The Nordic Digital Rights and Equality Foundation (NORDREF) – in collaboration with women’s shelters, police authorities and courts – will conduct research that aims to profile perpetrators of gender-based online abuse in Sweden, Denmark and Iceland, using various sources and methods.

The research will focus particularly on image-based sexual abuse, illegal threats and sexual harassment (including so-called dickpics). The ongoing pandemic has led to an uptake in use of digital communications and a rise in digital manifestations of violence against women, referred to as the ‘shadow pandemic’ by the UN. The negative impact this has on women’s both personal and public life has been evident in a Nordic and a global context. 

Establishing a perpetrator profile such as age, gender, motive and relationship to the victim lays the foundation for evidence-based proposals with the aim of countering and ultimately preventing online abuse, which in turn strengthens democracy and gender-equality.