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.