1. Introduction and background
– Anonymity and verification
To uphold the highest ethical standards, strict anonymity
is maintained for participants, especially survivors. This
necessary protection limits the ability to externally verify
specific individual cases cited in the research.
– Content deletion bias
The frequent deletion of offensive comments creates
a systematic underrepresentation of the true scale of
GBVO across platforms, toning down the extent of GBVO
prevalence across platforms. Moreover, many GBVO
incidents are handled offline, with survivors subjected
to harassment yet choosing not to report, often out of
shame or the belief that reporting will bring no remedy.
As a result, the cases visible online represent only a
fraction of what is happening in reality. To better capture
the true scale, targeted research is needed to estimate
unreported GBVO, ideally conducted in partnership with
civil society organizations, especially those focused on
women’s empowerment and survivor support.
These limitations also point to clear priorities for future
research. Follow-on studies could strengthen generalizability through safe, anonymous quantitative surveying
(or other prevalence-estimation approaches), expand
outreach to less digitally connected populations, and
adopt longitudinal designs to track evolving tactics and
platform shifts over time. Future work should also consider approaches that reduce “visibility bias” created
by content deletion (e.g., higher-frequency monitoring,
real-time capture within ethical boundaries, and partnerships with women-led CSOs that document cases not
publicly visible). Together, these steps would complement
the present study’s qualitative depth with broader coverage and stronger prevalence estimates, while maintaining
the ethical protections required for researching GBVO
in Syria.
– GBVO scans’ results skewed towards civil society
organizations, networks and associations
GBVO social media scans surfaced findings primarily
across civil society organizations, networks and associations’ pages as they are the ones which are most likely to
raise issues concerning women or calling for changes in
societal practices, hence were more likely to come up as
a result in the GBVO scans.
Taken together, these limitations mean that the study’s
findings should be interpreted primarily as an evidencebased account of patterns, drivers, narratives, and impacts
of GBVO in Syria, rather than as a precise measure of
population-level prevalence. In particular, stigma-related
underreporting, the deletion of abusive content, and the
reliance on self-reported experiences likely result in a conservative picture of the scale and intensity of GBVO, even
when patterns and mechanisms are clearly observable
across sources. Remote data collection and purposive/
snowball recruitment may also skew participation toward
more digitally connected and publicly visible groups (e.g.,
journalists, activists, CSO actors), while under-representing women with limited connectivity, lower digital literacy,
or heightened surveillance risks. To mitigate these constraints, analysis relied on systematic triangulation across
the desk review, interviews, focus groups, and targeted
online scanning; however, anonymization and safety
requirements necessarily limit external verification of individual cases, and examples should therefore be read as
illustrative of broader dynamics rather than independently
verifiable incidents.
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