KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

Monitoring on Online Sexism and Development of the Monitoring Tool

 

Lee, Sooyeon
Jung, Sooyeon
Kim, Sooah
Ra, Woonju

Online sexism refers to the expressions of degradation, violence, hatred and objectification found online based on gender role stereotypes, gender conflicts or negative attitudes on the opposite gender. This research aims at revealing the current situation of online sexism by developing the online sexism monitoring
tool.

The monitoring tool is composed of a tool for the verbal messages and that of the visual messages. The tool for the verbal messages categorizes the degree of the sexist expression into three categories of opinion/argument, degradation/attack, and hatred/violence on the one hand, and also categorizes the base of the sexism into gender role stereotypes and gender conflicts on the other hand. Gender role stereotypes are again divided into those of gender roles, physical characteristics, personal traits and the negative attitudes on the opposite gender. The gender of the object of the sexual discrimination (women, men, or
both women and men) needs to be specified. The tool provides concrete stereotypical statements to choose from for each category such as “Housework and child rearing is women’s role” for the category of ‘gender roles’. The tool for the visual messages assesses sexual objectification of the visual messages and categorizes it into sexual instrumentalization of women(or men), over-exposure of a woman’s(or man’s) body, and fragmentation of the body.

The objects of the monitoring were online new sites, online communities and cafes and the internet broadcasting site(Afreeca TV). The online news sites were monitored with news contents and photos and comments attached to the news, the communities/cafes with postings and comments, and the internet broadcasting with the chattings. The news sites were three major portal sites(Naver, Daum, Nate) and online news sites connected to them were also monitored. Ten online communities and cafes were chosen for their popularity and gender representativeness. The internet broadcasting site was Afreeca TV.

The results of the monitoring show that even though the average frequency of the sexist remarks was not particularly high, some sites were indeed very sexiest. Among the news sites, Nate was shown to contain the highest frequency of the sexiest news items, photos and comments. Two of the ten communities and cafes have more than 3 sexiest remarks on average on each posting and the maximum number of sexiest remarks was 70. The most sexiest type of the three sites(news sites, community/cafe, and internet broadcasting site) was internet broadcasting site. The Afreeca TV had 85 sexiest broadcastings out of 149(57%).

Sexism of all three types of the online sites showed some common characteristics such as most sexiest remarks were aimed at women and in many cases with expressions of hatred, degradation, and violence. In the sexiest photos, women were sexually objectified, depicted as a sexual instrument, overly revealed, and fragmented. Men, although in less frequencies, were also objects of sexism. Men were evaluated with their physical characteristics and negative attitudes toward men in general or certain male groups were revealed.