About
The Center for Solutions to Online Violence (CSOV) is a virtual hub for a distributed community working to address the myriad forms of violence women and femmes experience in digital spaces. In addressing online harassment, our goal is to improve equity, access, and engagement with digital tools and culture. We seek to ensure that women and femmes who participate in our connected culture do not have to trade physical and psychological security for access to digital resources and communities. We address issues of gender, race, sexuality, and ability.
History
The Center for Solutions to Online Violence was born from a working group dedicated to creating strategies for addressing anti-feminist violence online. This effort arose out conversations sparked by a diverse set of experiences of violence online, from the all too regular harassment experienced by women of color and trans people to GamerGate and the violences experienced by female public intellectuals.
Out of a set of online discussions in 2013-14 came our collective commitment to do something to address the harassment and violence that women and feminists are facing online. There are many who have participated in this effort and we are actively working to join in the chorus of voices that support the rights of feminists to work, write, speak, and live.
Originally funded as the “Addressing Anti-Feminist Violence Online” project, our work was supported by the Digital Media and Learning Competition 5: The Trust Challenge and is coordinated by a collective known as FemTechNet. In July of 2015, the group was able to meet through the support of the grant won through the Digital Media and Learning Competition, which is a collaboration between HASTAC, Duke University, the University of California Humanities Research Institute, and the MacArthur Foundation. The Addressing Anti-Feminist Violence Online retreat was a two-day summit that brought together people targeted by online violence, experts, writers, activists, and educators from across the country to share experiences, vent their frustrations, and launch into developing a multi-pronged toolkit of tactics to provide resources to a very diverse population of people who have been wounded and silenced by online violence.
Our Goals
CSOV is focused on four areas of content development:
- Resources for rapid response to for people experiencing online violence
- Curricula to educate potential abusers
- Strategies for responsible sharing for journalists, scholars, and members of the general public
- Documents that map the history of online violence by ethically gathering testimony, evidence, and data.
We plan to ensure that our digital “product” is in fact a living, constantly developing, responsive resource that will be accessible for a long time to come.
Contact Us
You can reach us center4sov[@]gmail[.]com
Check out the CSOV Steering Collective, Speaker’s Bureau at our CSOV Community page.