[Can’t] Delete: an intervention in mainstream news media representations of image-based sexual abuse

Abstract

Cases of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) – the creation or distribution of private sexual or nude images – are on the rise across the world and internet, but the public does not understand this issue as a form of sexual violence. This is due in part to the role of journalists and the news media as the first site where the general audience hears about new issues. Research into IBSA has not considered the role of the news media to educate the public, so this article seeks to explore this gap through the creation of an experimental work of journalism. The creative component is an interactive journalism feature hosted on a website that offers the audience opportunities to engage with victim perspectives within the context of an explanatory journalism article about IBSA. This approach seeks to be an example for future journalism about sexual abuse and improve public understanding of IBSA.

Introduction

Image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) is a relatively new phenomenon (Henry and Flynn, 2020) and just like other forms of misinformation that have significant impacts on individuals and society, it has proliferated in recent times due to the affordances of digital technology. As the Web 3.0 online ecosystem based on blockchain emerges, there is potential for further proliferation of such harmful content across media environments (Ragnedda and Destefanis, 2020). It has been argued that mainstream journalism has done relatively little to disrupt IBSA's spread or even provide the context that connects IBSA to sexual violence and gender inequality in public discussion (Buiten, 2020; McGlynn and Rackley, 2017). The research presented here uses the ‘connective model’ of creative practice research (Hamilton and Jaaniste, 2010) and feminist standpoint theory to respond to the problem of IBSA in society and explore a new journalism approach to the issue through the design, development, and publication of an experimental work of interactive journalism. [Can’t] Delete: Life after image-based sexual abuse (Gleave, 2021) is a website that tells four composite/fictional victim–survivor stories. Users are presented with four icons that depict different victim–survivor profiles and scenarios, and when the user hovers over each one, a pop-up box appears that steps them through each individual experience. The victim–survivor interactives are accompanied by a piece of ‘explanatory reporting’ (Dan and Raueter, 2023) designed to make it easier for the audience to understand the issue, develop well-informed opinions and arrive at accurate attributions of responsibility.

Acts of IBSA, which refers to ‘the non-consensual creation and/or distribution of private sexual images’ (McGlynn and Rackley, 2017: 536), including threats to share images and digitally altered images adding a person's face to an existing sexual image (Henry et al., 2019), are increasing, and the ways this abuse is perpetrated evolves as new technologies are developed (Henry et al., 2018). Like other forms of sexual violence, determining prevalence is challenging; furthermore, while IBSA is a serious issue with real harms to victims, the public is yet to fully comprehend it as a form of sexual violence (Buiten, 2020), which has serious implications for public and policy discussion and the ongoing experience of victims. We can no longer pretend what happens in the digital world does not affect real life. IBSA can result in what McGlynn et al. (2019) call a ‘social rupture’, describing a major devastation that alters many if not all aspects of a victim's life. It is an unsettling violation, and many victims speak of the harms as constant, enduring, and relentless, distinguishing their life and sense of themselves before and after the abuse (McGlynn et al., 2019). The lack of public understanding of the victim experience and IBSA as a form of sexual violence inhibits efforts to improve support for victims, as well as interventions to prevent these crimes. In the sections that follow, we argue that journalism has a key role in combatting IBSA and supporting victims because public awareness is the first step to advancing IBSA on the policy agenda, helping people across societies consider how cultures normalise abuse, and encouraging better support from internet platforms, law enforcement, and non-profits.

The majority of IBSA research has been conducted in liberal democracies including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and comes from criminology, law, and psychology (see for example: Citron, 2014; Di Tullio and Sullivan, 2019; Henry et al., 2018) with little scholarship to date from a media and communication standpoint. This article not only reports on the making of an experimental work of journalism informed by feminist standpoint theory, it also provides critical reflection on the challenges and opportunities that arose through its creation, which can inform the practice of other journalists working on projects that seek to contribute to social change. This approach demands a critique of mainstream news media representation, which is addressed in the section that follows, while also requiring those observations be put into practice by developing new methods in the artefact.

