Collingwood receives $495k in federal funding for social media campaign targeting tech-based abuse against women

The AFL club will get $495k in federal funding to use its social media reach to target tech-based abuse against women.

The Collingwood football club and the women’s leadership institute led by Julia Gillard have each been given almost half a million dollars in federal funding to help target tech-based abuse of women.

Labor will share $3m among seven community, health and research institutions in the first round of a $10m program aiming to stamp out the rising pattern of abuse.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said women disproportionately experience technology-facilitated stalking, threats and coercion, which was why combating that was a “national priority” for the government.

Collingwood’s community foundation will receive more than $495,000 for a social media campaign to target tech-based abuse against women. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Josie Hayden

For the $495,355 they received in funding, Collingwood will use their social media reach and their next season of football to “challenge social norms that contribute to abuse and promote positive and respectful behaviours and accountability among men and boys, and the wider community”.

In its project description, the club’s community foundation said their project would promote a “series of campaigns and initiatives to increase public awareness”.

“And address the fundamental understanding that abuse of women is not just physical but psychological and emotional in the form of tech-based violence through coercive and threatening behaviour,” the description reads.

The Global Institute for Women’s leadership will spend more than $494,000 on a project combining “state-of-the-art evidence and community engagement to develop a systems-based approach to preventing the tech based abuse of women”.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the grants program would give more women access to ‘critical resources and services’. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Ms Rowland said the grants program would ensure more women and children “have access to critical resources and services”.

“Including proactive and preventive tools to help stop this abuse at the outset,” she said.

eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the projects leverage the “unique expertise” of the likes of Collingwood and the institute to address tech-based abuse from “a number of angles”.

“Online abuse is strongly linked to family, domestic and sexual violence,” she said.

“All too frequently we see technology misused by perpetrators to harass, coerce and abuse women and children.

“Interventions like those funded today will help prevent gender-based tech abuse before it occurs, building community capability and nurturing violence-free online spaces.”