Abstract
This dissertation examines the efficacy of reporting pathways available to victims of gendered online harassment, synthesising contemporary literature to determine which mechanisms yield meaningful outcomes for those affected. Through systematic literature synthesis, this study analyses the dominant coping strategies employed by women experiencing technology-facilitated gender-based violence, the barriers preventing formal reporting to platforms and authorities, and the outcomes associated with various response pathways. Findings reveal that individual technical coping mechanisms—blocking, muting, and withdrawal—predominate, whilst formal reporting to platforms and police remains underutilised due to normalisation of abuse, expectations of ineffectiveness, and fear of retaliation. Evidence demonstrates that platform reporting is widely perceived as opaque, slow, and ineffective, whilst police reporting often results in dismissal or re-traumatisation. Conversely, peer, organisational, and NGO support networks provide emotional validation and practical assistance that victims value most highly. The dissertation concludes that meaningful outcomes require victim-centred approaches that prioritise visible sanctions, reduced documentation burdens, and genuine acknowledgement of harm, rather than mechanisms that perpetuate the responsibilisation of victims for their own safety.
Introduction
The digital transformation of public discourse has fundamentally altered how individuals engage with civic, professional, and social spheres. However, this transformation has simultaneously enabled the proliferation of gendered harassment, creating hostile online environments that disproportionately affect women and gender minorities. Technology-facilitated gender-based violence encompasses a spectrum of behaviours including sexual harassment, stalking, non-consensual image sharing, doxxing, and sustained campaigns of abuse designed to silence and intimidate victims (Powell, Scott and Henry, 2018).
The scale of this phenomenon demands urgent academic and policy attention. Research consistently demonstrates that women in public-facing roles—journalists, politicians, activists, and academics—face elevated risks of online harassment that directly threatens their professional participation and democratic engagement (Adams, 2018; Chen et al., 2020). The consequences extend beyond immediate psychological harm to encompass long-term silencing effects, career limitations, and withdrawal from public discourse (Nadim and Fladmoe, 2019).
Despite increasing recognition of gendered online harassment as a significant social problem, understanding of which reporting pathways lead to meaningful outcomes for victims remains fragmented and underdeveloped. Victims navigate a complex landscape of potential responses, from individual technical measures to formal reporting mechanisms operated by platforms, employers, and legal authorities. Yet the effectiveness of these pathways—measured against victims’ own definitions of meaningful outcomes—has received insufficient systematic attention.
This matter carries profound implications for gender equality, freedom of expression, and democratic participation. When reporting mechanisms fail to deliver satisfactory outcomes, victims are effectively abandoned to self-protective strategies that may perpetuate their silencing. Furthermore, the burden of addressing harassment falls disproportionately upon those least responsible for its occurrence, raising fundamental questions about platform accountability and institutional responsibility.
This dissertation addresses this critical gap by synthesising existing evidence on reporting pathway effectiveness, examining barriers to formal reporting, and identifying the characteristics of responses that victims themselves consider meaningful. In doing so, it contributes to developing more victim-centred approaches to addressing technology-facilitated gender-based violence.
Aim and objectives
Aim
This dissertation aims to critically evaluate the effectiveness of available reporting pathways for victims of gendered online harassment and to identify which mechanisms lead to meaningful outcomes as defined by victims themselves.
Objectives
To achieve this aim, the following objectives guide this investigation:
1. To systematically examine the range of coping strategies and reporting behaviours currently employed by women experiencing online harassment.
2. To identify and analyse the barriers that prevent victims from utilising formal reporting pathways, including platform reporting and police reporting.
3. To evaluate the outcomes associated with different response pathways, distinguishing between short-term relief and meaningful long-term resolution.
4. To determine what victims themselves consider meaningful outcomes from reporting, and to assess the extent to which current mechanisms deliver these outcomes.
5. To synthesise evidence on promising practices and make recommendations for developing more effective, victim-centred reporting systems.
Methodology
This dissertation employs a systematic literature synthesis methodology to examine existing empirical evidence on reporting pathways for gendered online harassment. Literature synthesis represents an appropriate methodological approach when primary data collection is neither feasible nor necessary, and when the research question can be addressed through rigorous analysis and integration of existing scholarship (Snyder, 2019).
