Social media attack campaigns and public online humiliation

Definition

Use of social media platforms or other public digital spaces to post, share, or amplify content that denigrates, exposes, or isolates the target, including smear campaigns, doxxing of private information, or coordinated public shaming that functions to damage reputation, sever support networks, and maintain presence in the target's social world.

How it operates

Public posts or comments that characterize the target as unstable, unfit, dishonest, or dangerous. Sharing private communications or personal details out of context. Tagging, mentioning, or directing mutual contacts to damaging content. Creation of accounts or groups for the purpose of ongoing public attack.

Function

Convert the target's online and offline community into an instrument of control and degradation.

Harm

The conversion of the target's online and offline community into an instrument of control and degradation.

Why this is coercive control

Private messages that do not reach a wider audience, and accurate limited statements in formal legal filings without public distribution, are not this conduct. The conduct here converts the target's online and offline community into an instrument of control and degradation.

Constructed example

“A post to mutual friends and family stating, "She abandoned the children for her own agenda. Here's the proof," accompanied by selective screenshots.”

Fictitious. Written to illustrate the behavior. Not a case.