“Nothing will stop the sluts now”: Analysing women's support for image-based abuse websites on social media

Abstract

The abrupt closure of a popular website which hosted image-based abuse in April 2012 triggered a robust social media response. Most posts on Twitter expressed a positive opinion about Is Anyone Up? ( IAU) and its “revenge porn” business model. These tweets were not just posted by men, with around one-third of the 2,967 tweets about the website on the day of its closure linked to the profiles of women. This article assesses the 1,030 tweets posted about IAU by identifiably female accounts in the 12 hours after the website shutdown. It assesses the levels of support for image-based abuse among women and compares the nature of this support with responses of Twitter users who are identifiably male, or those whose gender could not be determined. It considers factors such as the impact of online disinhibition on the prevalence of online mockery, especially within pre-existing misogynistic frames observable on social media. It also discusses the perception among women that image-based abuse served as an informal control on sending “nudes” and, on that point, how women were divided as to whether the closure of the site should be treated as a positive or negative development.