Abstract
Credible Threat is not an easy read because Sarah Sobieraj dives deep into places nobody wants to find themselves. The book empathically and graphically illustrates—through the experience of 52 women interviewees—how it feels to wade in the dark and muddy waters digital abuse creates. The challenge this book takes on requires interdisciplinary thinking: understanding “how women who … participate in public conversations about political and social issues navigate this menacing landscape, and the ways that this abuse—and women's response to it—shapes political life more broadly” (p. 4). For this purpose, Sobieraj skillfully brings together (feminist) perspectives from sociology, political science, law, and economy—even connection points to psychology emerge, such as stress and coping. The author illustrates how digital abuse finds its precedents in historical inequalities, how the law has not yet managed to adapt to its specific characteristics, and how the individual “costs” must be collectivized to further understand the societal relevance of the abuse. Credible Threat is an award-winning, six-chapter must-read with points so manifold that this review can hardly do them justice.
The book is based on the fundamental insight that digital abuse must be understood as a weapon in power struggles “to control political discourse that reflects and reinforces existing social inequalities” (p. 3). These struggles have existed and still exist offline as well. While such attacks feel “deeply personal” (p. 26), Sobieraj stretches that the abuse is “impersonal” (p. 25) in the sense that messages are generic and interchangeable. Most of all, digital abuse is intersectional—“unevenly distributed [even] among women” (p. 10).
Attacks often lack information about the aggressors, can be ubiquitous on various platforms, and trigger anticipatory fear—all of which create a disorienting climate larger than “the sum of its parts” (p. 31). Sobieraj also helps us understand how we can unintentionally feed into this climate by: getting caught up in trivializing narratives that render the digital life as detachable from “real life”; not taking communicative violence seriously; or blaming the victims if the abuse is rendered as an inevitable result of being visible and created by the victim's choices. Such narratives “free platforms, employers, police, and even abusers from responsibility by suggesting that more scrupulous personal conduct is the solution” (p. 54).
Further, the book ruthlessly illustrates how women pay for this visibility. There are direct economic consequences, e.g., if attorneys are contracted. There are economic costs that cannot be assessed, e.g., if personal information is removed for protection, where not even a possible future employer could find the women or their work. There are opportunity costs, e.g., the time invested in weeding through comments and tags, court appearances, or public counter-attacks. Digital misogyny not only generates unpaid but also unpleasant emotional work. This includes strategizing ways around “frightening public spaces” (p. 19) or the self-monitoring of mental reserves available for coping. All of this is exhausting emotional labor with real-life consequences, as time and energy could be better spent on more valuable priorities. In addition, Sobieraj acknowledges that not only is the work to close the “gendered digital safety gap” (p. 80) unequally distributed on women, but the management of its nasty outcome is also dependent on privilege.
Treatments of consequences such as depression or anxiety cause healthcare costs that must be collectivized. In addition, digital abuse is a “public safety issue” and a “free expression issue” (p. 132). In this context, Sobieraj identifies three “democratic disturbances that harm us all” (p. 105): first, digital abuse results in a “patterned deterioration of political discourse” (p. 115), including the loss of speaker and viewpoint diversity. Digital misogyny “even constrains the behavior of women who have not been attacked” (p .131). Second, digital abuse impacts the pool of candidates willing to run for public office and the effectiveness of their work. This can even apply to the journalistic labor market. Third, digital abuse in the form of mis- and disinformation about activists, journalists, politicians, and public servants undermines public institutions and interferes with election integrity. In sum, “[a]ttacks against women pose a credible threat to democracy” (p. 152) because they jeopardize society's “ability to innovate, understand social problems, work together, and build effective policies [that] hinge[s] on a steady supply of rich and reliable information from diverse sources” (p. 135).
In contrast, the abusers have a distinct advantage: impunity is the most likely outcome of their hateful engagement. This is true for three main reasons: first, because “US law is centered around suspects and their individual actions, and these options are ill-equipped to address the harm caused by many forms of digital abuse” (p. 41). Second, because the platforms do not enforce their rules. And third, because “at the end of the day, the abuse is a deeply rooted product of misogyny, white supremacy, xenophobia, and other inequalities that platforms may unintentionally support, but they did not invent” (p. 148). Change requires more than “[t]ree solutions to forest problems” (p. 40). Systemic changes are needed in the institutions and structures “that ignore and even promote digital toxicity” (p. 81).
In closing, Sarah Sobieraj discusses the challenges of current (self-)regulation approaches while emphasizing the fact that we must “build ameliorative infrastructure to support the victims” (p. 149). She outlines several steps: the acknowledgment of the problem as a social one; a better understanding of the abuse, especially by employers and managers; and recognition of digital abuse's intersectional character, as well as its profound impact on civil rights and public discourse. Moreover, the creation of a shared language can serve to improve institutional responses: responding officers must be sensitized and additional support systems established, such as trained advocates or social workers. Finally, platforms must be responsive and responsible, “asked only to ensure enforcement of their own rules, for a brief period, for at-risk users” (p. 151). To spread these ideas into the world, this book is a must-read for scholars, students, policy makers, platform shapers, and public figures alike. Actually, everyone should be aware of the points Sobieraj makes, as digital abuse and the handling of it are issues that concern each of us.