Earlier this autumn, DIGSUM held its yearly symposium. This year’s theme was Digital Darkside: Crime and Control in Online Spaces. Across two days, we explored how violence, control, and resistance are reshaped in digital spaces, focusing on disinformation, image-based abuse, darknet, digital policing, and beyond.
It was great to see how our speakers brought together conceptual, ethical, and empirical insights from across disciplines and countries. Together, we travelled some uncharted terrains, identified research needs, and laid the groundwork for future collaborations. Some of the questions we left with were:
Theory: How can we build critical vocabularies to name what is happening online?
Methods and ethics: How can we research digital harm without reproducing it?
Looking ahead: Where are the blind spots in policy, tech, and theory?
Huge thanks from the DIGSUM team to everyone who contributed to making this an inspiring, intense, event. More to come!