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Cyber Harassment

After a student defames a middle school teacher on social media, the teacher confronts the student in class and posts a video of the confrontation online.

In many ways, social media platforms have created great benefits for our societies by expanding and diversifying the ways people communicate with each other, and yet these platforms also have the power to cause harm. Posting hurtful messages about other people is a form of harassment known as cyberbullying. Some acts of cyberbullying may not only be considered slanderous, but also lead to serious consequences. In 2010, Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi jumped to his death a few days after his roommate used a webcam to observe and tweet about Tyler’s sexual encounter with another man. Jane Clementi, Tyler’s mother, stated:

“In this digital world, we need to teach our youngsters that their actions have consequences, that their words have real power to hurt or to help. They must be encouraged to choose to build people up and not tear them down.”

In 2013, Idalia Hernández Ramos, a middle school teacher in Mexico, was a victim of cyber harassment. After discovering that one of her students tweeted that the teacher was a “bitch” and a “whore,” Hernández confronted the girl during a lesson on social media etiquette. Inquiring why the girl would post such hurtful messages that could harm the teacher’s reputation, the student meekly replied that she was upset at the time. The teacher responded that she was very upset by the student’s actions. Demanding a public apology in front of the class, Hernández stated that she would not allow “young brats” to call her those names. Hernández uploaded a video of this confrontation online, attracting much attention.

While Hernández was subject to cyber harassment, some felt she went too far by confronting the student in the classroom and posting the video for the public to see, raising concerns over the privacy and rights of the student. Sameer Hinduja, who writes for the Cyberbullying Research Center, notes, “We do need to remain gracious and understanding towards teens when they demonstrate immaturity.” Confronting instances of a teenager venting her anger may infringe upon her basic rights to freedom of speech and expression. Yet, as Hinduja explains, teacher and student were both perpetrators and victims of cyber harassment. All the concerns of both parties must be considered and, as Hinduja wrote, “The worth of one’s dignity should not be on a sliding scale depending on how old you are.”

Discussion Questions

1. In trying to teach the student a lesson about taking responsibility for her actions, did the teacher go too far and become a bully? Why or why not? Does she deserve to be fired for her actions?

2. What punishment does the student deserve? Why?

3. Who is the victim in this case? The teacher or the student? Was one victimized more than the other? Explain.

4. Do victims have the right to defend themselves against bullies? What if they go through the proper channels to report bullying and it doesn’t stop?

5. How should compassion play a role in judging other’s actions?

6. How are factors like age and gender used to “excuse” unethical behavior? (ie. “Boys will be boys” or “She’s too young/old to understand that what she did is wrong”) Can you think of any other factors that are sometimes used to excuse unethical behavior?

7. How is cyberbullying similar or different from face-to-face bullying? Is one more harmful than the other? Explain.

8. Do you know anyone who has been the victim of cyber-bullying? What types of harm did this person experience? Why or why not? Does she deserve to be fired for her actions?

Related Videos

Causing Harm

Causing harm explores the types of harm that may be caused to people or groups and the potential reasons we may have for justifying these harms.

Bibliography

Teacher suspended after giving student a twitter lesson http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/world/americas/mexico-teacher-twitter/index.html

Pros and Cons of Social Media in the Classroom http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2012/01/19/Pros-and-Cons-of-Social-Media-in-the-Classroom.aspx?Page=1

How to Use Twitter in the Classroom http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2011/06/23/how-to-use-twitter-in-the-classroom/

Twitter is Turning Into a Cyberbullying Playground http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/08/08/twitter-turning-cyberbullying-playground

Can Social Media and School Policies be “Friends”? http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/policy-priorities/vol17/num04/Can-Social-Media-and-School-Policies-be-%C2%A3Friends%C2%A3%C2%A2.aspx

What Are the Free Expression Rights of Students In Public Schools Under the First Amendment? http://www.firstamendmentschools.org/freedoms/faq.aspx?id=12991

Teacher Shames Student in Classroom After Student Bullies Teacher on Twitter http://cyberbullying.us/teacher-shames-student-in-classroom-after-student-bullies-teacher-on-twitter/

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How Online Harassment Led to a Historic Court Case

• April 02, 2021
• CBR - Strategy
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As a law student, Brittan Heller was the target of a campaign of online harassment that created enormous stress for her personal and professional lives, led her to fear for her safety, and ultimately prompted her to file a landmark lawsuit. In the course of her legal career, she has helped other victims of online harassment and today advises tech companies on what they can do to help moderate the content on their websites. For this edition of “One Leader, One Story, One Lesson,” presented by Chicago Booth Review and Booth’s Harry L. Davis Center for Leadership , Heller talks to Booth’s John Paul Rollert about her experience and how she was able to use it as the foundation for a thriving career.

Note: The following includes a description of severe online harassment, including graphic language.

Video Transcript

John Paul Rollert : As we’ve recently all gone through this collective COVID experience, I’ve been increasingly thinking about what it means to live your life online. Now, for most of us over the last year, that’s meant spending all of your work hours on Zoom, an experience that can expose you to a lot of trivial considerations, such as: Will the cat run into my picture when I’m talking to my boss? Or, when will I get an honest to god haircut? But of course, as we all know, when you spend your waking hours online, when you have that kind of increased online presence, it can expose you to far more serious and grave concerns, in part because you create this online identity, and that identity is subject to forces that are often far beyond your control that give rise to considerations that can lead you certainly to lose sleep at night.

Because I’ve been thinking a lot about these matters, I was really excited to speak to an old friend, Brittan Heller. Brittan works at the intersection of law, technology, and human rights. She’s an expert in content moderation and the movement from online conduct to offline violence. She previously founded the Anti-Defamation League Center for Technology and Society, is an affiliate of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, and is counsel at Foley Hoag in global business and human rights and heads up their A.I. practice. Brittan, thank you so much for joining us.

Brittan Heller: Thank you for having me.

John Paul Rollert: This interest in the intersection of law, technology, and human rights was initially one that you didn’t so much pursue as unfortunately pursued you. Can you take us back about 15 years and tell us the harrowing story of how you initially got pulled into this particular area of interest?

Brittan Heller: Everybody always asks how it started, and it kind of started like most things do. There was a young man when I was in college at Stanford who really liked me, and I didn’t return the sentiment. He was in my LSAT study group, and eventually I got into his dream school, Yale Law, and he did not. Immediately after that, “A Stupid Bitch to Attend Yale Law” showed up as a posting on a website, and I’m not gonna name the website because I prefer not to give them more traffic. I looked at it, and it was rather bizarre. The claims were really weird: that I pretended to be a minority, that I pretended to be Black, that I was a Muslim terrorist, that I bribed my way into school with family connections, or money, or sexual favors, that I’d had a lesbian affair with the dean of admissions— just really bizarre stuff. Somebody also pretended to be me and responded back to the allegations, which was actually more damaging because they didn’t paint a very flattering portrait.

I contacted the people who ran the website and I asked them if they’d take it down, and they ignored me. I then decided to just move on and ignore it. When I went to law school, I was trying to get a summer associate job and was told that I needed to clean up my online presence. So I googled myself and saw that it had started with one person’s post and it had expanded to hundreds.

John Paul Rollert: So Brittan, it sounds like you’re in this position where you’re just about to go to law school, and you find yourself the subject of this online bulletin board. You ask the people who run the bulletin board to take down your information. They refuse to do so. And for a while, it’s just something that leaves your mind to a degree, until a year later when you begin applying for law jobs, it boomerangs. And what you quickly find is that the subject of this malicious online discussion begins confusing who you are with this, kind of, created online identity. And it begins to have, for you, real professional repercussions.

Brittan Heller: I think that’s exactly right. I had gone to law school to do human-rights law, specifically international criminal law, and found that this was actually getting in the way of me getting jobs in the American system. And if you can’t get experience in the American system, you can’t get other experience. It progressed. It got worse as time went on. I contacted the people who ran the website again. I asked them if they would take it down, and gave them one line of code and said, if you put in this one line of code, it will de-index it from Google. And you can keep saying whatever you want, what do you say? And their response was, “Freedom of speech. You’re gonna have to sue us.” So I did.

At around the same time, they had started this “Girls of the Top 14 Law Schools” contest. And with that, they encouraged people to follow around female students and take pictures of them so they’d own the copyright and they could do whatever they wanted. My picture ended up on crime-scene photos because they were quite angry at me for filing suit and annoying them. But other people weren’t as lucky. I got pro bono counsel from Stanford and Yale. I had a public-relations firm volunteer to help. I had a cybersecurity researcher volunteer to help with attribution. He later became the CSO of Facebook. And we announced the suit on the front page of the Washington Post . So it was very, very public for about two and a half years.

