THE UX OF ONLINE ABUSE
Implications of misogyny and other forms of online abuse in the shaping of collective memories
Online harassment and hate speech disproportionately target women and underprivileged communities, posing a persistent challenge for platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, and Wikipedia. When users perceive an interface as unsafe, at least one of the core principles of interaction design — pleasurability — is compromised. Yet, user experience research still tends to overlook critical perspectives on race, gender, and socio-economic inequality.
Drawing from media theory, memory studies, and gender studies, this research centers the digital experiences of women and marginalized communities to explore how online misogyny and abuse are perceived by those positioned outside hegemonic norms. It also examines how the experience of online violence shapes collective memory formation within digital environments.
Preliminary data from a general survey on media and memory (N = 150; margin of error ±7%), distributed among individuals interested in digital culture, reveal a clear correlation between identity traits and exposure to online violence. The likelihood of being targeted increases significantly among participants identifying beyond the gender binary or non-heteronormative orientations, and remains notably high in categories related to ethnicity, age, and socio-economic status.
Through ethnographic observations and social media data featuring examples of online misogyny and abuse, this research analyzes the relationship between systemic bias and online violence in shaping collective memory. It further engages with Girst and Echterhoff’s (2001) theories on disruption and inhibition in social memory sharing, proposing that hate speech may similarly distort or interrupt the exploratory experience of those targeted—specifically women and underprivileged communities—by disrupting their capacity for knowledge discovery in digital contexts.