Technology-facilitated violence: A conceptual review

Abstract

This article provides a conceptual review of the term ‘technology-facilitated violence’. In the last decade, discussion of technology-facilitated violence has become commonplace in criminological and social scientific discourses. Yet, scholars have not settled on what this term means or the kind of relationship between technology and violence it infers. Addressing this ambiguity, we review how scholars have conceptualised technology-facilitated violence, evaluate the adequacy of those conceptualisations, and develop strategies to improve them. To do so, we bring the philosophy of technology into conversation with the scholarship on technology-facilitated violence to identify the latent theories of technology that underpin existing definitions of technology-facilitated violence. Then, synthesising insights from these two fields of scholarship, we generate a new definition of technology-facilitated violence that builds on the strengths of existing definitions while avoiding their key limitations. This new definition and the conceptual review that informs it should improve scholarly understandings of technology-facilitated violence and help design better strategies to address its harms. Hence, we conclude by emphasising the importance of this kind of conceptual and synthetic work and the value it offers scholars concerned with improving both theory and practice.