Damage by a thousand clicks: A multimedia package

• Main Authors: Dabu, Bettina Rose A., King, Alyssa Gwyneth K., Villena, Bianca Mariluz R.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2022
• Subjects: Computer sex; Sexual harassment; Film and Media Studies
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdb_comm/23; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1037&context=etdb_comm
• Institution: De La Salle University

Damage by a Thousand Clicks is a multimedia package on cyber sexual harassment. Three young Filipinas — Leesa, Thalia, and Ysabel (names have been changed) tell their stories of surviving cyber-sexual harassment. Moving past taboos, they recount their experiences in pursuit of catharsis and in hopes of shedding more light on the issue. The project aims to empower these survivors and bring more gravity to the issue. By uplifting their stories, the project validates their narratives and their emotions, sending a resounding message: we believe you. In 2020 alone, there were 130 media-sourced reports of cyber-sexual harassment in the Philippines, a 165% increase from the highest record in 2015 at 45 cases (Foundation for Media Alternatives.) Women first encounter online harassment between the ages 12 to 20, with 7 out of 10 Filipino girls having experienced cyber-sexual harassment (Plan International.) Beyond the statistics are those that have gone unreported and unnoticed: society has desensitized women to oblivion where they don’t recognize sexual harassment, and when they do, they are disgraced for it. The project utilized the elements of creative non-fiction and multimedia production to humanize the stories of survivors and report the broader context of the problem. By taking on singular testimonies of typical hard-news subjects using a human angle, the audience gets to see —and hopefully empathize— how deeply harassment affects an individual, as well as recognize harassment being played out. Apart from the three survivors, the multimedia package also features three experts (a social worker, a psychologist, and a lawyer), offering multiple perspectives on cyber-sexual harassment. We then created three narratives based on the survivors' stories, and produced three informative videos. The project is publicly available at https://www.1000clicks.online/