Online Violence as a Digital Condition: A New Cultural Habit?

Abstract Online interactions today are increasingly hostile spaces designed to hyper stimulate, driven by instantaneous methods of gratification, all while sharing polarising opinions in snapshot attention spans. That the spaces occupying so much of our time and energy have become polarised, extreme, and hostile creates a vicious circle of consumption, intolerance, and violence. Ultimately, the ease with which digital spaces foster violence, aggression, and intolerance has created – what this paper argues – is a new digital condition of online violence as a cultural habit. The first part of this paper discusses the condition of online and digital violence, against the backdrop of an increasingly digital society. This discussion emphasises that the more interactions that take place online, the greater the chances that there is a direct experience of online violence, even if this is directed generally at online audiences, or witnessed as a bystander. In exploring this, the wider argument advanced here is that these experiences have become normalised across a wide intersection of digital and cultural interactions and are not limited to one form of media, nor one form of consumption. The second part of this essay undertakes a broader discussion of the types of online violence that presents as a new digital condition. Through such an exploration, this paper outlines that the new cultural norm is one of violence, and in online spaces, of online violence. What becomes particularly evident in exploring the concept of generalized violence – introduced in this essay – through online cultural forms of engagement is the proliferation of online violence across online platforms, social media networks, and digital interactions. And yet, despite this, the turn towards legally capturing and addressing online harms, particularly within the EU and the UK, does not, conceptualise this digital condition of violence in meaningful ways. This omission is one that has so far failed to generate appropriate regulation. In sum, this paper argues that law and society stands at a crossroads, faced with the onslaught of online violence as a new digital condition, but remains directionless as to how to challenge it. This paper argues that online violence, including online violence against women, is our new digital condition – and it has become an embedded norm to such an extent that it is a new cultural habit, and we are all conditioned to see it, hear it, experience it, and perpetrate it.