Large-Scale Study of Online Hostility Targeting Women
Our researcher Jan Švec, together with Zuzana Schreiberová, has published a new study examining online hostility against women in Czech politics. Based on nearly two million Facebook comments, the study explores how these attacks emerge and spread, what their characteristics are, how they target women compared to men, and who is responsible for spreading them.
Published in the journal Violence Against Women, the researchers analysed 1.94 million comments and more than 154,000 posts published in 17 Czech antiestablishment Facebook groups between January 2022 and March 2023. Combining automated analysis with a closer qualitative examination of periods when hostility intensified, they identified 32 major waves of hostile communication and analysed how these attacks emerged, what triggered them, who was most frequently targeted, what forms these attacks take, and who is responsible for them.
The findings contribute to a broader European debate on how online hostility can affect women’s participation in political and public life. Personal and violent attacks, often linked to disinformation and amplified by several highly active users, can discourage women from entering or remaining in politics, contributing to their lower representation and weakening the representativeness of democratic institutions.
Read the full article to learn more about the study and its findings.
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