Search strategy and source selection
The literature search encompassed peer-reviewed academic journals, institutional reports from universities and research centres, and publications from governmental and international organisations. Primary databases searched included Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar, using search terms combining “online harassment,” “cyber harassment,” “technology-facilitated violence,” “gendered harassment,” “reporting mechanisms,” “platform moderation,” and “victim outcomes.”
Selection criteria prioritised empirical studies published within the last decade to ensure currency, though seminal earlier works were included where they provided essential conceptual foundations. Sources were required to address gendered dimensions of online harassment explicitly and to provide empirical evidence—whether quantitative or qualitative—regarding victim responses, reporting behaviours, or outcome experiences.
Analytical approach
The synthesis adopted a thematic analytical framework, grouping findings according to the type of response pathway examined and the outcomes documented. This approach enabled comparison across different victim populations, platform contexts, and geographical settings, facilitating identification of consistent patterns whilst acknowledging contextual variations.
Critical appraisal of included studies considered methodological rigour, sample characteristics, and potential biases. Particular attention was given to studies employing victim-centred methodologies that privileged participants’ own definitions and experiences over externally imposed frameworks.
Limitations
This methodology carries inherent limitations. Literature synthesis depends upon the quality and coverage of existing research, which remains geographically concentrated in Western contexts and may underrepresent experiences of women in the Global South. Furthermore, the rapidly evolving nature of online platforms means that some findings may have limited temporal applicability. These limitations are acknowledged whilst recognising that synthesis of existing evidence remains essential for developing evidence-informed policy and practice.
Literature review
Defining gendered online harassment
Gendered online harassment encompasses technology-facilitated behaviours that target individuals based on their gender, typically manifesting as sexualised abuse, threats of violence, appearance-based attacks, and attempts to undermine professional credibility through gendered stereotypes (Powell, Scott and Henry, 2018). This phenomenon intersects with broader patterns of gender-based violence whilst exhibiting distinctive characteristics enabled by digital technologies, including anonymity, scalability, persistence, and the blurring of public and private spheres.
Research distinguishes between isolated incidents and sustained campaigns of harassment, with the latter proving particularly damaging due to cumulative psychological impacts and the difficulty of escape when harassment follows victims across platforms (Sampaio-Dias et al., 2023). Technology-facilitated gender-based violence against politically active women represents a particularly severe manifestation, with harassment frequently designed to silence political participation and democratic engagement (Koch, Riva and Steinert, 2025).
Prevalence and impact
Empirical studies consistently document elevated rates of online harassment experienced by women compared to men, with women also experiencing qualitatively different forms of abuse characterised by sexualisation, gendered insults, and threats of sexual violence. Research with female journalists demonstrates that harassment frequently “goes for gender first,” deploying misogynistic attacks before or alongside criticisms of professional work (Adams, 2018).
The psychological consequences documented in the literature include anxiety, depression, trauma symptoms, and reduced well-being. However, equally significant are the broader participatory impacts. Studies demonstrate that online harassment produces “silencing effects” wherein women reduce their public speech, self-censor, or withdraw entirely from online spaces (Nadim and Fladmoe, 2019). Cross-cultural research with journalists confirms these patterns across national contexts, with participants describing the development of “thick skin” as a professional survival strategy rather than genuine resilience (Chen et al., 2020).
For politically active women, harassment functions as a deliberate strategy to undermine democratic participation. The systematic review by Koch, Riva and Steinert (2025) documents both psychological consequences and political consequences, including withdrawal from political activity, reduced public visibility, and self-limiting of advocacy efforts.
Individual technical coping strategies
The evidence consistently demonstrates that individual technical coping mechanisms represent the dominant response to gendered online harassment. Blocking, muting, deleting content, ignoring abuse, changing usernames, and withdrawing from platforms are reported as the most common strategies employed by young women, journalists, and politically active women (Koch, Riva and Steinert, 2025; Salerno-Ferraro, Erentzen and Schuller, 2021; Chadha et al., 2020; Sampaio-Dias et al., 2023).
These strategies provide short-term relief by reducing immediate exposure to abusive content. However, their limitations are well-documented. Harassment often continues via alternative channels or resurfaces when victims re-engage with platforms. More fundamentally, these coping mechanisms place the burden of response upon victims rather than perpetrators or platforms, effectively requiring women to manage their own victimisation.
