This presentation provides an overview of the rise and expansion of apps and artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots designed to offer survivors of sexual violence with emergency assistance, education and a means to report and build evidence against perpetrators. Drawing on exploratory research on the development and deployment of these technologies, it illustrates how their use can be understood as both confronting and constituting forms of oppression. In doing so, we address how anti-violence apps extend problematic features of platforms to new domains, considering how they extract information from users, often rely on complex financial partnerships and tend to promote ineffective criminal justice responses.

Speakers:

Professor Kathryn (Kate) Henne is the Director of RegNet, the ANU School of Regulation and Global Governance, where she leads the Justice and Technoscience Lab (JusTech). She is also an Honorary Professor in the College of Heath Solutions at Arizona State University. Her research interests are concerned with how science and technology contribute to the governance of persons and populations. Her publications span issues of biomedicalisation, criminalisation, gender regulation, human enhancement, surveillance and technologies of policing.

Dr Renee Shelby is a postdoctoral fellow with the Sexualities Project at Northwestern University, where she is jointly appointed in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies Program. Her research examines intersections between technology, racial and gender inequality, the criminal legal system and social movements. Her first book project, Designing Justice: Sexual Violence, Technology and Citizen Activism, examines the social and legal consequences of new technologies used to prevent, investigate and prosecute sexual assault.

Jenna Imad Harb is a PhD scholar at RegNet and a member of the Justice and Technoscience Lab. Her research areas of interest are surveillance, science and technology studies (STS) and social justice. Her PhD thesis examines changes to how social assistance and humanitarian aid are being delivered in Lebanon, particularly amidst sustained crises—such as economic collapse, divisive politics, COVID-19, and the aftermath of the explosion in Beirut. She has also carried out research on technologies of policing and national security policy in Canada.

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