A work of alternative/experimental journalism

[Can’t] Delete: Life after image-based sexual abuse (Gleave, 2021) is a website that houses an interactive journalism feature. The work of journalism is informed by feminist standpoint theory and includes four fictionalised victim profiles that ask the reader to engage with the victim experience by making storytelling choices as if they are experiencing alongside the victim the murky and painful journey of IBSA victimisation. The decision to make the profiles fictional is discussed in the sections that follow and was largely motivated by a desire to avoid re-traumatisation and harassment of victims. Interactive journalism passes a share of the storytelling power to the reader, allowing them to engage with the content on their own terms. This freedom with active responsibility can bring about new discoveries through engagement (Usher, 2016). Following the interactive profiles, the site hosts a piece of ‘explanatory reporting’, defined by Dan and Raueter (2023: 1046) as a new genre of journalism that provides context by answering ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions, going beyond conventional reporting's focus on ‘who/what/when/where’, novelty and immediacy:

… its proponents have argued that explanatory reporting makes it easier for audiences to understand an issue, develop well-informed opinions and attitudes, and arrive at accurate attributions of responsibility. (Dan and Reueter, 2023: 1046)

This article, ‘Navigating the world wide web of image-based sexual abuse’, establishes a baseline understanding of IBSA. Through the sum of its parts, [Can’t] Delete (Gleave, 2021) is an example of alternative journalism about IBSA that seeks to build public understanding and empathetic responses for the victim experience. It accords with Tony Harcup's (2016: 684) categorisation of alternative media practices because it is ‘… informed by a critique of existing ways (the dominant practices) of doing journalism’. The aim is ‘to produce critical content with the primary goal of promoting social change’ (Rauch, 2021: 3). It is a provocation that questions mainstream journalism's deeply held values about objectivity in terms of its higher purpose in the 21^st century. Standpoint feminism provides the theoretical framework for this research project in moving from traditional positivist attachments (largely White western male notions of truth and knowledge production that dominate journalism and journalism studies), based on so-called evidence-bases and ‘objective’ reasoning, to a more multiple and post-positivist view of research and journalism knowledge production (Naples and Gurr, 2013).

The continuum of sexual violence

When trying to understand sexual abuse it is helpful to think in categories. At one end, there is physical sexual violence including rape and other assaults committed in-person. In the past two decades, and particularly since the mass adoption of smart phones, countries across the world are seeing more of what is called technology-facilitated sexual violence (Henry and Flynn, 2020). This is still a form of sexual abuse and can be perpetrated in-person or online. One example is cyberstalking which refers to several ways a person uses the internet to harass or intimidate another person. IBSA is nested within tech-facilitated violence and refers specifically to the way the victim was victimised, that is, through images and video (McGlynn and Rackley, 2017).

Like other forms of sexual abuse, IBSA represents a lack of consent from the victim and includes threats to create or share images, as is increasingly common in domestic violence situations (Henry et al., 2019). This conceptualisation positions IBSA on the continuum of sexual violence that recognises the commonalities between different forms of violence, threads of power, and gender inequality (Kelly 1987 in McGlynn and Rackley, 2017). Additionally, McGlynn and Rackley conceptualise a continuum of IBSA within this framework to allow for a variety of abuses currently identified while being broad and flexible to keep space for future ways of perpetrating image-based abuse which are inevitable as new digital technologies are developed. There is little scholarly literature analysing how IBSA is reported by the news media, but this topic can be informed by previous research about how the media reports on sexual violence more broadly (Lockyer and Savigny, 2019; Sacks et al., 2017).

From revenge porn to image-based sexual abuse

Researchers Nicola Henry and Asher Flynn (2020) traced the rise of the term ‘revenge porn’ beginning from 1993 when it was used in a film review about a group of friends on the run from a gang of drug dealers. They observed that it was not until 2001 when a news article was published about a woman who sought revenge on her ex-partner and shared obscene letters about him to his new partner, friends, and colleagues. The following year, the term was used in a media article to describe a man who printed and posted sexual images of his ex-girlfriend on the dumpster near her apartment. Then in 2005, ‘revenge porn’ was used to describe sharing images with the use of digital technologies, such as posting to so-called ‘revenge porn websites’, and by 2011 the term first prescribed by the news media had entered the vernacular (Henry and Flynn, 2020).