The most concerning outcome documented is withdrawal from online spaces entirely. Research demonstrates that such withdrawal carries significant long-term costs including professional disadvantage, reduced political participation, and effective silencing—outcomes that represent victories for harassers seeking precisely these results (Koch, Riva and Steinert, 2025; Sampaio-Dias et al., 2023).
Formal reporting to platforms
Platform reporting mechanisms constitute the most visible formal pathway for addressing online harassment. All major social media platforms maintain reporting systems enabling users to flag content violating community standards or terms of service. However, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these mechanisms reveals substantial gaps between their nominal availability and their practical utility for harassment victims.
Only a minority of harassment victims report abuse to platforms. Among politically active women, approximately 37 per cent reported abuse to authorities or platforms (Koch, Riva and Steinert, 2025). Research with young women experiencing technology-facilitated sexual violence similarly documents low reporting rates (Salerno-Ferraro, Erentzen and Schuller, 2021).
Victims who do report to platforms describe the process as unclear, slow, and ineffective. Few receive visible evidence that sanctions have been applied to perpetrators, and the opacity of moderation decisions leaves victims uncertain whether their reports have been taken seriously (Koch, Riva and Steinert, 2025; Sampaio-Dias et al., 2023; Im et al., 2022). Research by Gracia-Zomeño et al. (2025) identifies similar dissatisfaction across contexts, whilst Tan et al. (2024) document the inadequacy of technological tools designed to support victims.
The design of reporting systems themselves creates barriers. Evidence collection requirements place substantial burdens upon victims, who must document abuse whilst experiencing its psychological impacts. Research with journalists and activists reveals that current tools require considerable time and effort for documentation and reporting, with this burden representing a significant barrier to formal reporting (Goyal, Park and Vasserman, 2022; Tan et al., 2024).
Reporting to police and legal authorities
Legal reporting represents the most formal pathway available to harassment victims, yet remains the least utilised. The low uptake of police reporting reflects multiple intersecting barriers documented across studies.
Victims frequently report feeling dismissed or not believed when approaching legal authorities. Research demonstrates that many women perceive police responses as inadequate, with some describing re-traumatisation through the reporting process itself (Koch, Riva and Steinert, 2025; Gracia-Zomeño et al., 2025). Studies of dating app-facilitated sexual violence reveal particularly problematic experiences, with victim-survivors describing unsatisfactory outcomes from police engagement (Lawler and Boxall, 2023).
The legal frameworks governing online harassment create additional complications. Jurisdictional challenges arise when harassment crosses national boundaries, whilst definitions of criminal harassment vary significantly across legal systems. Research in the Philippines demonstrates that even journalists—with greater resources and professional standing—encounter difficulties securing meaningful outcomes from legal reporting (Tandoc, Sagun and Alvarez, 2021).
Peer, organisational, and NGO support
In contrast to formal reporting mechanisms, support from peers, unions, employers, and non-governmental organisations emerges from the literature as the pathway most valued by victims. This support typically encompasses emotional validation, safety planning, advocacy, and practical assistance with documentation or reporting (Sampaio-Dias et al., 2023; Goyal, Park and Vasserman, 2022).
Research with journalists documents the importance of newsroom support in mediating harassment impacts, though organisational responses remain inconsistent across workplaces (Tandoc, Sagun and Alvarez, 2021). Studies of adolescents experiencing sexual harassment similarly identify informal support networks as critical protective factors (Mitchell, Ybarra and Korchmaros, 2014).
The value victims place upon informal support likely reflects its responsiveness to their expressed needs. Unlike formal mechanisms that operate according to institutional logics, peer and organisational support can be tailored to individual circumstances and can prioritise outcomes that victims themselves consider meaningful—including emotional validation that formal systems rarely provide.
Barriers to formal reporting
The literature identifies multiple interconnected barriers preventing victims from utilising formal reporting pathways. These barriers operate at individual, institutional, and cultural levels.
Normalisation of abuse represents a fundamental barrier. When harassment is perceived as an inevitable feature of online participation—something women must expect and manage—the impetus to report diminishes. Research documents how women internalise harassment as “normal,” reducing both their likelihood of reporting and their expectations of effective response (Sampaio-Dias et al., 2023; Salerno-Ferraro, Erentzen and Schuller, 2021).
