Online Harassment and Its Impacts on Women and Minorities
The internet is a vast space with an ocean of information and billions of users who make use of the facilities and use it as platforms for expressing their ideas. Barlow (1996) said cyberspace was supposed to be a world that allowed any person to express their beliefs, irrespective of how unique, and they cannot be silenced or scared into conformity. However, with the global advent of social media and the internet reaching the farthest corners of the world, this statement is now being manipulated negatively. Online harassment is a very real cause of concern where people are harassed, bullied or subjected to unfair treatment on the internet. This discussion aims to prove that online harassment is a serious issue and there are not sufficient laws to prevent this from happening. It argues that women and minorities are additionally susceptible to online harassment. It makes use of a case study from Nepal, to illustrate the point. The conclusion provides the summarized version of the discussion.
The digital world is vast and the social media platforms host billions of users, with an infinite number of posts created, shared and deleted. Among these countless posts, there are several that carry offensive, hateful, sexually explicit and downright violent content, which often target women, and minorities (Mondal & Benevenuto, 2017). Online harassment includes forms like using offensive names, intentional embarrassment, stalking, physical threats, prolonged harassment and sexual harassment. There are several reasons behind online harassment, and misogyny is a significant reason behind such action. Misogyny is an ingrained hatred or prejudice against women, and this is expressed most vigorously on social media platforms as well as other online peripheries. Mondal & Benevenuto (2017) continue that anonymity serves as a protective barrier for the perpetrators who can hide behind fake profiles to target women and attack them online. Usually, examples of such harassment include sending lewd messages and images to the Direct Messages (DMs) of the women, or insulting and shaming them online by using their images, posts and personal information. Politics is already a sensitive area, and when the views of two opposing sections do not match, one side may resort to using insults and abuses, which can proceed to harassment. Emmy Rossum, a vocal supporter of Hilary Clinton was subjected to violent online harassment, where her Jewish lineage was used against her by the supporters of Donald Trump (Jones, 2016). Rossum was subjected to hateful messages where her entire family was threatened to be sent to the ‘gas chambers’, from the concentration camps in Auschwitz. This is one of the countless examples where political minorities, especially women are subjected to hatred on online platforms. Rossum complained that reporting the harassers to Twitter was not enough, as it barely had any impact. This leads the discussion to another important point social media platforms lack concrete laws to protect their users. A former employee of Facebook, Ms Haugen stated that the company is “unwilling to accept even little slivers of profit being sacrificed for safety” (BBC, 2021). Whatever Facebook and similar platforms do, including sending a notice to the concerned user and taking down the offensive post, is barely enough to stop online harassment. With the wide variety that these platforms offer, a person banned from an account can create a second account to stalk, harass or even potentially harm their victims. These victims are more prone to be young women and minorities, with misogyny and racism being the chief reasons behind such actions (Duggan, 2014). This reiterates the main argument that women and other minorities are more vulnerable to online harassment.
Racism is one of the main evils of society and much like misogyny, it is also used against individuals or groups of people. People belonging to minority groups, like African-Americans, the Hispanic population and Asians are targeted by the racial majority on the internet, which mostly includes white men (Vogels, 2013). Such online harassment can include sending hateful messages on the inbox of the racial and ethnic minorities or threatening to do physical harm. In this context, Noble (2018), in her book Algorithms of Oppression cites how the factors like race, gender and ethnicity impact online harassment against minorities. Several white-supremacist pages openly support the activities of the heinous KKK and the members can target the minorities online. Repeated harassment of this kind results in conditions like anxiety, fear, depression, sadness, embarrassment, isolation, and even suicidal thoughts (Stevens et al. 2020). It can be stated that the internet and social platforms are becoming a safe space for the harassers and abusers to attack from and making the platforms unsafe for the victims. Ferber (2018) finds that the alt-right, which is a new form of white supremacists manipulate white men into believing that they are losing their opportunities and powers, because of the minorities. These supremacists target the BIPOC, immigrants as well as white women and present them as a threat to the white man, which motivates them to begin harassing the minorities online. However, the community standards of Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms are too vague and broad to carry out actual action. Haugen, the Facebook whistle-blower said that the company is aware of the ways it can make the community safer, but it chooses not to. She stated that Facebook, “won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people” (BBC, 2021). As a result, the white supremacy groups and members have free reign to attack the minorities over the platforms and continue making life difficult for them. A chief way of these harassments includes using racial slurs and insults to humiliate the minorities. The discussion can suggest that the freedom these perpetrators enjoy in harassing the victims online, might give them a sense of security that allows them to carry out such actions in public. For example, Charlottesville witnessed such an incident in 2017, where a white supremacist group named “Unite the Right” instigated a violent activity that left one person dead (Ferber, 2018). Unless stringent action and severe laws are imposed against communities and individuals committing online harassment, such incidents can only increase in number and intensity.