John Paul Rollert: So you’re at law school. And now you find yourself in the middle of a high-profile court case that seems to bring up the tension between, on the one hand, the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, and on the other hand, this desire that we all have to control our personal identities. And that’s, of course, a very academic way of putting things. But I’m curious, for you personally, how did this experience affect you? It’s clearly something that took up a lot of time, money, effort, energy, mental bandwidth. And on a day-to-day basis, how did being in the middle of this actually affect you in your life at law school?

Brittan Heller: It was one of the hardest things I’ve done. I started off being very, very social and very involved in student life at Yale. I think I was on . . . I was an elected representative for the class. I would go out to parties and dinners. And I was very, very active in my classes. I participated, and that all ground to a halt. Some of the people who were doing the harassment were classmates. There would be a running commentary on the website of everything I said in class, what I was wearing, what I had done the night before sometimes, or what they had assumed I had done the night before. It wasn’t true most of the time. And it felt like, it felt like living in a panopticon.

It also got worse before it got better. People started making threats of physical and sexual violence, to the point where law enforcement had to get involved. They also put my personal information, my phone, my email, my class schedule, where I lived, all of that information online and encouraged people to teach me a lesson and make me pay. I ended up having, I remember having the FBI escort me in a finals one time.

You don’t want to read the comments. And everyone said, “Turn off the comments.” And the school even said, “Turn off your computer screen.” And that’s how you deal with this. The fact that it had kind of crossed the line into real-world threats I think changes the conversation because the First Amendment does not protect threats of violence. That is an exception in every legal system that has freedom of expression–based laws.

John Paul Rollert: It sounds like you’re clearly in this situation that starts out bad and at some point begins ratcheting up to something far worse. And of course, at the same time, because of this sense of being under surveillance, that anything you say or do at the law school, or that people might assume that you would say or do, will quickly find its way online. And honestly, I can’t imagine the kind of personal claustrophobia that leads to, but clearly at some point you decided that you had enough, that you had to do something, that contrary to what some people were telling you to do— “Just forget about it.” “Turn your computer off."— you felt you had to fight back. Can you tell us a little bit about that moment, and what for you brought you to that decision that you couldn’t just stand back and take it anymore, but that you had to move forward and try to attempt to find a way affirmatively to stop what was happening?

Brittan Heller: Filing the case was almost like a distancing exercise, where it gave me the ability to use an emphatic no. And most of the time, when people would talk about leadership or social-justice work, it was about using your yes, being affirmative and going out there. And that’s how leadership was defined. And I learned the power of saying no. It was scary.

It also meant legally that we were kind of on untested ground with this case. It was “Jane Doe” versus pseudonymous defendants “Hitler, Hitler, Hitler” and “Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkey.” That really hadn’t been done either. Lots of interesting constitutional issues. The First Amendment didn’t really . . . it didn’t really concern me as much because I was bringing the suit to test whether or not an individual who was experiencing this type of harassment could get redress under the current structure of the law. And the answer was immediately no because I had all of those resources and access to and the interest of the media. Most people who go through this, it’s a very private, painful experience.

I think I got over $1 million of pro bono legal services as well. And people don’t have access to that when it normally happens to them. So everyone assumed I was challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which provides intermediary liability. That means that Google, to a blogger, are not responsible for the content that other people post on their website. It actually wasn’t designed to test that. We had good legal theories behind what we did. The people at Harvard called me “the girl who wanted to kill the internet,” so it wasn’t just personally painful; it was a little professionally harrowing as well.

John Paul Rollert: Brittan, when you began thinking about filing a lawsuit, which of course is somewhat of an extreme measure, I’m curious, did you weigh out the pros and the cons of taking that action? And how did you figure out that ultimately this is precisely what you had to do, notwithstanding the downsides of such aggressive measures?

Brittan Heller: I was a law student and I knew that there would be hurdles in a case. I also understood that it was gonna get worse before it got better if I went public with it. And I decided that I had an obligation to file because most people, when this happens to them, will not have legal standing to file a case because they won’t have the type of damages that you need to prove to a court. And I did. It felt like if I didn’t do it, who would? It felt like something that needed to be done.

I knew I could handle it. I was in a position of privilege being a Yale Law student. So people would listen to me and would follow the case in a way that they wouldn’t if it was an average person who didn’t have that sort of connection. I’m very proud of it, but at the time I was very uncertain. America’s Most Wanted came to my house and disguised the apartment to have me look anonymous. And just with the voice and the hair and the backdrops, and eventually people figured out who I was. At the beginning, there’s a bit of a security blanket being a Jane Doe. But once it was known that it was me, that’s when I felt I had to be quite brave about it because I knew it was going to define me and my work and potentially the way that the tech industry deals with this type of situation.

John Paul Rollert: So essentially we’re talking at this point about 15 years ago, long before any of us had ever heard of Twitter trolls or had good reason to worry about them. In this case, you are being harassed and even stalked by people who are participating in an online message board. And they’re writing under these ridiculous pseudonyms like “Hitler, Hitler, Hitler.” And they’re saying things about you that are creating an online identity around Brittan Heller that doesn’t reflect the actual person whatsoever. So finally you decide to take matters into your own hands and you pursue this novel litigation strategy. And I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about the experience of going into litigation, and to the degree that you can, what exactly came of it.

Brittan Heller: When you file a lawsuit, nobody really wins. It was constantly covered by the Wall Street Journal law blog and papers all over the country. Filing the lawsuit meant that there was another microscope to this experiment.

I ended up settling the case after about two and a half years. The answer to the original impact litigation questions was no. Normal people could not get redress under the current structure of the law.

Thankfully, this was before Twitter trolls, but it doesn’t mean that these trolls were any less virulent. When I settled with the people, we were able to identify them—not all of them, but a good amount. As part of settlement negotiations, I met with them. So we would communicate. I remember this one kid. He was a kid. I think he was 17. And his parents were paying for his legal defense with their homeowners insurance. And it was very surly. So I remember that I said to him, “Hello, my name is Brittan. I see here that you, you wrote that you wanted to gouge out my eyes and skull fuck my corpse. I think we should be introduced first.”

The people that we identified were very surprising because they made such personal comments. I assumed that most of them would be people that I knew who had sort of a personal vendetta. They ranged in age from 17 to retired. And it was men and women, all different professional backgrounds. And from a high-school student to a postdoctoral scholar in pediatric AIDS medicine.

They all said the same thing. They said, “I didn’t realize what I was writing was impacting you in your real life. I didn’t think about that. It was a game. It seemed like a game. I didn’t realize what I was doing was impacting somebody on the other side of the screen. And I’m so, so sorry.”

John Paul Rollert: So for them, it was basically like you weren’t a real person, almost as if what they were maligning on the website was not an actual person with this fictional identity they created, but someone who didn’t even exist in the first place, as if they couldn’t imagine that there was actually a human being on the other end of everything that they were saying.

Brittan Heller: It crossed from online to offline antics as well. I remember that there was a law firm that gave me a summer job and took a chance on me. And somebody penned a, what I like to refer to as a poison-pen letter, describing my crimes against men. And they sent this to every professor at Yale whose email address they could get in the law school, and all of the managing, hiring partners at the firm that I was working at. It was bizarre and scary, but it made me feel like I couldn’t be safe anywhere I went. They copied me on it. So I knew exactly what was happening. It just emphasized for me how out of control I was in the situation. And so it felt, it felt like, like being . . . It felt like being in a horror movie, actually.

John Paul Rollert: Now, Brittan, insofar as your litigation efforts were ultimately successful, and you had a chance to confront these online trolls, it’s quite clear in hindsight that this particular experience had a profound impact on the professional choices you made after law school. And I was hoping you could draw a through line for us between this litigation experience and the remarkable career you carved out for yourself afterward.

Brittan Heller: I was worried that this was going to take me away from human-rights law and be a big distraction in the same way that it had disrupted my education. But it ended up meaning that I was the first person in human rights to be thinking about these issues related to online activity. And it ended up . . . I was worried that it was gonna be a professional mar, and it ended up putting me on the vanguard.

