Hate is for the haters. Much of the thrill of posting toxic messages can come from the attention and social approval a poster gets from like-minded people.
To inform university responses to online harassment affecting graduate students, artist-researchers created original artworks in response to interviews with their peers who experienced online hate.
Our online data is inevitably intertwined with the data of others. Current protections are ill-equipped to address this reality and manage the far-ranging impacts of data breaches.
Anyone who has trawled through an internet forum will have seen how anonymity can change people. What happens when young people are thrown into the mix?
How we get the balance right between using social media to hold people to account versus the risk of invading people’s privacy depends on the context, of course, and is ultimately about power.
Elon Musk’s attempt to take over Twitter uses free speech as the motivation, but research shows that unregulated online spaces result in increased harassment for marginalized users.
The pandemic has led to an increase in online interactions, including sexually violent behaviours. Teens as young as 12 are affected, but many victims are not aware of their options in seeking justice.
Attackers gain the trust of vulnerable individuals to obtain sexually explicit photos or videos via the internet, and then use these materials to blackmail victims.
While online communities may not fully address the isolation LGBTQ youth face in-person, they can serve as an important source of social support and a springboard for civic engagement.
Where policies do address online abuse and harassment, they’re largely ineffective in a world where academics engage with people in a variety of public platforms and through social media.