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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 1:26 am
Time: 1:26 am
Results for online harassment
1 results foundAuthor: Lenhart, Amanda Title: Online Harassment, Digital Abuse, and Cyberstalking in America Summary: The internet and digital tools play an increasingly central role in how Americans engage with their communities: How they find and share information; how they connect with their friends, family, and professional networks; how they entertain themselves; how they seek answers to sensitive questions; how they learn about—and access— the world around them. The internet is built on the ideal of the free flow of information, but it is also built on the ideal of free-flowing discourse. However, one persistent challenge to this ideal has been online harassment and abuse—unwanted contact that is used to create an intimidating, annoying, frightening, or even hostile environment for the victim and that uses digital means to reach the target. As with their traditional expressions, online harassment and abuse can affect many aspects of our digital lives. Even those who do not experience online harassment directly can see it and respond to its effects; even the threat of harassment can suppress the voices of many of our citizens. In order to explore these issues and the ways that online environments affect our experiences online, this report examines American teens’ and adults’ experiences with witnessing, experiencing, and responding to the aftermath of online harassment and abuse. Its findings are based on the results of a nationally representative survey of 3,002 Americans 15 and older conducted from May 17th through July 31st, 2016. Respondents were contacted by landline and cell phone, and interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. 47% of internet users have experienced online harassment or abuse In order to examine the types of harassment and abuse that Americans have personally experienced, we asked internet users about 20 harassing behaviors over the course of the survey. Overall, almost half (47%) of Americans have personally experienced one of the harassing behaviors we asked about. The types of harassing behaviors we studied fall into three broad categories: • Direct harassment refers to things that people do directly to one another. Examples include: being called offensive names, being threatened physically, and being stalked. 36% of internet users have experienced this type of harassment. • Invasion of privacy refers to harms done to the victim through the unauthorized access to and exposure or spreading of information beyond the owner’s control. Experiences include: being hacked, having information about or images of the person exposed online without their permission, being impersonated, being monitored, and being tracked online. 30% of internet users have experienced this type of harassment. • Denial of access occurs when someone uses the features of the technology or platform to harm the victim, usually by preventing access to essential digital tools or platforms. Examples include: sending a very large number of unwanted messages, rendering the account unusable; misuse of reporting tools so that the person is blocked from using a platform; and technical attacks that overwhelm a device, site, server or platform and prevent access to it. 17% of internet users have experienced this type of harassment. Overall, almost three-quarters (72%) of American internet users have witnessed online harassment or abuse, and almost half (47%) of Americans have personally experienced one of the harassing behaviors we asked about. Men and women are equally likely to face harassment, but women experience a wider variety of online abuse, including more serious violations. Young people and sexual minorities are also more likely to experience online harassment or abuse—and more likely to be affected by it A common theme throughout our findings is that young people under age 30 and sexual minorities (respondents who identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual) were generally more likely to witness and/or experience online harassment or abuse. Black, sexual minority, and young Americans—especially young women— are also less likely than others to say that people are mostly kind to each other online, and more likely to say they self-censor what they post online in order to avoid harassment. Men are substantially less likely than women to describe what they experienced as harassment Internet users who have experienced harassing behaviors differ as to whether they think their experience constitutes ‘harassment’ or not. We found that women who have experienced the behaviors we asked about were substantially more likely than men who have experienced the same behaviors to say that they thought their experience constituted ‘harassment or abuse’ (53% of women who experienced harassing behaviors vs. 40% of men). Some behaviors were also more consistently considered ‘harassment’ by their targets. For instance, more than eight in ten people who experienced cyberstalking, sexual harassment, or persistent harassment agreed that their experiences constituted ‘online harassment or abuse,’ while fewer than six in ten people who experienced offensive name-calling said the same. Women were more likely than men to be angry, worried, or scared as a result of online harassment and abuse Among those who did say that what they experienced was online harassment and abuse, women were almost three times as likely as men to say the harassment made them feel scared, and twice as likely to say the harassment made them feel worried. Meanwhile, men who said they had been harassed were more likely than women to say they were ‘not bothered’ by the experience. However, almost all of those who were ‘not bothered’ also reported feeling another emotion (annoyed, worried, etc.) as well. 27% of all American internet users self-censor their online postings out of fear of online harassment More than a quarter of Americans (27%) say they have at some point decided not to post something online for fear of attracting harassment. While many internet users who have not encountered harassment still say they have self-censored to avoid potential harassment, people who have seen or experienced harassment online are much more likely to self-censor for this reason than those who have not. Looking at men and women of different age groups, we find that younger women are most likely to self-censor to avoid potential online harassment: 41% of women ages 15 to 29 self-censor, compared with 33% of men of the same age group and 24% of internet users ages 30 and older (men and women). Details: New York: Data & Society Research Institute; Clemente, CA: Center for Innovative Public Health Research, 2016. 59p. Source: Internet Resource: Report 11.21.16: Accessed March 3, 2017 at: https://www.datasociety.net/pubs/oh/Online_Harassment_2016.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://www.datasociety.net/pubs/oh/Online_Harassment_2016.pdf Shelf Number: 141322 Keywords: Computer CrimesCyberstalkingOnline CommunicationsOnline HarassmentOnline victimizationSocial Media |