‘Revenge porn’ and other terms that have followed since, like non-consensual pornography, may be more media friendly, but these names can reinforce incorrect ideas that these acts are not sex crimes or forms of abuse (Di Tullio and Sullivan, 2019). For example, categorising acts of violence as ‘porn’ suggests there was a choice which is inappropriate when the creation or sharing of the sexual images under discussion are done without consent. ‘This is not to suggest that all pornography is abusive … but to suggest that this term is salaciously used in the media and … fails to focus on the harms of these practices’ (McGlynn and Rackley, 2017: 536). ‘Revenge porn’ refers to a small but still damaging subset of IBSA, yet the term focuses on the motivations of the perpetrators rather than the harm done to victims. McGlynn and Rackley (2017) argue its continual use resulted in requirements within legislation to prove a vengeful motive by the perpetrator. There are many different motives perpetrators acknowledge, including to harass or control, show off to a friendship group, for financial gain, or even for ‘a laugh’ (McGlynn and Rackley, 2017: 538).

Adopting IBSA may seem long and cumbersome, but it successfully positions the focus on victims and places these acts on the continuum of sexual violence. Besides the terminology used in the news media, analysing the reporting on IBSA cases reveals a mix of communications. As previously mentioned, there has been little research to date of news reporting on this topic; however, one example by Denise Buiten (2020) looked at a case from 2016 when a pornographic website was exposed for hosting over 2000 non-consensual sexual images of Australian teen girls. Buiten found a range in the reporting, noting some journalists called the images ‘inappropriate’ or ‘offensive’, closing off the conversation to understanding harms to victims, while others used terms that acknowledged those harms. In some instances, the reporting failed to provide the context that connects IBSA to sexual violence and instead unintentionally framed these cases as individual tragedies. Her study highlights the evolving discourse around IBSA and underlines that there is still some way to go in media awareness about the importance of connecting IBSA to rape culture and gender inequality in public discussion.

Media representation of image-based sexual abuse

When a new story, policy, or societal issue is emerging, the public turns to the news media for the latest information (Hanitzsch et al., 2018). Because the news media is typically the public's first introduction to an issue, headlines and the angle from which the story is told (referred to in the literature as news framing), have the power to influence the public's understanding (Entman, 1993; Reese, 2001). In the case of IBSA, journalists have attempted to keep up with the variety of harassment and violence perpetrated online or through new technologies, and yet have not successfully understood IBSA as a form of sexual violence. In their efforts to follow the story, they have influenced the terminology used and the ways victims are portrayed (McGlynn and Rackley, 2017).

Most academic literature about IBSA comes from criminology, law, and psychology (Citron, 2014; Di Tullio and Sullivan, 2019; Henry et al., 2018). Many of these publications begin with backgrounds correcting the terminology given by the news media, which is a communication failing, and yet there is little written about IBSA within the communication or media disciplines, including Journalism Studies. Here is a missed opportunity to better understand the effects news reporting has on the representation of IBSA. While journalism has brought a basic level of awareness to IBSA, the news media continues to make the same historical mistakes that researchers have pointed out in the reporting of sexual assaults (Buiten, 2020). For example, sexual violence reporting often fails to critique cultures that allow for such abuse to be perpetrated, and emerging research into media reporting of IBSA cases suggests the news media does not always contextualise these acts as gender-based violence (Buiten, 2020). Instead, it is argued that current media representation perpetuates victim blaming attitudes and minimises the harms to IBSA victims. Since the issue of IBSA is relatively new, the sooner journalism researchers and professionals recognise the effects of continuing the same representation mistakes and changing reporting tactics, the better it will be for victims.

Understanding how IBSA cases and victims are represented in the news media is closely related to the reporting about sexual violence and rape culture more broadly. Previous research suggests news discourses position women as provocateurs (Benedict 1994 in Lockyer and Savigny, 2019) and that sexualised language is used to describe female victims (Soothill and Walby 1991 in Lockyer and Savigny, 2019). It should be noted that some language and contextualisation has improved over the years with awareness post #MeToo (Hindes and Fileborn, 2019). Yet, there is still room to improve. Recent research has found examples of reporting that normalises and reinforces rape culture by giving a platform to rape jokes (Lockyer and Savigny, 2019) and circulating rape myths by blaming the victim, blaming alcohol or drug use, and depicting rapists as ‘sick’ instead of holding an abuser accountable for their actions (Sacks et al., 2017).

