Paper short abstract:

An anthropological perspective on the experiences of being a target of gender-based online hate speech in contemporary Spain, and the impact of these experiences on everyday life as lived on the continuum of the online and the offline

Paper long abstract:

Any anthropological examination of digital space needs to consider its embeddedness in the larger societal, cultural, subjective, economic, imaginary structurations of lived experience, and its entanglement with everyday practices and embodied knowledge. This perspective on digital spaces allows us to go beyond the duality between utopian and dystopian understandings of the digital spaces, and beyond the duality of the online and offline. The gendering of digital spaces takes place at several levels, including the coding of algorithms with human biases, but also in relation to digital participation and interactions. The current model of ‘radical transparency’ in social media encourages people to have only one identity online, resulting in an increased blurring between our online and offline lives rendering our bodies more central to our online personas. The use of social media has also contributed to an increase in user produced content, of which violence in the shape of hate speech is one aspect. This paper aims to analyse the experiences of being a target of gender-based online hate speech in the context of contemporary Spain, and the impact of these experiences on everyday life as lived on the continuum of the online and the offline, including participation in online spaces as venues for political discussion.