Digital Culture, Online Misogyny, and Gender‐based Violence

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a worrying upsurge in the scale, extremity and impact of online misogyny and anti-feminism. Increasingly, the perpetrators of digital hate optimise the technological affordances of social media and mobile phone technology to engage in death and rape threats, stalking, coercive control, image-based sexual abuse, sextortion, hacking, and coordinated ‘pile-ons’. The problem, therefore, is not merely one of trolling or ‘hate speech,’ confined to the realm of the virtual, but rather a multitude of deeply invasive and harmful practices designed to intimidate, silence and suppress women. This chapter explores the contours and origins of online misogyny, pointing out its complex entanglements in the socio-economic conjuncture, the technological affordances of social media and the rise of male supremacist ideologies online. I argue that the digital abuse of women constitutes a significant human rights crisis, which impedes women's full participation as digital citizens.

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