoke about how research must be representative of the groups and marginalised communities it is speaking about, and as an extension, make sure these groups are, at the very least, consulted with before, during, and after the research has been completed. This is also true for NGOs who can advise on good research practises and ethics.
It is imperative that research into TGBV does not retraumatise survivors. One way we discussed this can be ensured is to use trauma informed language — that is sensitive, has an empowering tone, and is transparent. Also crucial is inclusive pronoun use, and availability in multiple languages beyond just English.
In a world of increased monetisation, we also thought about how inclusive research may benefit by being open access and not behind a paywall. This would increase the chances that the research reaches those that need it the most.
Finally, we thought about how good research aims to show impact and use responsible data collection methods. This means research should clearly show participants how their data will be used, respecting privacy and asking for clear consent (and allowing for the withdrawal of consent) for participation in the research.
What would an inclusive technology product feel like?
Unfortunately, most technology is not designed with the survivor in mind, often causing trauma or enabling abuse. Inclusive technology should aim to be user friendly and easy to navigate; this means accessibility requirements need to be taken into account (font size, colours, images, visual aids, captions for screen readers, language accessibility, and more). A key principle discussed involved products that can be tailored to meet individuals’ needs, such as extremely flexible privacy settings.
In the workshop, we discussed how tech products should also be ethical in their approach, aiming to have open connections with NGO’s and external consultants who can ensure good practice and provide feedback on policies and products. In a similar vein to inclusive policy, we also reinforced that tech products should be designed with an universal audience in mind therefore multilingual platforms are a plus. In addition, it is important for tech products to be open to learning, iterative and incorporate feedback loops from users — rather than apply fixed standards.
Attendees also suggested support services being embedded into tech products for easy access for survivors of TGBV. This could be live chat support on site by licensed and trained practitioners who can guide individuals to resources and help — a human connection can be important to provide trauma-informed support and understand the nuanced context around the forms of abuse one may have experienced. Connections to local organisations that can assist survivors is important, as are simple interfaces and processes for reporting and removing harmful content and blocking abusive individuals. A feature in tech today is the algorithmic models followed by many tech giants like Facebook and Instagram to produce data that is tailored to the user. This often produces certain systematic and repeat errors. In order to build an inclusive tech product as a response to TGBV, this must be free of bias, in other words, the AI should not repeat or reproduce human prejudice and discriminate. Even where AI is used, human content moderation — trained in local languages and context — is extremely important to serve as a check on algorithms that may miss forms of abuse that are locally rooted or that look different than the typical cases.
All these ideas above taken holistically have vast potential to create inclusive technologies that can respond to TGBV in a trauma informed and survivor centric way. We will be incorporating these ideas, among many others based on our work, into our final field guide for orbits.
If you’d like to find out more, please visit End Cyber Abuse and Chayn. You can also sign up to stay connected to our work here.
