Being a Female Sports Journalist on Twitter: Online Harassment, Sexualization, and Hegemony

Abstract

Online harassment toward women in social networks can occur in many forms such as contempt, profanity, insult, sexual desire, pruriency, physical threat, misogyny, and so on. Particularly, women with high social status and influence over society, such as female journalists, are more frequently exposed to online harassment. In an area such as sport, where male hegemony is dominant, female sports journalists are exposed to online harassment both in social media and in their professional lives. In modern Muslim countries such as Turkey, the controversial position of women is reflected in social media networks, and female journalists can receive harassment, as well as support. As a result of the present study, which evaluated the online harassment experienced by female sports journalists in Turkey on Twitter, as well as the subdimensions of the harassment observed using the netnographic method, it was determined that female sports journalists are frequently exposed to online harassment on Twitter. Based on the findings obtained in the present study, the most frequently received comments on Twitter by female sports journalists are derogatory and sarcastic, focusing on the physical appearance of women, exclusionary from a hegemonic perspective, and involving emotional harassment, physical threat, and profanity, respectively.