Deconstructing bystander responsibility for sexual violence in the digital age

This article explores the complexities of the ‘bystander effect’ for determining responsibility for technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV). It highlights how the technical features of digital media and the cultural normalisation of TFSV operate to both dilute and diffuse responsibility for harm. Unpacking bystander responsibility, it argues that TFSV disrupts traditional cultural, social, and legal scripts around responsibility with the introduction of numerous potential ‘bystanders.’ In highlighting the complex webs of responsibility that arise in cases of TFSV, the article underlines the need to move beyond legal frameworks which are typically predicated on individual modes of responsibility. Taking account of the broader technostructural elements of shared responsibility for TFSV, and utilising the notions of the ‘victim-offender-bystander triad’ and ‘implicated subjects’, it engages with literature on responses to mass victimisation, including restorative, transitional and transformative justice frameworks, to offer a novel framing of responsibility in such contexts. It ultimately draws out the implications of a more nuanced collective understanding of responsibility for TFSV based on responsive regulation and prevention.