Introduction
With the advent of the Internet age and the popularity of smartphones, the use of social media has become part of our daily routine. We share, comment, and get information on different social media platforms. And because of the dissemination, real-time, and interactive characteristics of social media, social media platforms have been recognized and supported by the masses and have an inestimable user group. After a decade of development, social media is still the hottest topic.
In a virtual online community, users show their “real” selves in an anonymous online environment, freely posting remarks and comments on various events and strangers. In this environment, some people gradually lose the constraints from the law, morality, and three views; they want only to talk about network users in the virtual community, make verbal attacks, etc., and forget that these users are real people behind them. Words and actions cause real harm to us in the real world. This is what we know as “online harm.”
In my opinion, the consequences of losing one’s self-esteem and self-discipline in the online world are “online harm,” and the “online harassment” I’m going to discuss is also a form of online harm.
Pew Research center
According to a Pew Research Center study released in October 2014, online harassment, from mundane verbal abuse to more threatening behavior, has become quite common.
According to the report, 40 percent said they had personally experienced online harassment, and 73 percent said they had witnessed others being harassed.
When looking at Internet users who are younger and more knowledgeable about new technologies, this proportion becomes even more exaggerated. 65% of Internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 have become the target of online harassment, which is more likely than other groups. Many suffer from online harassment.
In addition, 18% experienced more severe forms of harassment, including long-term and ongoing harassment, sexual harassment, physical threats, and stalking.
What is online harassment and how is it defined? What is the hazard?
Reasons for online harassment include political or religious beliefs, appearance, race or ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation(Flew, 2021). As Sammons and Cross (2017) argue, anyone can be targeted by an online harasser. Some people may insult you unintentionally or intentionally, reveal your secrets, etc. When these unwelcome statements are repetitive, excessive, or extremely offensive, it becomes a serious problem. Cyberbullying is an aggressive and extreme form of online harassment.
In 2006, when a 13-year-old girl named Megan formed an online friendship with a 16-year-old boy named “Josh Evans” via MySpace, the message to the girl started as a compliment but ended up being vicious. An email to her said he didn’t want to be friends with her because she treated her friends badly, and a message posted on the page said: “Meghan Mayer is a slut. Meghan Mayer is fat.”13 Shocked by the betrayal of friendship and public humiliation, the girl hanged herself. (Cross, 2014)
This is a tragic example of cyberbullying in which the bully utilized a fake persona online to perpetrate real insults and smears against a young girl in a virtual online world, resulting in the tragic loss of a young life. The inquiry also revealed that the bully was operating under a false identity and that the bully’s conviction was just a misdemeanor and a violation of Myspace’s rules (Cross, 2014). But it was also because of the conviction for this heinous crime that attracted attention to online harm that the conviction was reversed a year later, and many laws specifically targeting cyberbullying and online harassment were enacted. This is a solid start, in my opinion.
A cyberbully is also an online harasser, and they are all cyber-injurers
The growth and accessibility of the Internet have facilitated social communication. The nature of online communication and the web means that users can post private or sensitive information online that is accessible to a wider audience (Macaulay et al., 2020 as cited in Krombholz et al., 2015). This also means that web harassers can harass based on the personal information posted by users, and online harassers can also harass anyone without restraint. According to the Pew Research Center, two distinct but overlapping categories of online harassment emerged among Internet users. The first is abusive and embarrassing. This harassment is so common that those who see or experience it often ignore it. The second category involves more serious harassment, such as physical threats, prolonged harassment, stalking, and sexual harassment. The second category is obviously more dangerous, causing more distress and distress to the victim in terms of psychological and actual personal safety. Dangerous (Duggan, 2014).