Immediately after law school, I worked at the International Criminal Court and then did a series of human-rights fellowships overseas and found myself focusing on the impact of technology on people’s lives. When I came back to the US, I became a prosecutor and I worked in the human rights and special prosecution section at the DOJ, which is the Nazi-hunting section. And I ended up taking a special role as the computer hacking and IP specialist, CHIP, in the office to learn about electronic evidence and to basically spearhead all of the online investigations that we were doing.

I started the Center for Technology and Society. I had a focus explicitly on these type of activities. I took pro bono clients who were experiencing harassment and used my knowledge of how this works to get them the best solution possible. Danielle Citron wrote a book about the case called Hate Crimes in Cyberspace . And when I started meeting with tech companies professionally, I remember I went to one of the major tech companies, and they all have to read the book before they start working in trust and safety. So they knew who I was and what had happened, but it also gave me credibility.

I’ve worked on these issues as an attorney, as a government official, on the domestic and the international front, as a victim, and as an advocate. So it is very comprehensive. Now in my practice, I haven’t met anyone who has a similar legal practice to mine, that is centered around freedom of expression but integrates freedom of expression and public safety. In my practice now, I work with technology companies—some of the largest ones down to startups. And I help them develop content moderation systems and think about policies and procedures before there’s a problem. It also has led me to think a lot about virtual reality, the specific features of that medium that make online harassment feel real. It feels like it’s really happening to you. It implants in your head like a memory. So I’m looking at how emergent technology is going to be another turn of the screw.

John Paul Rollert: I’m curious, Brittan. You obviously had this incredibly traumatizing experience. And yet you ultimately turned it into an anchor for a broader and highly successful professional practice. And I’m curious if there is something empowering about that, both for you but also for the people that you work with. I mean, in many respects, you have a special credibility having been subject to online harassment long before anyone had ever heard of, again, Twitter trolls. This is an area which you have a kind of special experience with. And I’m curious when working with clients when counseling people, is there a special power that comes with that?

Brittan Heller: I think there is power in it. I can go to people and say, “I understand exactly what you’re going through.” Very few people do. Very few people understand what it’s like to open up a screen and read every comment you’ve made in class and have people responding to it, basically trying to use your own words against you in everyday life. Or when you’re walking home, and they’ve put your address, to wonder if someone will be waiting for you there. The experience of going through something like that changes you. I try my best to convey that to the companies and get them to be proactive about it. And I think that’s also a very unique angle on it because most lawyers will focus on litigation. But what I do now is almost like it’s on the preventative end of the spectrum.

John Paul Rollert: For those of us who have spent the last year living online in a way that we could have never imagined before COVID, but who are also sensitive to these developments in information technology like artificial intelligence or augmented reality, is there some lesson that you take from your experience that you could share with us, as we look ahead to these developments, regardless of if we’ve had the kind of traumatic experience you’ve shared here, is there some kind of central lesson you would have us keep in mind looking ahead?

Brittan Heller: Absolutely. The most important thing that I learned, and I strongly believe is still relevant today . . . This taught me the need to rehumanize technology. The distance that people described—"I didn’t conceive that there was someone on the other side of the screen"—that touches basic human empathy. But I think it can also be addressed through smart design choices and smart policies and flexible policies. I advise companies on the things that you can do to remind people that there is a person on the other side of the screen. My practice is a mix of social psychology, design, and breaking people’s toys, in addition to the law. It’s very fulfilling but it also touches back to the core of why I became a lawyer in the first place. It’s centered around human dignity. I view everything that happened as being a spectrum, where I started off looking at human-rights abuses, and then through this experience, really take a proactive and predictive viewpoint of it. I like to think that I’m the Cassandra of the internet.

John Paul Rollert: Well, of course it was the fate of Cassandra never to be listened to by the ancient Trojans. But I think the lessons that you’ve shared with us today, and particularly the reminder that we need to remember that human face on the other end of any of our online activity, are lessons that we should take to heart. And I’m grateful to you for sharing them. Brittan Heller, thank you for joining us today.

Brittan Heller: Thank you for having me. This was really great.

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Expert Commentary

Internet harassment and online threats targeting women: Research review

2015 review of studies and papers on issues relating to gender and online sexual harassment, as well as hate speech and threats targeting women and girls.

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by John Wihbey and Leighton Walter Kille, The Journalist's Resource July 13, 2015

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/criminal-justice/internet-harassment-online-threats-targeting-women-research-review/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

Online harassment and threats are not a new phenomenon, but the degree to which these are directed at women and girls has begun to receive increased attention from news media , academia and law enforcement.

Forms of harassment can vary widely, from name-calling and trolling to persistent stalking and shaming to outright sexual and death threats. To some degree, the problem is structural and dates back to the Internet’s early days: The Telecommunications Act of 1996  allowed operators of websites to avoid liability for what users post, although the limits of this continue to be tested in the courts  and many aspects of the Communications Decency Act provision are not entirely settled . But it remains the case that the wide-open environment that enables creativity, innovation and vigorous debate online paradoxically also enables derogatory, anonymous speech for which there is often  little legal recourse .

Because of the volume of data and information they deal with, many Internet and social media companies struggle to articulate and enforce standards, even on more obvious issues such as the online messaging of violent extremists . Most warn that death threats, for example,  are not protected by free speech , but banning users in an environment with anonymity is a challenge. In particular, the problems inherent on the microblogging platform Twitter, which, unlike Facebook, allows for anonymity, have been playing out publicly . Meanwhile, the controversy at Reddit that resulted in the resignation of CEO Ellen Pao in July 2015 again raises, among other things, issues over online harassment and the complex dynamics of addressing it.

As the totality and intensity of the harassment is being better understood, scholars have even begun to see this phenomenon as a profound civil rights issue for women and other groups such as racial minorities. Persistent threats can not only diminish well-being and cause psychological trauma but can undercut career prospects and the ability to function effectively in the marketplace and participate in democracy.

A 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that about 40% of Internet users say they have experienced harassment, and that females in particular age cohorts endure higher rates of threats:

Stalking and sexual harassment are more prevalent among young women than among young men. But they are also more prevalent among young women than among women even a few years older (those ages 25-29). Women ages 18-24 who use the Internet are more than twice as likely as women ages 25-29 to have experienced sexual harassment online (25% vs. 10%) and three times as likely to have been stalked online (26% vs. 8%). In addition, they are twice as likely as that older cohort to have been physically threatened (23% vs. 11%) and twice as likely to have been harassed for a sustained period of time (18% vs. 8%).

Further, according to the Pew survey, women were much more likely than men to say that their recent experience with harassment online was “extremely” or “very” upsetting.

There have been a number of attempts at remedying the problem of cyber sexual harassment, from for-profit business models to new  algorithmic software applications to detect and monitor threatening language.

The following studies and papers provide further perspective on these and related issues of online threats and harassment:

“Online Harassment, Defamation and Hateful Speech: A Primer of the Legal Landscape” Marwick, Alice E.; Miller, Ross W. Fordham Center on Law and Information Policy Report No. 2, June 2014.

Abstract: “This interdisciplinary project focused on online speech directed at women and seeks to provide a primer on (i) what legal remedies, if any, are available for victims of sexist, misogynist, or harassing online speech, and (ii) if such legal remedies and procedures exist, whether practical hurdles stand in the way of victims’ abilities to stop harassing or defamatory behavior and to obtain legal relief. The study concluded that while online harassment and hateful speech is a significant problem, there are few legal remedies for victims. This is partly due to issues of jurisdiction and anonymity, partly due to the protection of internet speech under the First Amendment, and partly due to the lack of expertise and resources on online speech at various levels of law enforcement. Given this landscape, the problem of online harassment and hateful speech is unlikely to be solved solely by victims using existing laws; law should be utilized in combination with other practical solutions.”

“Embodied Harms: Gender, Shame and Technology-Facilitated Sexual Violence” Henry, Nicola; Powell, Anastasia. Violence against Women , March 2015, doi: 10.1177/1077801215576581.

Abstract: “Criminality in cyberspace has been the subject of much debate since the 1990s, yet comparatively little attention has been paid to technology-facilitated sexual violence and harassment (TFSV). The aim of this article is to explore the ways in which retraditionalized gender hierarchies and inequalities are manifested in online contexts, and to conceptualize the cause and effects of TFSV as “embodied harms.” We argue that problematic mind/body and online/off-line dualisms result in a failure to grasp the unique nature of embodied harms, precluding an adequate understanding and theorization of TFSV.”

“Perpetuating Online Sexism Offline: Anonymity, Interactivity and the Effects of Sexist Hashtags on Social Media” Fox, Jesse; Cruz, Carlos; Lee, Ji Young. Computers in Human Behavior , November 2015, Vol. 52, 436-442. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2015.06.024.

