Morally Motivated Networked Harassment as Normative Reinforcement

Moral outrage and shared moral norms energize networked, coordinated harassment online

Networked, coordinated harassment is done by all kinds of communities, from partisan political groups to fandoms. Though the origins of harassment are not necessarily identity-based, the resulting attacks use race, gender, sexuality, religion, and other attributes as vectors, making it more likely that people with marginalized identities will be harassed in ways that are intersectional/more harmful for individuals with multiple marginalized identities.

The key point is that while harrassers draw from identity-based stereotypes in their attacks, they understand their actions as morally justified and based in the target’s actions, rather than their identity. Marwick offers two examples, “I’m not against Anita Sarkeesian because I’m a misogynist/anti-feminist, but because she’s a scammer/liar,” and “I’m not against the 1619 project/Nikole Hannah Jones b/c I’m racist/my white ID is threatened but because she’s a liar who hates white people and white children.” In these cases, the speaker justifies their harassment of women by defining the woman as immoral and themselves therefore as moral actors for policing their immoral behavior.

Generic conventions in YouTube reponse videos drives online harassment campaigns

Over the last decade YouTube “response videos” in which a user offers counterarguments to a video uploaded by another user have become popular among political creators. While creators often frame response videos as debates, those targeted assert that they function as vehicles for harassment from the creator and their networked audience. Platform policies, which base moderation decisions on individual pieces of content rather than the relationship between videos and audience behavior, may therefore fail to address networked harassment. We analyze the relationship between amplification and harassment through qualitative content analysis of 15 response videos. We argue that response videos often provide a blueprint for harassment that shows both why the target is wrong and why harassment would be justified. Creators use argumentative tactics to portray themselves as defenders of enlightened public discourse and their targets as irrational and immoral. This positioning is misleading, given that creators interpellate the viewer as part of a networked audience with shared moral values that the target violates. Our analysis also finds that networked audiences act on that blueprint through the social affordances of YouTube, which we frame as harassment affordances. We argue that YouTube’s current policies are insufficient for addressing harassment that relies on amplification and networked audiences.

 

Publicity and self-branding can backfire against academic researchers who study media

For many academics, using social media has both drawbacks and advantages. Social media may allow connection with colleagues, scholarly promotion, and public engagement, and may also open researchers up to criticism and even possible harassment. This essay argues that we must think critically about logics of self-branding and attention-seeking given these two sides of the coin of social media publicity. First, publicity can easily be weaponized against scholars engaging in projects that may be socially or politically controversial by individuals or organizations who disagree with their premises. Universities are often unprepared to deal with this negative publicity and fail to protect researchers from the consequence. Second, self-branding may undermine one’s ability to be viewed as a serious scholar and requires rigorous self-censorship, particularly for those far from the white, male ideal of the professoriate. I conclude with some recommendations for academic social media use at different career stages.