Online harassment in Japan: Dissecting the targeting of a female journalist

Harassment on the Internet, particularly on social media such as Twitter, has reached a level where it can, without exaggeration, be characterised as a real-world societal problem in Japan. However, studies on this phenomenon in the Japanese language environment, especially adopting a victim-centric perspective, are rare. In this paper, we incorporated the concept of online harassment and reviewed existing studies about online harassment from Japan and abroad. We then conducted a detailed case analysis of the “flaming” of a female journalist and those who targeted her on Twitter. Based on our analysis, we observed that there were three layers of users who targeted the journalist: influencers, users who responded to the instigation by influencers, and trolls. Each harassed the journalist, but in a different manner. Given Japan’s particular difficulty of imposing domestic regulations on social media companies that are mostly from abroad, we propose and describe possible measures that individuals and their employers should consider taking.