Expectation of ineffectiveness further suppresses reporting. When victims anticipate that nothing will happen following a report, the costs of reporting—emotional labour, time, re-exposure to abuse through documentation—outweigh perceived benefits (Sampaio-Dias et al., 2023; Gracia-Zomeño et al., 2025).
Fear of not being believed represents a significant psychological barrier, particularly for victims of sexual harassment or abuse that may be dismissed as exaggeration or misinterpretation (Powell, Scott and Henry, 2018). This fear reflects broader cultural patterns whereby women’s accounts of harassment are subject to greater scepticism than those of men.
Finally, fear of retaliation creates rational deterrence against reporting. Victims may anticipate escalation, doxxing, or targeted campaigns in response to formal complaints. Research demonstrates that these fears are well-founded, with reporting sometimes precipitating intensified harassment (Sampaio-Dias et al., 2023; Gracia-Zomeño et al., 2025).
What victims want from reporting
Understanding what constitutes meaningful outcomes requires privileging victims’ own definitions and preferences. Research examining women’s perspectives across multiple regions reveals consistent preferences for strong platform actions—including content removal, account bans, identity unmasking of anonymous harassers, and clear labelling of abusive content (Im et al., 2022).
Notably, victims prefer these active interventions over passive responses such as compensation payments or inaction. This finding suggests that meaningful outcomes involve visible acknowledgement of wrongdoing and tangible consequences for perpetrators, rather than merely individual remedy.
Victims also value reporting tools that provide emotional support, clear information about processes and timelines, and easy documentation mechanisms. Current dissatisfaction stems partly from cumbersome evidence-collection requirements and opaque processes that leave victims uncertain about the status and outcomes of their reports (Goyal, Park and Vasserman, 2022; Tan et al., 2024).
Discussion
The failure of current reporting pathways
The evidence synthesised in this dissertation demonstrates a fundamental mismatch between available reporting pathways and victims’ needs. Current mechanisms—whether platform-based or legal—rarely deliver outcomes that women find meaningful. They are characterised by slowness, opacity, and low perceived impact, producing rational disengagement from formal reporting in favour of self-protective strategies.
This finding carries significant implications for understanding gendered online harassment as a policy problem. The dominance of individual technical coping represents not a choice freely made but rather a default response when formal mechanisms are perceived as unavailable or ineffective. When blocking and withdrawal become primary strategies, responsibility for addressing harassment shifts entirely onto victims—precisely those with the least power to effect systemic change.
The silencing effects documented across studies compound this concern. Withdrawal from online spaces may reduce immediate exposure to harassment but simultaneously achieves the outcome harassers seek: removing women’s voices from public discourse. The current reporting landscape thus fails not only individual victims but also broader goals of gender equality and democratic participation.
Understanding barriers as systemic failures
The barriers preventing formal reporting—normalisation, anticipated ineffectiveness, fear of disbelief, fear of retaliation—should be understood as systemic failures rather than individual deficits. These barriers emerge from accumulated experience with inadequate institutional responses and reflect rational assessment of the costs and benefits of reporting.
Normalisation of harassment, for instance, reflects platforms’ historical failure to take gendered abuse seriously. When systems consistently fail to address reported harassment, victims learn to expect nothing from reporting—and to perceive harassment itself as an unavoidable feature of online participation rather than a remediable harm.
Similarly, fear of not being believed reflects broader cultural patterns of gender-based incredulity that formal systems often reproduce rather than challenge. When reporting mechanisms require extensive documentation, impose high evidentiary burdens, and treat victim accounts with implicit scepticism, they perpetuate rather than counter these patterns.
Fear of retaliation represents a rational response to observed patterns of harassment escalation. Addressing this barrier requires systems capable of providing genuine protection—something current mechanisms manifestly cannot guarantee.
The value of informal support
The consistent finding that peer, organisational, and NGO support represents the pathway most valued by victims merits careful consideration. This preference likely reflects multiple factors.
First, informal support networks can provide immediate emotional validation—acknowledgement that harassment constitutes genuine harm worthy of response. This validation contrasts with formal mechanisms that often implicitly question victims’ interpretations of their experiences.
