Implementing The Online Safety Act 2023:
An Empirical Analysis of Political Economic Institutions and Lived Experiences
The Project
In recent years, global policy agendas have increasingly sought to address the proliferation of cyber harms and their real-world impacts, with the UK’s landmark Online Safety Act (OSA) achieving royal assent in 2023. While much work attempts to analyse the harms of cyberhate and direct policy-making, the dominant approach to this phenomenon has remained piecemeal in targeting individual perpetrators, circumventing political responses with broad strokes of cyber-policing.
In engaging this issue, I build on constructivist and ameliorist political economic theory, critically evaluating the institutional and intersectional influences and experiences of digital violence against developments in law and policy. I go from the macro to the micro to the meso level analytically and methodologically to theoretically ground an understanding of the threats, limitations and opportunities for change in the UK.
This approach is rooted within several core political arguments and sociological methodologies but flows to accommodate the variances in lived experiences of DVAW and combatting it. I elucidate how the political and economic landscape shapes the rhetoric and practices around cyber policing. Thus, Although I believe that my ultimate answers to my research questions remain limited, I hope that I provide a good starting point in elucidating the challenges remaining in the design and implementation of inclusive cyber policy, whilst inspiring alternative lines of research towards inclusive and scalable cyber policy.
The Approach
While much-existing scholarship advances perspectives on techno-capitalism, performative masculinities, and Meso-level communities, my research suggests a novel opportunity to integrate and expand upon these three research streams to investigate the potential for equitable spaces within the UK’s political economy.
More pointedly, integrating these streams reveals the context, impetus and methods around which online violence functions as an oppressive mechanism. I tackle the complexities, challenges, and possibilities for developing policies against diverse but interconnected regimes of oppression, aiming to develop an agenda for hope.
At the most abstract levels, I apply a broadly themed "Case Study Method", in locating the wider phenomena of online violence within separate and distinct events. I draw together a range of methodological tools to form a unique “research assemblage” that operates as distinct yet connected case studies to capture the complex and nuanced practices of online violence.
Furthermore, this project extends a qualitative sociological analysis through semi-structured interviews with policymakers, online moderators, digital activists, and victims of online violence. This approach was carried out alongside content and thematic analysis to investigate the tensions at the nexus of policy and social change. Consequently, this allowed a holistic assessment of the converging systemic inequalities that enabled violence alongside an amelioration of the power of collective organising and coalitional politics from below.
All interviews were transcribed, reviewed and utilised a three-stage coding process. Firstly, I assessed each transcript to immerse myself in the data and ascertain information regarding the participant’s experiences and insights. Next, I read through each transcript assessing narratives regarding the concept of "Online Safety" as a whole. In the second stage, the narratives identified were synthesised to construct the themes presented within this project. This was done through inductive coding of participant inputs, I placed no restrictions on the number of codes generated and coded all inputs before grouping my codes into categories. Areas of significant overlap were then identified and developed into broader themes. Finally, I reassessed the narratives from each participant's interview to highlight influential background characteristics. I extracted the corresponding quotes using a macro and collated them and their themes in a table that included the Theme, Definition, Codes and supporting Verbatims.
Project Management
A project timeline with check-in points and expected deliverables was communicated to my department and personal supervisor.
A RAID (Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies) Log and Task Tracker was shared with my personal supervisor and updated weekly
Ultimately, my findings highlight how any resolution of online violence has to address the “exclusionary intent behind abuse” as the digital transmogrification of very real political problems and is likely to necessitate radical ways of redistributing power and resources beyond policy changes imposing duties on corporations. It will require cooperation between all peoples who have fallen prey to the vagaries of neoliberal techno-capitalism to dismantle its hegemonies and develop a more equitable and inclusive approach to the distribution of social, economic and political powers. This project is merely a starting point, examining the potential for critical analysis of violence online within the political and economic structures which motivate and maintain it, I hope that future work may draw upon the contributions of this project in challenging manifestations of hate and inequality, wherever they appear.