Introduction: Overview of the Online Harassment

When it comes to harassment on social media, it does not spare anyone even if it is a celebrity or a common person. Technology and social media applications have surely made pour lives easier but it has also made us more vulnerable to strangers. Hence, “cyber bullying” is a common term these days. It is used when a person uses the internet to threat or harass another person. Over the years, it has become a major problem. Cyber bullying has caused many deaths and suicides too. The victims are often bullied, verbally abused, threatened, insulted and they also face negative comments on their posts.

 Today, each one of us is so exposed to the social media that we fail to guard our privacy. Everyone has access to our personal details, our pictures, our locations and other vital information. It usually takes place in popular social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (Burke Winkelman, Sloane, et al). Sadly, not many people know what to do about it. What people do instantly is that they delete the message or comment immediately giving the predator a chance to do it again. As this is an emerging issue, many states and nations are yet to take an action against the harassment on social media. Many law enforcement bodies just issue a report but take no further steps to resolve the matter. People often make defamatory comments and spread rumors either out of jealousy or to get attention.  Negative comments often hurt the victims and make them weak. They start self-doubting and questioning their own capabilities. The harassers also send pornographic films or images in the inbox of the victims (Burke Winkelman, Sloane, et al). Sometimes people also upload obscene content in order to take revenge. People also harass victims on live chats.

In this essay the discussion shall be focusing upon two open ended questions. Firstly, it shall be dealing with the aspect of violation of the modesty of women and gender and sexual minorities, and secondly, it shall be dealing with the aspect of the reasons why the issues are difficult to be solved by facebook. The thesis statement of this particular essay is to provide an account of how and why the harassment in social media takes place with specific emphasis on facebook. The reasons behind facebook not being able to provide any solution to the problem shall also be discussed as a part of the thesis statement.

The fact that women and other gender sexual minorities are more often than not a victim of cyber bullying over Facebook and casual negative comments thrown at them by the users is not something which is unknown to the people. In this section the discussion shall be focusing upon two open ended questions. The issue of women and gender and sexual minorities shall be taken up separately since both are different in nature. The nature of harassment over Facebook faced by biological women is quite different from the ones faced by the gender and sexual minorities. Though both the forms of harassment cannot be quantified against each other, but the subtle level of difference in extending redressal is always an issue, and that is context specific (Fox and Moreland).

Thesis Statement and the Open Ended Questions

With regard to the issue faced by the biological women, the problem of delay by Facebook authorities is quite a big problem. The Facebook authorities take a lot of time to dispense justice to the woman whose modesty has been violated by some user. The comment, reaction or post is first reported to the Facebook authorities, then the issue of processing the complaint takes few days. During this particular period of delay, the damage that has already been done to the victim cannot be undone. Facebook cannot be blamed for this particular issue of delay as it has millions of users subscribed to it and it cannot be possible to Another factor which is intertwined by many factors is a serious impediment for Facebook to solve the issue, and that is geographic and most importantly the cultural factor attached to that particular geographical contiguity. If a particular geographical contiguity is very much characterized by conservatism and sexism, then the chances of the dignity and modesty of the women getting violated is much more. In countries where men consider it as a matter of entitlement endowed unto them to treat women as commodities, and objectify them. Not to say that in the developed countries the women do not face harassment over Facebook, but then the cultural context of a particular geographical contiguity is definitely an issue which is rather difficult to tackle. It has to be considered that Facebook guarantees freedom to all for expressing their view and there is no mechanism which can detect the underlying meaning and significance of a particular sentence or word, typed and posted on Facebook. Actions can be taken only after the instance of violation has been reported. Thus one can might as well sense that the issue is very technical which makes solving the problems of harassment over Facebook difficult (Fox and Moreland).