Second, informal support can be responsive to individual circumstances and preferences, whilst formal mechanisms operate according to standardised procedures that may poorly fit particular situations.
Third, informal support can be provided by individuals with personal understanding of harassment experiences, whereas formal mechanisms are frequently operated by individuals lacking such understanding or training.
These observations suggest that meaningful reporting mechanisms might productively incorporate elements of informal support—including emotional validation, responsiveness, and genuine understanding—rather than relying solely upon bureaucratic procedures.
Towards victim-centred approaches
The evidence synthesised in this dissertation points toward several characteristics of more effective reporting mechanisms. First, such mechanisms must centre victims’ own definitions of harm rather than imposing external standards. Current approaches frequently require victims to demonstrate that their experiences meet particular thresholds—often calibrated to legal definitions or platform policies—rather than accepting victim-defined harm as the starting point for response.
Second, effective mechanisms must provide visible sanctions. Research demonstrates that victims want to see consequences for perpetrators—content removal, account suspension, identity disclosure where appropriate. The opacity of current moderation systems, which rarely communicate outcomes to reporters, undermines confidence that reporting achieves anything.
Third, effective mechanisms must reduce the documentation burden currently placed upon victims. Requiring harassment victims to systematically collect and organise evidence whilst experiencing psychological harm represents a significant barrier. Technological solutions that automate evidence collection merit development, alongside institutional approaches that accept victim testimony without excessive corroboration requirements.
Fourth, effective mechanisms must provide genuine support throughout the reporting process. This support encompasses emotional validation, clear information about processes and timelines, and practical assistance—elements currently provided primarily by informal networks rather than formal systems.
Meeting the research objectives
This discussion demonstrates achievement of the stated research objectives. The synthesis has documented the range of coping strategies employed by harassment victims (Objective 1), identified barriers preventing formal reporting (Objective 2), evaluated outcomes across different pathways distinguishing short-term relief from meaningful resolution (Objective 3), determined what victims consider meaningful outcomes (Objective 4), and identified promising directions for more effective approaches (Objective 5).
The evidence consistently indicates that meaningful outcomes for victims are rarely delivered by current reporting pathways, and that more promising directions require fundamental reorientation toward victim-centred approaches.
Conclusions
This dissertation has examined which reporting pathways lead to meaningful outcomes for victims of gendered online harassment, synthesising contemporary empirical evidence to address a significant gap in understanding.
The findings demonstrate that current reporting pathways—to platforms and to legal authorities—rarely deliver outcomes that women find meaningful. These mechanisms are perceived as slow, opaque, and ineffective, generating rational disengagement. Consequently, victims default to individual technical coping strategies—blocking, muting, self-censorship, and withdrawal—that provide short-term relief but fail to address harassment systemically and may perpetuate silencing effects.
In contrast, peer, organisational, and NGO support networks provide the emotional validation, practical assistance, and genuine understanding that victims value most highly. This finding suggests that meaningful reporting mechanisms must incorporate supportive elements currently available primarily through informal channels.
The research objectives have been achieved through systematic examination of victim behaviours, barriers to reporting, pathway outcomes, victim preferences, and promising practices. The synthesis reveals consistent patterns across contexts whilst acknowledging important variations.
The significance of these findings extends beyond academic contribution. When reporting mechanisms fail harassment victims, women’s voices are effectively excluded from online public discourse—with profound implications for gender equality and democratic participation. Developing effective responses to gendered online harassment represents not merely a technical challenge of platform design but a fundamental matter of social justice.
Future research should address several limitations and gaps identified through this synthesis. Geographically diverse studies are needed to understand whether patterns observed in Western contexts apply elsewhere. Longitudinal research could track reporting experiences and outcomes over time, addressing questions about long-term effectiveness that cross-sectional studies cannot answer. Intervention studies testing victim-centred reporting mechanisms would provide evidence on which specific design features produce meaningful outcomes.
Most fundamentally, future research and practice must maintain focus on victims’ own definitions of meaningful outcomes. The evidence synthesised here demonstrates that current mechanisms fail precisely because they are designed according to institutional logics rather than victim needs. Reorienting systems toward what victims actually want—visible sanctions, emotional support, reduced documentation burdens, and genuine acknowledgement of harm—represents the essential direction for progress.
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