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Paper short abstract

How can we ethically engage digitally shared narratives about/by victims of gender violence? This paper explores the ethical limits to narrating cases of victims "revived" through digital memory and activism, and survivors leveraging these spaces as testimonial spaces.

Paper long abstract

I begin by asking: If and when I find violence etched in my digital memory, can I ethically engage with these stories if the victims are killed? Is it ethical to engage with their stories if they survived?

Once celebrated as revolutionary, digital spaces are now shaped by surveillance, repression, and contested visibility. Using cases shared in the Arab(ic) X-sphere, it explores how the realness and corporeality of violence are transformed into public, reductive digital narratives at the convergence of state-sanctioned control and culturally sanctioned repression. Earlier literature views digital platforms as sites for redress and testimony, but recent scholarship highlights their role as extensions of social and political structures, where testimonies can be discredited, surveilled, or weaponized. These dynamics are particularly relevant when a victim is assaulted and killed, as hashtag activism and trending feeds facilitate mobilization both online and offline. However, when survivors break their silence, their bravery is often rendered obstructive and subject to control and silencing. This paper contributes to debates on how scholars navigate this digital terrain without treating narratives of violence as mere data points. Rather, they are fragments of people’s lives, echoes of pain demanding acknowledgment. Thus, what does it mean to read these stories and witness them? Can one speak on behalf of victims and survivors in a moment marked by desensitization and erasure? With these concerns in mind, this paper engages in a critical discussion of what affordances can be garnered through fictionalization as an ethical research practice.