User blog:Noha Abou-Hashima/Collaborative Platform of hitRECord by Noha Abou-Hashima

What is hitRECord?
Formed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 2010, hitRECord is a collaborative production company that provides a digital platform for artists and creative individuals from all over the world to exchange ideas and share in production of creative projects. Artists, novelists, scriptwriters, filmmakers, photographers, writers, and musicians from all over the world contribute to the platform by sharing ideas or working together on projects that require a varied array of artistic talents. In return, they gain experience from the work they do, expand on their creative capacity, and get recognition for their ideas and/or contributions. Sometimes they are even paid!

Case Study
It is often the unfortunate result that wherever there is a large gathering of people, harassment and violent acts tend to develop. So I want to look at women's participation on the platform and find out whether or not they face gender-based violence/abuse, and if so, what, if any, were the support or lack thereof recieved?

Research Question
My research question(s) will be as such: How do women who participate on hitRECord's digital platform rate their experience? Do, and how often, they face harassment, verbal abuse/threats of abuse, discrimination? Do they recieve harsher critiques on their work, especially in those artistic fields that are usually dominated by males, such as film directing?

Additionally, if possible, I would like to look at how these women's experiences on an online digital platform differ from their experience in the real-world artistic market. If not, then I would recommend this as a possibility for future research on gender-based harassment a platform like hitRECord.

Method
Due to the nature of the research question, I aim to use surveys as the main method of collecting data for this research. The survey will typically include a number of questions that help answer the research question. An example of a question would be: " Have you ever personally encountered any type of gender-based harassment from an individual or more on the digital platform? " Typically, the format of the questions should help me gather sufficient data that is as accurate as possible about women's experience of participating on the platform. For further control of the study, I will focus on cisgender women, but will look at all age groups, races and sexual orientations to avoid the possibility of not having enough data due to a target group not having enough presence on the platform. I would recommend that future research try to narrow down these categories and look at how these different factors affect an individual's likliehood to face gender-based harassment.

Why is it important?
I believe this is an important case study, because, it is necessary to determine the depth of gender-based issues like harassment, especially on a limitless medium like the Internet. Offline, such problems have laws and policies designed to address them. But what about when these problems move into the realm of the Internet, with its vastness and unrestricted nature? It becomes more difficult for the law to protect individuals from harm when they are present on a virtual space or community. Often, threats or harassment received on the Internet are not taken as seriously as they would be if they happen offline. This can be due to the anonymity of users, and thus the tendency of many to "troll" or prank others online. So as a result, it falls on the users of the Internet to defend themselves and each other online. Communities that have a certain hierarchy, for example, like hitRECord where it is managed by JGL and his team, users can rely on these individuals to "weed" out the harassers or ban them from further gaining access to the community and its services. Other users can also contribute to publicly shaming the harasser for their actions, thus showing support and solidarity against harassment. This will be part of my study as I look at whether or not women who faced harassment received support from other users on the platform.

Scholarly Sources
To help me analayze the data from this study, I will reference other similar studies on gender-based harassment in online communities such as social networking websites and online video games.


 * 1) Gumbus, A., & Meglich, P. (2013). Abusive Online Conduct: Discrimination and Harassment in Cyberspace.  Journal of Management Policy and Practice, 14 (5), 47-56.
 * 2) Sengupta, A., & Chaudhuri, A. (2011). Are Social Networking Sites A Source of Online Harassment for Teens? Evidence From Survey Data. Children and Youth Services Review, 33 (2), 284-290.
 * 3) Citron, D. K. (2009). Law's Expressive Value in Combating Cyber Gender Harassment.  Michigan Law Review, 108(3), 373-415. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/201129725?accountid=14771