The discussion shall now focus on the central idea where a case study from Nepal illustrates how online harassment aimed at women journalists has made life significantly difficult for them. Koirala (2020) presents a case study where the significant increase in broadband internet usage has led to patriarchy and misogyny targeting women journalists in a male-dominated profession. The case study narrates how Nepalese women journalists are facing increasing amounts of harassment that ranges from shaming the journalists, ridiculing their efforts to sexual attacks on the internet. This systematic targeting of the journalists who are typically women can be identified as gendered cyber-hate. Jane (2016) suggests that a similarity exists between this gender cyber-hatred with chief social issues like rape, domestic abuse, and workplace sexual harassment, among others. This online harassment of women might be stemming from the general understanding of the society of women being inferior to men. The misogynistic discourse which insists on the inferiority of women to men can be seen as the central reason why women are victimized more in online situations. Nepal, much like its neighbors is a patriarchal nation with males dominating most of the fields and professions. Therefore, the desire to reduce women to a lower position and the frustration of seeing women enjoying success gives way to online harassment, which is weaponized by the patriarchal Nepalese society. It is a fact that the sexist abuse women face in every field, especially the journalistic profession which has a significant male majority is linked with patriarchy aimed at treating women as inferior. British feminist Plant (1996) states that digitalization has taken the control away from men as the superior gender because the internet does not discriminate. Fearing the loss of power and being reduced to a lower position compared to women, forces men to use sexual attacks and insults as a weapon to hold on to their position of power. Interestingly, this fear of losing power is the same reason used by white supremacists to instigate violence against BIPOC and other minorities. Therefore, both racial and gendered online hate that patriarchy attacks are centrally located in the inferiority complex of men and the fear of losing their position to women. It is for this reason that the patriarchal society of Nepal uses online harassment including mockery, insults, name-calling and sexual attacks to protect their position of supremacy. The anonymity of the attacks, coupled with the potential to reach a huge audience in a brief period makes online misogyny more dangerous than the offline kind. The final findings of the case study suggest that the profession and gender of these women are the chief reasons why they are subjected to online harassment (Koirala, 2020). Thus, the argument that women and minorities are more susceptible to online harassment is proven in this case study of Nepalese women journalists.
Based on the discussion about online harassment, a chief idea that has come up several times is the failure of social platforms to prevent the harassment. The Home Affairs Committee (2017) stated their shock that google did not carry out the minimum check to filter the advertisements of the companies and organizations which included harmful and even terrorist content. The ignorance of Google, together with the deliberate inaction of Facebook suggests that these platforms need to be forced to take a more direct approach to stop online harassment. The best option can be adopting a ‘duty of care’ approach where the regulations are based on the procedure, aimed at prohibiting negative results will be more appropriate (Woods & Perrin, 2021). It can be stated that this procedure will force the companies to be more responsible regarding the service designing, and as a result, will be more efficient. These platforms need to objectively clarify that certain activities will have severe consequences that can include having to serve jail time if the regulations are broken. The terms and conditions while creating a social media account contain the community guidelines to not engage in harassment, but these lengthy articles are mostly ignored. This discussion suggests that much like breaking the law in real life results in serious consequences like being imprisoned, doing the same activities over the internet should have similar impacts. Irrespective of the platform, be it mass or niche, each of them should carry stipulations that engaging in the harmful activity will result in severe reprimands. UNICEF (2022) suggests contacting the police and emergency if someone feels they might be in apparent danger. Using these methods should be able to reduce online harassment but the social platforms must start taking this seriously and take an active step to curb it.
The discussion had argued that women and minorities are more vulnerable to online harassment. Through the discussion, it was found that women and minorities are mainly targeted for online harassment. This harassment includes name-calling, racial slurs, sexual attacks and stalking. A case study of Nepalese journalist women was used to identify that the central reason behind such attacks is the inferiority complex of the patriarchal society that they might lose the position of power to women and minorities. Thus, patriarchy has weaponized the internet to attack the victims and uses the garb of anonymity and the ability to reach many people within brief periods. Additionally, the ignorance and lack of action from the social media platforms is the reason the harassers get away with the least of consequences. The main responsibilities of these platforms include removing an objectionable post or banning the perpetrator. However, they can quickly create a new account to attack their targets once more. This discussion suggested strict rules to be imposed that warn every user of severe consequences, which is hoped to reduce the rates of online harassment.
References
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