The challenges and impacts of digital intimate partner violence for social work

Abstract

This chapter examines how digitalization affects the environment within which social work operates and the challenges it brings. In particular, we focus on the impact of men’s exploitation of digital technologies and affordances in intimate partner violence (IPV), abuse, and violations (DIPV: digital intimate partner violence), as a major form of digital gender-sexual violations. From various international research, policy work, and activism, it is becoming clear that IPV in real life (IRL) is now frequently accompanied and reinforced by DIPV. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make a clear separation between AI-enabled IPV and non-AI-enabled IPV; this embeddedness is at the core of the potency of DIPV. These shifting conditions, in terms of the relations of DIPV and AI (artificial intelligence), bring multiple impacts, especially on women and girls, and raise multiple challenges for social work and kindred activities. Thus, we address the challenges raised by DIPV and related digital developments and their implications for social work and anti-violence work. This chapter addresses theoretical and policy concerns, notably: the problems that social workers deal with, including work with perpetrators, the societal embeddedness of AI and digitalization, the blurring of online/offline boundaries, and the wider societal environment of social work.