Abstract: “Sexism and sexual harassment are not uncommon in online environments such as social networking sites, forums, and video games. This experiment investigated whether users’ anonymity and level of interactivity with sexist content on social media influenced sexist attitudes and offline behavior. Participants (N = 172) used a Twitter account that was anonymous or had personally identifying details. They were asked to share (i.e., retweet) or write posts incorporating a sexist hashtag. After exposure, participants completed two purportedly unrelated tasks, a survey and a job hiring simulation in which they evaluated male and female candidates’ resumés. Anonymous participants reported greater hostile sexism after tweeting than nonanonymous participants. Participants who composed sexist tweets reported greater hostile sexism and ranked female job candidates as less competent than those who retweeted, although this did not significantly affect their likelihood to hire.”

“Online Incivility or Sexual Harassment? Conceptualising Women’s Experiences in the Digital Age” Megarry, Jessica. Women’s Studies International Forum, November–December 2014, Vol. 47, Part A, 46-55. doi: 10.1016/j.wsif.2014.07.012.

Abstract: “Launched in 2006, the growth of Twitter as a microblogging platform has been exponential, yet little research to date specifically considers women’s experiences of the medium. This article draws on a case study of the #mencallmethings hashtag, in which women describe and discuss the verbal abuse that they have received online from men. Providing a broad based context for the specific analysis of the #mencallmethings hashtag, I concentrate on the theoretical contributions made by western feminist research over the last 30 years to embed the aggressive harassment of women online in a wide review of types of threats to women. I argue that the harassment conveyed in the hashtag should be recognized as online sexual harassment, and a form of excluding women’s voices from the digital public sphere.”

“Addressing Gender-Based Harassment in Social Media: A Call to Action” Simons, Rachel Noelle. iConference 2015 proceedings.

Abstract: “Previous research indicates that women face a disproportionate amount of online harassment resulting from their identity as women. As a relatively new phenomenon, however, gender-based online harassment is not well understood. Social media platforms are a critical medium for gender-based online harassment and the effects of this harassment on women can be devastating both to their personal lives and to their professional careers. While the field of Information Studies is uniquely positioned to address the serious problem of gender-based online harassment, there are significant gaps in key areas of the literature related to this problem. Therefore, critical research is needed in order to produce key insights for empowering victims, for discouraging perpetrators, and for increasing awareness among social media platforms’ designers and managers. This knowledge can be grouped into three application areas: education, policy, and technological tools.”

“Exploring Differences in How Men and Women Respond to Threats to Positive Face on Social Media” Chen, Gina Masullo; Abedin, Zainul. Computers in Human Behavior , September 2014, Vol.38, 118-126. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2014.05.029.

Abstract: “A three-condition (rejection, criticism, control) experiment (N = 78) with gender treated as an additional factor and moderating variable examined gender differences in response to two types of threats to positive face — rejection and criticism — on a social-networking site. Results showed it did not matter if men or women were rejected or criticized on a social-networking site; both threats to positive face lead to more retaliatory aggression, compared to the control. However, men retaliated to a greater extent than women to both types of threats. Also, men responded differently to criticism than to rejection, while women’s results did not vary. Findings are discussed in relation to face theory and politeness theory, particularly in regard to computer-mediated communication.”

“Sexual Harassment 2.0” Franks, Mary Anne. Maryland Law Review , 2012

Abstract: “The rise of sexual discrimination in cyberspace is only one of the most recent and most striking examples of the phenomenon’s increasing complexity. Sexual harassment law, however, has not kept pace with this evolution. Discrimination law has not been adequately ‘updated’ to address new and amplified practices of sex discrimination. Its two principal limitations are (1) it treats only sexual harassment that occurs in certain protected settings (e.g. the workplace or school) as actionable and (2) it assumes that both the activity and the resulting harm of sexual harassment occur in the same protected setting. Thus, it is unable to address any harassment that occurs completely or partially outside of traditionally protected settings. By contrast, this article proposes a ‘multiple-setting’ conception of sexual harassment that both moves beyond traditionally protected settings and explicitly acknowledges that sexual harassment in one setting can produce harms in another. In order to address multiple-setting harassment, a third-party liability regime similar to that of traditional sexual harassment law should be introduced into non-traditional contexts. In the particular case of online harassment, liability should attach to website operators. This regime will create an incentive for website operators to adopt preemptive, self-regulatory measures against online sexual harassment, much as employers have done in the offline setting.”

“Hate Speech in Cyberspace” Delgado, Richard; Stefancic, Jean. Wake Forest Law Review , Summer 2014, Vol. 49.

Summary: “The advent of the Internet, beginning around 1994, has not led to an improvement in civility or the quality of interpersonal relations. If subjective experiences are a guide, heavy users feel freer to take positions or espouse views that depart from our public values…. Since hate speech on the Internet is pervasive, rising, and unlikely to subside unaided, what should society do to counter it? Possible responses to Internet hate speech include those that one commonly hears with this type of utterance, including talking back to the aggressor. As we shall see, most of these avenues are even less efficacious than they are with ordinary speech. Because courts and legislatures are unlikely to tackle the Internet any time soon, while Internet providers and companies are even less likely to rein themselves in, new approaches are in order.”

“Cyber Civil Rights” Citron, Danielle Keats. Boston University Law Review , 2009, Vol. 89, 61-125.

Abstract: “Social networking sites and blogs have increasingly become breeding grounds for anonymous online groups that attack women, people of color, and members of other traditionally disadvantaged groups. These destructive groups target individuals with defamation, threats of violence, and technology-based attacks that silence victims and concomitantly destroy their privacy…. The social science literature identifies conditions that magnify dangerous group behavior and those that tend to defuse it. Unfortunately, Web 2.0 technologies accelerate mob behavior. With little reason to expect self-correction of this intimidation of vulnerable individuals, the law must respond. General criminal statutes and tort law proscribe much of the mobs’ destructive behavior, but the harm they inflict also ought to be understood and addressed as civil rights violations. Civil rights suits reach the societal harm that would otherwise go unaddressed and would play a crucial expressive role. Acting against these attacks does not offend First Amendment principles when they consist of defamation, true threats, intentional infliction of emotional distress, technological sabotage, and bias-motivated abuse aimed to interfere with a victim’s employment opportunities. To the contrary, it helps preserve vibrant online dialogue and promote a culture of political, social, and economic equality.”

“Criminalizing Revenge Porn” Citron, Danielle Keats; Franks, Mary Anne. Wake Forest Law Review , 2014, Vol. 49.

Abstract: “Violations of sexual privacy, notably the non-consensual publication of sexually graphic images in violation of someone’s trust, deserve criminal punishment. They deny subjects’ ability to decide if and when they are sexually exposed to the public and undermine trust needed for intimate relationships. Then too they produce grave emotional and dignitary harms, exact steep financial costs, and increase the risks of physical assault. A narrowly and carefully crafted criminal statute can comport with the First Amendment. The criminalization of revenge porn is necessary to protect against devastating privacy invasions that chill self-expression and ruin lives.”

“Abuse and Harassment Diminish Free Speech” Bernstein, Anita. Pace Law Review , Fall 2014, Vol. 35, Issue 1.

Abstract: “Like writings that come before it, this article challenges the chestnut that freedom comes at the expense of another progressive good. Equality, to some writers; antisubordination, to others; ‘civil rights’ also serves…. Abuse and harassment pull valuable words out of the marketplace of ideas, I argue. They lessen the discourse. Also following in the path of other writings, this article notes a few higher stakes present in online speech as contrasted with its lower-tech antecedents. Electronic discourse adds anonymity, amplification, and permanence; within this medium, these conditions reinforce each other…. In this article, I advocate measures against abuse and harassment because (not ‘even though’) I cherish free speech.”

“Sexism in Online Video Games: The Role of Conformity to Masculine Norms and Social Dominance Orientation” Fox, Jesse; Tang, Wai Yen. Computers in Human Behavior , April 2014, Volume 33, 314-320. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2013.07.014.

Abstract: “Sexism toward women in online video game environments has become a pervasive and divisive issue in the gaming community. In this study, we sought to determine what personality traits, demographic variables, and levels of game play predicted sexist attitudes towards women who play video games. Male and female participants (N = 301) who were players of networked video games were invited to participate in an anonymous online survey. Social dominance orientation and conformity to some types of masculine norms (desire for power over women and the need for heterosexual self-presentation) predicted higher scores on the Video Game Sexism Scale (i.e., greater sexist beliefs about women and gaming). Implications for the social gaming environment and female gamers are discussed.”

