Dogpiling (Internet)

Online harassment is a common method of dogpiling.

Dogpiling, dog-piling or simply a piling-on is a form of online harassment or online abuse characterized by having groups of harassers target the same victim. Examples of online abuse include flaming, doxing (online release of personal information without consent), impersonation, and public shaming. Dog-pilers often focus on harassing, exposing, or punishing a target for an opinion that the group does not agree with, or just simply for the sake of being a bully and targeting a victim. Participants use criticism and/or insults to target a single person. In some definitions, it also includes sending private messages. Dogpiling can happen on online social media platforms when someone's post gets viral, and gets a lot of attention online. From the attention, people who don't agree with the online post or video will leave negative comments to the social media user. As more people leave negative comments, it turns into a larger group hating and targeting the user. Dogpiling is one of the forms of online harassment, and it can overlap with public shaming and cyberbullying.

Etymology

The word comes from the dog-pile in American football, in which a person who has the ball is targeted by the entire opposing team who come and jump on him. It became popular with the rise of social networks.

Harmful effects

On the victim

Dogpiling can make a person feel overwhelmed when receiving a large number of comments and notifications during a short amount of time. Receiving this much negative online activity can cause the victim to feel like they cannot openly share their thoughts and feelings without getting judged or criticized. This can make the targeted person not feel comfortable to participate on online platforms due to the high volume of backlash they received. Victims of dogpiling may feel less self-esteem, various emotional reactions, self-harm ideations, and suicidal thoughts. Adolescents, particularly female adolescents, are more likely to be susceptible to these effects from dogpiling. Not only does dogpiling affect social media and online community users, it also affects journalist's ability to be able to to report and share information. Online users who may not agree with the journalists articles or posts, use online harassment to strike back at journalists. The harassment is intended to silence and discourage journalists from reporting. It could result to psychological stress and damaged reputations which could lead to journalists limiting the topics they discuss or even leave their profession. Journalists could be intimidated by the online harassment and might censor what subjects they share and report, which can affect public dialogue.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "dog-pile". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2021-10-11.
  2. ↑ "When Online Harassment is Perceived as Justified". Archived from the original on 2020-09-18.
  3. 1 2 3 "Defining Online Harassment". 11 April 2018. Archived from the original on 2019-07-03.
  4. ↑ Blackwell, Lindsay; Chen, Tianying; Schoenebeck, Sarita; Lampe, Cliff (2018). "When Online Harassment Is Perceived as Justified (Proceedings of the Twelfth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2018))". Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence - aaai.org. Archived from the original on 2020-09-18. Retrieved 2020-08-31.
  5. ↑ Kiener-Manu, Katharina (February 2020). "Cybercrime Module 12 Key Issues: Cyberstalking and Cyberharassment". UNODC. Retrieved 2020-08-31.
  6. ↑ Jhaver, Shagun; Ghoshal, Sucheta; Bruckman, Amy; Gilbert, Eric (2018-04-26). "Online Harassment and Content Moderation: The Case of Blocklists". ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. 25 (2): 1–33. doi:10.1145/3185593. ISSN 1073-0516. S2CID 4315029.
  7. ↑ Jhaver, Shagun; Chan, Larry; Bruckman, Amy (2018-02-02). "The view from the other side: The border between controversial speech and harassment on Kotaku in Action". First Monday. arXiv:1712.05851. doi:10.5210/fm.v23i2.8232. ISSN 1396-0466. S2CID 3653593.
  8. ↑ "Recognize and understand online harassment | Digital Safety Kit for Public Health | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health". 2024-11-21. Retrieved 2026-10-24.
  9. ↑ Thomas, Kurt (2021). "SoK: Hate, Harassment, and the Changing Landscape of Online Abuse". Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy: 247–267.
  10. ↑ Yang, B.; Wang, B.; Sun, N.; Xu, F.; Wang, L.; Chen, J.; Yu, S.; Zhang, Y.; Zhu, Y.; Dai, T.; Zhang, Q.; Sun, C. (Dec 2021). "The consequences of cyberbullying and traditional bullying victimization among adolescents: Gender differences in psychological symptoms, self-harm and suicidality". Psychiatry Research. 305 (306) 114219. doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2021.114219. PMID 34614443 – via Elsevier Science Direct.
  11. ↑ "White Paper: Interventions for Online Harassment of Journalists | Berkman Klein Center". cyber.harvard.edu. 2024-07-31. Retrieved 2026-10-28.
  12. ↑ Young, Cathy (2015-10-13). "Blame GamerGate's Bad Rep on Smears and Shoddy Journalism". Observer. Retrieved 2020-08-31.
  13. ↑ Sarkeesian, Anita (2019-12-23). "Anita Sarkeesian looks back at GamerGate". Polygon. Retrieved 2020-08-31.
  14. ↑ Mortensen, Torill Elvira (2016-04-13). "Anger, Fear, and Games: The Long Event of #GamerGate". Games and Culture. 13 (8): 787–806. doi:10.1177/1555412016640408. S2CID 147383984.

  1. ↑ "Recognize and understand online harassment". Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 2024-11-21. Retrieved 2026-10-23.