Modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide many open-ended and undefined possibilities for image-based sexual abuse (IBSA). ICTs bring several distinctive features and affordances to everyday life, such as the compression of time and space across distance and physical separation; communicative instantaneousness in real time; asynchronicity; blurring ‘real’ and ‘representational’, and online/offline boundaries; wireless portability and globalized connectivity; and personalization. All of these features can be relevant in assessing IBSA, and in particular, the relative ease of perpetrating and disseminating IBSA. There is a multiplicity of forms of IBSA which include colloquially termed ‘revenge pornography’, ‘upskirting’, ‘downblousing’, deepfake pornography, sexual spycamming, cyberflashing, online child sexual abuse, sex trafficking, commercial sex exploitation, online pornography—to name just a few [1].

Such forms of IBSA are part of the long histories of the relationship between sex, sexuality, and technologies that have developed from the peep show to telephones (e.g., ‘call girls’, sex lines, specialist telephone sexual services, as well as telephone sex itself), video and television (e.g., sex videos, sex channels, sex pay TV), and more recently the Internet (e.g., non-connection sex, virtual sex, sexual storytelling, sexual genres) [2]. The multiplicity of forms of sex and sexual representation using ICTs has also been accompanied by an increasing move from passive to more active engagement (e.g., hologramic sex, augmented reality sex, immersive reality sex) and the creation of IBSA materials (e.g., deepfake pornography, sexual spycamming) [1]. The symbiotic relationship between sex, sexuality, and ICTs, and interactivity is also part of the broader histories of the ‘mainstreamification’ of sex [3], where the boundaries between public and private are shifting from one of external censorship to an ‘informed’ consumer culture. That is, the relationship between the two spheres is becoming more fluid and porous, with sex often taking center stage, and where access to and use of publicly available sexualized materials is normalized. Men tend to access and use such materials, online or not, for revenge or other purposes more than women, albeit with less gender difference for younger people for some forms and declining use with age [4]. Such broad tendencies have multiple effects, especially on younger people, such as pressures on women and girls to look or act in certain sexualized ways [5].

While the use of technology for sexual purposes is as old as the printing press, what differentiates the modern world is the near-universal availability of sex and sexualized materials on the Internet and technological devices for accessing it, as well as the speed in which it can be accessed [6]. The ability to both devise and view sexualized materials, whether in private, at home, or in public, along with the relative anonymity of these activities as afforded by various new technological developments, has arguably contributed to the mushrooming of IBSA. Indeed, Woods and McGlynn [7] point out that in some countries, a third of participants in their study had been victim-survivors of IBSA, and a fifth had experienced threats to share explicit materials.

Some scholars [8] have found links between ‘sexting’, the sending, receiving, or forwarding of sexualized materials by mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets and IBSA. The taking and sending of materials may be consensual in ‘sexting’, but the receiving and forwarding of them are non-consensual [9]. Some studies [10] estimate that around 50% of young adults have either sent or received a ‘sext’, with men seeming to view ‘sexting’ more positively compared to women [11]. However, whilst both men and women may send ‘sexts’ and perceive it as “arousing”, “exciting”, and “flirty” [12], other studies [13] suggest that some girls and women may feel pressured or even coerced, to reciprocate in ‘sexting’. Once those sexualized materials have been taken, they can be used and re-used in IBSA [8].

Given this context, IBSA can be situated and understood from several different traditions and perspectives. Firstly, the public display of sexualized images and videos in some forms of IBSA means it can be viewed as a relatively new form or genre of pornography and especially as part of the explosion of (online) pornography ^[14][15][16][14,15,16], and more general pornographization [6] in and across societies [3]. What these terms refer to is the sense that some societies are becoming different, sexually different, by virtue of the mass of sexual representations and discourses in play, with pornography and related sexual imaging increasingly permeating contemporary culture and perhaps even blurring the lines between what is understood as sexuality and what might be considered non-sexual or less sexual [17].

IBSA can be understood as forms of and part of the broad range and continua of gender-based violence (GBV), and given IBSA is largely perpetrated by men [18], kindred framings can be used, such as men’s violence against women and girls (VAWG), violence against women and children, and sexual violence, including of (former) intimate partners in specific forms of IBSA such as ‘revenge pornography’ [19]. Thus, IBSA can be located within the continuum or continua of GBV, sexual violence, and men’s violence against women and children, stretching across war and ‘peace’, interpersonal and structural violence, and other violent processes [20]. IBSA can also be encompassed within the deadly, damaging, dispersed, and diffuse regimes of violence ^[21][22][21,22] that are not immediately or directly physical on the fleshy body, even though they have harmful physical bodily effects on the violated and the abused. In situating IBSA as GBV, emphasis is placed clearly on gendered power, control, and the intention to harm that are exerted and reproduced structurally and interpersonally. The crux of IBSA as GBV is then the enactment and imbalance of gender-sexual power, often facilitated by the perpetrator’s ability to remain anonymous and (superficially) distant. In many ways, seeing IBSA as GBV acts as an umbrella framing of the subsequent approaches to situating IBSA including as exemplars of forms of violence that are novel, continuing to change, and, in that sense, unfinished.