Building public understanding of image-based sexual abuse: interactive journalism

It is important to find new ways of telling stories about IBSA that are victim-centred and build public understanding with a lower risk of re-traumatisation. Interactive journalism was chosen as the format for [Can’t] Delete (Gleave, 2021) because it offers a way to focus on and humanise victim experiences while involving audiences in ways that add to public knowledge. Interactive journalism is defined as a ‘visual presentation of storytelling through code for multilayered, tactile user control for the purpose of news and information’ (Usher, 2016: 25). Allowing for user control is the key in creating a more collaborative experience where the reader can play an active role in the storytelling. This approach offers an alternative to the shortcomings of traditional reporting (Spyridou and Milioni, 2019), which in the case of reporting about sexual abuse can mean the circulation of rape myths and victim blaming attitudes. Interactives seek to add to public knowledge in new ways and to create experiences that support human action (Usher, 2016), which is interpreted here in two ways: the action the readers take to engage with the story and the action that societies will take to address IBSA due to greater awareness of the issue.

The literature on interactive journalism pursues two themes, according to Spyridou and Milioni (2019). One analyses the feature projects published by major news organisations and the tools used, such as polls, commenting spaces, and tools to submit text or images. Overall, the research shows that digital start-ups have adopted more interactive tools than elite media, and the promise of interactive journalism remains largely unrealised (Spyridou and Milioni, 2019). The other branch of literature suggests journalists resist collaborative journalism because they prefer to maintain control of user participation with users as active recipients rather than active participants in the news (Spyridou and Milioni, 2019). The power of the active recipient should not be disregarded. Each interactive journalism project embodies a ‘see-it-for-yourself’ approach by encouraging discovery (Usher, 2016: 130). The user is invited to explore the information, test out hypotheses, investigate their own questions, and interpret the narrative independently (Usher, 2016). This freedom affords the user a more holistic storytelling experience by engaging with the content on their own terms. While there are examples of interactives reporting on social justice issues that are clearly aimed at shifting public perspectives and prompting different kinds of community conversations, this has not been a focus in the academic work on interactive journalism, yet one this creative project seeks to address.

Methodology

This research addresses IBSA reporting practices through the creation of a work of victim-centred and fact-based journalism (Gleave, 2021). A creative practice method (see Smith and Dean, 2009) provided an opportunity to engage directly with the problematic coverage by engaging with feminist standpoint theory and experimenting with a different type of reporting, both in content (using updated terminology and focusing on victims’ experiences) and the medium for delivering the story (an interactive website). This approach opens opportunities for the research to be received by a non-academic audience and raise awareness about IBSA.

Feminist standpoint theory

The feminist theory that informs the approach of [Can’t] Delete: Life after image-based sexual abuse (Gleave, 2021) is situated within the worldview that seeks to understand how knowledge is constructed, including the news media's role in constructing public understanding of gender-based violence (Bryman and Burgess, 2012; Denzin and Lincoln, 2017). Feminist standpoint theory refers to the knowledge of the individual and engages with the ways they understand themselves and their social experiences (Harding, 2009). It seeks to determine what is wrong in a society and what is still useful, as well as advocate for women's perspectives claiming they are distinct and different from men's (Harding, 2009). Most standpoint theorists attempt to locate standpoint in specific community contexts with particular attention to the dynamics of race, class, and gender. Standpoint theorists draw links between the development of standpoint theory and feminist political goals of transformative social, political, and economic change:

From the perspective of feminist praxis, standpoint epistemology provides a methodological resource for explicating how relations of domination contour women's everyday lives. With this knowledge, women and others whose lives are shaped by systems of inequality can act to challenge these processes and systems. (Naples and Gurr, 2013: 30)

While some postmodern feminist writers have critiqued this theory, saying it returns to an essentialist view of ‘women’ when there is no single want, thought or desire shared universally across all women (Leavy and Harris, 2018), this theory is well suited to understand the needs of victims of IBSA whose experience of surviving abuse is diverse across race, gender, and class. The interactivity of [Can’t] Delete (Gleave, 2021) situates the reader in the perspective of the victim, thus putting this theory into practice and encouraging the reader to understand a social experience unlike their own. There is also potential for other victims to engage with the project and see themselves and their own experience in the fictionalised profiles, which can provide a deep sense of validation.

