A sociotechnical anthropology of online safeguarding
Authors: Phippen, A. and Bond, E.
Pages: 183-212
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-46053-1_8
Abstract:The Online Safety policy space is now sufficiently developed for us to observe repeated failures to develop legislation that goes any way to prevent online harms and support the victims of online abuse. New policymakers and politicians come forward to propose similar prohibitive measures to ensure harms cannot occur online, with the misguided belief that because harms occur online, and that online technology can be used to prevent it. Evidence drawn from 20 years of research in this field highlights a stakeholder space where poor understanding and personal biases fail to achieve the fundamental need in safeguarding-to provide a safe space for a victim of harm to disclose and receive support. Prohibitive policy and the fallout from this-judgemental and punitive education-combine to result in environments where the vulnerable will not disclose for fear of judgement and chastisement or, even worse, criminal sanction. We propose breaking this cycle by learning from the history in another area of social policy, examining the failures of the war on drugs and the emergence of harm reduction approaches, which aim to achieve support for victims through an evidence base and informed support from multiple stakeholders. We argue that this model is more in line with what young people are calling for and suggest this more progressive approach is essential to break the cycle of policy failure.
Source: Scopus