This week’s readings revolve around the various risks and dangers of online activity and the moral panic that has ensued among the older, parental generation in regards to the Internet use of their children online. Danah Boyd explains how this type of panic has changed an evolved through history from the beginning times of Rock & Roll to sexual predators in online forums in today’s society. The category of teenage and adolescent girls is also very prominent in this discussion, especially in regards to sexual harassment and dangers online. As explained in the articles, females are seen to be at the highest level when it comes to risk and danger online.
I found this Buzzfeed article that pertains to such an issue, as it announces Twitter’s recently-added feature in which women, in particular, can fill out a form to report online harassment. The article contains various screenshots of what would qualify as online harassment, like when a women posts a simple, serious question about the availability/use of tampons in other countries and is then subjected to 24 hours of comments where her appearance, anatomy and politics are mocked and degraded by other Twitter users. Along with some other examples of these instances where women seem to be unfairly attacked online, the article includes some statistics from a Pew study that report that 25% of young women have been sexually harassed online and 26% have experienced stalking.
In reaction to these instances and in collaboration with WAM, a nonprofit dedicated to gender justice in the media, Twitter added this form in which women could report such online attacks. Relating back to the readings for this week, this type of form and action by Twitter/WAM falls in line with the moral panic and the discussion of Internet risk and danger, especially around young females. With this, they are recognizing the risk/danger women are subjected to and are attempting to alleviate it. My question is, how has this form changed or altered such harassment? Does this kind of action really work? What are the consequences for those that are caught doing the harassment? Also, does this bring up issues of gender equality online, as a whole? I’m sure males get harassed and bullied too, maybe especially those that are young and/or identify with the LGBT community. How are those cases being dealt with in today’s Internet realm of Twitter and other social media outlets?
Studies indicate that harassment on the Internet is heavily gendered, racialized, and sexualized. If you look at the YouTube comments section, for example, and compare comments on a video hosted by a man and a video hosted by a woman, they both might receive the same amount of negative feedback. However, the woman’s negative comments will likely be sexually aggressive (i.e. rape threats), while the man’s negative comments will be relatively benign. The same goes if you compare videos by a person of color and videos by a non-POC, or videos by a heteronormative vs. videos by a member of the queer community.