A ‘connective model’ of creative practice-led research

While creative practice research is not common in Journalism Studies, it has been gathering momentum in adjacent academic fields to journalism including creative writing and design, prompting recent calls for more experimental and ‘arts-based’ approaches for interrogating and advancing journalism studies (see Sander Hölsgens et al., 2020 on this important topic). There is a range of understandings of the term ‘creative practice research’ but broadly speaking, Donald Schön's (2017) concept of ‘reflective creative practice’ has guided the development of approaches that foreground the value of practitioner knowledge and insights into how practitioners can interrogate their tacit understandings to produce new insights and experience into practice and fields such as journalism. Linda Candy's widely accepted definition of practice-led research as ‘an original investigation undertaken in order to gain new knowledge partly by means of practice and the outcomes of that practice’ (Candy, 2006: 1) is most relevant here. Practice-led research ‘is concerned with the nature of practice and has operational significance for that practice’ (Candy, 2006: 19). It differentiates from practice-based research, which involves the creation and evaluation of an artefact that is used as the basis of the contribution to knowledge. Instead, the practice-led research presented here will lead primarily to new understandings of journalistic ‘practice and form and how to improve it’ (Candy and Edmonds, 2018: 64, author italics).

The ‘connective model’ of creative practice research developed by Jillian Hamilton and Luke Jaaniste (2010) provides the theoretical framework for the analysis presented here. In the ‘connective model’, examining precedents of practice (traditions and exemplars in the field) forms a significant part of the research, along with the researcher's own creative practice and situating concepts (which in this case comprises the literatures and theories discussed in the previous sections). This ‘allows the researcher to both situate their creative practice within a trajectory of research and do justice to its personally invested poetics’ where the researcher will perform ‘the important function of connecting the practice and creative work to a wider emergent field’, to support claims for a research contribution (Hamilton and Jaaniste, 2010: 32).

The connective model has three interlinked dimensions. The first involves identifying and exploring ‘situating concepts’ within the literature that include key definitions and debates of relevance to the topic being investigated (Hamilton and Jaaniste, 2010: 34). In this case, examining the question of what IBSA is, and the ways in which researchers have so far conceived it as a problem for society. The second stage is concerned with ‘precedents of practice’ (Hamilton and Jaaniste, 2010: 34) or exemplars that inspire and inform the development of the researcher's own practice. For this project the second dimension involved drawing on specific exemplars of interactive journalism with a social justice focus (see Wei and Fortugno, 2018). The third dimension is the researcher's creative practice, which for this project includes the interactive work of journalism Can’t Delete (Gleave, 2021), as well as critical reflection on its production and potential impact. The following sections document and reflect upon the process and outcome of creating Can’t Delete: Life after image-based sexual assault (Gleave, 2021).

Developing a new work of journalism

The website begins with an introduction to IBSA, leads into four victim profiles that make up the interactive storytelling element, and concludes with a text-based piece of explanatory journalism highlighting the key facts about IBSA. It was designed by the lead author Josie Gleave using Wix, a website builder with templates, and the interactive profiles were created using Twine, an open source tool for creating interactive stories. To engage with the interactive element, the user can hover over the four profiles, click on one to explore, and a pop-up box with storytelling pages will prompt the user to begin. The profiles represent four different ways a person can be victimised by IBSA: ‘revenge porn’, voyeurism, ‘deepfakes’, and ‘sextortion’. ¹ Some of these terms – ‘revenge porn’, in particular – are criticised for not adequately representing the harms to victims. These are terms that were created and adopted by the news media and used in this project as labels over the victim profiles to be easily recognisable to the reader. Appropriate context is given in the explanatory article that follows the profiles.

Each profile begins with a short introduction to the character, details of their abuse, and then leads the reader through a series of decisions as the character tries to determine the best way forward. In this way, the reader participates in the victim's story. The goal of this approach is to encourage empathy and understanding for the victim's experience. The details of how the abuse occurs and the responses of the victims are informed by research and news reports of real IBSA cases, but the profiles have been crafted in such a way to be fully anonymised, meaning the characters and names are fictional. Following the victim profiles is a text-based piece of explanatory journalism that supports the interactive storytelling element with facts about IBSA. Anger, fear, and a sense of hopelessness are evident in the victim profiles, but it is the explanatory feature that details the range of harms they experience. This is the groundwork needed to provide context for IBSA to be understood as a serious type of sexual violence.

