Online incivility or sexual harassment? Conceptualising women's experiences in the digital age

SynopsisLaunched in 2006, the growth of Twitter as a microblogging platform has been exponential, yet little research to date specifically considers women's experiences of the medium. This article draws on a case study of the #mencallmethings hashtag, in which women describe and discuss the verbal abuse that they have received online from men. Providing a broad based context for the specific analysis of the #mencallmethings hashtag, I concentrate on the theoretical contributions made by western feminist research over the last 30 years to embed the aggressive harassment of women online in a wide review of types of threats to women. I argue that the harassment conveyed in the hashtag should be recognised as online sexual harassment, and a form of excluding women's voices from the digital public sphere.