Keywords: research roundup, cyberbullying, cyberstalking, gender, online harassment, social media, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, sexism, anonymity, online sexism, invasion of privacy

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Leighton Walter Kille

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7 in 10 girls and young women in PH experience online harassment – Plan International study

16 OCTOBER 2020

by Aly Narvaez

October 11, MANILA— A new global research by girls’ rights organization Plan International reveals that more than half— or 58 percent— of girls and young women worldwide have been harassed or abused online.

Launched on October 11 in celebration of the International Day of the Girl, the report  Free to be online? Girls’ and young women’s experiences of online harassment  is based on a survey and in-depth interviews of over 14,000 girls aged 15 to 24 in 31 countries including the Philippines. 

The largest study of its kind, the report shows that girls who use social media in high and low-income countries alike are routinely subjected to different forms of online harassment and violence such as threats of sexual violence, sexual harassment, threats of physical violence, Anti-LGBTIQ+ comments, racist comments, body-shaming, purposeful embarrassment, stalking, and abusive and insulting language. 

In the Philippines, the survey reveals that nearly 7 in 10, or 68 percent, of girls and young women have experienced online harassment, specifically on social media. Majority of these girls also revealed that the harassment happens frequently (50 percent) or very frequently (33 percent). 8 out of 10, or 79 per cent, said that they or other girls they know have received threats of sexual violence on social media.

Further, majority (67 percent) of the Filipino girls and young women surveyed said that they were harassed by people they know.

“The high incidence of online violence against girls and young women is alarming. In this global pandemic and in an increasingly digital world, girls are more at risk than ever,” says Mona Mariano, Gender Specialist of Plan International Philippines. “We must understand that it may also impact girls’ lives offline. Experiencing harassment or abuse online may take a huge toll on a girl’s confidence and wellbeing.”

The research shows that in the Philippines, girls and young women who identified themselves as having at least one intersecting characteristic (being from an ethnic minority, identifying as LGBTIQ+ or living with a disability) are more vulnerable to online violence. 

The study also reveals that while the survey was conducted across multiple continents, girls and young women share similar experiences of online harassment and discrimination. Majority of the girls and young women surveyed believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has made being online more important, but falling victim to online violence has been limiting their freedom of expression, driving them out of digital spaces, and leaving them emotionally stressed and feeling unsafe.

“Online violence is disempowering girls. They’re being shut out of a space that plays an important part in fulfilling their potential to thrive and become leaders,” continues Mariano.

Equal freedom for girls and young women

As a response, Plan International launched its #FreeToBeOnline global campaign which calls for ending online violence and upholding the digital rights and freedom of girls and young women.

Advocating for a whole-of-society approach, Plan International highlights in its campaign the important roles of governments, private sector especially tech and social media companies, civil society, and communities in recognizing the harm caused by online violence against girls and young women, promoting digital citizenship education, reporting abuse, crafting and implementing inclusive policies and laws, and amplifying girls’ voices.

“Everyone has a role to play in ending gender-based violence online. The government, social media companies, our families and communities— and young people themselves— have enormous power and potential to stop this,” says Mariano.

As part of the campaign, girls around the world have also written an open letter to social media companies, urging them to create stronger and more effective ways to report abuse and harassment.

The global research and campaign are part of  Girls Get Equal , Plan International’s movement for a world where girls and young women have the power to be leaders and shape the world around them.

“Girls will only get equal if we remove barriers to their meaningful participation in the digital world and make online spaces safe for them.”

Media Contact:

Aly Narvaez

Communications Specialist-Media Relations, Plan International Philippines

Email:  [email protected]

Phone: +63 998 962 2399

Editor’s notes

• As part of Girls Get Equal, girls and their allies around the world have written an open letter calling on social media companies to create ways to report abuse and harassment that really work.
• Research for  Free to be online? Girls’ and young women’s experiences of online harassment  was carried out in 31 countries. This includes a survey of 14,071 girls and young women on behalf of Plan International by Kantar and Ipsos between April 1 and May 5, 2020, and an additional series of in-depth interviews. Kantar and Ipsos surveyed girls in Australia, Benin, Brazil, Canada ,  Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Germany, Ghana, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, Spain, Thailand, USA, Zambia. Girls were asked about their experiences of using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, Snapchat, WhatsApp, WeChat, YouTube and Line.

Girls Get Equal, Gender-based violence

Related pages

Turning the world around, plan international philippines adopts declaration to support girls’ political participation, equal power now: youth manifesto (philippines).

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Making Sense of Online Harassment

Why some people are driven to commit acts of online hate and harassment is a complex question with a multitude of possible answers, many of them dissatisfying.

Despite heightened awareness of the issue and efforts by tech companies like Twitter to roll out new anti-harassment tools, online harassment is not going away: According to the Pew Research Center, online harassment is on the rise, having increased and intensified in the past five years alone.

While many forms of online hate and harassment are no doubt a reflection of the structural inequalities embedded in our culture and communities, hateful rhetoric and/or discriminatory attitudes that are more likely to be denounced in public settings become amplified and nearly impossible to tamp down in online settings. This makes many corners of the internet hostile and inhospitable, especially for women; those from racial, ethnic, and religious minorities; members of the LGBTQ+ community; and people with disabilities. Other times, online harassers will say and do wildly offensive things with the sole intention of getting a rise out of their target, not because they have a particular ideological agenda they’re trying to impart. In either case, and regardless of a harasser’s intentions, the impact of online hate and harassment on an individual target can be devastating.

For some targets of online harassment, however, trying to understand a harasser’s intentions and contextualize the abuse can be a useful way to process all this online toxicity. A burgeoning faction of researchers and journalists have begun to explore when, why, and how people hate and harass on the internet, upending prior notions that online harassment is the sole purview of bullies and sadists. They’ve learned that how and when people harass online can be influenced by a person’s mood, personal circumstances, sense of self-worth, and politics, and even what time of day it is.

There’s no one-size-fits-all diagnosis for what drives online hate, but there are theories, anecdotes, and reportage that we hope will continue to drive bigger and better research. The more data that is collected on this subject, the more tech companies, newsrooms, and internet users can come together to help eradicate hate in our online communities.

PEN America’s goal in providing the following information is to help assuage feelings of confusion, guilt, or shame that targets of online harassment frequently report feeling during episodes of abuse. Not everyone will benefit from the information provided below. If any of these resources appear triggering to you, or if you think it might just be too painful to try to understand an online harasser, then it’s probably best to save this resource for another day.

What Drives People to Commit Acts of Online Harassment?

New studies and an influx of online harassment–related journalism are beginning to dispel the stereotype that online harassers are a minority population of anonymous misanthropes who take pleasure in other people’s pain . Certainly some are (and some have even admitted to this fact on public radio), but others are people we know —active members of our communities who use online harassment as an unfortunate form of stress release or a way to deflect their own feelings of self-loathing. “Trolls are portrayed as aberrational and antithetical to how normal people converse with each other. And that could not be further from the truth,” says Whitney Phillips , author of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture . “These are mostly normal people who do things that seem fun at the time that have huge implications. You want to say this is the bad guys, but it’s a problem of us.”

A number of external factors have also been found to influence a person’s likelihood of committing online harassment, meaning that while online harassers may be harder to categorize, there are now ways we can begin to predict when and where harmful online behaviors will occur. The more people and institutions can leverage this knowledge, the more we can redirect online discourse into more positive, productive territory.

Below we’ve listed a number of theories and factors that might drive someone to commit online harassment. This is by no means meant to be a list of excuses for abusive online behaviors. Rather, this is a list of possibilities that may resonate with certain individuals who are curious to learn more about why some people harass others online.

Ingrained bias

This may be the most obvious reason why people commit acts of online hate and harassment: They’re perpetuating biases that already influence how they see the world and their place in it. Communities that are more susceptible to being targeted by discriminatory policies and social attitudes offline are also more susceptible to being targeted for their identity online. In a 2021 study , Pew found that certain groups are more likely than others to experience trait-based harassment: 54 percent of black people and 47 percent of Hispanic people report being targeted for their race or ethnicity during episodes of online harassment, as compared to 17 percent of white people. Women, meanwhile, are almost twice as likely as men to report being targeted for their gender during online harassment. Pew also reports that among adults aged 18 to 29, women are more than twice as likely as men to be the targets of sexual harassment online. The fact is, the internet not only reflects social ills, it amplifies them with impunity. Battling hate in our communities means tackling it online, which requires a concerted effort by tech companies, newsrooms, and internet users alike.

