Sociology & Political Science
Digital Violence: When Technology Amplifies Gender-Based Harm
Online gender-based violence—cyberstalking, image-based abuse, doxxing, and digital harassment—has exploded alongside social media adoption. Five papers from India, Tanzania, Uzbekistan, and Indonesia reveal that legal frameworks lag behind technological capabilities, and that the burden of digital violence falls disproportionately on women in the Global South.
By Sean K.S. Shin
This blog summarizes research trends based on published paper abstracts. Specific numbers or findings may contain inaccuracies. For scholarly rigor, always consult the original papers cited in each post.
The digital revolution promised to empower women: access to information, economic opportunity through e-commerce, political participation through social media, and educational access through online learning. For many women, these promises have been fulfilled. But for many others, the same digital infrastructure that enables empowerment has also enabled new forms of violence—cyberstalking, non-consensual intimate image distribution ("revenge porn"), doxxing, coordinated online harassment campaigns, and AI-generated deepfake pornography.
Online gender-based violence (OGBV) is not simply the digital extension of offline violence. It operates through distinct mechanisms: it is scalable (a single act of image-based abuse can reach millions), persistent (digital content is difficult to remove permanently), anonymizable (perpetrators can act without identification), and jurisdictionally complex (perpetrator, victim, and platform may be in different countries).
India: Scale and Cultural Context
Akhtar and Bhowmik (2025) investigate online gender-based violence in India, focusing on its manifestations, legal challenges, and sociocultural dimensions. The proliferation of social media has facilitated new forms of violence against women in India, where the intersection of patriarchal norms, rapid digitalization, and inadequate legal frameworks creates a context where OGBV flourishes.
The paper documents multiple forms of OGBV in the Indian context: cyberstalking (unwanted persistent contact), trolling (abusive commentary), non-consensual pornography, morphing (manipulating images), and doxxing (publishing private information). These forms often intersect: a woman who speaks publicly on social media may face coordinated trolling, followed by doxxing that reveals her address, followed by offline harassment or threats.
The legal challenge in India is that existing laws—the Information Technology Act, the Indian Penal Code, and the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act—were designed for offline offenses and do not adequately address the digital-specific mechanisms of OGBV. The IT Act's Section 66E (violation of privacy) and Section 67 (publishing obscene material) provide some recourse, but enforcement is inconsistent and survivors often face secondary victimization in the reporting process.
Tanzania: University Campuses as Contested Spaces
Kavishe (2024) examines the contribution of digital technology in exacerbating GBV against female students in Tanzanian higher learning institutions. Studies indicate that gender-based violence has been practised and sometimes normalized at higher learning institution campuses in Tanzania.
The Tanzanian case is significant because it documents how digital technology amplifies pre-existing gender violence within institutional settings. Female students report that digital tools are used for: surveillance by intimate partners (tracking location, monitoring communications), distribution of intimate images without consent as a form of control, cyberbullying by peers, and sexual harassment through messaging platforms.
The institutional dimension is important: universities have a duty of care toward their students, but most Tanzanian universities lack policies that specifically address digital forms of GBV. The existing gender policies focus on physical violence, leaving digital violence in a governance gap.
Legal Frameworks: Gaps Across Jurisdictions
Rizvi (2025) provides a broader analysis of the role of law in combatting GBV on social media and online platforms. The advent of digital platforms has introduced new dimensions of gender-based violence, posing significant challenges for legal frameworks worldwide.
The paper identifies several structural limitations of current legal responses:
- Definitional gaps: Many jurisdictions lack legal definitions of OGBV that capture its full range of manifestations. Without clear definitions, prosecution is difficult.
- Jurisdictional challenges: When a perpetrator in one country targets a victim in another through a platform headquartered in a third, which jurisdiction's laws apply?
- Evidentiary challenges: Digital evidence is ephemeral (content can be deleted), mutable (screenshots can be fabricated), and overwhelming (harassment campaigns may involve thousands of individual acts, each legally minor in isolation).
- Platform accountability: The extent to which platforms bear responsibility for facilitating OGBV—through inadequate moderation, algorithmic amplification of harassment, or failure to enforce community standards—varies across jurisdictions and is largely untested in court.
Uzbekistan: Emerging Digital Spaces, Absent Laws
Alieva (2025) examines OGBV in Uzbekistan, where rapid digitalization has outpaced legislative development. Despite the increasing prevalence of cyberstalking, online harassment, doxxing, and image-based abuse, Uzbekistan's legal framework lacks specific provisions to address these forms of violence.
The Uzbek case illustrates a pattern common across Central Asia: governments have invested heavily in digital infrastructure and promoted digital economy strategies, but the legal and institutional frameworks to protect citizens—particularly women—in digital spaces have not kept pace. The result is a digital environment where perpetrators operate with impunity and survivors have limited recourse.
SDG 5 and Digital Rights
Ardhanariswari, Azzahro, and Fauzan (2026) connect OGBV to SDG 5 (Gender Equality), arguing that the digital era has not only expanded social interactions but also significantly increased the prevalence of online gender-based violence in Indonesia. This trend indicates a regulatory gap between existing policies and SDG 5 targets.
