Intermention: changing men's attitudes toward sexual harassment intervention online

Abstract

This paper presents “Intermention: Changing men’s attitudes towards sexual harassment intervention online”, a first-of-its-kind pilot campaign testing a communication strategy for its effectiveness in changing the attitudes of men aged 21-24 towards intervening when witnessing instances of sexual harassment online. The rise of digital spaces and computer-mediated communication in recent years have allowed for online perpetrators to harass more victims under the protection of anonymity and the perceived lack of consequences. Men are more likely to buy into rape myths than women and hold other atittudes which may influence their judgements about responsibility and deter them from intervening against sexual harassment online. Due to masculinity beliefs, men are more likely to intervene when it concerns a close female friend or family but socially-distant victims will likely be ignored. The combination of these factors necessitates an effective campaign message that convinces men to be willing to intervene when seeing such instances for all women. The pilot campaign tested three messages using the Social Judgement Theory (SJT) against a control message for their effectiveness in changing men’s attitudes towards intervention online, by addressing the following factors: perceived consequences, convenience, and empathy by relationship. We conducted A/B testing on Facebook and Instagram paid media to measure men’s willingness to intervene via downloads of an intervention guide. The results showed that men in Singapore may be more receptive to messages of convenience and basic respect (control message). However, broader research and campaigns must be done to test if this holds true for all platforms over a longer period of time. Overall, Intermention was successful in gathering data about the types of messaging that may be the most effective in changing attitudes in men for this particular issue.