Disinhibition

The “online disinhibition effect” is a term that was coined to describe the breakdown, in online settings, of social mores and inhibitions that are normally present during in-person interactions. Because so many online platforms offer anonymity and a feeling of invisibility, as well as generally lacking an authority figure, internet users can more easily adopt dissociative behaviors that allow them to evade empathy and misbehave without consequence—and also without having to see the direct impact their actions have on another person’s life. By remaining anonymous, people are more likely to act on antisocial or harmful behaviors they would otherwise avoid in real life. Because some people have a tendency to see online communities as less “real” than the communities in which they physically take part, the internet becomes a make-believe space where some feel empowered to adopt personas, or characters, that are shed the moment they log offline.

Perversely, participating in online hate can offer a sense of community to people who might not be officially affiliated with—or know how to become affiliated with—an organized hate group. For people who have hateful tendencies toward other individuals or groups, or for people who don’t necessarily hate specific groups but feel angry and alone, online hate speech and harassment offer a proxy form of community, which, sadly, is one of the reasons people join hate groups in the first place.

Self-esteem issues/self-loathing

Maybe this one feels obvious, but in a number of instances in which targets of harassment have confronted their abusers in published articles, radio programs , and podcasts, online abusers have revealed feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, and jealousy over what they perceive to be their victims’ self-confidence. For example, when podcaster Dylan Marron confronted a homophobic online troll on his podcast Conversations with People Who Hate Me , the young man opened up about his own experiences being bullied at school. When writer Lindy West confronted an online harasser who had impersonated her dead father, the man offered an apology and a reason for his hate : “I think my anger towards you stems from your happiness with your own being,” he told her. “It offended me because it served to highlight my unhappiness with my own self.”

In many ways related to the online disinhibition effect, “lulz” is a form of internet slang derived from the online abbreviations “lol” and “lolz” (“laugh out loud”) and is used to denote laughter at another’s expense. Some online harassers will report that they “did it for the lulz,” meaning they took pleasure in causing another person pain or discomfort online. Notorious neo-Nazi and online troller Andrew Auernheimer , The Daily Stormer webmaster known as “weev,” offers insight into this attitude, claiming that he sees offensive internet behavior as a “political act” that undermines polite society. He defines “lulz” as “the joy that you get in your heart from seeing people suffer ironic punishments.” Unfortunately, this sadistic attitude—responsible for the spread of hateful, racist ideas that have a decidedly un ironic and harmful impact on society—is cited by other online harassers as a reason behind their abusive online behavior.

Like those “doing it for the lulz,” some internet harassers report doing it for the attention. As one confessed (and repentant) internet troll writes, “All a troll wants is [for] you to turn the spotlight onto them. They want you to repost their comment to your followers. They want you to write a blog post or status about them. They will use anything and everything to get it.”

External factors that can influence the likelihood of online harassment

Context and precedent in comments sections.

A study by researchers from Stanford and Cornell Universities suggests that people are more inclined to post hateful comments after seeing negative comments posted by others. If the precedent set in a comment thread or message board is civil and constructive expressions of fact and opinion, then the ensuing conversation is more likely to be civil and constructive as well. People are also less likely to post inappropriate comments if the online platform posts visible rules of engagement at the top of the conversation thread.

Time of day

The same study cited above suggests that people are more likely to post offensive comments late at night and at the beginning of the week, which is also when people are most likely to be in negative moods. Writers who find themselves consistently targeted by online harassment might find it useful to disengage from social media late at night and/or to avoid joining conversations that have already descended into negativity and hate.

According to Stanford professor Jure Leskovec , negativity breeds negativity: “Just one person waking up cranky can create a spark and, because of discussion context and voting, these sparks can spiral out into cascades of bad behavior.” Negativity can also carry from one conversation to the next, so if an online harasser has engaged in abusive online behaviors in one setting, he or she is more likely to carry these behaviors into the following online conversation. Researchers have also found that a person’s mood can be impacted by a variety of external factors , including reduced satisfaction with one’s life and exposure to unpleasant conditions (i.e., high temperatures, secondhand smoke), which can then impact the likelihood of someone committing acts of online harassment.

The Case for Empathy

While this approach is not for everyone, many targets of online harassment have reported benefitting from attempts to empathize with their online harasser. Sarah Silverman’s troll apologized after she expressed concern for his back pain. Psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, who experienced a particularly painful episode of online harassment, also recommends the empathy approach .

Why Your Brain Hates Other People Robert Sapolsky,  Nautilus

The Psychology of Hate Allison Abrams,  Psychology Today

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Learn more at pen.org . This website was made possible with support from the New York Community Trust and Craig Newmark Philanthropies.

GamerGate: A Case Study in Online Harassment

• First Online: 21 July 2018

Cite this chapter

• Sarah A. Aghazadeh 33 ,
• Alison Burns 33 ,
• Jun Chu 33 ,
• Hazel Feigenblatt 33 ,
• Elizabeth Laribee 33 ,
• Lucy Maynard 33 ,
• Amy L. M. Meyers 33 ,
• Jessica L. O’Brien 33 &
• Leah Rufus 33  

Part of the book series: Human–Computer Interaction Series ((HCIS))

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In 2013, an online movement called GamerGate gained notoriety and would reflect the reach, scope, and severity of harassment in social media. This chapter looks at a timeline of Gamergate, platforms where it flourished, characteristics of the movement, and connections to scholarly work on gaming culture and feminism.

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Aghazadeh, S.A. et al. (2018). GamerGate: A Case Study in Online Harassment. In: Golbeck, J. (eds) Online Harassment. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78583-7_8

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EDUCAUSE 2020 Student Technology Report: Supporting the Whole Student

Online harassment.

• Although the majority of students have not experienced online harassment, ethnic minority and female students more often experience the more harmful forms of online harassment than do their peers.
• Students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups are more likely to be harassed on school platforms than their peers.
• Students are more likely to take action themselves to address online harassment than to report it to their institution, friends/family, or law enforcement.
• More students are either dissatisfied or neutral than satisfied with the outcome of the actions they took to address online harassment.
• Strengthen student codes of conduct and policies for responding to online harassment based on the different kinds and severity of harassment individuals experience. Define what constitutes harassment in online environments, even if harassment takes place in nonacademic settings or via the use of personal devices. PEN America's Online Harassment Field Manual provides a useful Glossary of Terms for defining types of online harassment, as well as best practices for protecting users and responding to attacks .
• Foster an anti-harassment culture by training students, faculty and staff about online harassment. Incorporate "bystander intervention" education to help the campus community recognize different types of harassment, and encourage the reporting of attacks that threaten student safety and wellbeing, and/or interfere with academic participation. The Cyberbullying Research Center and the Tyler Clementi Foundation both offer resources that can be useful in the development of programs and workshops.
• Develop a centralized system for reporting and tracking instances of online harassment, and the actions taken to investigate and address cases. While taking personal action is immediate and crucial, strong and accessible reporting mechanisms are needed to help constrain online harassment and foster safe and inclusive environments for students. In their 2019 report " Changing the Culture: Tackling online harassment and promoting online welfare ," Universities UK suggests expanding online reporting systems and shares case study examples of impact for consideration.

Peers You Can Connect With

Responsible Use of Online Classroom Content

Richland Community College

In the spring of 2020, Leadership at Richland Community College was made aware that students were posting other students' identifiable classroom work (assignments, discussion board posts) to social media, in some instances creating a threat to those students' safety. In response to these reports, the institution drafted a new campus-wide Responsible Use of Online Classroom Content policy, codifying the institution's standards of behavior in this area and formalizing the institution's response to reported instances of policy violations.

Stalkerware and Digital Harassment: A Security Toolkit for First-Year Students

Duke University

Identifying a growing need for awareness and resources on issues such as cyberstalking, stalkerware, and gender violence, the Duke Cyber Policy and Gender Violence Initiative organization collaborated with the IT Security Office to create a cyberstalking and stalkerware training module for all incoming first-year students. This module was designed to help students recognize the patterns typically found in cyberstalking and stalkerware cases and to equip them with the information and resources they would need to effectively address those issues.