In such an online environment, online harassment as a behavior that is difficult to criminalize often occurs, and most of the news reports we see about online harassment are usually connected with the words “women” or “sexual harassment”. On social media, women appear to be the main targets of online harassment, with harassers sending vulgar, sexually provocative, disrespectful, and uncomfortable words to women to hurt them. According to a 2014 survey on online harassment by the American Association of Pew Research Centers, 25% of young women aged 18 to 24 have experienced online sexual harassment (Duggan, 2014). These online sexual harassers include not only strangers but also acquaintances. The harassers conduct sexual harassment in real life, threatening and harming women’s own safety and psychological state. Through the information we publish, there are also many possibilities to determine the location of the harassed person, so as to turn online harassment into real sexual harassment and implement violations in reality.
No matter what kind of online harassment, it will have a serious impact on the harassed person.
In July 2020, on an ordinary day, who would have thought that such a daily activity of a young lady (Ms. Wu) coming to the express station to pick up the courier would become the start that ruined her life (It happened in China).
A nine-second video was filmed a month ago while she was picking up a package at a courier station in the community. In the photo, she is wearing a lilac floral dress, standing next to a shelf full of packages, as the camera captures her legs and then moves up until she is fully in view and her face is clearly visible. Three men walked up and down in front of her, and no one noticed anyone nearby filming the video. The unremarkable video is accompanied by a screenshot of a chat that is completely unfamiliar to Ms. Wu, who is depicted as a lonely mother constantly trying to seduce a delivery man, even sending a hotel address to invite him to see her.
The rumor-mongers made up such nasty plots as “rich woman cheating on courier brother” and spread them on the Internet. As the matter spread on the Internet, netizens who did not know the truth wrote unsightly messages to harass Ms. Wu. Ms. Wu’s neighbors, friends, and colleagues talked about her, and Ms. Wu suffered from severe depression and lost her job. Ms. Wu considers herself “socially dead.” After the incident, the rumormonger repeatedly emphasized: “I’m just joking, I’m just having fun. Why are you holding on to me?” The rumormonger’s father also said, “It’s just a kid joking.” After an investigation by the local police, two rumor-mongering men were arrested for fabricating stories on August 13. They were only detained for 9 days and did not perform the agreed apology video. Therefore, on October 26, Ms. Wu sued the court for “defamation” and demanded that the two be held criminally responsible, claiming that “Never back down.”
“I hope that my story will inspire others who have had similar experiences to say “no” to online defamation and to see the dark side of the internet,” Wu added. She went on to say that she would not accept an apology from the defendant or his family (Wang, 2021).
Ms. Wu commenced her appeal for the preservation of her rights. Finally, in April 2021, the court sentenced Lang and He to one year in prison and two years of probation for slander, thanks to Ms. Wu’s efforts. Ms. Wu spent over a year on the nine-second hearsay video during the past year, and the damage she sustained was unfathomable and irreversible. Ms. Wu has struggled with depression for the past year. No one was interested in hiring her for her work. And she also suffered from vulgar harassment and malicious speculation from netizens. This case made national headlines and sparked public concerns about cyberbullying (Wang, 2021). At the same time, it also set a good example for netizens who encountered online rumors, online violence, and online harassment, and encouraged more of the injured netizens started the road of rights protection, and at the same time gave a warning to the online rumor-mongers.
Is it difficult? Why did it take Ms. Wu almost a year to send the rumormonger to prison? First of all, it is still difficult to judge the incidents of network harm in terms of the law, and the difficulty is not small. Second, from August 2020 to December of the same year, the matter was reported by many media outlets and sparked heated discussions on the Internet. Only the Weibo topic “rumored derailed woman” who hasn’t been able to find a job” has received a significant number of views.580 million and 81,000 discussions. This reflects the huge scope of cyber harm. The public order of the Internet society was seriously disrupted as a result of the incident’s widespread distribution on the Internet. The two perpetrators randomly selected objects to fabricate false information, spread it quickly through the Internet, and maliciously slandered others, which not only seriously damaged the victim’s reputation and personal dignity, but also spread rapidly through the Internet, causing cyber violence, which is far from traditional community communication. The social harm is far beyond what the individual victim can bear, affecting the confidence of the “onlookers” in the country’s rule of law, personal safety, and social governance and actually causing serious damage to the current social order, which enables Ms. Wu to defend her rights. However, there are still many cyber-injury cases in life that have not been spread and have not entered the public eye. How difficult should their rights-protection journey be? They all gave up protecting their rights because it was too difficult. This deserves serious consideration. In China, this cyber-injury case has also become one of the top ten cases to advance the rule of law in 2021.