The paper proposes a more gender-responsive regulatory framework that addresses OGBV specifically within Indonesia's legal system. The argument is that SDG 5 cannot be achieved if the digital spaces where women increasingly live, work, and participate are also the spaces where they are most vulnerable to violence.
Claims and Evidence
<
| Claim | Evidence | Verdict |
|---|
| OGBV is increasing alongside social media adoption | All five papers document increasing prevalence across diverse contexts | ✅ Supported |
| Current legal frameworks adequately address OGBV | Rizvi (2025), Alieva (2025): significant definitional, jurisdictional, and evidentiary gaps | ❌ Refuted |
| Digital technology empowers women without creating new risks | Akhtar & Bhowmik (2025), Kavishe (2024): empowerment and violence coexist in the same digital infrastructure | ❌ Refuted |
| Universities have adequate policies for digital GBV | Kavishe (2024): most institutions lack digital-specific GBV policies | ❌ Refuted |
| OGBV affects women equally across social positions | All papers: intersections of gender with class, education, religion, and geography shape vulnerability | ❌ Refuted |
Open Questions
Should platforms bear civil liability for facilitating OGBV? If a platform's algorithm amplifies harassment or its moderation fails to remove non-consensual intimate images within a reasonable timeframe, should it be liable for damages?Can AI detect OGBV at scale? NLP models trained to detect harassment, hate speech, and threats show promise but face challenges with context, sarcasm, coded language, and low-resource languages.How should criminal law balance perpetrator accountability with survivor protection? Reporting OGBV often exposes survivors to further harassment, retaliation, or social stigma. Can reporting mechanisms be designed to protect survivors while enabling prosecution?What is the relationship between online and offline GBV? Does OGBV precede, accompany, or substitute for physical violence? Understanding this relationship is essential for designing interventions that address both dimensions.Implications
OGBV is not a niche issue—it is a structural barrier to gender equality in the digital age. The evidence reviewed here demonstrates that without specific legal provisions, institutional policies, platform accountability mechanisms, and survivor support services, digital spaces will remain hostile environments for women's participation. Achieving SDG 5 requires not only promoting women's digital access but ensuring that the digital spaces they access are safe.
The digital revolution promised to empower women: access to information, economic opportunity through e-commerce, political participation through social media, and educational access through online learning. For many women, these promises have been fulfilled. But for many others, the same digital infrastructure that enables empowerment has also enabled new forms of violence—cyberstalking, non-consensual intimate image distribution ("revenge porn"), doxxing, coordinated online harassment campaigns, and AI-generated deepfake pornography.
Online gender-based violence (OGBV) is not simply the digital extension of offline violence. It operates through distinct mechanisms: it is scalable (a single act of image-based abuse can reach millions), persistent (digital content is difficult to remove permanently), anonymizable (perpetrators can act without identification), and jurisdictionally complex (perpetrator, victim, and platform may be in different countries).
India: Scale and Cultural Context
Akhtar and Bhowmik (2025) investigate online gender-based violence in India, focusing on its manifestations, legal challenges, and sociocultural dimensions. The proliferation of social media has facilitated new forms of violence against women in India, where the intersection of patriarchal norms, rapid digitalization, and inadequate legal frameworks creates a context where OGBV flourishes.
The paper documents multiple forms of OGBV in the Indian context: cyberstalking (unwanted persistent contact), trolling (abusive commentary), non-consensual pornography, morphing (manipulating images), and doxxing (publishing private information). These forms often intersect: a woman who speaks publicly on social media may face coordinated trolling, followed by doxxing that reveals her address, followed by offline harassment or threats.
The legal challenge in India is that existing laws—the Information Technology Act, the Indian Penal Code, and the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act—were designed for offline offenses and do not adequately address the digital-specific mechanisms of OGBV. The IT Act's Section 66E (violation of privacy) and Section 67 (publishing obscene material) provide some recourse, but enforcement is inconsistent and survivors often face secondary victimization in the reporting process.
Tanzania: University Campuses as Contested Spaces
Kavishe (2024) examines the contribution of digital technology in exacerbating GBV against female students in Tanzanian higher learning institutions. Studies indicate that gender-based violence has been practised and sometimes normalized at higher learning institution campuses in Tanzania.
The Tanzanian case is significant because it documents how digital technology amplifies pre-existing gender violence within institutional settings. Female students report that digital tools are used for: surveillance by intimate partners (tracking location, monitoring communications), distribution of intimate images without consent as a form of control, cyberbullying by peers, and sexual harassment through messaging platforms.
The institutional dimension is important: universities have a duty of care toward their students, but most Tanzanian universities lack policies that specifically address digital forms of GBV. The existing gender policies focus on physical violence, leaving digital violence in a governance gap.
Legal Frameworks: Gaps Across Jurisdictions
Rizvi (2025) provides a broader analysis of the role of law in combatting GBV on social media and online platforms. The advent of digital platforms has introduced new dimensions of gender-based violence, posing significant challenges for legal frameworks worldwide.