Follow the link to view the artefact: https://s38924418.wixsite.com/honours The website is best viewed via desktop, not a mobile device.

Warning: [Can’t] Delete: Life after image-based sexual abuse (Gleave, 2021) directly addresses the issue of sexual abuse. This is a difficult topic and may be distressing; please take care of your safety and well-being. Resources for support can be found at the conclusion of the website.

Making journalism about IBSA in a new way

[Can’t] Delete (Gleave, 2021) is an example of doing journalism about image-based sexual abuse in a new way. The combination of interactive storytelling with fictionalised profiles and research informed reporting was designed to give a balanced view of the issue while also seeking to affect an empathetic response from readers that could create social change. The approach to accomplishing the research aim was through offering different standpoints predominantly in the interactive profiles. The reader hears the voices of victims of IBSA that are likely different to their own experience and are encouraged to engage. This influence in the work comes from feminist standpoint theory, which seeks to enact social progress (Harding, 2009). This section sets out the reasons for fictionalising the victim profiles and then argues the importance of the explanatory article in accomplishing the ambitious goals of this new journalism website. Finally, the article suggests what future work and research can be done to further increase awareness and understanding of IBSA in both the academy and non-academic spheres.

Fictionalising the victim profiles

For much of the 20^th century, the epistemology of journalism favoured objectivity, requiring journalists to remove any interpretation or perspective from their reporting (Vos, 2018). Any suggestion that journalists working in mainstream news outlets could also engage in advocacy was rejected. Post-1960s, there has been recognition that this so-called objectivity does not necessarily provide truthful insights but rather represents a single world view (Maras, 2013). Questions about how to do journalism transformed into concerns about who controls or defines truth and objectivity (Vos, 2018). Striving for objectivity has not gone away despite a growing acceptance that this goal is flawed, and less thinking has been put forward about how the ‘view from nowhere’ approach impacts power relations and ‘chronic representational issues’ (Callison and Young, 2019: 4). Lee Gutkind, renowned for his work on creative non-fiction, described the role of the journalist this way:

The reporter's mission is to report the news with objectivity and balance, not take sides or give one aspect of a story more attention than the other. We all know by reading The New York Times or watching Fox News that objectivity in journalism doesn’t exist – it's merely empty rhetoric. Objectivity is impossible unless, perhaps, you’re a robot. Even then, the software that helps robots think is written by men and women who have ideas and opinions of their own. (Gutkind, 2012: 34)

Mainstream journalists are taught that facts are not only best practice, but the only practice. This is evident even from the title of Gutkind's book, You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, in which he allows for some flexibility regarding compression of timelines if the writer is transparent, but not composite characters. He concludes two main points to remember are ‘don’t create incidents and characters who never existed; don’t write to do harm to innocent victims’ (Gutkind, 2012: 43). These two points are exactly the ones contended with in the [Can’t] Delete artefact at the centre of this research.

One important issue with reporting victim stories is preserving their privacy to prevent audiences from searching for the victim's images online, the very ones the reporting says are abusive (McGlynn, 2016). In routine news reporting, anonymity is an option where there are unacceptable risks for interviewees, but as the ethical dimensions of interviewing IBSA victims is complex and high risk, the researchers decided to explore alternative approaches to balancing public interest and victim rights. The ‘connective model’ of creative practice research (Hamilton and Jaaniste, 2010) involves working from precedents of practice, which was a useful avenue of inquiry for working with the question of anonymising the victim profiles. Following the precedent of The Waiting Game (Wei and Fortugno, 2018) from ProPublica and WNYC which allowed for the fictionalisation of minor details that did not change the underlying facts of the story, the research followed an activist path to problematise this issue for journalists to ask them to consider which is more important: raising awareness and empathy while protecting victims or maintaining the journalism industry's standard of objectivity? The characters in [Can’t] Delete (Gleave, 2021) do not represent one victim's story verbatim, but many victims will see parts of their experiences in these profiles and recognise the representation of IBSA victimisation as truth.

