Non sono solo immagini
In the last years, the way people communicate has radically transformed: thanks to digital technologies, and in particular online platforms, new relational possibilities have opened up, together with new forms of violence. One of them is image-based sexual abuse, the non-consensual distribution and/or creation of private sexual material. This type of violence is perpetrated daily within vast online communities to the detriment of mainly unaware victims.
The research aimed to study the practices of image-based sexual abuse and the role of platforms in their implementation within the community, focusing not on the victims but on the perpetrators. The opportunity identified to obtain this shift in perspective (from victims to perpetrators) is that of online vernacular language, the set of expressions, styles, and grammars peculiar to digital communities.
“Non sono solo immagini” is a site designed to educate and raise awareness on image-based sexual abuse using the evidence from the research carried out on online vernacular language. The project is a collection of artifacts displayed as visualizations designed to analyze the communications and practices of those who perpetrate violence to provide the user with the tools to initiate a critical reflection on the subject that could be the first step towards social change.
The catalogue is the first artifact, it displays 313 requests of images and/or videos that constitute image-based sexual abuse made by the members of 4 Telegram groups active in the Italian pornography subculture.
The requests have been analyzed and rendered visually as postcards. These latter are displayed as a visualization, where the filter buttons function also as a legend.
Every background color refers to an action proposed by a member of a group, such as the exchange of material. Every full shape symbolizes the subject of the requested material, such as a partner, an ex or a parent. The color of the shape implies the gender of the subject. Fiinally, the outline shape symbolizes, if disclosed, the genre of the material for example rape or child pornography.
The glossary is the second artifact, it displays the terms more repeated by the users of 4chan when requesting the manipulation of some material in order to make it sexually explicit.
The different types of manipulations have been displayed as a sort of card index, where every manipulation is a file that contains its definition, the variants, the related terms and some examples. This card index works also as a world cloud, in fact the terms are ordered according to the times they were repeated.
The color of the file represents the manipulation type, for example one can ask to manipulate the subject, or to move the subject in another image, or even to do a physical action over the image.