The paper identifies several structural limitations of current legal responses:
- Definitional gaps: Many jurisdictions lack legal definitions of OGBV that capture its full range of manifestations. Without clear definitions, prosecution is difficult.
- Jurisdictional challenges: When a perpetrator in one country targets a victim in another through a platform headquartered in a third, which jurisdiction's laws apply?
- Evidentiary challenges: Digital evidence is ephemeral (content can be deleted), mutable (screenshots can be fabricated), and overwhelming (harassment campaigns may involve thousands of individual acts, each legally minor in isolation).
- Platform accountability: The extent to which platforms bear responsibility for facilitating OGBV—through inadequate moderation, algorithmic amplification of harassment, or failure to enforce community standards—varies across jurisdictions and is largely untested in court.
Uzbekistan: Emerging Digital Spaces, Absent Laws
Alieva (2025) examines OGBV in Uzbekistan, where rapid digitalization has outpaced legislative development. Despite the increasing prevalence of cyberstalking, online harassment, doxxing, and image-based abuse, Uzbekistan's legal framework lacks specific provisions to address these forms of violence.
The Uzbek case illustrates a pattern common across Central Asia: governments have invested heavily in digital infrastructure and promoted digital economy strategies, but the legal and institutional frameworks to protect citizens—particularly women—in digital spaces have not kept pace. The result is a digital environment where perpetrators operate with impunity and survivors have limited recourse.
SDG 5 and Digital Rights
Ardhanariswari, Azzahro, and Fauzan (2026) connect OGBV to SDG 5 (Gender Equality), arguing that the digital era has not only expanded social interactions but also significantly increased the prevalence of online gender-based violence in Indonesia. This trend indicates a regulatory gap between existing policies and SDG 5 targets.
The paper proposes a more gender-responsive regulatory framework that addresses OGBV specifically within Indonesia's legal system. The argument is that SDG 5 cannot be achieved if the digital spaces where women increasingly live, work, and participate are also the spaces where they are most vulnerable to violence.
Claims and Evidence
<
| Claim | Evidence | Verdict |
|---|
| OGBV is increasing alongside social media adoption | All five papers document increasing prevalence across diverse contexts | ✅ Supported |
| Current legal frameworks adequately address OGBV | Rizvi (2025), Alieva (2025): significant definitional, jurisdictional, and evidentiary gaps | ❌ Refuted |
| Digital technology empowers women without creating new risks | Akhtar & Bhowmik (2025), Kavishe (2024): empowerment and violence coexist in the same digital infrastructure | ❌ Refuted |
| Universities have adequate policies for digital GBV | Kavishe (2024): most institutions lack digital-specific GBV policies | ❌ Refuted |
| OGBV affects women equally across social positions | All papers: intersections of gender with class, education, religion, and geography shape vulnerability | ❌ Refuted |
Open Questions
Should platforms bear civil liability for facilitating OGBV? If a platform's algorithm amplifies harassment or its moderation fails to remove non-consensual intimate images within a reasonable timeframe, should it be liable for damages?Can AI detect OGBV at scale? NLP models trained to detect harassment, hate speech, and threats show promise but face challenges with context, sarcasm, coded language, and low-resource languages.How should criminal law balance perpetrator accountability with survivor protection? Reporting OGBV often exposes survivors to further harassment, retaliation, or social stigma. Can reporting mechanisms be designed to protect survivors while enabling prosecution?What is the relationship between online and offline GBV? Does OGBV precede, accompany, or substitute for physical violence? Understanding this relationship is essential for designing interventions that address both dimensions.Implications
OGBV is not a niche issue—it is a structural barrier to gender equality in the digital age. The evidence reviewed here demonstrates that without specific legal provisions, institutional policies, platform accountability mechanisms, and survivor support services, digital spaces will remain hostile environments for women's participation. Achieving SDG 5 requires not only promoting women's digital access but ensuring that the digital spaces they access are safe.
References (5)
[1] Akhtar, S. & Bhowmik, M. (2025). Digital Violence: The Rise of Online Gender-Based Violence Against Women in the Age of Social Media. IJFMR, 7(2), 41785.
[2] Kavishe, A.M. (2024). The contribution of digital technology in exacerbating gender based violence against female students in higher learning institutions in Tanzania.. African Journal of Social Issues, 7(1), 57.
[3] Rizvi, N.A. (2025). The Role of Law in Combatting Gender-Based Violence on Social Media and Online Platforms. IJFMR, 7(1), 36813.
[4] Alieva, K. (2025). Online Gender-Based Violence in Uzbekistan: Gaps in Legislation and the Path Forward. SPR, 1342, 56.
[5] Ardhanariswari, R., Azzahro, F., & Fauzan, M. (2026). Digital Technology as a Tool for Fulfilling Women's Rights: A Legal Analysis of Online Gender-based Violence (OGBV) Within the Framework of SDG 5. KnE Social Sciences, 11(1), 20610.