Introduction
Online harassment or cyber bullying is kind of harassment that in done using electronic means. It has been seen that online harassment has become increasingly common among today’s youth as the digital arena and technology has increased and expanded. With the rise of the widespread of the digital or technological world where everyone has been using their smartphones to connect with each other in the globalised world, another dark side of the technology is on the rise (Lindsay, 2012). The dark side of the internet includes people who are on a constant look out for other people where the lives of everyone has become open and vulnerable to easy threats and harassments. In this article, the variations and ideas about online harassment will be analysed in light of the case study.
What is online harassment?
Online harassment occurs when someone, mostly a teenager or even adults in many cases harasses or bullies’ others on the panel of the internet via social media pages such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and others. The most harmful kind of the bullying or harassing methods mostly involves posting threats sexual remarks, information of a person’s personal life or data, hate speech, rumours, or pejorative labels. It has been seen that harassment or bullying can be identified as a form of behaviour that occurs on a repetitive manner with the intent of causing someone harm in their mental peace (Jhaver, 2018). Many victims of cyberbullying or online harassment have reported to have experienced major mental illnesses that leads to suicidal ideation, very low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, trauma, and other kinds of responses that are highly negative in nature that includes frustration, anger, depression, or being scared.
It has been seen that online harassment in many cases acts as the extension of a kind of bullying that has already existed in the traditional form but takes the form of bullying on the online platform. Many students who are harassed on the platform of the digital media have been reported to be bullied in schools or in other forms of traditional manners such as in verbal or even physical forms. However, more importantly students who are reported as bullies in the physical world are known to be online harassers more often (Blackwell, 2017). Cyber harassment is a platform for bullies who express their power and domination on seemingly weaker students but making it easier for them to conduct their harassment on the online panel as it comes with no such confrontation.
Students have experienced some form of cyberbullying
Students are increasingly being experienced cyberbullying, with social networking sites being the primary perpetrator. Because social media is so common among students and the young adults, many have turned to online harassing their peers in order to obtain fame or popularity. Online harassment, on the other hand, has a slew of bad implications for both the perpetrator and the victim. There are certain things you may do to defend oneself if you are assaulted or harassed over the internet by an abuser.
Vogels (2021) notes that in the country of Australia, the crime rate of online harassment has risen by 56 per cent since 2010 due to the causative factor of widespread use of social media. Research based on online harassment has shown that mostly online harassment takes the form of an extended harassment mostly done on women to defame them or simply do it ‘for fun’. There have been millions of reported cases of cyber bullying on pages of teenagers and even celebrities who are reported to have been bullied by strangers on the internet. The cause of online harassment has not yet been known, but it is a widely known fact that online harassment is a widespread thing that greatly affects an individual. A survey conducted by Pew Centre of Research has shown that 60 per cent of the people who have been harassed online are women ranging from the age group of 16 to 40 years of age (Jones, 2013).
Case study related to online harassment
Online harassment is another form of cyber bullying, where an individual or a group of people bullies another victim using the methods of electronic media or internet communications. This also sounds much like cyber stalking along with the part where actually interaction takes place between the perpetrator and the victim. The forms of online harassment include the kind of speech through comments or personal messages or sharing of explicit or non-consensual messages or images to a person to terrorise him or her (Duggan, 2017). The online harasser can effectively use hate speech or send threatening messages along with audios or video recordings with explicit information with the aim of intimidating them or simply threatening them to either give in to their wishes or for ‘fun’. Much like the case of any other forms of traditional harassment or bullying, the bully or online bully finds pleasure in demeaning or humiliating a victim and they enjoy the power that comes with it.
Case 1- Jane Doe and David Richardson
Following their split, a lady (identified to in court records as Jane Doe) brought a civil claim against her former lover (David Richardson) for sharing nude images and films of her. The lady was awarded a protection order (also known as a restraining order) on her attacker David Richardson, after repeated incidents of physical assault over the last several months. Richardson, on the other hand, went over and above by sending links to Jane’s parents and a school of law colleague, as well as impersonating Jane on matchmaking and adult sites. Yet after Doe had obtained an order of protection on him, this persisted. “Infringement of copyright, online impersonating with intention of harming, stalking, and the infliction of intentional emotional distress,” according to Doe’s complaint. In 2020 David Richardson then took his harassment and intimidation online, contacting the victim via texts, telephone conversations, email messages, and Messages on Facebook over the period of three years. David Richardson was convicted and was found to have violated the protection order in 2020 and received a sentence of approximately four years in jail. Doe seemed to have no alternative but to trademark her breasts in order to effectively get the photographs taken down even though she had actually submitted the photographs to Richardson that were mutually consensual. Richardson was ordered to pay 7 million dollars in damages and delete the images and recordings after a state district court judge found in Doe’s favour in 2020 (Vogels,, 2021). In addition, he was compelled to reimburse the victim’s lodging expenses after she abandoned her house in the midst of his menaces.