Weibo screenshots by myslef: topic # rumored derailed woman has not been able to find a job #
There is no cost to online rumors, and the harm must be severely punished
Many people think that online sexual harassment is not a big deal without someone “really touching you,” but in fact, multiple surveys show that women describe the consequences of these incidents as “extreme distress,” affecting their studies and lives and increasing psychological pressure. It makes them more sensitive and uneasy when facing the external environment. Isn’t Ms. Wu’s incident a good example? Until some time ago, Ms. Wu was still trying to adjust to this matter, and she has not completely recovered from the shadows and returned to normal life.
What’s more, a person may not experience online harassment through direct experience, and even witnessing other online harassment incidents can affect them.
After Ms. Wu’s rights protection incident, her Weibo account also became a “tree hole.” Young users from college or just starting their careers spoke out about their experiences and were encouraged by Ms. Wu’s bravery. They “have no power,” says Wu, and in the face of rumors and cyberbullying, “the first thing they show is fear, then they retreat, overwhelmed.” (Wang & Ren, 2021)
No online harm by https://ellii.com/courses/133/lessons/4055
Blog summary and reflection
In this blog, I discuss cyber harassment and cyber harm and specifically analyze a case of sexual harassment rumors. It shows the theme of cyber harm and cyber harassment as crimes, hoping to let readers know that any form of cyber harm is a crime, and the law can be used as a weapon to protect their rights. Anyone who expresses comments on the Internet should think more before making comments. Whether or not an individual is directly or indirectly influenced by it, serious self-censorship can result to avoid causing such harassment. Social media platforms are coming under increasing public scrutiny due to frequent incidents of online harm, inconsistencies in their use of policies regarding cultural differences, and hate speech (Matatoros，2017). And the management of social media as a major platform for online harm is Very important. This blog only addresses the seriousness of online harm and does not address how to address and avoid online harassment. At the same time, this is also an issue that requires everyone to think about it together. The next step I will think about is how to stop online harassment and reduce online harm.
Reference list:
Anonymous. (n.d). stop harassment [poster]. Medellin living. https://medellinliving.com/online-harassment-cyberstalking-colombia/
Anonymous. (n.d). no online harm [image]. ellii. https://ellii.com/courses/133/lessons/4055
Cross, M. (2014). The dark side. Social Media Security, 161–191. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-1-59749-986-6.00007-2
Duggan, M., 2022. Online Harassment. [online] Pew Research Center. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2014/10/22/online-harassment/ [Accessed 5 April 2022].
Flew, Terry (2021) Regulating Platforms. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 91-96.
Macaulay, P. J. R., Steer, O. L., & Betts, L. R. (2020). Factors leading to cyber victimization. Emerging Cyber Threats and Cognitive Vulnerabilities, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-816203-3.00001-0
Matatoros-Fernandez, A. (2017). Platformed racism: the mediation and circulation of an Australian race-based controversy on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, Information, Communication & Society 20(6), pp. 930-946.
Sammons, J., & Cross, M. (2017). Beyond technology—dealing with people. The Basics of Cyber Safety, 179–200. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-416650-9.00009-7
Wang, Q. (2021, January 6). A warning, poster. China Daily. Retrieved April 7, 2022, from https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202101/06/WS5ff4f598a31024ad0baa0ada_1.html
Wang, H., & Ren, W. (2021, January 6). Libel, caution: Smeared online, a woman fights back. SixthTone. Retrieved April 6, 2022, from https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006677/libel%2C-caution-smeared-online%2C-a-woman-fights-back
