Put yourself in the shoes of a woman experiencing online misogyny. Do you think you’d be able to separate the online hate and threats from your ‘real life’ experience? Would it make you feel less safe offline? What kinds of worries might you have about your private, public, and professional relationships?
It would depend on my level of exposure to the online misogyny. If for instance, I consume a lot of online content, especially through social media, I would not be able to separate the online threats from my real-life experience. The thing about the internet, especially social media, is that it creates information bubbles. In other words, if I am engaged in groups where online misogyny is prevalent, I am more likely to continue to get exposed to such groups than other online groups. Furthermore, I am also more likely to believe content that is misogynistic as I am already predisposed to thinking that is the way the internet works.
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As a result, my offline security would depend on my personality. There is a chance that online misogyny would shape my worldview to the point that I assume my online experiences are equivalent to real-world experiences. This is especially true when I am no longer able to separate online hate from real-life threats on my person. The impact on my private, public, and professional relationships would also vary.
However, the common denominator would be that people who are polite and civilized in real-life are the misogynists online. There is no real way to tell people different as their online behavior could contrast with the real-life personality. I do not know if it is the illusion of anonymity or the relaxation of social inhibitions that make the internet the mainstay for misogyny (Frenda & Bilal, 2018; Jaki et al., 2019). Regardless, my inner worries would be that the people I openly communicate with and trust in real-life could be the worst misogynists online. Therefore, what other parts of their characters do they hide behind their civility?
Regarding online misogyny, is the solution to hateful speech to engage in ‘more speech’ that counters hate speech?
Yes, the solution to hateful speech is to engage in ‘more speech’ that counters the hate speech. The key difference, however, is deciding where to conduct ‘more speech’. Hateful speech is prevalent online for two main reasons. First, there are negligible consequences to engaging in hate speech. Secondly, the internet is a place where there are no social inhibitions, no regulations, and a lot of bystanders who do nothing but ignore the hate speech or take it has a source of entertainment. As a result, the people that engage in hate speech feel empowered. The internet is their home and engaging in ‘more speech’ gives them home ground advantage. Nothing good would ever come out of that.
In contrast, cases of hate speech in the real world are not as pronounced because of what the real-world enforces that the internet does not: social inhibitions, government regulations, and punishment for those who engage in hate speech. Anyone who engages in hate speech even in the public will draw the ire of any bystander(s). As a result, ‘more speech’ that counters hateful speech should be done in the real-world. If it is done enough, there will be a tipping point where the behavior spills over to the internet. This might happen by the increased regulation of online forums. It might also happen when the sensitized bystanders in real life start censoring and enforcing social inhibitions online.
Reflect on the debate that occurs in this video. One side argues that the internet should be preserved as an open forum. When hate speech is allowed to proliferate, however, can we consider the internet to truly to be an open forum?
The internet has never been an open forum for one main reason: its ability to create information bubbles. For instance, if one tries to argue against online misogyny in a forum filled with misogynists, they will be drowned out by misogyny, have their ability to effectively respond by the controllers of the group. The same thing could happen when a male chauvinist argues for chauvinism in a feminist group. What is worse is that the only way to remove information bubbles is to increasingly regulate the internet. However, when that happens, the internet truly ceases to be an open forum.
References
Frenda, S., & Bilal, G. (2018). Exploration of Misogyny in Spanish and English tweets. In Third Workshop on Evaluation of Human Language Technologies for Iberian Languages (IberEval 2018) (Vol. 2150, pp. 260-267). Ceur Workshop Proceedings.
Jaki, S., De Smedt, T., Gwóźdź, M., Panchal, R., Rossa, A., & De Pauw, G. (2019). Online hatred of women in the Incels. me forum: Linguistic analysis and automatic detection. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict , 7 (2), 240-268.
