4. Findings
– Public defamation campaigns: Coordinated attacks
employing gendered and sectarian narratives. According
to two FGDs and two KIIs, defamation campaigns usually target women, and adolescents more than adults, it
peaks during “trends” in certain events, such as political
events or religious holidays.
The threats were about my reputation.
Survivor IDI — Woman
Survivor testimonies also demonstrate that GBVO commonly unfolds through overlapping forms of abuse rather
than single categories. Harassment, threats, reputational attacks, and blackmail were frequently described
as interconnected and mutually reinforcing. For many
survivors, the experience was characterized by escalation,
moving from public attacks (comments, posts, humiliation)
into more invasive practices such as attempts to obtain
private data, impersonation, or targeting through personal networks. The longer a survivor remained visible or
continued expressing public opinions, the more likely abuse
was described as persistent and intentional, suggesting
that perpetrators often aim to erode resilience through repetition and exhaustion rather than through one-off harm.
– Harassment and hate speech: Including body-shaming
and insults to “family honor”. According to the participants in one of the FGDs, specific social media platforms are used to circulate hate speech and GBVO,
namely Facebook and Telegram.
– Impersonation and doxxing: Creating fake profiles and
publishing private information. KIIs with media activists
mentioned well-known cases where private conversations and messages were leaked to the public to be part
of a public “trend” against activists when expressing
their opinions that are different from theirs.
– Psychological intimidation: Explicit threats of physical
violence or rape. As per a KII media activist, such threats
are received and posted in the comments section during
public defamation campaigns. This was also noted in the
media scanning of the GBVO comments.
4.2.2 Survivor testimonies and
the continuum of violence
Survivors’ testimonies consistently portray GBVO not as
isolated “online incidents,” but as a predictable and escalating continuum of harm that intensifies with women’s
visibility and persists over time. Across IDIs, survivors
described how abuse often begins with harassment or
sexualized insults, then shifts into more coercive tactics,
most notably reputational threats, intimidation, and privacy
violations, that are designed to pressure women into
silence and withdrawal from public space.
A dominant pattern across survivors accounted for the use
of reputation and family-related consequences as leverage. Survivors repeatedly emphasized that the most effective threats were those that invoked social standing, family
relationships, or community judgment, because these
threats extend beyond the digital sphere and carry tangible risks in women’s daily lives. One survivor captured this
dynamic directly: “The threats were about my reputation”
(Survivor IDI — Woman). Professionals interviewed for this
study echoed that this reputational framing is widely used
because it exploits gendered social expectations and the
unequal consequences women face when targeted.
Importantly, survivor narratives indicate different levels of
affectedness, shaped by exposure, perceived credibility of
threats, and the survivor’s social context. Women in publicfacing roles, such as journalists, activists, or civil society
actors, described higher exposure and faster escalation
once they became identifiable. At the same time, survivors
embedded in more conservative family or community environments reported that reputational threats carried heightened weight, as the potential consequences could include
family conflict, restrictions on mobility, loss of work opportunities, or forced withdrawal from public engagement.
In the most severe accounts, survivors described GBVO as
producing deep insecurity and a sense of being constantly
watched, particularly among those who had previously
experienced offline persecution or repression. One survivor
drew a direct comparison between the fear generated by
online targeting and the fear she experienced after release
from detention, emphasizing how privacy violations and
intimidation revived earlier feelings of vulnerability:
There were two phases where I didn’t
feel safe. The first was in 2013 after I was
released from prison. The second phase,
since the fall of the regime, people have
begun to violate my privacy because of my
opinions on certain public matters.
Survivor IDI — Woman
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