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Annual International Conference on Internet Harassment
and Bullying 2025 (ICIHB)
10th-11th October 2025.
RCC-Toronto Down Town, 80 Cooperage St, Toronto, ON, M5 A OJ3
Theme: Cyberstalking: Gender and Computer Ethics Understanding Internet Harassment?
Harassment in online spaces is increasingly part of public debate and concern. Pervasive problems like cyberbullying, hate speech, and the glorification of self harm have highlighted the breadth and depth of harassment taking place online.
Online harassment is pervasive in regions around the world. Users post hate speech that demeans and degrades people based on their gender, race, sexual identity, or position in society; users post insults and spread rumours, disproportionately harming those with fewer resources in society to cope with or respond to the attacks; and users share private, sensitive content, like home addresses or sexual images, without the consent of those whose information is being shared.
These behaviours introduce multiple types of harm with varied levels of severity, ranging from minor nuisances to psychological harm to economic precarity to life threats. Gaining a global understanding of online harassment
is important for designing online experiences that meet the needs of diverse,
varied global experiences.
In an ideal world, communications between or among any class of persons should be mutual and respectful. However, we do not live in an ideal world any where. In recent years, owing to growing access to internet-able devices such as smart phones and tablets, internet usage among children and young adults, many times without supervision by an adult, there is a growing trend of vices such as cyber bullying, cyber stalking, cyber sexual harassment which have resulted in many unprecedented challenges for the victims who are majority girls. The challenges faced in combating the challenge especially by educators is that these types of bullying and harassment do not typically take place at schools and are often done anonymously.
Cyberviolence is an increasing problem worldwide – even more so since the Covid-19 pandemic – and is often gender-based and targeting boys, women, and girls. Cyberviolence hampers the full realization of gender equality and violates women’s rights.
Why Cyberviolence Can’t Just Be ‘Turned Off’
Cyberviolence can have more devastating psychological impacts on victims than face-to-face interactions. It can have a global reach and can take place anytime – it’s difficult to escape or to stop. People who experience cyberviolence may be re-victimized every time a hateful message or sexual image is shared or viewed without their permission. Abusive partners and stalkers are using digital surveillance technology to control and monitor their victims’ lives. Monitoring apps intended for the purposes of locating a friend, or a child can be used to monitor women and girls. These apps, known as spyware, give abusers unlimited access to their victims’ online activities and physical whereabouts without their knowledge.
We can’t ignore hate and cyberviolence.
Reducing online hate is essential to ending gender-based violence overall. Exposure to hateful attitudes that promote an inferior social, political, and economic position for women influence violence against women. It escalates the risk that consumers of such content will adopt similar attitudes and act towards them. Hatred towards women increases physical acts of violence against women, just as inciting racial hate leads to an increase in racially motivated
violence. The intersection of these factors makes it especially dangerous for indigenous women, Black women, women of colour, and identifiably Muslim women
or women presumed to be Muslim.
About the Conference!
The conference will gather experts in the field to help increase understanding and gravity of the issues involved best practices and possible solutions to tackle the mounting number of online threats targeting children, mainly young girls, and boys. Nevertheless, that does not mean that young girls and boys do not experience online harassment: the possibility that victims are afraid to testify or/and report their unpleasant experiences to other interlocutors (the police, for example) can’t be excluded.
Online Statistics in Canada!
The Pink Shirt Day/Anti-Bullying Day (February 22) released statistics or Canada that sheds light on cyber bullying among young people aged 12-29 years and they are worrying. Based on multiple data sources, the study found that one in four youth (25%) aged 12-17 years reported experiencing cyber bullying the previous year. An equal share of 25% of young adults aged 12-29 years also experienced sexual harassment in the form of unwanted suggestive or explicit texts, aggressive or threatening emails, social media, and text messages.
According to the no bullying website in their recent study, cyber bullying is termed as a growing problem and the statistics speak to it.
· 25% of teenagers have experienced repeated bullying via their cell phones
or on the internet.
· 52% of young people report being cyber bullied, including online threats, hate speech.
· 55% of young people have witnessed bullying and harassment via social media.
· 11% had embarrassing or damaging photographs of them taken without their consent or knowledge.
All this shows the growing problem of cyber bullying and harassment that are now prevalent world over and steps must be taken to cure the problem.
Why join us.
This conference aims to draw the attention of the world to this growing challenge which if nothing tangible is done may result in unimaginable consequences. This it will do by providing participants with an enriching opportunity to deepen knowledge of this growing trend as well as a theoretical, policy and testimonials of a global dimension. It is hoped that this engagement will result in collaborative partnerships that will push and lobby for key legislation and a Policy shift to create a safer world for children and young adolescent girls who are the biggest victims of internet sexual harassment. The conference will also bring together a diverse pool of researchers and display case studies from around the world which will create a networking and publishing pool for participants.
Who Should Apply.
The conference is open for all especially legislators, social activists, women and children’s activists, educators, internet regulators and providers, victims of any form of cyber abuse, young women, teenage girls and all those who meet the criteria of admission.
What to expect.
Participants should expect a rich discussion on how to overcome the challenge at hand but also how to provide meaningful solutions on the challenge broadly. The organizers will put together a big pool of discussants with lived experiences to draw the attention to the problem. There should be a big lobby to legislators to help make laws that speak to the problem.
Program.
The program shall be shared by the organizer in due course.
1. Theoretical approaches to online violence and cyberbullying
· Definition, characterization, and conceptualization of cyberbullying (school cyberbullying, cyberbullying at the workplace), of digital incivilities
or hate speech.
· Links between “bullying” and “cyberbullying”, “bullies” and “cyberbullies”.
· Exploration of the terminology: “cyber bullying” versus “cyber mobbing”, or versus “internet harassment”.
2. The role of emotions and feelings
· Affective dimension of online violence, bullying, harassment or hate.
· The role played by emotions in bullying or cyberbullying (among bullies, witnesses or bullied, but also among people involved in the fight against
bullying or even among researchers studying this violence).
· The place taken by emotions in discourses about cyberbullying (for example in the media).
· The socio-technical specificities of platforms and the way in which the affective intensity of contents related to violence can facilitate their circulation and the intensity of the reactions they generate.
· The way in which technical mediation can contribute to a distancing of emotions and empathy.
3. Intersectional approaches
· Power dynamics in online violence and hate speech.
· The role played by victims or aggressors belonging to a minority or to a privileged group in the dynamics of bullying/harassment.
· Hate speech against feminist activists, human right advocates, and intersectional activists.
· The emergence of support or mutual aid groups is induced by intersectional approaches.
4. Prevention of cyberbullying and online violence
· Actors and tools involved.
· Educational initiatives and the role played by school, teachers, etc.
· Digital literacy and digital citizenship.
· Psychosocial skills development.
· Hashtag activism (#metoo, #stopbullying, #stopbodyshaming).
· Empowering youth to combat bullying and cyberbullying.
· Legal responses to cyberbullying.
· The responsibilities of social media companies in the regulation of cyberbullying and hate speech.