Emotional violence of social media

Delta Milayo Ndou  : Digitaldialogue

IN 2014, Monica Lewinsky the woman who had an affair with former US president Bill Clinton, gave an inspiring Ted Talk following a decade of silence over one of the biggest sex scandals in American politics in which she talked about “The price of shame”. In her speech she talks of the role that digital or electronic communication played in turning her into a pariah stating:“I was patient zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously. This rush to judgment, enabled by technology, led to mobs of virtual stone-throwers.” Although her remarks were not centred on social media per se, Lewinsky’s description of “mobs of virtual stone-throwers” aptly captures the violence of social media that manifests as cyber bullying.

By legal definition, cyber bullying refers to any harassment that occurs via the Internet, cellphones or other devices whereby communication technology is used to intentionally harm others through hostile behaviour such as sending text messages and posting ugly comments on the Internet.

Cyber harassment covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature and it is commonly understood as behaviour, which disturbs, torments, alarms, intimidates or upsets, and it is characteristically repetitive through the use of electronic communication.

There is an overlap in terms of what constitutes cyber bullying and what constitutes harassment but if a fine distinction must be made then it is that harassment is typically repetitive, continuous, unrelenting and totally unrepentant while bullying might involve occasional instances of hostile conduct. The distinction is so fine that it is akin to splitting hairs so for the purpose of this article, cyber harassment will be the term used to encompass both bullying and harassing.

While everyone online is a potential victim of harassment and might have been subjected to bullying at one point or another, I have noted that “public figures or personalities” or their children are especially vulnerable online.

Public figures on social media — to ‘fight back’ or endure

Owing to their social standing, status of affiliation to certain “brands” some public figures become easy targets; low-hanging fruit as it were, for those disgruntled and aggrieved Zimbabweans who feel that misdirecting their rage is justifiable as long as their target of choice has even the slightest tangential connection to those they hold responsible for their struggles.

The pressure and the expectation placed upon public figures to maintain certain decorum in public spaces, to assume a dignified disposition and to rise above the mobs of virtual stone-throwers who torment them is what make them vulnerable and exposed.

They are virtual sitting ducks because their professional standing or social status comes with certain expectations that do not involve engaging in public confrontations that could easily degenerate into reputation-damaging profanity and slander.

Recently, I was tasked with crafting a social media policy for my organisation and I agonised over the question of whether or not our media “personalities” should “protect” themselves online by taking on those who harass them.

Given my aversion to being treated unfairly, I’m very ill suited for the task of counselling others on how to take online harassment on the chin and long-sufferingly bear it with a grin.

During my tenure as the “face” of Zimpapers on Twitter, I was regularly on the receiving end of vitriol, constantly subjected to vile insults, attacked by total strangers whom I had done nothing to provoke except work for an employer they happened to dislike. I had complete strangers dedicating time, energy and all the bile they could muster to express the hope that I get raped or that I get shot at and sprayed with bullets in my nether regions, including one particularly dramatic chap who laid the suffering of all Zimbabweans at my feet — because of where I worked.

Social media is oftentimes a space where emotional violence is easily inflicted, where the bullets are words and the weapons of choice — if you are a woman — include slut shaming, slander and mentions of all your lady parts. How do you fight back online if you are a “public personality” or a “brand” — should you fight back at all or should you just steer clear of social media altogether? In one of my social media trainings with female parliamentarians the consensus was that the only way to avoid being humiliated online is to steer clear of those platforms because no one will leap to your defence.

Instead they will rush to retweet, to favourite, to share and distribute or spread your tormentor’s words far and wide rather than call out and challenge the trolls in your defence. Who can blame these people for wanting to spare themselves the ignominy of becoming targets for cyber harassers who have nothing to lose and can bully others with impunity?

Just this week I followed an exchange between The Herald editor and a particularly vexatious person on Twitter who was doing his utmost to annoy the editor.

The editor responded caustic wit and another Twitter user joined the conversation to chide and admonish the editor and say “aaa munhu wa editor anoita hasha zvakadaro” (how can someone who is an editor lose their cool?) to which the editor replied “ukamujairira anoita hasha. Editor munhuwo” (when provoked, an editor can retaliate).

An editor is a human being too). Are editors, politicians, lawyers, musicians, celebrity, not human beings and if we agree that they are not entitled to defend themselves in instances where they are victims of harassment, especially online? Does the fact that someone is an editor, politician, lawyer, celebrity, musician, mean that they must roll over and play dead, take insults lying down and simply endure unprovoked and vitriolic attacks for the sake of maintaining a dignified posture?

No doubt, the vast majority would advise that they do just that and so would I except that I am well aware that these individuals (professions and social status notwithstanding) are human beings too.

Will Section 23 save us?

One individual on Twitter remarked — while commenting on the provisions of Section 23 of the Computer Crime and Cyber Crime Bill — that “five years in Chikurubi for ‘online harassment’ is quite harsh” and wondered “how do you establish ‘substantial emotional distress’”. Section 23 of the Computer Crime and Cyber Crime Bill covers harassment utilising means of electronic communication and specifically provides that:

(1) a person who intentionally, without lawful excuse or justification or in excess of a lawful excuse or justification initiates any electronic communication with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person using a computer system to support severe, repeated, and hostile behaviour commits an offence punishable, on conviction, by imprisonment for a period not exceeding five years, or a fine not exceeding level 10, or both.

I think five years imprisonment is a good deterrence and is especially necessary to curb the extremely severe cases of online harassment where victims have suffered in silence without any legal recourse.

Whether offline or online, our actions have consequences and by clarifying the exact conduct constituting harassment and by deeming it unlawful, perhaps Section 23 will, at one point or another save us from the emotional violence of social media. I was appalled when someone on Twitter insulted the late Amos Midzi’s daughter for no reason whatsoever other than that her late father had belonged to a political party he abhorred — what was even more disgusting was the fact that some people went on to share that awful tweet.

I challenged a few of them regarding this and one of them said that a retweet is not an endorsement she just wanted other people to “see”. However, I think we are as much accountable for the content we create as we are for the content we choose to distribute online by way of sharing it.

The same way people can take issue with you for forwarding chain emails even though they know you did not generate the said emails is the same way they can take issue with you over the content you choose to share because you are responsible for bringing it into their personal space. So then, may Section 23 deter us from being beastly towards one another online and may it keep the mobs of virtual stone-throwers at bay.

Delta is Head of Digital at Zimpapers. Follow her on Twitter: @deltandou