ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors argue that the online environment presents the potential for anyone to be vulnerable and that stakeholders – those with responsibility for safeguarding from practice to policy – routinely fail victims because their solutions fail to understand the wider social context. Actor network theory (ANT) offers a useful approach to our understanding here. In conceptualising society as produced by and through networks of heterogenous material, it is made up through a variety of human and non-human entities. The white paper makes little effort to define what an ‘Online Harm’ actually is, aside from the following from the Ministerial introduction which states: Online harms are widespread and can have serious consequences. The online dissemination of images, and the lack of control of the image once on image is either shared with multiple parties or posted in a public online space, means that the audience for viewing is entirely unknown.