Several of the most violent abusers are extroverted people who just want to be recognised and appreciated for their statements.
Based on the case study, it was understood, that there were many tangents related to online harassment had crept up. From the critical analysis of the above mentioned case study related to the cyber harassment and stalking along with threats to Jane Doe, the different paradigms of online harassment came to the forefront. It was observed that many online harassments such as Richardson had shown signs of obsessive behaviour that is the foremost sign of every online harasser. It was seen that as opposed to traditional stalking, online harassment becomes easier for the harasser to intimidate their victims on an every day basis when they are in search of power and domination over the victim. Most of the times, such as in the case of Jane Doe, the harasser is a known person. The psychology of the harasser such as Richardson mostly surrounds the idea of intimidation and domination without the actual risk of confrontation. Seeing that Richardson already had a history of domestic violence and when he realised that his power and domination over Jane had been diminishing after she had already opted for a restraining order against him after ending the relationship with him, he felt insecure and to an extent scared of losing the power and control that he had over her. The loss of control leads to harassment. Finn (2017) is of the opinion that online harassers such as Richardson are mostly born out of families who are broken in nature and they themselves have faced violence of some sort in their lives. When things go out of their control and when the harassers feel helpless, (at least in the case of Jane Doe and David Richardson) they try to exert pressure and threats over something or someone that they would be to have a solid grasp on. In most of the cases harassment in the online platform begins with a similar tangent in the physical world and exceeds in the internet world where the use of anonymity allows the harasser to intimidate their victim through fake accounts created across social media platforms.
In this case, the exchange of explicit images was of great concern as, images of private parts have been one of the greatest assets used by online harassers to blackmail and threaten their victims in order to get something out of them. The case in concern saw the similar tangents where the online harasser Richardson had uploaded the videos and images of Jane Doe to adult porn sites along with sending them to relatives of Jane Doe. This kind of threats is highly concerning in nature as it causes major psychological harm to the victim. The case is a perfect example of one of the most common cases on online harassment.
Conclusion
The fight against online harassment
Online harassment has now become a widespread approach to harass someone as youngsters grow up in the digital age in every aspect of their life. This major problem affects young adults as well, despite the fact that it is commonly associated with younger children and teenagers. What could you do to assist in the fight against online harassment? The institutions must devise new strategies to combat bullies and safeguard those who are subjected to harassment.
1. Online harassment should be documented and reported
Everyone has received an offhanded harsh comment on a website at some time, but once it becomes a pattern of harassment and bullying, it becomes a felony in many circumstances (Wolak, 2007).
2. Bullies should be blocked, ignored, and avoided.
Because of the widespread use of social networking sites and other internet forums, internet bullies have an easier time gaining access to their targets. Disable, block, and insulate yourselves from that kind of potential negative as possible the instant someone publishes publicly or slips into your Direct messages with harassment and bullying.
3. Actively search out positive organizations and assistance.
No one ought to be tormented or harassed online in any form. Many individuals feel that persons who harass online may hide behind anonymity. The greatest method to deal with these situations is to drown out the negative with positive. Use social media to search helpful organizations.
References
Blackwell, L., Dimond, J., Schoenebeck, S., & Lampe, C. (2017). Classification and its consequences for online harassment: Design insights from heartmob. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 1(CSCW), 1-19.
Duggan, M. (2017). Online harassment 2017.
Finn, J. (2004). A survey of online harassment at a university campus. Journal of Interpersonal violence, 19(4), 468-483.
Jhaver, S., Ghoshal, S., Bruckman, A., & Gilbert, E. (2018). Online harassment and content moderation: The case of blocklists. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 25(2), 1-33.
Jones, L. M., Mitchell, K. J., & Finkelhor, D. (2013). Online harassment in context: Trends from three youth internet safety surveys (2000, 2005, 2010). Psychology of violence, 3(1), 53.
Lindsay, M., & Krysik, J. (2012). Online harassment among college students: A replication incorporating new Internet trends. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 703-719.
Vogels, E. A. (2021). The state of online harassment. Pew Research Center, 13.
Wolak, J., Mitchell, K. J., & Finkelhor, D. (2007). Does online harassment constitute bullying? An exploration of online harassment by known peers and online-only contacts. Journal of adolescent health, 41(6), S51-S58.