4. Findings
The variation in abuse across platforms/social media demonstrates that GBVO is shaped by platform design and
affordances, rather than occurring uniformly across digital
spaces. Messaging applications and anonymous platforms
intensify fear by creating proximity and uncertainty, while
public platforms amplify abuse through visibility and collective participation.
4.4.2 Asymmetry in digital literacy
The strategic use of platforms, coordinating attacks in less
visible spaces and amplifying them in public ones, was
described by participants as deliberate and sustained, and
it was also linked to an uneven distribution of digital literacy and digital safety knowledge between perpetrators
and many targets. In the FGDs, participants explicitly identified a “lack of digital literacy” as a factor that increases
women’s vulnerability, including limited knowledge of digital protection practices and, in some cases, uncertainty
about how to report abusive accounts; they also noted
that young women and adolescent girls can be particularly
exposed due to limited experience with digital protection.
KIIs reinforced this point, with respondents referencing
weak cybersecurity awareness and limited technical/digital literacy among segments of society, alongside calls for
digital safety awareness-raising and training to address
these gaps. Survivor IDIs similarly connected risk to limited
familiarity with digital platforms and security practices,
framing this as a vulnerability that perpetrators can exploit
for escalation, including blackmail. Taken together, these
accounts suggest that the disadvantage is not merely that
perpetrators “know the platforms,” but that many targets,
especially women with less access to guidance or institutional support, lack key protective and response knowledge, which reduces their ability to prevent compromise,
contain reputational exposure, and navigate reporting
pathways when abuse intensifies.
4.4.3 Platform governance failures
From a systems perspective, platform governance failures,
weak and slow moderation, inconsistent enforcement,
and reporting pathways that are not survivor-centered,
were explicitly identified across data sources as enabling
GBVO to flourish. FGDs noted that survivors often face
no meaningful response after reporting, with participants
stating that there are “no real response mechanisms” and
“no real benefit or response to reporting,” alongside the
absence of clear institutional responsibility. FGDs also
indirectly evidenced platform gaps by detailing what is
currently missing: participants called for effective and
fast reporting tools, a clear and accessible report button,
follow-up within 24 hours, support teams trained in gender issues, protection of personal information, and rapid
documentation for threats, which collectively signals that
current platform mechanisms are experienced as inadequate for GBVO cases. KIIs similarly linked recurrence to
governance and enforcement failures, emphasizing that
“the absence of legal deterrents” is among the key drivers enabling perpetrators to act with impunity (KII — Media
professional), while also describing how perpetrators
exploit platform design and weak controls by coordinating
in closed spaces and amplifying in public ones.
The findings therefore suggest that without addressing
these structural features, including effective moderation, consistent enforcement, and survivor-appropriate
reporting and follow-up, individual-level digital safety
interventions will remain insufficient, because they place
the burden of protection on survivors in an environment
where participants describe accountability as limited and
response pathways as unclear or ineffective.
4.5 Narratives and discourses
surrounding GBVO
According to the data, GBVO is sustained by a set of recurring discourses that do not merely “comment” on women’s
presence online but produce social permission for abuse
and shift accountability away from perpetrators. Across
IDIs, FGDs, and KIIs, participants repeatedly described (i)
victim-blaming and self-censorship advice as a normalized response to GBVO; (ii) moral delegitimization (shame,
“honor,” respectability policing) as a routine mechanism
used to justify attacks against women; and (iii) political/
sectarian delegitimization narratives that frame outspoken women (and sometimes men) as threats, traitors, or
illegitimate voices. Participants also described narratives
that target the sector around women (journalism, civil society, women-led organizations), presenting women’s rights
work as socially harmful or externally driven, which further
normalizes backlash and weakens solidarity.
The media scan reinforces and concretizes these patterns
by showing how these narratives appear in public comment spaces: women are framed as illegitimate public
actors “stay home,” “kitchen,” “leave public life to men”,
attacked through sexualized shaming and reputation
destruction, and delegitimized through “foreign agenda”
accusations. The scan also shows an explicit discourse
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