September 28, 2015 at 2:52 pm
Here's how the report at page 6 defines cyber violence against women and girls, or Cyber-VAWG: [words]"
When you're talking about the report's overall concept of "cyberviolence," though, I think it is more fair to look at the report's explanation of why it uses that term (on page 21):
The United Nations defines violence against women as: 'Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.' It includes forced intimate partner violence and sexual assault, marriage, dowry-related violence, marital rape, sexual harassment, intimidation at work and in educational institutions, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, forced sterilization, trafficking and forced prostitution and gender-related killings.
The term ‘cyber’ is used to capture the different ways that the Internet exacerbates, magnifies or broadcasts the abuse."
From that perspective, the term "cyberviolence" makes some sense. Violence is rarely an end in itself – it's usually a means to something else (in the context of violence against women, often a means to control and humiliate). The effect of violence is amplified when it is combined with communicative acts. ISIS is able to spread terror far more effectively by posting videos of executions on the internet. The Klan's terrorization of the South didn't depend just on physical attacks, but on visual symbols such as cross burning and marches. The speech amplifies and extends the effects of the violence beyond the immediate victims to a broader group. Likewise, communication is enhanced and made more effective by the violence – the violence draws attention to the speech that it wouldn't otherwise get. Dylann Roof's racist screeds were published internationally, most extensively on the internet, after he shot up the church in Charleston; only a small fringe group would have been exposed to his thoughts without the violence.
The report mentions an example specific to violence against women – the distribution of photographs taken during the gang rape of Rehtaeh Parsons. The harassment, including online harassment, exacerbated the effects of the physical violence and led to the victim's suicide.
I think it's fair for the report to use "cyberviolence" in that context, and one of the report's strengths is its call to look at how speech and violence are intersecting to exacerbate, magnify and broadcast abuse against women.
Unfortunately, the report's application of that idea is done very poorly, for the reasons you've noted in your post. Poor execution shouldn't be grounds for dismissing the underlying concept, though.
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