Research Project
Exploring Barriers to Digital Civic Participation Through an Anti-Objectification Intervention
Dr Dawn Woolley
The online objectification project, led by Dawn Woolley at Leeds Arts University and funded by Include+ (EPSRC), examines girls’ experiences of viewing objectifying content online. Objectifying and demeaning content is listed as one of the top 10 harms experienced by girls and women in Ofcom’s Online Nation Report (2024). This project takes an intersectional approach to understand how vulnerabilities accumulate across gender, race, sexuality, and disability. The primary aim is to examine how exposure to objectifying content affects the wellbeing of young women and co-design an intervention that fosters resilience.
The project centres the voices, experiences and creativity of girls and young women, values that are at the heart of Getaway Girls, our community partner. Getaway Girls is a charity based in South Leeds that aims to empower girls and young women to lead safe, healthy and fulfilled lives through recognising their talents and lived experience. Their core values are empowerment, collaboration, equality and inclusion, creativity and innovation, and voice and influence.
Through interviews and creative workshops with girls and young women at Getaway Girls we co-created responses and actions that could empower users to report objectifying content and support other girls and women online, to increase digital equality and inclusion.
The research design followed four stages:
Stage one: Scoping defined key terms and the research focus with partners and participants.
Stage two: Intervention Design involved semi-structured interviews and arts-based workshops (e.g. collage, drawing, writing etc.) with a group of young women, who shared their experiences and co-created an online intervention designed to help users recognize, navigate, and respond constructively (i.e. report, block) to demeaning online content.
Stage three: Quantitative testing evaluated the intervention’s effectiveness with a larger group of young women via online questionnaires.
Stage four: Sharing during which we finalised and shared the intervention.
This project is innovative in its use of participatory, arts-based methods to address online harms. The interdisciplinary team has expertise in community-engaged methods, social media activism, social psychology, and visual literacy. Researchers have experience of participatory research with LGBTQI+ and gender marginalised communities, marginalised older people, and refugee and migrant communities.
An exhibition of artworks and audio recordings by participants will be on display at Leeds Arts University from Wednesday 29 April – Saturday 20 June 2026. Find out more and register for the opening event on Tuesday 28 April.
For more information about the project and Include+ visit includeplus.org/feasibility-study/online-objectification.
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Online Objectification Animation
Team
Dr Dawn Woolley, Leeds Arts University, is a researcher and visual artist with expertise in site-specific art on Instagram and photography theory on gender politics in selfies. This project continues her work using creative methods to increase visual literacy around gender stereotypes and co-create queer visual languages for selfies with groups of LGBTQI+ young people.
Magda Zawisza, Associate Professor in Consumer & Gender Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge holds several prestigious grants, is Chair of Psychological Ethics Committee and a reviewing editor of Sex Roles and Frontiers in Sex, Sexuality and Gender. Her research has informed 2019 policy changes by the Advertising Standards Authority on harmful gender stereotypes.
Sally Dibb, Professor of Marketing & Society, Manchester Metropolitan University, brings expertise and an extensive publishing and research record in consumer behaviour, digital vulnerability and social marketing. Her experience of managing interdisciplinary projects will support the research team.
Dr Katie Thompson is a lecturer in Marketing at Manchester Metropolitan University with expertise in digital consumption, digital harms and consumer identity. In her PhD research she explored experiences of embodiment and surveillance within the context of selfie-editing. She has qualitative research methods expertise, including interviews, projective techniques, and Netnography.
Margot Lefevre, Research assistant at Anglia Ruskin University, is an MSc Social Psychology graduate (Distinction) with experience working in academic labs in the UK (University of Kent, Anglia Ruskin University, Bournemouth University) and France (Université Paris Nanterre). Her research interests centre on gender equality communication, intergroup relations, and behaviour change, using experimental methods and advanced quantitative analyses.
Flavia Docherty, CEO of Getaway Girls and dedicated charity leader, passionate about social justice. She has 23 years experience of management within the third sector, the last 14.5 of which have been spent as CEO of Getaway Girls, an award-winning, values-driven charity. Winner of the National Youth Worker of the Year Award in 2014.