4 ms·

Morally Motivated Networked Harassment as Normative Reinforcement

3 points by KittenInABox 5y ago

PaulHoule 5y ago
Funny, I spoke with the ringleader of an online harassment ring and he told me that he thought his victims gathered online to "normalize" their deviant behavior and wanted to deny them the opportunity to do that.
aliasEli 5y ago
From the abstract: > We lack explanations of why people engage in online harassment beyond simple bias or dislike. > Drawing from examples of networked harassment taken from qualitative interviews with people who have experienced harassment (n = 28) and Trust & Safety workers at social platforms (n = 9) If you are really interested in why people engage in this behavior you should interview the harassers and not their victims.
- jfengel 5y ago
  They'd like to. From the paper: One might ask why I interviewed people who experienced online harassment when attempting to determine motivations for harassment. Extensive efforts to recruit people who identified as perpetrators of harassment, who had been accused of harassment, or even who admitted to having engaged in online conflict, were unsuccessful.
JoeyBananas 5y ago
Wow, this is a highly politically motivated paper. Go read the introduction and look at what they use as an example of "harassment."
- jfengel 5y ago
  It's not an example of harassment, at least not an especially egregious one. It's an example of the way replies portrayed her as racist.
kradeelav 5y ago
As a kink artist, I really appreciated this paper. There's a lot of types out there on twitter (I no longer have a feed on there) that don't care for art and send vile death threats and worse on a regular basis to those who draw taboo art - that is still art. So this is particularly relevant. I would encourage people to give this paper a chance. The paragraph that sold it for me: "Thus, self-censorship is another way in which networked harassment functions as a norm reinforcement technique. The networked audience engaged in harassment successfully reinforces its moral norm by discouraging the target from violating it in public. And, because networked harassment is more likely to happen to women, trans and non-binary people, sexual minorities, and people of color, networked harassment causes minoritized voices to be systematically eliminated from the public sphere. Networked harassment also reinforces symbolic boundaries between groups by creating moral distinctions between us and them. As discussed, polarization and partisanship involve both in-group solidarity and out-group animus."

3 points by KittenInABox 5y ago

Funny, I spoke with the ringleader of an online harassment ring and he told me that he thought his victims gathered online to "normalize" their deviant behavior and wanted to deny them the opportunity to do that.

aliasEli 5y ago

From the abstract: > We lack explanations of why people engage in online harassment beyond simple bias or dislike. > Drawing from examples of networked harassment taken from qualitative interviews with people who have experienced harassment (n = 28) and Trust & Safety workers at social platforms (n = 9) If you are really interested in why people engage in this behavior you should interview the harassers and not their victims.

jfengel 5y ago
They'd like to. From the paper: One might ask why I interviewed people who experienced online harassment when attempting to determine motivations for harassment. Extensive efforts to recruit people who identified as perpetrators of harassment, who had been accused of harassment, or even who admitted to having engaged in online conflict, were unsuccessful.

JoeyBananas 5y ago

Wow, this is a highly politically motivated paper. Go read the introduction and look at what they use as an example of "harassment."

jfengel 5y ago
It's not an example of harassment, at least not an especially egregious one. It's an example of the way replies portrayed her as racist.

kradeelav 5y ago

As a kink artist, I really appreciated this paper. There's a lot of types out there on twitter (I no longer have a feed on there) that don't care for art and send vile death threats and worse on a regular basis to those who draw taboo art - that is still art. So this is particularly relevant. I would encourage people to give this paper a chance. The paragraph that sold it for me: "Thus, self-censorship is another way in which networked harassment functions as a norm reinforcement technique. The networked audience engaged in harassment successfully reinforces its moral norm by discouraging the target from violating it in public. And, because networked harassment is more likely to happen to women, trans and non-binary people, sexual minorities, and people of color, networked harassment causes minoritized voices to be systematically eliminated from the public sphere. Networked harassment also reinforces symbolic boundaries between groups by creating moral distinctions between us and them. As discussed, polarization and partisanship involve both in-group solidarity and out-group animus."