Research

Urgent action needed to combat online violence against women and girls, says 2015 UN report: Millions affected globally, but most countries still failing to effectively address growing problem. UN Women’s Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka: ``We want to reclaim and expand the opportunities it offers. That means recognizing the scale and depth of the damage being done – and taking strong, concerted steps to call it – and stop it. Abuse online is still abuse, with potency and very real consequences.”

The Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program of the National Science Foundation has funded research to detect and identify cyberabuse. There are a number of theoretical and applied models which show categorizing or machine learning to scan for abusive comments under profiles, posts, photos, videos, and user media, yet they are not integrated into current social platforms for massive prevention. Data was cut off from Instagram in 2018, showing that no internal process exists in current social platforms to openly provide public safety.

Ditch the Label, a leading anti-bullying organization in the UK, has a number of studies. The Gender Report 2016, Masculinity and Misogyny in the Digital Age, Sexuality bullying, Cyberbullying and Hate, In-Game Abuse, Makeup Shaming, and Exposed: The Scale of Transphobia Online are examples of their research.

``With digital platforms taking charitable initiatives to global scales, micro-volunteering could be the solution to increasing the number of volunteers in the future.... The video app Be My Eyes, which pairs sighted volunteers with blind and low-vision people to help fulfill daily tasks, currently has more than two million registered volunteers; micro-volunteers have made more than 86,000 contributions to the Missing Maps Humanitarian OpenStreetMap platform; and United Nations Volunteers benefits from 12,000 online volunteers a year across 187 different countries.``

``37 percent of American adults have experienced severe online harassment, defined by the Pew Research Center as including physical threats, sexual harassment, stalking and sustained harassment.`` The ADL wants more CMS controls and legislation.

``A significant proportion of candidates at the 2017 general election experienced harassment, abuse and intimidation. There has been persistent, vile and shocking abuse, threatened violence including sexual violence, and damage to property... The widespread use of social media platforms is the most significant factor driving the behaviour we are seeing. Intimidatory behaviour is already affecting the way in which MPs are relating to their constituents, has put off candidates who want to serve their communities from standing for public offices, and threatens to damage the vibrancy and diversity of our public life.``

``ADL partnered with Moonshot CVE and the Gen Next Foundation to launch the Redirect Method... The program used advertising to divert individuals who searched Google for violent extremist material toward videos and other content that exposes the falsehoods of extremist narratives and suggests non-violent content.``

Tech Companies Are Destroying Democracy and the Free Press: ``Advertising revenue for print newspapers has fallen by two-thirds since 2006. From 2008 to 2018, the number of newspaper reporters dropped 47 percent. Two-thirds of counties in America now have no daily newspaper, and 1,300 communities have lost all local coverage.``

``In addition to a lack of transparency on internal decision-making processes, no social media/networking company surveyed had made a public commitment to human rights, nor demonstrated a clear understanding of violence against women.``

2020: ``Two thirds of adults in the UK are concerned about content online, and close to half say they have seen hateful content in the past year... Online abuse of public figures - In recent years we have seen a worrying rise in the amount of abuse, harassment and intimidation directed at those in public life. Much of this abuse happens on social media. An international survey of female journalists found two thirds (64%) had experienced online abuse – death or rape threats, sexist comments, cyberstalking, account impersonation, and obscene messages. Almost half (47%) did not report the abuse they had received, and two fifths (38%) admitted to self-censorship in the face of this abuse.``

HateLab is a global hub for data and insight into hate and crime using AI. The Online Hate Dashboard has been developed by academics with policy partners. ``The platform depends on the willingness of Twitter to make its data available to third-party applications. (Facebook closed down open access in 2018, so independent organisations cannot screen its posts.) Twitter shares data on the proviso that HateLab does not identify individual accounts via its dashboard. “In that sense, we can only provide the 10,000ft view,” Williams says. The dashboard can highlight patterns, target groups and geographical hotspots – but connecting with individuals is outside its remit... misogyny is by far the most prevalent form of hate on Twitter.`` The Dashboard is being piloted within the National Online Hate Crime Hub, announced by the UK Home Secretary in 2017.

Social media platforms ``reveal an overwhelming tendency toward inaction`` and ``removes visability to the eyes of the reporter (their ISP address) and yet remains visible to the community of users.`` All Rise has a 2015 All Rise Global Survey result with 12,556 participants and other studies.