Digital Public Interest Collective webinar about tech-facilitated violence features Dr. Emma Vossen

Thursday, May 5, 2022

On May 2nd GI Research Communications Officer Dr. Emma Vossen was a panellist at the webinar “Tech-Facilitated Violence & Abuse: Implications for People, Democracy, & Digital Spaces.”

The event was hosted through Royal Roads University in conjunction with the SSHRC funded Digital Public Interest Collective. The Digital Public Interest Collective was founded by Jaigris Hodson, Chandell Gosse, Shandell Houlden, Victoria O’Meara, and Andrea Galizia. They are a collective of interdisciplinary researchers and scholars examining misinformation and conspiracy theories, health and science communication, technology-facilitated violence and abuse, and the potential and limits of online influencer practice.

The webinar was hosted by Dr. Jaigris Hodson, Canada Research Chair in Digital Communication for the Public Interest. It featured guests Dr. Abby Ferber (University of Colorado), Suzie Dunn, JD, LLM (Dalhousie University) and Dr. Michelle Ferrier, the Founder of Trollbusters, an organization devoted to helping journalists who are targeted and threatened online.

The panellists discussed both their activism, research, and personal experiences surrounding the topic of tech-facilitated violence and abuse. Dr. Ferrier noted that their research has found that 63% of respondents had been threatened or harassed online, and 1 in 10 had received a death threat in the last year.

Dr. Vossen highlighted her experiences receiving targeted harassment and threats since 2012 in response to her research about gender and sexuality. If you would like to know more, you can read about it in Vossen’s 2018 dissertation “On the Cultural Inaccessibility of Gaming.”

The event also launched the “Digital Public Interest Collective Podcast”, which features an episode interviewing Vossen and GI member Dr. Kishonna Gray about harassment and abuse in games and games culture.