This workshop addresses the rapidly evolving landscape of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), with a focus on ‘sextortion’ and ‘deepfakes’, particularly affecting young people. While these developments have garnered media attention, their precise nature, prevalence, and the connections between new/evolving and traditional IBSA remain underexplored. The workshop brings together academic, policy and practice experts to examine the issues and develop a research, policy and practice agenda.
Scheduled for Safer Internet Day (SID) 2025, the workshop builds on themes from a SID 2024 conference, attended by the organisers, which identified the evolving nature of IBSA. It adopts a ‘post-digital’ perspective, situating IBSA within offline contexts of sexual harm. It critically assesses current policy and practice, particularly the failure to clearly differentiate between abusive and non-abusive image-sharing among young people, which has contributed to cultures of IBSA whereby victims feel too ashamed or fearful of punishment to report abuse, with recent examples connected to sextortion cases.
CONFIRMED SPEAKERS
Associate Professor Dean Fido, University of Derby
Sophie Hawkes, Royal Holloway
Professor Andy Phippen, Bournemouth University
Professor Jessica Ringrose, UCL
Dr Devina Sarwatay, City St Georges, University of London
Internet Watch Foundation
Lucy Faithfull Foundation
Ofcom
Meta-Instagram
Revenge Porn Helpline
ORGANISERS
Dr Emily Setty, University of Surrey
Mr Jonny Hunt, University of Bedfordshire
Mr Jude Mukoro, University of Surrey
Workshop Report
The report for this workshop is coming soon, please check back later.