A final concern about fictionalising the accounts was not wanting to give the audience any reason to discount the victim profiles. There were concerns that because the profiles are not considered ‘true stories’ by the standards of mainstream journalism, then they could be dismissed as dramatic to contrive a response from the reader. The profiles were crafted from discoveries in existing IBSA research about who is harmed, how, and what options they have after abuse. In other words, these scenarios are not uncommon. Exploring feminist standpoint theory, which refers to the knowledge of the individual and the ways they understand themselves and their experiences (Harding, 2009), provided the framework to take this victim-centred approach. The interactive profiles situate the reader in the perspective of the victim, putting the theory into practice and encouraging the reader to consider an experience unlike their own.

Reporting without causing additional harm is one of journalism's challenges when writing about any form of sexual abuse. Journalists have options such as granting anonymity to the victim, and when the author of [Can’t] Delete Josie Gleave (who is a researcher and practising journalist) reported on this issue in the past, they were forthcoming in offering that option. Gleave felt the victim's real name rarely added to the story unless it provided a sense of empowerment to the victim who was trying to regain control of their story. This can be part of the healing process for victims, but they and journalists need to be aware that when a victim publicly claims their experience of abuse it can lead to further harassment.

One high profile example of continued harassment was ‘Celebgate’ or ‘The Fappening’, crude titles adopted by media outlets to describe a collection of hundreds of nude images of celebrities hacked from their iCloud accounts in 2014 (McGlynn et al., 2017). While it was not clearly represented as IBSA in the news, the so-called leaked images were at least accepted as a privacy violation, and yet, as the story was shared and re-reported, readers and media organisations continued to spread the images across the internet. This cycle of viewing, commenting, re-posting, and re-sharing non-consensual images makes the initial abuse exponentially worse as victims lose control over those images (McGlynn and Rackley, 2017). With this case and others in mind, the author of [Can’t] Delete Josie Gleave did not want to use examples that could be traced back to a victim. The epistemological underpinnings of journalism to tell ‘true stories’, and the importance of protecting a victim's anonymity if requested is navigated by journalists in traditional reporting, but this becomes more challenging when put into an interactive. Yet the potential of interactive features to facilitate empathetic responses and even prompt social action makes this approach an attractive tool for journalists and journalism to broaden understanding for issues that seem stubbornly fixed across cultures (Usher, 2016). Attitudes around sexual abuse and victim blaming are examples that could be improved by interactive storytelling. For this reason, we argue it is acceptable to fictionalise key details of a story to protect victims from further harm if the fictional accounts are based on research of what could and has occurred and the reader is informed from the start that this approach has been used. In this way, [Can’t] Delete takes an experimental approach that is ethical, best described as an act of alternative journalism (Harcup, 2016; Rauch, 2021) that sits outside a conventional journalism practice but is able to strive for one of journalism's higher ideals – to give a voice to the marginalised (Callison and Young, 2019). Journalists should consider the option of breaking with the logics of journalism to experiment with more effective ways to address newer kinds of social problems, such as IBSA, that have deep roots in patriarchal power (Powell and Henry, 2017).

Background and context in explanatory journalism

While the victim profiles are a key feature of the interactive website, the goal of increasing awareness of image-based sexual abuse would not be complete without the piece of explanatory journalism. The article, ‘Navigating the world wide web of image-based sexual abuse’, provides the basic background and context needed for readers to fully understand the victim profiles. It begins with a historical context of IBSA, which is related to forms of voyeuristic abuse and shaming that have been around for decades, yet IBSA is considered a new phenomenon that exploded in growth with new technology developments, such as the smart phone and internet (McGlynn and Rackley, 2017). This piece addresses the categories of abuse, including ‘revenge porn’, ‘upskirting’, ² secret filming or sexual voyeurism, ‘deepfake pornography’, ‘sextortion’, and recorded sexual assaults, as well as an explanation of why certain terms first adopted by the news media have since been rejected by victims (McGlynn et al., 2017). This article also draws awareness to the seriousness of IBSA and its harmful effects on victims. In short, the explanatory article is where readers learn what IBSA is and why they should care.

