A Primer of the Legal Landscape

In May 2014, Fordham CLIP and Alice E. Marwick - Assistant Professor in Fordham's Department of Communications and Media Studies - completed a project, "Online Harassment, Defamation, and Hateful Speech: A Primer of the Legal Landscape." This interdisciplinary project focused on online speech directed at women and seeks to provide a primer on (i) what legal remedies, if any, are available for victims of sexist, misogynist, or harassing online speech, and (ii) if such legal remedies and procedures exist, whether practical hurdles stand in the way of victims' abilities to stop harassing or defamatory behavior and to obtain legal relief. The objective of the project is to provide a resource that may be utilized by the general public, and in particular, researchers, legal practitioners, Internet community moderators, and victims of harassment and hateful speech online.

The principal authors of the study were Professor Alice Marwick and Ross Miller ('14), Fordham CLIP Project Fellow.

Professor Joel Reidenberg (Microsoft Visiting Professor of Information Technology Policy, Princeton University, and Fordham CLIP Academic Director), N. Cameron Russell (Fordham CLIP Executive Director), and Jordan Kovnot ('11) (CLIP Interim Director) also advised on the study.

Media Coverage

"Study: People Harassed Online Have Few Legal Protections," The Atlantic, June 18, 2014