Online Harassment and Abuse

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

This course provides students with an overview of the problem of online harassment and abuse in the context of international peace and security, focusing on the disproportionately gendered impacts and forms of technology-facilitated violence. It will introduce students to emerging policy considerations and debates in the national security sector to define this global threat across the fields of development, democracy, and countering violent extremism, and provide students with an opportunity to engage in policy analysis to apply principles of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda to the issue of gender-based online harassment and abuse. Case examples will offer students insights into the complex and varied dimensions of online harassment and abuse on particular populations, and examine online violence in the context of particular regional conflicts and crises, including the protests led by women activists in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s murder in Iran in 2022.