Digital Targeting of Women Activists: Redefining Online Hate Speech as Direct Violence in Peace Studies

The internet has become a venue for the dissemination of hate speech and attacks against women. In this research, hate speech is contextualized within the framework of Galtung’s triangle of violence and addressed based on the experience of victims. Ten Spanish feminist women have been interviewed and, using critical discourse analysis, a model of key characteristics of online hate speech toward women has been developed. The results demonstrate the existence of a pattern of hate speech against feminists with a public presence. Its objective is to halt feminism through violent strategies that hurt the health of activists and their professional careers. The connection between online and offline violence is confirmed, with the manosphere acting as a channel for the amplification of gender violence and as an environment conducive to direct violence by spreading themes, tones, qualifying terms, and strategies that also legitimize structural violence. Thus, online violence has negative consequences both on the victims and the broader social system. Novel insights include the reconceptualization of hate speech as a form of symbolic, cultural, and direct violence, the need to focus on the manosphere, and discussion on online attacks conveyed by opposing feminists, which, nevertheless, interviewees do not consider hate speech.