IBSA can also be seen as gender, gendered, sexual, and gender-sexual violating practices. Moreover, these “… practices may be interpreted as structured action, resulting from the gender-sexual social order and social structures, sometimes called patriarchy, and/or as a way of doing gender, doing sexuality, or doing gender/sexuality performatively. Either or both ways, it is part of the gender-sexual matrix, dominantly heterosexual, that (re)produces gender categorizations …” (p. 29) [1]. IBSA is largely perpetrated by men, and thus it can also be viewed as “… a matter of the practices of men and masculinities or similar concepts, such as manhood acts that happen to take place with the use of or via ICTs. Thus, it can be seen as instances of patriarchal, sexist, hegemonic and dominant forms of masculinities and manhood, and complicit, subordinated, marginalized, ambivalent, resistant, and counter-patriarchal forms.” (p. 30) [1]. This is not to deny that some women also perpetrate IBSA, “… but to see men’s digital violent practices, and the discourses employed within and around them, as part of the diverse repertoires of men and masculinities, and in this sense perhaps less novel, less original, than they may appear to some or in some debates.” (p. 30) [1]. In such research, IBSA “… may be understood as more about gendered-sexual positions, positionings, practices, within current, and changing, gender-sexual orders, and less about the specific and rapidly changing affordances of ICTs …” (p. 30) [1].

In addition, IBSA not only operates along a heterosexual axis but includes IBSA targeted towards, as well as by and between, LGBTIQA+ people [1], with considerable evidence of their greater victimization than for heterosexual people [23]. A range of different focuses is being taken up more fully in recent research. Examples here include how the sending of unsolicited genital images may be relatively accepted amongst some gay and bisexual men [24], how gay and bisexual men who are using geosocial dating apps may be more likely to be victims of ‘revenge pornography’ than both the general population and the broader lesbian, gay, and bisexual community [25], and how, in some surveys, lesbian, gay or bisexual participants may be more likely to report as having engaged in some form of IBSA perpetration over their lifetime [26], alongside experiencing higher rates of victimization.

Given women are largely the victim-survivors of IBSA, another frame for understanding IBSA is through the lens of digital hate and misogyny, as on the manosphere. While it is difficult to ascertain whether there has been an increase in such behaviors (before the internet, they would have been more localized and therefore less visible), it is clear that the advent of Web 2.0 and the development of social media have amplified them and that amplification, together with women’s activism, has raised and extended public awareness of online misogyny. It can be difficult to determine perpetrators’ emotions and intentions associated with IBSA, as they may not be reliable witnesses and may insist that they engage in these behaviors ‘for a laugh’ rather than to express hatred [18]. It is, therefore, valuable to analyze the words and expressions used, as well as the ways they are experienced [1]. Such analysis reveals that IBSA communicates misogyny that may be entwined with other forms of prejudice and hate.

Since IBSA is committed by, through, and with technologies, IBSA can be seen as part of the technologization of socialities, sexualities, and violence in their multifarious possibilities. In other words, IBSA is online and other technologically-linked activity and activity that harms another, often intentionally so and often repeatedly, where the victim-survivor is typically unable to defend themselves. Moreover, technology is far from neutral in terms of intersectional gendered power but embodies intersectional gendered power relations already ‘built-in’ to its structures, functions, and deployments. More specifically, the roots of some platforms are in men’s abuse of women. For example, Oliver [27] reminds us that social media technology was borne out of sexist attitudes and practices towards women on college campuses. Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook “to post pictures of girls for his college friends to rate and berate” [27] when he was in a fraternity; Evan Siegel, the inventor of Snapchat, sent messages “referring to women as ‘bitches’, ‘sororisluts,’ to be ‘peed on’ and discussed getting girls drunk to have sex with them” [27]; and Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, founders of Tinder which was introduced on colleges campuses, were involved in a sexual harassment complaint in which Mateen was accused of sending the President of Marketing “sexist messages calling her ‘slut’, ‘gold-digger’ and a ‘whore’” [27].

IBSAs can also be characterized as borderlessness, difficult-to-control, and, at times, perhaps increasingly, transnational—in their production, consumption, counter-interventions developed against it, and their very existence as a new and developing online-offline configuration [28]. A transnational perspective foregrounds two key elements: first, the nation or national boundaries, and second, ‘trans’ (across) relations, as opposed to ‘inter’, ‘supra’, or ‘intra’ relations [29]. Thus, the nation is simultaneously affirmed and deconstructed in that national borders, and nation-based governance and controls may become less powerful. Moreover, the second element of ‘trans’ in transnational can be understood as referring, initially at least, to both moving between nations, as in hosting and posting IBSA in one country, on a platform located elsewhere, for transnational transfer, and homosocial audiences and exchange, but also in the sense of moving beyond the nation-state, as in new or changing transnational gender-sexual cultures and sexual violations across and beyond national borders and in some ways making those borders redundant or at least less impactful. Both these interpretations are highly relevant for understanding IBSA and attempts to counter it. A third meaning of the transnational concerns the formation of new transnational social configurations and phenomena [30]; in this context, new transnational gender-sexually violating configurations that work online-offline simultaneously. Such online-offline configurations are integral to the transnational circulation and consumption of online violations and transnational mobilization, reproduction, and entrenchment of patriarchal power and heterosexual norms.

