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MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School Certificate for Approving the Dissertation We hereby approve the Dissertation of Bridget Christine Gelms Candidate for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy ______________________________________ Dr. Jason Palmeri, Director ______________________________________ Dr. Tim Lockridge, Reader ______________________________________ Dr. Michele Simmons, Reader ______________________________________ Dr. Lisa Weems, Graduate School Representative ABSTRACT VOLATILE VISIBILITY: THE EFFECTS OF ONLINE HARASSMENT ON FEMINIST CIRCULATION AND PUBLIC DISCOURSE by Bridget C. Gelms As our digital environments—in their inhabitants, communities, and cultures—have evolved, harassment, unfortunately, has become the status quo on the internet (Duggan, 2014 & 2017; Jane, 2014b). Harassment is an issue that disproportionately affects women, particularly women of color (Citron, 2014; Mantilla, 2015), LGBTQIA+ women (Herring et al., 2002; Warzel, 2016), and women who engage in social justice, civil rights, and feminist discourses (Cole, 2015; Davies, 2015; Jane, 2014a). Whitney Phillips (2015) notes that it’s politically significant to pay attention to issues of online harassment because this kind of invective calls “attention to dominant cultural mores” (p. 7). Keeping our finger on the pulse of such attitudes is imperative to understand who is excluded from digital publics and how these exclusions perpetuate racism and sexism to “preserve the internet as a space free of politics and thus free of challenge to white masculine heterosexual hegemony” (Higgin, 2013, n.p.). While rhetoric and writing as a field has a long history of examining myriad exclusionary practices that occur in public discourses, we still have much work to do in understanding how online harassment, particularly that which is gendered, manifests in digital publics and to what rhetorical effect. In this dissertation, I critically examine how harassment is enabled and circulated by digital platforms as well as the effects it has on people, online cultures, and social media design and policy. I outline a feminist theory of what I call “volatile visibility,” the correlation between a woman’s circulation online and the amount of harassment she experiences. To document and analyze the effects of volatile visibility, I conducted a survey and in-depth interviews with women who have experienced severe forms of online harassment. Their stories reveal how online harassment works to maintain existing cultural boundaries that exclude women from public discourses. Therefore, I argue online harassment, in its influence on how we exist and interact online, dampens women’s rhetorical influence and limits their opportunities for expression. This work has implications for social media rhetorics, circulation, and digital methodologies. I also present pedagogical implications, arguing we should incorporate concerns of online harassment into our digital writing courses to help students understand how harassment influences who can safely engage in public discourse online and how they can do so. I conclude with advice for what we can do as researchers, designers, and citizens to intervene in cultures of online harassment. VOLATILE VISIBILITY: THE EFFECTS OF ONLINE HARASSMENT ON FEMINIST CIRCULATION AND PUBLIC DISCOURSE A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English by Bridget C. Gelms The Graduate School Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2018 Dissertation Director: Dr. Jason Palmeri © Bridget C. Gelms 2018 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables......................................................................................................................iv List of Figures......................................................................................................................v Dedication...........................................................................................................................vi Acknowledgements............................................................................................................vii Introduction: Online Harassment and Why Being a Woman Online is Really, Really Hard…………………………. ............................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Online Harassment is an Issue of Social Justice…..........................................15 Chapter 2: Volatile Visibility and the Methodological Problem of Harassment...............40 Chapter 3: The High Stakes of Online Harassment: Threats to Women and Feminist Action ………………………………………………........................................................59 Chapter 4: Tactics of Avoidance: How Harassment Makes Women Disappear…...........90 Chapter 5: Avenues for Change: Policies and Pedagogies of Online Harassment..........114 References........................................................................................................................144 Appendix A: Survey Questions.......................................................................................167 iii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1: Responses to the survey question, “what are your racial and/or ethnic identifications?”………………………………………………………………………… 54 Table 2.2: Responses to the survey question, “how do you describe your sexuality?”………………………………………………………………………………. 55 Table 2.3: Responses to the survey question, “how do you describe your gender?” …………………………………………………………………………………56 Table 3.1: Stories of how harassment affects behavior and well-being…………………84 Table 3.2: Stories of identities and topics that arouse online harassment………….……85 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: @femme_esq’s controversial tweet………………………………………......2 Figure 1.2: @femme_esq’s Twitter avatar………………………………........…………26 Figures 1.3-1.6: Imani Gandy’s tweets about @femme_esq…………………...…….26-27 Figure 1.7-1.8: Jamilah Lemiuex’s tweets about @femme_esq……………………..…..28 Figure 1.9: Leslie Jones leaves Twitter…………………………………………….…….32 Figure 5.1: Twitter’s form for reporting harassment……………………………..…….116 Figure 5.2: PragerU’s video, “Are 1 in 5 Women Raped at College?”…………..…….124 Figure 5.3: Pinterest’s terms of service for posting content ……………...……………137 Figure 5.4: Pinterest’s terms of service for jurisdiction………………………...………138 v DEDICATION For all of the women who have been silenced or menaced by harassment. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people who made this work and my ability to get to and through graduate school possible. I’d first like to thank Jackie Grutsch McKinney for helping me see my own potential as a student. I’d also like to thank the faculty at Miami who have had a hand in my success. Heidi McKee has taught me so much, and her vested interest in my progress through the program and field has helped me take my work to new heights. For that I’m grateful. Thanks also go to my committee: Michele Simmons, who introduced me to Troubling the Angels, a book that changed the way I think about person- based research and community work; Lisa Weems, whose class on youth culture and education gave me occasion to see Stand By Me for the first time (!). Her work continues to inspire me; Kate Ronald, who was part of my committee the year before her retirement. In my preliminary exam, I wrote, "I came to feminism through Twitter," to which Kate responded, "I came to feminism through books and hideous men." I will never forget that; and Tim Lockridge, who designed a graduate course that nurtured my interest in digital rhetoric and writing. It was in his class that my dissertation project began to take shape, and his feedback in that class, during my preliminary exam, and throughout my writing of this dissertation has had profound effects on my thinking about this topic and its place in our field. The biggest thanks goes to my chair, Jason Palmeri. Jason is the kind of person that you meet and inspires you to be a better, more compassionate teacher, mentor, and advocate. His dedication to his work and students is unparalleled, and I feel very fortunate to have worked with him in the classroom and on this project. My dissertation would not be what it is without his robust and transformative feedback and support. I also want to thank my Miami grad school buds, without whom I never would have made it through: Catherine Tetz, Cynthia Johnson, Kathleen Coffey, Matt Young, Erin Brock Carlson, Hua Zhua, Caleb Pendygraft, Enrique Paz, and Kyle Larson. I am also so grateful for cross-institution friends: Rich Shivener, Lucy Johnson, Zarah Moeggenberg, Ann Burke, and Kat Greene. And finally, I don’t know where I would be without my friend and collaborator Dustin Edwards, who has sent me an unprecedented amount of Tom Hardy GIFs and painted nails emojis throughout my dissertation writing process. Working with him has made me a better thinker and writer. I can’t thank him enough. This dissertation was written mostly in the company of dogs and a one-eyed cat. Thank you goes to Blue, Pepper, Ripley, and Wendy. Of course, I also thank my human family: my sisters Ginny and Caryn for their endless support and cheer, and my parents, who took kind of a while to figure out I wasn't a literature major but have been excited for me every step of the way. To my third parent Ralph, thank you for showing me how exciting higher education can be. Most of all, I owe thanks to Sean, my partner in all things, who has unconditionally supported me in everything I’ve tried since we met eleven years ago. Sean’s commitment to speaking