DW Akademie Study Safer platforms, stronger participation
4.2 Forms and prevalence
of GBVO in Syria
Across the matrix, GBVO is documented as taking multiple, overlapping forms, including harassment, gendered
insults, threats, blackmail, reputational attacks, impersonation, and coordinated smear campaigns. These forms are
widely reported across regions and respondent groups,
indicating high prevalence and normalization.
A key finding emerging across the data is that GBVO in
Syria is experienced as a compound harm, not a single
act. Survivors and experts describe patterns in which one
form of abuse becomes the gateway to others: an insulting
comment escalates into coordinated harassment; harassment becomes doxxing or impersonation; doxxing enables
stalking; and the perceived loss of reputation increases
the credibility and fear attached to threats. This layered
escalation is consistent with how technology-facilitated
violence is documented in other conflict-affected settings,
where the digital sphere enables rapid repetition, replication, and distribution, often at low cost and with minimal
accountability (ACAPS, 2025; Mihácsi and Kyander, 2025).
Across Syria, sexualized blackmail and extortion is especially significant because it leverages the highest-stakes
social vulnerability for many women: the risk that family
and community responses will punish the survivor rather
than the perpetrator. In such cases, perpetrators do not
need to prove authenticity to cause harm; the threat itself
can be sufficient to force silence, extract money, pressure women to withdraw from online spaces, or compel
public “apologies” and retractions. Conflict conditions
and displacement intensify these dynamics: fractured
support networks, economic hardship, and insecurity
can increase susceptibility to coercion, while fragmented
governance and weak institutional recourse reduce deterrence (ACAPS, 2025). This is also one reason why survivors repeatedly describe GBVO as an issue of safety and
control, not merely “offensive speech.”
The study’s evidence also suggests a growing concern around manipulated content, including the use of
edited images, fabricated screenshots, and, reportedly,
AI-assisted sexualized fabrication. While not every case
involves advanced tools, the perceived possibility that
content can be generated or altered increases women’s
sense of vulnerability and expands perpetrators’ options
for coercion. Globally, online violence against women
journalists has increasingly included misrepresentation
via manipulated images and networked attacks tied to
disinformation tactics, and the Syrian context reflects
similar logics even when the technological sophistication
varies (Posetti et al., 2020). In practice, the fear of digital
fabrication strengthens perpetrators’ leverage, because it
becomes harder for women to “prove innocence” once a
narrative is circulated.
Public defamation campaigns operate differently but have
comparable effects. Here, the goal is not always private
coercion but public delegitimization, portraying women as
immoral, politically disloyal, sectarian, or socially deviant.
These campaigns often rely on symbolic triggers (a photo,
a public appearance, a quote taken out of context) and are
sustained through comment sections and repost cycles,
where repetition makes accusations feel “true.” Even when
individuals initiate the first post, amplification by pages,
groups, or coordinated accounts can create an environment in which women are forced to defend themselves
continuously or withdraw. Over time, these attacks also
normalize the idea that women in public life are legitimate
targets, making violence predictable and therefore harder
to contest.
Importantly, harassment and hate speech in this context
is rarely gender neutral. Women are repeatedly targeted
through language that ties their credibility to sexual morality, “family honor”, and perceived obedience to social
norms. This is why insults are not merely emotional harm:
they are signals of social discipline, aimed at making women’s presence costly. The overlap of these forms, sexual
threats, reputational attacks, impersonation, doxxing,
and intimidation, demonstrates that GBVO functions as a
continuum of violence, extending offline gender inequality into digital life while also creating new vectors for harm
through platform affordances (Mihácsi and Kyander, 2025).
4.2.1 Documented forms of GBVO
The research identifies several core manifestations
of GBVO:
– Sexualized blackmail and extortion: Frequently involving threats to release private photos or AI-generated
explicit content. The participants in the FGDs highlighted knowing cases of being blackmailed with their
photos or AI-generated sexualized photos, which usually
use WhatsApp and Telegram when blackmailing.
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