Embodied and entangled: Slow violence and harm via digital technologies

As embedded systems, Internet and communications technologies not only have material footprints, they exist within and maintain historically specific societal structures and power dynamics. Despite growing awareness of the ubiquity of online harassment and bullying, there remains a disconnect between the embodied experiences of technology facilitated violence and legal and social recognition of harm. Looking at a notorious case out of Nova Scotia and the anti-cyberbullying legislation it inspired, I consider the ways such violence is made visible and invisible, looking specifically at the persistent cognitive disconnect between the virtual and the corporeal, and the language that enacts or justifies such distinctions. Formed within and against persistent ontological perceptions about technology and the nature of the virtual, I elaborate on slow violence in two different registers: the differentially experienced and embodied slow violence of persistent online threats and abuse, and the slow violence of responses to those communications.