Misogynist harassment in cyberspace. A case study from asocial work perspective

Resumen

The internet has brought about a radical change in the way people communicate and relate to each other.Widespread use of this new system of communication has resulted in a shift in conventional attitudes in humanrelations. Some of its features are anonymity, virality or disinhibition, which in turn determine norms of interaction.This paper offers a preliminary study on online harassment, which we consider a type of gender-based violence inits wider definition. We define online harassment as the display of a series of online behaviours aimed at disturbing,upsetting and distressing women who engage in the internet in any way. Spanish website Píkara Magazine is used as acase study, in which we review the most common behaviours specific to this type of harassment and we undertake adiscourse analysis of the comments posted on this online magazine during 2015. Furthermore, we consider differentways of tackling this phenomenon from the social work discipline.