Cover, R. (2022). Digital hostility: Contemporary crisis, disrupted belonging and self-care practices. Media International Australia, 184(1), 79–91.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X221088048

Open access: No

Notes: In this paper, Cover proposes ‘digital hostility’ as a conceptual umbrella to grasp manifestations of online violence. In proposing digital hostility, Cover aims to capture three important shifts in our experiences of platformized violence: 1) the massification of online harms, 2) the need to move beyond content to identify harmful behaviour, and 3) the individualization of violence. Drawing from ethnographic work on people targeted by platformized violence, he argues that focusing on digital hostility centres its cultural valence—that is, on how it disrupts cultural norms. For him, these cultural movements result in the disruption of identity. Overall, Cover presents a great conceptual ground to focus on the cultural terrain in which violence takes place, noting how a cultural lens “opens the possibility of thinking about online adversarial behaviour, hostile acts towards other users and hate speech as everyday and normative experiences of communication” (p. 82). This shift results, in turn, in a new possibility to understand platformized violence beyond its antisocial consequences: “if recognised as a social issue, digital hostility may be productive of new practices of ensuring harmonious, civil and relational communication that both rescues the benefits of the past and reduces the capacity of digital hostility to do violence to users” (p. 84)

Abstract: Digital hostility has verifiably increased over the past decades among adult users of social media and online forums. Both an extension of, and different from, cyberbullying, digital hostility has become a framing factor in the reduction of quality of public debate at a social level and, at an individual level, has been cited as responsible for withdrawal, disconnection and negative impact on health and mental health. This paper draws on digital ethnographic and in-depth survey research to present new approaches to understanding the cause, form and impact of digital hostility among adults. Participants in the study generated valuable discussion which, when analysed from the perspective of media and cultural theory, presented three significant findings: Firstly, that digital hostility is increasingly recognised not as a behavioural problem among individual perpetrators but as a ‘crisis’ that both arises from within and disrupts digital culture. Secondly, participants discussed the impact of their own experiences of online adversity on their health and wellbeing. Analysed through critical and cultural frameworks, their experiences can be understood as being positioned as ungrievable subjects or, in extreme cases, bare life—particularly when digital hostility is experienced through cross-platform trolling and spills over into stalking. Finally, participants discussed the experience of self-care in the absence of adequate support mechanisms by platform hosts. Self-care manifested not as individualised self-protection but as mutually-supportive, using alternative platforms to share strategies and support; care was also oriented towards care for digital culture more broadly. This paper provides initial insights into the perception and understanding of digital hostility as an everyday cultural experience.