Award Title: Forging new families in contemporary contexts: Exploring interpersonal relationships, power and abuses of power within online sperm donation
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Sperm donation plays a critical role in starting and building a family. It is the only way that many people can conceive, including single women, women in same-sex relationships, and because of male infertility in mixed-sex relationships. Thus, sperm donation has a crucial function in an equitable society. Increasingly, potential recipients and donors are connecting via websites and social networking sites, in what has become a large, global, but wholly unregulated, market. This phenomenon has been largely hidden from societal and academic view, despite reports of donors abusing recipients. For the first time, we will provide a holistic and in-depth understanding of online sperm donation, exploring the interpersonal relationships, power relations and abuses of power that are occurring across the five levels of its social ecology: individual, relationship, community, societal and temporal. 
 
Relationships are central to online sperm donation - whether between donors and recipients, between donors/recipients and their life partners, or between the people who use and own the online platforms. Yet virtually nothing is known about these relationships: how are they initiated, negotiated, sustained or ended? Given that donors are in a position of power - holding the sperm that recipients require - and there is emerging research and increasing media reports of donors abusing recipients via these online platforms, we urgently need academic insight into the power relations and abuses of power in this context: how is power operating across the social ecology of online sperm donation and how is it being reinforced, abused or resisted?  
 
Building on the team's existing and ongoing work in this area, we will address these knowledge gaps. Thus, our first aim is to understand the interpersonal relationships, power relations and potential abuses of power across the social ecology of online sperm donation. Reflecting the five levels of the social ecology (see Annex A), we will meet this aim via five objectives, which will:   
   
1. evidence recipient and donor experiences of interpersonal relationships, power and abuses of power;   
2. demonstrate how their partner and the person they conceive with narrate their experiences of these;  
3. evidence how site users forge interpersonal relationships and subcultural norms within the online sperm donation platforms, and the role of online platform owners in creating and governing these;  
4. demonstrate the broader social narratives participants draw on to understand and explain these experiences;  
5. track how these experiences unfold over time.   
      
Meeting these objectives will provide unique and holistic evidence on online sperm donation, bringing this into public knowledge at a time of rapid expansion within the online sperm donation market, and increasing questions about unregulated assisted conception practices (Cheshire, 2019), online harms (HM Government, 2019) and violence against women (British Council, 2016).   
    
Based on the above findings, our second aim is to explore the imagined ideal futures of those involved in online sperm donation and work with them to facilitate personal, professional and social change in online sperm donation. We will meet this aim via two objectives, which will:    
   
6. produce a set of comics and visual social-ecological power drawings that distil the findings from Objectives 1-5;   
7. undertake workshops with those involved in online sperm donation, reflecting on the comics and power drawings to imagine ideal futures for online sperm donation and to co-design and co-implement actions to achieve change.    
   
Meeting these objectives will harness the knowledge generated from the research by collaboratively working with those involved in online sperm donation to raise public awareness and inform policy, legislative, social, and service-delivery responses.

Lay Abstract: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the "fundamental unit of society", and in 1969, the United Nations recommended that "governments should, as a matter of urgency, make universally available information, education and the means to assist couples and individuals to achieve their desired number of children". However, many people need help from a sperm donor to start or build their family, and even now, there are lots of barriers to them receiving this help at an NHS or private clinic. So, instead, many people are looking for a sperm donor online. Unfortunately, there is very little information available to them about what online sperm donation involves and how it might change their lives for the better - or, possibly, for the worse. In the media, for example, there have been stories of men registering with online sperm donation sites and then being abusive to women who are looking for sperm.

Relationships are at the heart of online sperm donation so our project starts there. There are the relationships between the person looking for sperm and the person who donates the sperm, and between these people and their life partner (if they have one). There are also the relationships between the many people who take part in the online sperm donation websites, and between these people and the person who owns the website. Sometimes, these relationships go well; sometimes, they do not. The first aim of this project is to look at how people experience these relationships, who is being positioned as powerful, and any abuse that is happening. In the first part of the project, the main way that we will look at these relationships is by talking with people who want sperm and people who are looking to donate sperm. We will talk with them three times over two years, starting with their online search to find sperm or donate sperm. Over the two years, we will also talk to these people's life partner, and the person they find who gives them the sperm or who they donate their sperm to. In the second part of the project, we will look at the relationships between the many people who take part in online sperm donation websites, and between these people and the person who owns the website. The main ways we will look at this is by joining the online websites as a researcher and following how people interact with and treat each other over one year, and by talking with the people who own the websites.

The research will increase everyone's understanding of three important topics in our society: violence, health, and the internet. For violence, it will make people more aware of how women looking for sperm online (and possibly other people, too) are being abused, what support they need, and how we can stop this abuse from happening. For health, it will help decide whether NHS clinics should have more funding for sperm donation and who can access it, and whether the government should regulate online sperm donation. For the internet, it will help people discuss how the internet affects our lives and what safety and support we need online.

It will be essential to ask the people involved in online sperm donation what they think needs to change in online sperm donation (e.g., public awareness, policies, laws, support services). So, the second aim of the project is to find out what people involved in online sperm donation think is the 'ideal future' for online sperm donation and work with them to make these changes. In the third part of the project, we will run workshops to share the research findings using comics and drawings, and together, work out what needs to change in online sperm donation, plan and do activities that will lead to this change, and log what changes happen. During the whole project, we will also share our findings with people involved in online sperm donation, researchers, professionals working in abuse, health, and internet safety, people who make policies and laws, and the public, to help effect change.

Research Activity Codes: 8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health Categories: REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND CHILDBIRTH