Assignment #2: “Caroline Criado-Perez: ‘Twitter has enabled people to behave in a way they wouldn’t face to face’” (Leslie Garay)

Caroline Criado-Perez is a feminist campaigner who was threatened with rape, violence, and death via Twitter, the online social networking service. These threats came after Criado-Perez caused controversy fighting “with the Bank of England to reinstate a woman on the bank of an English banknote” after it was announced that the only other woman on an English banknote was to be replaced by a man (Winston Churchill). That would cause all the banknotes to be represented by “an all-male, all-white lineup on the English banknotes.” Therefore, Criado-Perez, opposing that motion, sued the bank with the 2010 Equality Act backing her up, not expecting that she would receive such violent threats over her protests on Twitter soon after. As she continues to receive such threats, as of now two people have been arrested for their criminal behavior online.

Link: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/04/caroline-criado-perez-twitter-rape-threats

In her interview with the news writer, Criado-Perez states: “What social media has done is enable people to behave in a way they wouldn’t face to face. There’s a feeling that they are anonymous and people can’t find them, and there’s also research into how people need to see a face in order to feel empathy, and if you don’t have that then you feel that you can fire off this sort of stuff.” That “stuff” includes the violent threats that Criado-Perez faces. But what could cause such behavior to be so explicit? Is it really all because they are against Criado-Perez’s stance?

Criado-Perez was on the right track in her aforementioned statement: in John Suler’s article, “The Online Disinhibition Effect,” Suler specifically goes into one of the answers: disassociative anonymity. Behind the anonymity that Twitter can provide, the people that threatened Criado-Perez are able to separate their actions (or words) online from their real-life “in-person lifestyle and identity.” With that veil, they do not feel so scared about acting out against her because in this online territory they cannot be traced back so easily. It does not matter if they hurt Criado-Perez because their real names are not attached to their actions (or words), so “they do not have to own their behavior by acknowledging it within the full context of an integrated online/offline identity.” In other words, these people who are threatening Criado-Perez feel that what they are doing could not possibly affect them or “be directly linked to their rest of their lives.”