The author of [Can’t] Delete (2021) Josie Gleave drew from the work of Clare McGlynn and Nicola Henry, who are leading law and criminology experts in the field of IBSA. In 2017, McGlynn and Rackley created the term ‘image-based sexual abuse’ and categorised it as a form of sexual violence, thereby situating it on Kelly's 1987 continuum of sexual violence (McGlynn and Rackley, 2017). Following this, they conceptualised a continuum of IBSA to allow for a variety of abuses to be identified as IBSA. In the same year, Powell and Henry wrote about the harms of technology-facilitated sexual violence – IBSA being one form – through a ‘victim-centred approach’ (p. 5). They described this to mean letting victims guide the researchers by informing them of the harms of this kind of violence. Taking a creative practice approach that harnesses Gleave's professional knowledge and skills as a journalist, she drew from McGlynn and Henry's repertoire of published works in order to communicate the issue of IBSA for a non-academic audience.

Relying on the scholarly literature about IBSA was valuable in this process because despite its roots in age-old sexual violence, the mode of abuse – non-consensual imagery created and shared via digital communication technologies – is a relatively new issue (McGlynn and Rackley, 2017). Science journalists are known for relying on academic literature findings, but this is less common when reporting on social issues. This is a missed opportunity to provide context and to avoid misrepresentation. If Gleave only relied on the work done by other journalists, [Can’t] Delete would arguably be missing the crucial contextual elements that identify IBSA as a form of sexual violence (Buiten, 2020). Similarly, if Gleave had drawn only on interviews with victims, they would have had compelling and heartbreaking stories that would reveal the realities for victims, but those experiences still need context to advocate for solutions and make the argument that more can be done to support victims. Therefore, the author combined explanatory and interactive journalism in a single journalistic work for a comprehensive audience experience. The ‘see-it-for-yourself’ approach to an interactive website encourages the reader to discover the complexities of the issue and explore the information (Usher, 2016) and building the reporting from a foundation of academic research provided the context. Together, these journalistic elements seek to achieve the project's goal of establishing a baseline of understanding IBSA that is currently lacking.

Conclusion: learnings and future work

Instances of image-based sexual abuse continue to rise globally, and we urgently need solutions as researchers warn the decentralised Web 3.0 might introduce further difficulties in regulating harmful online content, including IBSA and child sexual abuse material, allowing it to proliferate (Ragnedda and Destefanis, 2020). The first steps to combatting this is wider public awareness and understanding of the harms of IBSA, plus a sense of urgency to act that can boost policy efforts. Considering the public is usually first exposed to an issue through the news media and the language and story framing chosen for headlines and reporting influences the public's understanding (Entman, 1993; Reese, 2001), finding new approaches and improving journalism about sexual abuse, specifically IBSA, is crucial to creating this sense of urgency for change and improving the lives of victims. After all, ‘the role of the media in discovering, unveiling and making private crimes public cannot be underestimated in the formation of public action and policy’ (Luce, 2019: 52). Without a more complete and nuanced understanding of how abuse is perpetrated, by whom, against whom, and why, our societies will be behind in making connections to our culture that allows for IBSA to be perpetrated.

The academy also has more work to do. Image-based sexual abuse has gained increasing scholarly awareness in the past decade, but overall, the research is still in its infancy, and there has been very little work that examines journalism about IBSA in media and communication studies despite researchers from other fields, like criminology and psychology, recognising how important media representation is to public understanding and the policymaking process (McGlynn and Rackley, 2017). There is an urgent need for this research to better inform news organisations and journalists so that they can avoid causing harm to victims through poor representation and instead start spreading awareness of IBSA as a form of sexual violence.

Creative practice research offers productive spaces for this work, and Hamilton and Jaaniste's (2010) connective model has provided a robust framework for achieving the project aims. It has been used to bring together situating concepts (a feminist critique of the dominant practices of doing journalism) with precedents of interactive journalism and Gleave's creative practice with ‘the primary goal of promoting social change’ (Rauch, 2021: 3). There is much room for improvement in future reportage about sexual abuse, including critiquing cultures that allow for abusive behaviours, contextualising the abusive acts as gender-based violence, accurately emphasising the effects on victims, and avoiding victim blaming attitudes (Buiten, 2020). This project has identified this need and sought to respond with an experiment in how journalism about IBSA can be conducted that simultaneously informs the public and encourages empathy and understanding of the victim experience. Furthermore, as we have better examples of the media empathising and connecting with victims, and amplifying their voices without augmenting their harms, both the public and policymakers will be better equipped to synthesise these inputs into action.