Online Misogyny and Sexual Harassment

Gender & Sexualities Research Forum (GSRF) at City University London

Wednesday 17 June 5-7pm

Rooms A107 and A108, College Building

St John Street
London
EC1V 4PB

Online spaces such as blogs, forums and Twitter are invaluable resources for feminist communities. However, due to its nature, the Internet also expands the space available for misogynistic discourses to spread and be heard and – as the cases of Caroline Criado-Perez and Mary Beard demonstrate – provides an outlet for ‘trolls’ to enact vitriolic attacks on women who publicly voice their opinions. Whilst encouraging progress has been made in increasing public and corporate awareness, we still have much to learn about this problem and about how we can start to tackle it. This seminar will discuss new research into the online harassment of women and explore how academic work can start to answer some of these questions. Topics up for discussion include: what methods can we use to track harassment on large social media platforms? What is the role of the law in addressing cyber-hate against women? What would a more ethical Internet look like and how might this be achieved?

Speakers: 

Marianne Franklin (Goldsmiths, University of London): Title TBC

Marianne Franklin is Professor of Global Media and Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she is a member of the Centre for Feminist Research. Active in research and advocacy on human rights issues and the internet, she has served as co-Chair of the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition at the UN Internet Governance Forum and is currently chair of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet). Her latest book is Digital Dilemmas; Power, Resistance and the Internet (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Olga Jurasz (Open University):  “Online Misogyny and Social Media: A Challenge for (Legal) Regulation”

Olga Jurasz is a lecturer in law at the Open University Law School. Her main research interests are public international law, human rights and legal regulation of gender-based violence. She has been recently working on a collaborative project addressing gender, cyberviolence and law.

Carl Miller (Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, Demos): “Researching Misogyny on Twitter”

Carl Miller is the Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos. It is the first British think tank unit dedicated to researching and understanding the digital world.  He develops new ways of understanding social media as a new part of social and political life. He wrote a weekly column on digital politics for The Sunday Times and is a social media commentator for Sky.  He is a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College, London.

Chair: Laura Thompson

** Talks and discussion followed by refreshments at 7pm **

For more information or to join the GSRF mailing list, contact Laura García-Favaro on: genderforum.city@gmail.com