Amid Covid, an epidemic of online violence in country

As the pandemic unfolded, most interactions – professional as well as personal – moved online.

And as online interactions increased, so did the cases of women being harassed, so much so that the dictionary had a new entry: Zoom-bombing or Zoom-flashing.

It refers to the practice of people joining online gatherings to post racist, sexist, pornographic, or anti-Semitic content to shock and disturb viewers.

A study of several cases and studies from across Asia conducted by experts at the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago has found that with increased time spent online during Covid, instances of gender-based violence (GBV) facilitated by technology went up in India.

As part of the study, researchers screened over 2,000 articles and analysed 97 of them. Forty of these articles were based in India. The range of online abuse perpetrated online among several vulnerable groups included cyberbullying, cyberstalking, defamation, image-based abuse, sexual harassment, doxing, gendertrolling and hacking.

“In India, increased concern over online violence during the pandemic is evidenced by increasing conversations around online GBV on Twitter, which nearly tripled during the 2020–2021 period of Covid-19 compared to before," the study noted.

In addition to instances of Zoom-flashing, newer forms of online violence that found popularity were “shock content,” where videos that mix humor with violent acts against women were posted as Instagram reels and TikToks, the study said.

LGBTQI+ individuals and female sex workers also faced increasing online violence during Covid.

“India saw more female sex workers moving toward mobile or home-based sex work, making them increasingly vulnerable to violence from clients taking screenshots of their work to later use for blackmail or non-consensual distribution of intimate images,” the study says.

Among the set of recommendations, experts have asked India to come up with a legislation to deal specifically with online gender-based violence, and assess and amend anti-obscenity and anti-pornography laws that actively harm survivors or restricting consensual sexual expression by laying out what is acceptable social behaviour.

Vidya Reddy of the Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse (CPHCSA) said that India lacks intent to solve the problem.

“Indian certainly condones child sex abuse material, but it has a long way to go in practice when it comes to government structures. In most child sex abuse cases, there’s always technology involved, but not always is it reflected when a cases is filed. There is a need for greater understanding among investigative authorities about the intersection of technology and sexual violence,” said Vidya.

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