New research from Dr Tully O’Neill (La Trobe Law School) and Associate Professor Bianca Fileborn (University of Melbourne), published in The British Journal of Criminology, has uncovered how social media is shaping new forms of justice for victim-survivors of street harassment.
Street harassment, which includes acts of unwanted attention in public space such as catcalling, leering and staring, is often minimised or brushed off as a ‘compliment’. Failed attempts to address it through policy and law reform has led to many victim-survivors turning to digital platforms to make their voices heard.
Dr O’Neill says that Instagram has become a particularly powerful site for digital justice and activism.
“Our research analysed several activist accounts on Instagram and found that affect and emotion play a central role in shaping this kind of activism,” Dr O’Neill says.
“In particular, disgust was a significant emotional response to street harassment, and this disgust often legitimised expressions of other kinds of discourse, some of which may require further questioning.”
The study also examined how digital language contributes to this affective response. Emojis, for example, were commonly used to express disgust and to signal blame toward perpetrators of harassment.
“Emojis were often explicitly leveraged towards men who are seen to be perpetrators of catcalling and street harassment.”
“What can be known about street harassment is often bound up in these affective economies,” Dr O’Neill argues. “Some behaviours are framed as disgusting and legitimate to name, while other more ‘mundane’ experiences are rendered further invisible.”
Dr O’Neill says the research deepens the theoretical and conceptual scholarship concerned with informal and digital justice in the aftermath of sexual harm.
“By arguing that digital justice can have affective dimensions, there is scope to further analyse and understand how and why informal justice occurs, as well as the potential consequences of this kind of activism and speech.”
