Online Harassment

Online harassment is the “pervasive or severe targeting of an individual or group online through harmful behavior.”

The phenomenon has many names: online abuse, cyber harassment, cyberbullying, trolling, flaming, etc. Some terms are used interchangeably, others have been drained of meaning.

• Severe because even a single incident of online abuse, such as a death threat or the publishing of a home address, can have serious consequences.
• Pervasive because, while some individual incidents of online abuse, such as insults or spam, may not rise to the level of abuse, a steady drumbeat of incidents, or a coordinated onslaught, does.
• Online includes email, social media platforms (such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok), messaging apps (such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp), blogging platforms (such as Medium, Tumblr, and WordPress), and comments sections (on digital media, personal blogs, YouTube pages, and Amazon book reviews).

Source: Defining “Online Abuse”: A Glossary of Terms | onlineharassmentfieldmanual.pen.org