5. The Warwick University Group Chat: Where Reputation Is Placed Ahead of Safeguarding?

This chapter moves the debate on online harassment from the previously dominant focus on school-age children and teenagers to examine a case of digital harassment and abuse at a UK university. Online harassment in adulthood is not as well recognised in academic and policy arenas with relatively little research to date as greater attention has been given to online identity theft, scams and online fraud. However, there has been considerable public and media attention recently on university students, online harassment and hate crime in the UK with a highly influential social media storm surrounding the online group chat case at Warwick University early in 2019 in which male students had been communicating about female students in a sexually aggressive and violent manner. The online group chat named “Fuck women disrespect them all” initially sparked a social media storm when the story broke but incited a further and more dramatic social media with the hashtag #ShameOnYouWarwick after details of the poor handling of the case came to light with hundreds of comments appearing on social media which in turn fed further press headlines and media coverage.