H eadlines
ADL: Online Hate Up, 40 Percent Experienced It
NATIONAL SUSAN C. INGRAM | JE FEATURE
PERHAPS THE MOST strik-
ing and disturbing statistic
the Anti-Defamation League
gleaned from its recent national
survey of about 1,000 internet
users is that close to 40 percent
of Americans have experienced
“severe online harassment.”
Severe ha rassment
includes sexual harassment,
stalking, physical threats and
sustained harassment.

The survey conducted Dec.

17-27 showed a spike from a sim-
ilar survey conducted by the Pew
Research Center only a year prior.

While that study found 41
percent of respondents had
experienced any kind of harass-
ment, compared to 53 percent
in the 2018 ADL survey, only 18
percent characterized the online
harassment as severe, while the
2018 ADL survey found 37 per-
cent had experienced severe
online harassment.

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4 FEBRUARY 21, 2019
The “scale and complexity of
online hate has reached unprec-
edented levels,” the ADL report
said, citing coordinated online
harassment of high-profile tar-
gets including Jewish journal-
ists and black public figures.

While 11 percent of respon-
dents said they were targeted
because of religion, more Muslims
at 35 percent than Jews at 16
percent said they were harassed
because of their religion.

Most commonly reported
was online harassment based
on sexual orientation, with 63
percent of LGBTQ people hav-
ing experienced harassment.

In addition to Muslims and
Jews, the survey found 30 per-
cent of Hispanics, 27 percent
of African Americans, 24 per-
cent of women and 20 percent
of Asians experienced online
harassment. At the bottom of
the scale were men at 14 per-
cent, Christians at 11 percent
and whites at 9 percent.

In her 2014 book Hate
Crimes in Cyberspace, Danielle
Keats Citron, law professor at
the University of Maryland
Carey School of Law and affil-
iate scholar with the Center
for Internet and Society at
Stanford Law School, wrote
about the impacts of cyber
harassment and cyber stalking.

“Although definitions of these
terms vary, cyber harassment is
often understood to involve the
intentional infliction of substan-
tial emotional distress accom-
plished by online speech that is
persistent enough to amount to
a ‘course of conduct’ rather than
an isolated incident,” Citron
wrote. “Cyber stalking usually
has a more narrow meaning: an
online ‘course of conduct’ that
either causes a person to fear for
his or her safety or would cause a
reasonable person to fear for his
or her safety.”
Citron cited Elizabeth Cargill,
a psychologist who works with
cyber stalking victims, about how
online harassment feels: “like
the perpetrator is everywhere:
Facebook, email, message boards
JEWISH EXPONENT
and outside the office.”
“As a result, emotional harm
and distress routinely accompany
the financial costs. Post-traumatic
stress disorder, anorexia nervosa
and depression are common,”
Citron wrote. “Cyber harass-
ment victims struggle especially
with anxiety, and some suffer
panic attacks. Researchers have
found that cyber harassment vic-
tims’ anxiety grows more severe
over time.”
Citron noted that the inci-
dents of people experiencing
cyber stalking rises, perhaps not
surprisingly, in correlation with
the amount of time people are
online, especially young people
who spend a lot of time online.

The ADL survey found that
65 percent of 18-29 year olds
had experienced online hate
or harassment, with 49 percent
reporting severe harassment.

The numbers dropped, but
were significant for older age
groups, with 60 percent of people
aged 30-49 experiencing harass-
ment and 42 percent reporting
severe harassment. Of those
above 50, 39 percent reported
harassment with 25 percent
reporting severe harassment.

By far, of the leading online
or social media platforms on
which people said some of their
online harassment occurred,
Facebook was the leader, with 56
percent of respondents report-
ing harassment on Facebook.

Lesser percentages of harass-
ment were reported on Twitter
(19 percent), with YouTube and
Instagram at 17 percent and
16 percent, respectively. At the
bottom of the list were Snapchat
(10 percent), Twitch (8 percent)
and Discord (7 percent).

Meanwhile, some numbers
were reversed for frequent,
daily users of these platforms,
with daily users of Twitch,
Reddit and Facebook at 47 per-
cent, 38 percent and 37 percent
of respondents, respectively,
reporting harassment.

That impact of harassment
is reflected in the actions
people took following online
harassment, with 38 percent
of respondents stopping or
changing their online activ-
ity. Eighteen percent contacted
the platform where they were
harassed, while 15 percent
“took steps to reduce risk to
physical safety,” and 6 percent
contacted police.

With 59 percent of respon-
dents believing online hate and
harassment makes hate crime
more common, increases the use
of derogatory language (50 per-
cent), makes young Americans
lose faith in their country (39
percent) and makes people feel
less safe (22 percent), the ques-
tion arises as to solutions.

The ADL survey found that
most people, regardless of
party affiliation, support more
action in response to cyber-
hate, including strengthening
laws against perpetrators and
online platforms and giving
police more training.

“Americans also want to see
private technology companies
take action to counter or miti-
gate online hate and harassment.

They want platforms to make
it easier for users to filter and
report hateful and harassing
content. In addition, Americans
want companies to label com-
ments and posts that appear
to come from automated ‘bots’
rather than people,” the report
said. “Finally, a large percentage
of respondents were in favor of
platforms removing problematic
users as well as having outside
experts independently assess the
amount of hate on a platform.”
The report found support
is strong for these types of
action to be taken to mitigate
online harassment, “across the
political ideological spectrum.

Although liberals especially
support platform recommen-
dations, with a majority of con-
servatives also supporting all
recommendations.” l
Susan C. Ingram is a reporter with
the Baltimore Jewish Times, an
affiliated publication of the Jewish
Exponent. JEWISHEXPONENT.COM