Beyond the Power and Control Wheel: how abusive men manipulate mobile phone technologies to facilitate coercive control

Abstract

Mobile phone ownership has become almost universal, with smartphones the most popular consumer electronics device. While the role of technologies and digital media in the domestic abuse of women is gaining international attention, specific information regarding how mobile phones, and their various ‘apps’, may assist perpetrators in the coercive control of their current or former partners is still a relatively unexplored area in the research literature. This study with women survivors was able to identify that perpetrators use mobile phones in ways that go beyond the traditional tactics of abuse identified through the globally used feminist theorisation of the Power and Control Wheel (developed by the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Programme). The portability and diverse capabilities of mobile phones have been manipulated by abusive men to develop strategies of ‘agile technological surveillance’, which allow them to track and monitor their partners in various ways ‘on the go’ and irrespective of physical proximity. An adaptation of the Power and Control Wheel has been developed and licensed to account for these new opportunities for surveillance, manipulation and control. Proposals are made for integrating this revised framework into professional practice to inform the assessment and management of risk in abusive relationships.