Digital witch-hunts: what online abuse teaches us about the politics of definition
From seventeenth-century trials to twenty-first-century deepfakes, the struggle over who gets to define harm remains.
Witch-hunts have returned to public conversation, with the recent film Wicked: For Good reviving the familiar question of who gets cast as a witch and exploring how women’s reputations can be destroyed by narrative rather than evidence. While witch-hunts often reference the trials of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, more recently, the term has also been used to describe the online abusive campaigns that target women, especially those who are in public life. Some commentators have argued that these modern attacks belong in the same category as historical witch hunts, whilst others disagree, suggesting that the definition of witch-hunts excludes online misogynistic abuse.
This is not an abstract theoretical debate. How we define things matters: a definition not only provides us with a shared frame of understanding, but also allows us to properly say what something is not. We can then communicate effectively, knowing we all broadly understand what we mean: people who need to can also conduct research and policy makers can make recommendations on best practice, with a shared understanding of terms.
At first glance, the definitions we live by often look solid and stable. We frequently accept them as they stand, assuming that’s just how things are. But when we start probing, they can quickly break down into competing perspectives: Is wellness a form of healthcare or a consumer identity? Is an ‘expert’ someone who is credentialled through qualifications, or is it simply a matter of being experienced or even being widely followed online?
We take up this topic to understand how women today become targets of deepfakes, smear campaigns, and waves of online hostility. For some commentators, these attacks can be defined as being in the same category as the early modern witch-hunts that led to the execution of thousands of (mostly) women, giving today’s abuse a clear historical and moral lineage. But as writer Sara Ahmed suggests, we should be cautious: while powerful labels can work symbolically, there is a danger that they can signal concern without actually enabling change.
A second definitional tension runs through the debate on misinformation. Researchers and practitioners disagree on whether existing definitions of misinformation properly account for the gendered abuse faced by women online. Indeed, media researchers Marília Gehrke and Eedan R. Amit-Danhi argue that gendered disinformation “has scarcely been addressed by scholars”. The concern here is that narrow definitions can create blind spots: if the most gendered forms of online harm fall outside the frame of misinformation, they become less visible to researchers, policymakers, and platform designers.
So in what follows, we examine the definition of ‘witch-hunt’ and assess whether, and on what grounds, contemporary online attacks against women could fall within that category. We also consider whether these forms of abuse fit within existing definitions of misinformation and what is at stake if they do not.
Our aim is to explore the implications for addressing this deeply concerning issue and to consider what this definitional debate reveals about the current state of thinking on misinformation.
The witch hunt industrial complex
Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, roughly 60,000 people, overwhelmingly women, were executed as witches across Europe and its colonies. The popular narrative has long been that this was a case of collective hysteria, driven by irrational crowds. Arthur Miller explicitly framed the Salem witch trials in this way, using them as an allegory for the McCarthyism at the time of writing.
However, it is increasingly recognised that these mass killings were not collective panic but systematic processes with a high degree of organisation and structure. Theological guidebooks such as the Malleus Maleficarum set out rules for what could be used as evidence of witchcraft. This included testimony that a ‘witch’s spirit’ appeared to the victim, which was to be admitted as proof, and that any denial itself was read as guilt. Another set of rules involved interpreting misfortune as the result of witchcraft, so a failed harvest became proof of ‘cursing’. These guidebooks offered a receptive audience a set of mechanics that allowed rumours to readily be converted into guilt and, from there, into punishment.
The resulting trials were not only legal procedures but public spectacles designed to make persecution of witches visible to a wide audience. Pamphlets carried sensational accounts of witches’ confessions, which allowed suspicion to spread beyond the courtroom. Public executions provided spectacle, with hangings and burnings before crowds to dramatise the triumph of authority over evil. Witch trials served as public lessons in godly behaviour and social discipline, operating as platforms for authorities to communicate moral boundaries to the wider community.
And historians point to the way this machinery was useful for those in positions of power. For vicars and priests, witchcraft claims drew a scattered set of lay beliefs into a narrative about evil with the church at the centre of interpretation. For magistrates, it expanded their reach, as manuals and ‘experts’ ensured that rumours and neighbourly disputes were translated into evidence that was admissible in court, allowing the state to claim authority over what would otherwise be unseen. For rulers, it offered political expedience: crop failures, epidemics, and fiscal crises could be attributed to hidden enemies, thereby redirecting resentment away from institutional failings.
