Publicising privacy, weaponising publicity : the dialectic of online abuse on social media

Salter uses dialectical theory to examine the contradictions between online ‘publics’ and privacy. The chapter argues that online abuse and harassment are products of the evident tension between the encouragement of online intimacy by social media platforms on one hand, and the commodification and exploitation of user data on the other. In patterns of online abuse and harassment, private life becomes ‘public’ in unwanted ways via technology that is designed for instantaneous circulation and exposure. A dialectic analysis suggests that the availability of social media for misogynist abuse is no coincidence, and demonstrates how technology reproduces social and material inequalities

Skin tension and cleavage lines (Langer' s lines) causing distortion of ante- and postmortem wound morphology

The assessment of individual wounds at autopsy may be complicated by the superimposition of a number of injuries or damage to tissues that occurred after death, either of which has the potential to distort the morphology of the initial injury. Additional factors that may change the shape of wounds are (1) the relationship of the wound to the so-called skin cleavage lines (Langer’s lines) and (2) tension placed on the skin. Three autopsy cases are reported to demonstrate once more how wound morphology may be altered by such factors. In case 1, rectangular stab wounds to the base of the neck in a 53-year-old man, which suggested that a square or rectangular tool may have caused the injuries, were altered to more typical knife stab wounds once skin tension had been released at autopsy. The uppermost wounds, however, continued to gape due to the effects of skin cleavage lines. In case 2, slit-like wounds resembling stab wounds in the neck of a 54-year-old woman found in a river were shown to be circular once skin tension had been released. In case 3, the effects of either cleavage lines or skin tension could be demonstrated on excised wounds from a 43-year-old man whose body had also been found in a river; tensile forces easily changed circular into slit-like wounds. Tension and/or skin cleavage lines may transform round skin defects into slit-like wounds resembling knife stab wounds, round out genuine stab wounds and artefactually lengthen stab wounds. These factors must be taken into consideration carefully when wounds are assessed at the death scene prior to autopsy.Roger W. Byard, Axel Gehl, Michael Tsoko