Drawing the Threat

Abstract

This article analyzes Estonian high school students’ (N = 10) perceptions of the online pervert. To get a multimodal and thorough understanding of this phenomenon, 12th graders were first asked to make drawings of online perverts and, later, follow-up in-depth interviews were conducted. A combination of visual and verbal methods helped to reveal that the young did not see themselves sharing any noticeable characteristics with the pervert and tended to construct this ‘otherness’ mainly through psyche, age, nationality and appearance. The definition of a pervert, however, was very ambiguous, as the interviewees perceived the pervert to be, on the one hand, harmful, violent, obscene and insidious, and, on the other hand, a sad, lonely voyeur or a rather ordinary person.