Grant / January 2020

Post and Re-trauma: Enhancing the Cybersecurity of Sexual Assault Victims on Facebook

In the last few years, social media has created supportive spaces where sexual assault victims can share their testimonies, yet social media also serves as a forum for victimizing activities such as stalking, harassing, and humiliating survivors. This study aims to uncover and empirically characterize the negative aspects of Facebook use by sexual assault survivors in the U.S. and Israel who have exposed their stories online. Through an anonymous online survey and complementary interviews with select subjects, the researchers seek to find the relations between various parameters, such as the severity and type of the online abusive behavior, the circumstances in which it appears, and the characteristics of the victim, the abuser, and their relationship.