Understanding Harassment Inside Online Communities: The Role of Social Identity Threat

Abstract

This research used two survey studies to investigate how situational factors can cause online harassment by measuring the level of support for harassment in reaction to social identity threats inside online communities. A total of 601 English-speaking active internet users were recruited using the Prolific research platform and asked to complete the preliminary or main survey. The preliminary survey study presented participants with descriptions of threatening behavior in different hypothetical scenarios and asked them to report ratings for personal upset, threat to a group’s usefulness, and threat to a group’s reputation. The preliminary study also asked participants to report the level of harassment displayed in descriptions of possible reactions to those threats. The main survey study presented participants with descriptions combining these threats and reactions and asked participants to report their level of support for both high and low harassment reactions. This research aimed to develop and validate a method for measuring situational factors relevant to online harassment, and the results showed that threat and reaction ratings were both significant in predicting the level of support for online harassment. This research also hypothesized that threats to group-level social identity would correlate with higher levels of support for harassment behavior, and the results showed that this was supported for threats to a group’s reputation. This research also used the results from the main survey to explore the influence of individual factors like gender identity in predicting support for online harassment.