Psychological violence and the bane of cyber-harassment against women: an experiential inquest on Facebook

Abstract

Cyber-harassment on social media platforms is a perennial issue among social workers, psychologists, policy makers, social scientists and enforcement agents in any modern society. The increasing incidences of cyber-harassment against women have become a menace in the international community. This data-based study examined the nature and practice of cyber-harassment and its negative implications for psychological violence against women using Facebook as an example. This study was anchored on the uses and gratification theory, which stipulates that many individuals gain satisfaction by using Facebook for the practice of cyber-harassment against women, which would lead to psychological violence that negatively affects the identity and esteem of women. This study adopted the survey method and the instrument of data collection was the questionnaire. Also, two hypothesis were tested using the correlation analysis at the 5% level of significance (i.e. alpha= 0.05). Also, the correlation analysis result were further subjected to the Somer’ d directional measure and symmetric measures so as to determine the strength and nature of the relationship of variables. The result indicated that many of the respondents were aware of the practice of cyber-harassment against women on Facebook. Also, a majority had witnessed women cyber-harassed on Facebook. This study advocates that women should be seen as significant pillars of development in any nation across the globe. Importantly, the perennial issue of cyber-harassment against women on social media platforms should be tackled as a global agenda, whereby government officials, social workers, school administrators, legislators, policy makers and enforcement agents should work together to implement and execute laws, programmes and policies that would reduce the incidences of cyber-harassment on social media platforms

Keywords: Cyber-harassment, psychological violence, women, Facebook and social media