Electronic Threats and Harassment

This chapter highlights the highly influential and evolving contribution of cyber activity across a range of harassing, threatening, stalking, and violent behavior. Multiple psychological factors (e.g., perceived anonymity and low-risk nature of activity) influence the negative impacts of cyber and electronic activity. It is strongly suggested that the de facto standard of practice emerges in that one cannot perform threat assessment and management without assessing the electronic activity by the subjects of concern. The omnipresence of cyber and electronic communications mandates that threat assessment and management cannot occur without a review of pertinent electronic activity and communications that are reasonably accessible. The research to date suggests that threat assessment professionals should focus on the pattern and nature, as opposed to the modality, of communications when assessing the risk entailed with threatening and harassing electronic communications. The nature and pattern of contacts must also be evaluated in the context of how the correspondence relates to other contact behaviors as part of a chain of events signaling intent from ideation to action. Among such factors are the presence of relevant content factors (e.g., personalized motive, expressing intent or plans to approach, language regarding justified violence, and rhetoric suggesting incitement of violence) as well as factors related to leakage of intent and intensity of effort. Implications for threat management, particularly related to the impact on victims, as well as strategies to help combat such online harassment or abuse are also discussed.