Although the majority of students (84%) reported that they have not experienced online harassment, ethnic minority and female students more often reported experiencing the more harmful forms of online harassment than do their peers. 1 Students who identified their race/ethnicity as multiple or "other" were more likely to report experiencing hate speech, trolling, online sexual harassment, 2 and online threats than students in other racial/ethnic groups. 3 And female students were more likely than male students to report experiencing online sexual harassment and the nonconsensual sharing (or the threat of sharing) of intimate images and videos.

Students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups are more likely to be harassed on school platforms than their peers. Although most of the online harassment that all respondents told us they experienced occurs in environments used for personal, non-coursework purposes, more Black/African American (17%), Hispanic/Latinx (17%), and Asian/Pacific Islander (13%) students said they are harassed in environments or apps their institution provides or sponsors than white students (11%). Black students are also more likely than individuals of other races/ethnicities to encounter harassment on platforms that are recommended by their instructors. Though our data don't reveal the actual content of the harassment encountered by the Black students in our sample, other studies have shown that race-based attacks can significantly impact students' feelings of safety, security, and belonging at their institutions. 4  

Students are more likely to take action themselves to address online harassment than to report it to their institution, friends/family, or law enforcement. Half of respondents reported blocking or muting their harasser, which was the most common action taken, followed by modifying one's account to avoid a harasser and ignoring (but not muting or blocking) the harasser. More women than men said they mute or block their harasser and/or inform friends or family members. Many students wrote in their open-ended responses that blocking/muting or just ignoring their harasser is effective (e.g., "Most online harassment can be ignored"). Others seemed resigned to the idea that some level of harassment is inevitable when using many tech apps and platforms. These attitudes may be indicative of the "wide spectrum of harm" 5 that many women experience online and that some behaviors are considered a nuisance, while others may be more severe and threatening.

More students were either dissatisfied (15%) or neutral (41%) than satisfied (45%) with the outcome of the actions they took to address online harassment. Reasons cited for lack of satisfaction reflect a combination of indifference and resignation. For example, one student said, "I'm more or less used to it and apathetic to it at this point." Other comments suggest that some students have experienced more harmful attacks and feel that reporting it would do no good or could make the situation even worse. These findings indicate that many students may be accustomed to or tolerant of certain kinds of online harassment. Women reported lower rates of overall satisfaction (43%) than men (51%) with the outcomes of actions to address harassment. As noted earlier, these attitudes may be indicative of the varying types and degrees of harm that many women experience online and that some behaviors are considered a mere nuisance. This disparity could also relate to differences in how seriously men versus women view online harassment, 6  the different kinds of online attacks experienced by men and women, and/or the broader cultural attitudes that downplay the types of harassment women encounter.

The online harassment typology choices included in the survey were developed using PEN America's Online Harassment Field Manual as a guide.

Although we did not define this term in the survey, PEN America's Online Harassment Field Manual includes "unwelcome sexual requests, comments, and content" in their definition of "online sexual harassment."

Choices for the ethnic background question included American Indian/Native American/Alaskan native, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, White, Other, and prefer not to answer. Respondents could select all that applied.

Sara Weissman, "Campus Climate Issues Don't Disappear When Campuses Close, Scholars Say," Diverse Issues in Higher Education , April 21, 2020; Keilah Davis, Alicia Thomas, Rachael Davis, and Boz Kaloyanov, "Slurs in Group Message Stoke Racial Tensions," Technician , January 24, 2019; and Jake New, "Can You Hear Us Now?" Inside Higher Education , September 24, 2014.

Jaigris Hodson, Chandell Gosse, George Veletsianos, and Shandell Houlden, "I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends: The Ecological Model and Support for Women Scholars Experiencing Online Harassment," First Monday 23 no. 8 (August 6, 2018).

A 2017 Pew Research study found that dramatically more young women than young men saw online harassment as a major problem. "Young men or women" were defined as those between the ages of 18 and 29. Eighty-three percent of young women consider online harassment a major problem compared to only 55% of young men. See Maeve Duggan, "Online Harassment 2017," Pew Research Center, July 2017.

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Case Study: Was That Harassment?

• J. Neil Bearden

A salesperson wonders how to respond to a colleague’s joke.

• JB J. Neil Bearden is an associate professor at INSEAD.

Partner Center

Online harassment and cyberstalking: a case study

• Iñigo Gordon Benito UNESCO Chair for Human Rights and Public Authorities, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1000-960X

The evidence from some studies conducted until now reflects that the offenders´ conscious anger and hostility toward the victim is the prevalent motivation behind the unwanted pattern of conduct that alarms and causes distress to another individual. From a legal-criminal perspective, even if a context-sensitive approach is still necessary, this could well amount to harassment or stalking, on a case-by-case basis. Intriguingly, hostility has always been the core term operating in hate crime legislation in England & Wales. Apart from what looks like a coincidence, how does the unhealthy and long-term fixation pattern with an individual intersect with hate crimes? How is the workability of all the above in the virtual environment? We will use R v Joshua Bonehill-Paine (2016), a racially aggravated online harassment case, as a vehicle to illustrate some concerns and broader thematic points of interest.

Según reflejan algunos estudios realizados hasta la fecha, la ira consciente y hostilidad de los agresores hacia la víctima sería la motivación predominante detrás del patrón de conducta no deseada que alarma y causa angustia a otro individuo. Desde una perspectiva jurídico-penal, aunque siga siendo imprescindible realizar una aproximación sensible al contexto, esto bien podría equivaler a hostigamiento ( harassment ) o acoso ( stalking ), en función del caso. Curiosamente, la hostilidad siempre ha sido el término central que opera en la legislación sobre delitos de odio en Inglaterra y Gales. Al margen de lo que parece más bien una coincidencia, ¿cómo relacionar el patrón de fijación enfermiza a largo plazo por un individuo con los delitos de odio? ¿Cómo es la operatividad de todo lo anterior en el entorno virtual? Utilizaremos R v Joshua Bonehill-Paine (2016), un caso de hostigamiento online agravado por cuestiones raciales, como vehículo para ilustrar algunas preocupaciones y puntos temáticos de interés más amplios.

Author Biography

Iñigo gordon benito, unesco chair for human rights and public authorities, university of the basque country (upv/ehu).

Iñigo GORDON BENITO is a Lecturer in Criminal law and a member of the UNESCO Chair for Human Rights and Public Authorities of the University of the Basque Country (http://katedraddhh.eus/en/equipo/equipo.php). His research activity is focused on hate crimes, hate speech and online identity theft. In November 2021, he defended his doctoral thesis entitled «Hate crimes and cyberhate in the Spanish Criminal Code. Special attention devoted to the generic aggravating circumstance of Article 22.4 and the aggravated subtype of Article 510.3». He is currently part of the Hate Crime Research Group working team, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, which runs from 1 September 2021 to 1 September 2025 (Title of the Project: Hate crimes in Spain: pending challenges; Reference: I+D+I PID2020-115320GB-100). In 2018 he carried out a research stay at Oxford Brookes University (UK). In April 2021, he carried out a new research stay at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (Germany). He has been certified as an Assistant Lecturer/Professor in May 2022. He is a hired postdoctoral researcher as of 26 June 2022.

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College Sports | A jury found Illini basketball star Terrence…

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College sports | a jury found illini basketball star terrence shannon not guilty of rape. then the online harassment of his accuser started..

Some said the 19-year-old should be prosecuted for accusing Terrence Shannon Jr. of rape when a Douglas County jury decided no such crime could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Others said the Chicago native and University of Illinois men’s basketball star should sue her and her best friend, also 19, for damaging his reputation and possibly his NBA dreams.

“Kuddos,” one person wrote on X, the site once called Twitter, “for making sure these girls can feel one percent of the pain tsj went thru cuz of their fake claims.”

Another person posted on the site: “Don’t falsely accuse someone of something that could change their life forever. Hope she struggles to find a job when she graduates because of this. Nobody will be able to trust her”

The mother of the woman who accused Shannon of rape told the Chicago Tribune during a brief phone call that her daughter has received death threats and messages telling her to kill herself since her name and screenshots of her social media accounts were publicly shared.

“It’s been horrible,” she said, her voice breaking. “It’s just so emotional. I guess I was just so naive of the fact that this is what would happen and these awful people.”

Her daughter sent the Tribune a text message asking for more details about this story and then did not respond to two subsequent messages.

Experts say the young woman’s experience underscores an all-too-common reality: While high-profile athletes accused of sex crimes are often able to repair their careers and images, even if those allegations are proven in court, the women who accuse them can be the targets of online harassment campaigns that, ultimately, can scare sexual assault survivors into silence.

