A Socio-Technical Approach to Researching Technologically Facilitated Intimate Abuse

As the use of technological objects to mediate intimate partner abuse rises, further considerations into the scope of research and knowledge construction possibilities are required. This chapter aims to position research into the field of technologically mediated abuse within a pluralistic theoretical paradigm centralised on system thinking as a building block to other ways of seeing and doing research. The chapter is developed through several key ideas: fundamental theoretical paradigms are outlined and considered in line with the topic before application to a pertinent and challenging area of intimate abuse research: language and definition possibilities, prior to drawing the chapter to a close focusing on a particular typology of system thinking. Overall, the chapter will provide the justification for a system-thinking approach to ground further research within the field of technology-mediated intimate partner abuse.