A fundamental issue in analyzing transnational processes is the dispersion, transfer, and deployment of a variety of both material resources—finance, people, things—and virtual resources. In the latter case, dispersion is often reproduced symbolically, through, and in the contexts of ICTs, with complex and evolving forms of virtualization. Transnational processes thus concern both the physical, material movement of people and bodies—as in migration—and goods and services—as in trading—and also virtual, immaterial movements of money, data, cultural references, messages, and visual images. While sexualities are typically thought of as embodied, online sexualities, sexual cultures and sexual violations also entail national and transnational movement of text, images, and violations.

The dynamic between borderless internet/e-spaces and the transnationalization of DGSV has several further implications. First, the normalization of sex and sexuality on the internet, via, for example, sexual selfies, sexting, sexual posts, cyberintimacy, and pornography, including sexual violence, provides multiple resources for further harassment, bullying, exploitation, violation, and ‘revenge pornography’ in borderless e-spaces: “… with each new tech development—such as the option to live-broadcast on social media—comes the possibility of new forms of cyber violence” [31]. Second, the blurring and co-occurrence of offline and online create greater potential for (sexual) violence, abuse, and harassment to occur, online-offline. Third, the publicness of previously private spaces has the potential for multiple impacts, often repeatedly, where victim-survivors have less opportunity to defend themselves against or hide from what may exist in perpetuity. These new configurations involve complex intersections of online sexual violations and abuses with direct physical violation. Thus, the growth of online sexual violation is also relevant in the rethinking of transnational processes more generally—in production, consumption, and interventions, between and beyond nations, and in the creation of new configurations and phenomena online-offline.

The discussion on and concern with both the manosphere and transnationalizations leads us on to the wider question of the reformulation of the public sphere online and the approach to DGSVs through a focus on processes of publicization. IBSAs have come to be an object of public interest and concern for some mass media and governmental actors, including in new forms of public space, notably among mass media, social media, governmental and policy actors, and activists. These publicizations [32] often also invoke demands for more legal or regulatory controls. In this perspective, the notion of ‘moral panic’ [33] may at times have relevance without any playing down of the likely intentions to harm and violate and the likely associated experiences of harm of those victimized. Mass media interest in DGSV has been elaborated through the reporting of the hacking and subsequent online posts of photographs of female celebrities naked, such as of the high-profile film star of Hunger Games, Jennifer Lawrence [34].

This mediatization perspective might also be seen as an example of a complex, unstable, and rhizomic nexus of postings, violations, media interest, law and regulation, further postings and violations, and so on. The elaboration of such governmentality may take different forms in different national and societal contexts, depending on wider framings of sexuality and violence. These networks of publicizations may broadly and, in the long run, work to either promote or oppose various forms of online violation. The topic and contents of, for example, ‘revenge pornography’, image-based abuse, and kindred DGSVs circulate between and across these various forums in the online-offline public domains.

More broadly still, some forms of IBSAs, such as ‘revenge pornography’, can be seen as forms of online narratives and thus compared with and related to the recent, or not so recent, phenomenon of ‘autofiction’, a term coined by the French writer, Serge Doubrovsky, in 1977, with some parallels to the genre of faction. In some examples of this genre, writers supposedly ‘tell all’ about their everyday lives, friends, partners, family, and acquaintances, and sometimes call it a novel or some other composite production, sometimes with spectacular personal consequences. Perhaps the most famous protagonist here is Karl Ove Knausgård, the Norwegian author of six autobiographical autofictional novels. This form of writing can be a means of saying all without recourse to responsibility for others, at times as a form of what might be called ‘revenge social porn’.

There are no doubt other productive approaches for examining DGSV, for example, as accounts of the psychological dynamics of shameful and shaming actions of self or others ^[35][36][35,36], as conspicuous consumption of women [37], as part of intimate or formerly intimate social relations [38], and so on, but this review of perspectives above suffice here for present purposes. Indeed, DGSV can be understood as the combination of these perspectives, even while this analysis focuses on the online practices and interactions of men and women and masculinities and femininities.

This introductory discussion has outlined how IBSA needs to be located within the long histories of the relationship between sex, sexuality, and technologies, and in particular, the enactment of violence and abuse via visual means. The contemporary practice of IBSA is aided by the multiple features and affordances of new and changing information and communication technologies. Further to this, this entry has shown how IBSA can be approached and analyzed from diverse perspectives, including within the broad continuum of gender-based violence and, more specifically, digital hate and misogyny, as displayed on the manosphere. The final sub-section of the Introduction highlights the key issues of transnationalizations and mediations. The following sections address perpetrator motivations, impacts on victim-survivors, and legal, policy, and technological responses.