Week 10: Digital Citizenship and Conflict: Social Media Governance: Online Harassment :/
In the reading “Drinking male tears: language, the manosphere, and networked harassment” the authors explain that women are more likely to face online harassment than men (Marwick & Caplan 2018, p. 545). For instance, many women who share their feminist viewpoints on social media are subject to online harassment by anti-feminists such as groups of men online that claim feminism is incorrect or that it is a lie (Marwick & Caplan 2018, p. 594). However, online harassment can be taken a step further with sexual harassment.
Anna Gensler, who has approximately 33,400 Instagram followers, created an Instagram project ‘Granniepants’ exposing online sexual harassment, which is one form of online harassment many women must deal with (Vitis & Gilmour 2017, p. 335). Women will send in an inappropriate message they have received by a man, and Gensler will then draw a naked portrait of the man with his words incorporated in it, so that the woman can send it back to him. Many of the men who receive these portraits have bad reactions to them. Through this project, she encourages her followers to stand up against online harassment. Additionally, the ‘Granniepants’ project highlights how many individuals who participate in online sexual harassment do not consider it to be a serious form of abuse due to the fact that they are doing it online with words rather than in person or physically. Gensler’s project encourages those who participate in online harassment to realize that, although their abuse takes place online, there may be consequences to their words and actions.
It is quite difficult to govern online harassment, especially on social media. Many of the technological affordances associated with social media are what allow online harassment such as anonymity, private messaging and posting publicly. However, more effective measures can be implemented in order to prevent online harassment from happening as often as it does in society. For instance, users who post abuse and use hate speech can be suspended and banned from platforms due to their actions.
References
Marwick, A.E. & Caplan, R. 2018, ‘Drinking male tears: language, the manosphere, and networked harassment’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 545-594.
Vitis, L & Gilmour, F 2017, ‘Dick pics on blast: A woman’s resistance to online sexual harassment using humour, art and Instagram’, Crime, Media, Culture, vol. 13, no. 3, p. 335.















