When Does it Become Harassment?

Abstract

Calling out, a phenomenon where people publicly broadcast their critiques of someone to a larger audience using, has become increasingly common on social media. However, there has been concerns that it could develop into harassment, deteriorating the quality of public discourse by over-punishing individuals for minor transgressions. To investigate this phenomenon, we interviewed 32 Twitter users who had been called out, had called out, or had witnessed a calling out on Twitter. We found that a key determining factor that distinguishes criticism from harassment was the callee's ability to respond to or engage with the criticism, and that different stakeholders hold different perspectives toward how online harassment is defined. We also discovered that the distinction between callers and callees was not absolute, and that there was high interchangeability of roles both within and across events. Through these findings, we discuss design implications for the platform in promoting healthy discourse while preventing toxic behavior on social media.

Targeted Social Media Harassment: A Comparative Analysis of Toxicity Directed at Men and Women Sports Reporters

“…But it also suggests that toxic users gravitate toward posts shared by women and form affect-driven communities that harass women. "Trigger comments" of controversial topics and terms often spur harassing behavior (Almerekhi et al, 2019, p. 2), and even small exposure to incivility in online communities increases the likelihood that a user will engage in similar uncivil behavior themselves (Kim et al, 2022). Such behavior could result in a toxic comment snowball effect, which could explain why Watson's name is a part of the women reporters' word cloud but not the men's.…”

“…Almerekhi et al (2019) found that controversial stories and topics trigger more toxic discussion. If women speak out more on a controversial issue, it would stand to reason that more toxic behavior would follow in a “mob mentality” (Kim et al, 2022, p. 4742), forming a toxic community driven by affect and emotion (Massanari, 2017; Papacharissi, 2015). The fact that the word clouds for women sports reporters included terms like “sexual assault” and “Deshaun Watson” could be a result of the fact that women sports reporters are more likely to use their platforms to discuss issues of sexual assault or issues of race, however, the burden should not rest solely on them.…”

“…Some difficulty exists, however, in defining toxicity online because the nature of incivility is subjective (Masullo Chen et al, 2019). Even with this limitation, researchers have extensively studied the nature of toxic discourse on 4Chan (Petit, 2022), Reddit (Almerekhi et al, 2019;DeCook, 2022;Massanari, 2017;O'Hallarn et al, 2023), and X (Fan et al, 2021;Kim et al, 2022;Mosleh et al, 2021;Saveski et al, 2021). There is some discourse that scholars agree is toxic, such as name-calling, mistruth, racism, or sexism (Muddiman & Stroud, 2017).…”

“…Research into toxic and uncivil discourse on social media has shown that certain “trigger comments” that “contain controversial or provocative terms” are more likely to promote such behavior (Almerekhi et al, 2019, p. 2). Exposure to incivility in online communities increases the likelihood that users will also post in an uncivil manner (Kim et al, 2022).…”