Web of Hate: A Retrospective Study of Online Gendered Abuse in 2022 in the United States

By Clara Martiny, Cécile Simmons, Francesca Visser, Rhea Bhatnagar, Isabel Jones, Allison Castillo Small

In 2022, the United States witnessed both dramatic breakthroughs and calamitous setbacks on women’s rights, from Ketanji Brown becoming the first Black woman to sit on Supreme Court of the United States to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a legal precedent that protected a woman’s right to bodily autonomy for over 50 years. These events, among many others, had an undeniable impact on the US information environment, with 2022 seeing the rapid growth in popularity of misogynistic and male supremacist influencers who openly advocate for violence against women and campaigns of hate and disinformation targeted against women celebrities speaking out against the abuse they have faced.

This report looks back at 2022 to examine online conversations around nine different real-world events impacting women in the US and explores the potential correlation between these offline events and the targeting of women with misogynistic and abusive content on social media. This study also attempts to identify how misogyny, abusive content, and gendered disinformation may be amplified and deployed in the lead-up to the 2024 US presidential election.

Berlin: IDS - Institute for Security Dialogue, 2023. 31p.