As part of the 2021 cohort of the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator, a team headed by Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics Director Rebekah Tromble of the George Washington University has received an award to develop a rapid response system that will aid experts facing coordinated campaigns of online harassment. The project will focus initially on female journalists.
Over the next year, the multidisciplinary, multi-institutional team will use its $750,000 grant from the Convergence Accelerator program to build on the work of groundbreaking anti-harassment organization Hollaback! in creating quickly accessible resources and support for online harassment victims. The team also will develop an educational campaign for online bystander intervention—how a friendly fellow Twitter user, for instance, can help someone being attacked without escalating the conflict and potentially making things harder for the victim.