A roundtable discussion was organized to mark the beginning of a project aimed at preventing online violence against women. One of the findings is that Slovenian society is still tolerant of some forms of violence and that the country lacks programs designed to prevent violence against children and adolescents. Through new technologies, young people are exposed to different kinds of threats and violence. Concepts such as cyber-bullying, trolling, and revenge porn have emerged because of the development of new communication methods. However, Maja Vreča from the portal Arnes.si cautions that while some concepts that emerge also vanish quickly, it is concerning that harassment is so widespread that it needs many different terms for its various forms.

With the rise of new technologies, revenge porn – the publication of sexually explicit videos or images by the victim's former partner – is on the increase. Toni Klančnik of the Slovenian Police Department believes that such actions should be condemned verbally, and that instead of pornography, we should refer to the practice as abuse – just as child pornography is seen as the abuse of children. Klančnik adds that young people, who often sext (i.e., exchange photos of their naked bodies), have a problematic attitude to online anonymity, which can be highly relative. “This information travels across servers and databases, and once content is published online, it's impossible to control what happens to it.”

Perpetrators of online violence don't need physical strength
However, the publication of sexual imagery of former partners is not just a concern among young people – it also affects adults. Katja Zabukovec Kerin from the Association for Nonviolent Communication described a case in which a former partner published the naked images of his ex-girlfriend on leaflets and then distributed them around her workplace, complete with personal information about the victim and her family. Zabukovec Kerin adds that while investigating the case, her team frequently heard that the gentleman was not a threat because he was calm and short of stature, which shows that people often fail to realize that perpetrators don't need specific physical characteristics to participate in online violence. The Association for Nonviolent Communication has noticed that violence against women tends to escalate when the women do not follow established social norms. “We have a case in which a woman got a short haircut, and was immediately subject to attacks based on her perceived sexual orientation, and so on.”