“Too many people assume it’s ‘easy’ to report rape victimizations. It isn’t,” said Joanne Belknap, a criminologist and professor emerita at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Underreporting of rapes will undoubtedly be strengthened by the extreme doxxing of this woman and her friend.”

What makes a false rape accusation?

One of many issues Belknap sees in the aftermath of the Shannon trial is its blanket characterization as an example of a false rape accusation.

“That’s when I get upset,” said Belknap, whose decades of work includes research on sexual victimization and intimate partner abuse.

To start, she said, we have to understand what statistics tell us — and do not tell us — about the prevalence of false rape allegations.

An oft-cited estimate puts the range of false rape allegations in this country at somewhere between 2% and 10%. But the number is likely much lower, Belknap said, as that estimate only accounts for instances when a person reports an allegation to law enforcement. According to federal estimates , two-thirds of rapes and sexual assaults go unreported each year; studies suggest the number is even higher on college campuses.

“It is vital to remember that while false rape charges, and especially convictions of such charges, are reprehensible,” Belknap said, “it is also true that rape survivors are typically very reluctant to report to the police, recognizing that they will likely be blamed and their names dragged through the mud.”

To be sure, false rape allegations, though rare, do happen. This country has a long, shameful history of white women falsely accusing Black men of sexual violence — accusations that resulted in imprisonment and lynchings.

In 2006, a media frenzy erupted in North Carolina when three members of the Duke University lacrosse team were accused and later cleared of raping and sexually assaulting an exotic dancer whom one writer and researcher called “the archetypal false accuser.”

Nine years later, Rolling Stone retracted its story about a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity when, among other issues, it learned of apparent fabrications by the alleged victim at the center of the story.

In 2018, a 19-year-old Long Island, New York, woman was sentenced to one year in prison after she admitted she’d lied about being raped by two college football players.

After reading about the Shannon case, Belknap’s view is that it shouldn’t be included among those examples. Instead, she said it appears to illustrate long-standing and wide-ranging shortcomings in the criminal legal system’s response to rape accusations.

“To get a felony conviction, unless you have a lot of evidence, it’s just going to be hard,” she said.

At Shannon’s trial, the state’s case centered largely on testimony from his accuser, who said the 23-year-old slipped his hand under her skirt and digitally penetrated her vagina in September while at a crowded bar near the University of Kansas campus. The woman’s friend also took the stand, telling jurors she was at the bar that night but did not see the alleged assault take place.

DNA swabs taken from Shannon and his accuser offered no link between him and his accuser, and revealed no male DNA in the woman’s vagina or genital area.

That lack of DNA evidence was one of several criticisms leveled against police by Shannon’s defense lawyers, who argued during the trial that the investigation had been sloppy in failing to interview possible witnesses and an alternative suspect who was near Shannon the night of the alleged sexual assault and who had been accused of a similar crime, two weeks earlier, in the same spot in the bar where Shannon’s accuser said she was assaulted.

At the end of the four-day trial, it took a Douglas County jury — seven men and five women — about 90 minutes to reach the unanimous verdict of not guilty to one felony count of rape and  an alternative count of aggravated sexual battery, also a felony.

But for women like Shannon’s accuser, Belknap said, if a jury or judge decides that there is not enough evidence for a conviction, there is too often the assumption that the allegation must be false.

“This is how it gets twisted,” she said.

Still, she added, “it is really brave for rape survivors to come forward, and a lot of times they realize that it’s going to be hard and they’re going to be blamed. They do it because they do want justice. And they also do it because they want to protect future victims.”

‘It was terrible for those women’

Belknap said there’s been a high-profile rape case involving male student athletes at every campus she’s been on. And in every case, she said, the survivors suffered retaliation that hindered their recovery.

While she was working at the University of Cincinnati in the early ’90s, she said, a former student phoned her one day and eventually told her she’d been raped by a star male athlete at the university.

Two other women eventually joined Belknap’s former student in accusing the athlete of sexual assault. After the allegations became public and the women’s names surfaced, Belknap said, the three were publicly shamed during the trial.

“It was terrible for those women,” she said.

The athlete was eventually found innocent of the charges against him.

“Someone I trusted told me in the dorms that night people were celebrating,” Belknap remembered.

About a decade later, Belknap, having left Cincinnati for the University of Colorado, said she found herself pulled into another sexual assault controversy after two women reported being raped by Colorado football players and recruits while at a party.

In the ensuing scandal, Belknap said she publicly criticized university leaders, the athletic director and then-head football coach, Gary Barnett, who joined the program two years earlier after seven seasons at the helm for Northwestern University.

The fallout from her comments was swift and severe, she said. Threats, some deadly, landed in her inbox and voicemail. Random people hurled insults at her. “I went to the chiropractor’s office,” she remembered, “and this woman went off on me.”

‘Untouchable’

Not long after she arrived at Colorado, Belknap said, a student came by her office and told her she’d been raped by a then-professional basketball player whose team had been in town to play the Denver Nuggets.

Belknap said she told the student about counseling services on campus and offered to escort her to that office. But she included words of caution.

“Typically, the way these unfold, the professional athlete is seen as untouchable and women who report them are viewed as liars and gold diggers,” Belknap said.

There have been times over the years when the public has appeared willing and able to look past sexual assault allegations against their sports heroes ( Kobe Bryant , Cristiano Ronaldo , Ben Roethlisberger , for example), even if those allegations result in a conviction ( Mike Tyson ).

The aforementioned athletes, and others, have seemingly managed to avoid permanent damage to their careers.

In Shannon’s case, the threat of career damage was one of the central themes of the federal lawsuit his attorneys filed against the University of Illinois in a successful bid to overturn his suspension .

“His NBA career will tank,” they said in the filing, “as will his reputation, the ability to support his family, his ability to play collegiate athletics (and perhaps professional sports), and his presumption of innocence.”

Upon his return to the court, the fifth-year guard guided the Illini to a Big Ten Tournament championship — being named Most Outstanding Player in the process — and a trip to the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight.

With his trial date looming, some basketball writers predicted he could be taken as high as no. 13 in this month’s NBA draft; others had him falling out of the first round. A recent scan of NBA mock drafts show some still project him to be a first-round pick.

Shannon’s legal troubles did not appear to deter Klutch Sports Group from adding him to the agency’s roster of clients that includes LeBron James, Lonzo Ball and Zach LaVine. Shannon’s agent was in the Lawrence courtroom for the trial, and James posted a message of support for Shannon the day after the verdict.

Since Shannon’s acquittal, the university named him its male athlete of the year and announced that his jersey will hang from the rafters at the State Farm Center.

“Only for the situation he had to go through that he didn’t get the votes to be the consensus All-American that our policy requires,” Director of Athletics Josh Whitman told WCIA 3 in Champaign . “And so we were excited to grant an exception.”

‘Another rape’

Shannon’s accuser, meanwhile, may have little recourse against those who have publicly shared her name and photograph.

“To me, all this doxxing is another rape,” Belknap said. “It should be illegal that they are giving this woman’s name. I don’t know what you do about this, but it seems so wrong to me.”

Laws against cyberbullying and harassment vary by state. Last year, Illinois became one of the few states to enact specific anti-doxxing legislation that imposes civil penalties on anyone who shares a person’s public information online knowing that person “would be reasonably likely to suffer death, bodily injury, or stalking.”

A similar bill in Kansas stalled in committee this year.

Defining what constitutes doxxing has been a thorny question. Identifying a culprit could prove equally difficult.

One of the most prominent posts on X that named Shannon’s accuser and her best friend — and included screenshots of their social media profiles — has been viewed more than 4.6 million times, according to that site’s views count.

The person who posted it wrote in his profile that he is an “insider” at Deadspin and a “senior journalist” with a television news outlet in Fargo, North Dakota. His profile also reads “as seen” in two Sports Illustrated accounts dedicated to coverage of professional football, the NBA and WNBA.

Since joining in April 2023, he’s amassed 413 followers.

A search of Deadspin and Sports Illustrated sites returned no bylines with his name. Representatives from both companies did not respond to a Tribune email asking about his employment or affiliation with their organizations.

An employee at the Fargo news station said he never heard of the man.

Additionally, the man’s profile picture depicts a professional hockey player of a different name. The hockey player told the Tribune he used to have a Twitter account but deactivated it after he tired of reading comments from angry fans.

He said he was unaware that his picture, which is his 2016 headshot from Northeastern University, is being used for a fake profile.

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