"You have to prove the threat is real": Understanding the needs of Female Journalists and Activists to Document and Report Online Harassment

TL;DR

This study explores the experiences of female journalists and activists facing online harassment, introducing a framework and tool to help document, report, and recover from harassment incidents.

Contribution

It presents the PMCR framework focusing on prevention, monitoring, crisis, and recovery, and designs a tool to assist targets in documenting and reporting harassment.

Findings

Participants need tools for evidence collection during harassment crises.

The designed tool was positively received and highlighted key user needs.

Recommendations for future tool development to support harassment targets.

Abstract

Online harassment is a major societal challenge that impacts multiple communities. Some members of community, like female journalists and activists, bear significantly higher impacts since their profession requires easy accessibility, transparency about their identity, and involves highlighting stories of injustice. Through a multi-phased qualitative research study involving a focus group and interviews with 27 female journalists and activists, we mapped the journey of a target who goes through harassment. We introduce PMCR framework, as a way to focus on needs for Prevention, Monitoring, Crisis and Recovery. We focused on Crisis and Recovery, and designed a tool to satisfy a target's needs related to documenting evidence of harassment during the crisis and creating reports that could be shared with support networks for recovery. Finally, we discuss users' feedback to this tool, highlighting needs for targets as they face the burden and offer recommendations to future designers and scholars on how to develop tools that can help targets manage their harassment.