With regard to the issue of the instance of harassment faced by the gender and sexual minorities, the issue is more of reluctance on part of Facebook to initiate any action to counter them effectively. It is very strange that Facebook has no such strict policy which categorically and specifically seeks to target the harassment hurled on the gender and sexual minorities and provide the necessary assistance. As a matter of fact, the sort of behavior that one notices in the social setting particular to a context, is reflected in social media as well, as human beings are incapable of thinking and acting outside the context of social setting and its impact on the mindset of the people. Scores of homophobic and transphobic posts are circulated over Facebook on a daily basis but on being reported it has been found out that the reply from Facebook that comes, reads as that the post does not violate the community standards. Harassment need not always be direct, the caricaturous posts making a mockery out of the sexual and gender minorities and their existence is also harassment and that goes unnoticed by Facebook (Fox and Moreland).

Discussion: How and why harassment takes place in social media

There are many instances of harassment in the platform of Facebook. Facebook has become a part of our daily lives and there is an estimate that an average person checks his or her Facebook account at least five times a day (Burke Winkelman, Sloane, et al). Such a dominating presence of an individual in the social media platform has wide spread consequences of the concerned individual. The way people portray themselves in a social media platform is very different from the wy they conduct themselves in public. This is so because certain people believe that they are safe behind a computer and hence, they can they say anything without facing any severe repercussions. Such a thought process has resulted in several cases of harassment (Burke Winkelman, Sloane, et al). Certain instances of harassment in the platform of Facebook occurs when, for instance, a photo of an innocent person is misused in the platform. Morphing of a photo is very common these days and since the profile of a person is visible to those added in the friend list of a person, his or her photos will be visible to everyone in the friend list. There is a chance, however small, that there might be someone in the friend list whom the concerned individual does not know. Thus, this increases the chances of the profile being misused where the photos might be used for some other unscrupulous reasons Burke Winkelman, Sloane, et al. This results in the public shaming of the concerned individual as it is not likely that other people on the platform would believe in the innocence of the concerned individual. This will further have certain repercussive reactions on the individual as he or she will be tended to defend himself or herself in front of other people, resulting in to unnecessary mental distress and depression.

Another instance of harassment in the platform of Facebook which is very persistent is the obnoxious messages of not so good intention send to unaware people. The contents of the messages can be very rude and demeaning, which can affect the character of the other person to whom the message has been send to. Facebook takes no action to prevent the sending of such messages. The only step taken by Facebook in this regard is to separate out the folders where the known people, added in the friend list can send messages while the messages of the unknown people are segregated into a different folder.

The consequences are quite evident. The victims are rendered mentally scarred forever. The psychological setback which the victim incurs is something which cannot be cured and only time can heal that scar.

Thus it can be said that the society needs a massive imbibition of the factor of morality and a profound sex education with gender sensitization is required. The problem is not something which is exclusively of facebook to be solved. It is a problem which is looming large in the society and by making the facebook guidelines stricter, the solution shall be not be enough.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can observed that the various platforms of social media had emerged initially to help the people to be connected with each other. The main purpose of social media was to make people be closer to one another. However, the boon of social media has been overshadowed by its bane. There are many people who misuse the very purpose of social media and use the platforms just to create trouble and stress for the other people. The sites of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter contain very personal details of the individuals using these platforms and the rogue people find opportunities to misuse such private information for their benefit. The instances of cyber bullying, being harassed on the social media platform has increased at a rapid pace ever since the various mediums came in to existence. Moreover, a concerning issue is that there are not many ways by which such persistent instances can be resolved as the primary purpose of the internet is to protect the identity of the one availing its use. Thus, it becomes very difficult to resolve the issues of harassment and find the identity of the one creating the mischief as mentioned in the thesis statement.

References:

Burke Winkelman, Sloane, et al. “Exploring cyber harassment among women who use social media.” Universal journal of public health 3.5 (2015): 194.

Fox, Jesse, and Jennifer J. Moreland. “The dark side of social networking sites: An exploration of the relational and psychological stressors associated with Facebook use and affordances.” Computers in Human Behavior 45 (2015): 168-176.