Of course, as political philosopher Silvia Federici argues, misogyny was at the heart of this: the social ordering of the period made women disproportionately vulnerable to accusation. For example, midwives and healers held reproductive knowledge that challenged the emerging professional power of male physicians. But more generally, women who deviated from prescribed norms of obedience, chastity, or economic dependence were recast as dangerous. In Federici’s famous book, Caliban and the Witch, the figure of the witch serves as a vehicle for disciplining female autonomy and reshaping the moral and economic order.
Seen in this way, witch-hunts were clearly never simply outbreaks of hysteria. They were a whole ecosystem, with courts, clergy, magistrates, neighbours, and professional witch-finders, all working together in a structured process. It was, in effect, an early industrial complex for identifying, trying, and ultimately murdering those marked as suspect.
Digital hunts: deepfakes and the manosphere
Returning to our question of definitions, is it legitimate to say that the witch hunt has now taken a different form, one that today operates through digital media?
Campaigners point out that just as then, women today are subject to considerable violence by men: an estimated 736 million women (almost one in three) have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their life (30 per cent of women aged 15 and older). And there is a huge amount of non-consensual deepfakes and other forms of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) overwhelmingly targeting women with devastating impacts.
We can see the parallels: early witch-hunts relied on public trials, sermons, and executions designed to be watched. And today, in much the same way, deepfakes and doctored images are created for maximum visibility and circulation. Their purpose is not only to humiliate a particular woman but to send a wider message that women should be scrutinised for signs of guilt or shame, and to assume wrongdoing even when none exists.
On the other hand, it could also be argued that today’s online misogynistic abuse is not a witch-hunt in the strict sense: it lacks the codified rules and formal pathways through which historical hunts converted accusations into punishment, given that today’s digital persecutions are driven by online environments, anonymity, and networked misogyny. And some digital scholars caution that broad labels can flatten crucial distinctions, flattening important differences and obscuring the specific dynamics that drive contemporary forms of harm to women.
But if we can find these parallels, then we make them politically salient, giving them a moral weight that comes from aligning it with what is widely recognised as one of history’s most shameful chapters (though in some parts of the world, it is not yet history at all). Thus, the point is not just analytical but political: naming creates resonance. It reframes what might otherwise be dismissed as private, individual hostility, or indeed, ‘mass hysteria’ as something collective and structural, an enduring pattern of control.
Structural orchestration: the social and systemic forces across the centuries
However, the basis on which we construct our definition is an important consideration, as it is not fixed but reflects our choices about where to look and what to make visible. Our preceding discussion has focused on the mechanics of these accusations, which draws on a cognitive or information-processing perspective, concerned with how claims are formed, spread, and judged. By contrast, a lens that centres the victim (rather than the process) could also be the basis on which we define witch-hunts. Defining in this way shows more clearly the way that it is predominantly women who are positioned as dangerous or deceitful, making them ready targets. This broader socio-cultural definition allows us to more easily see the narratives and power relations that make certain accusations possible in the first place. It addresses the underlying conditions, rather than the mechanics of how these are then activated, shaping who becomes a believable target and why.
To examine witch-hunts using this socio-cultural lens, we can turn to writer Sian Norris, who argues that misogyny is anchored in narratives about zero-sum: women’s gains are men’s losses. Norris gives an account of the way deindustrialisation, the rise of precarious labour, and the retrenchment of welfare offer a fertile ground for zero-sum logic to reframe laws on workplace equality or protections against gender-based violence as attacks on men.
Polling supports this, with recent research finding more than half agreeing both that women’s rights have gone ‘far enough’ and that men are being asked ‘too much’ to support equality: claims that are clearly at odds with persistent gaps in pay, safety, and political representation.
Now, using this broader socio-cultural definition, we can more clearly see the parallels: In the past, crop failures and disease were blamed on women who were already viewed with suspicion; today, the data suggests that feelings of status loss and economic insecurity are often redirected toward feminism or women’s independence.
In both eras, misogyny provides the lens through which problems are interpreted, and the surrounding infrastructure helps accusations spread. The systems differ, but the underlying logic is similar, with women framed as the source of others’ misfortune. Seeing witch-hunts within this wider pattern of misogyny shows why definitions matter: the terms we use determine whether we recognise these continuities or overlook them.
For example, in Britain, overt endorsement of the statement “a man’s job is to earn and a woman’s job is to care for the home” fell from 48% in 1987 to just 9% in 2022, suggesting a shift in gender attitudes. Yet deeper, more essentialist attitudes proved to be resilient. As late as 1990, 45% agreed that being a housewife was as fulfilling as paid work, and nearly a third thought women “really wanted” home and children above all. These long-term, perhaps less visible, assumptions have surely meant misogyny can be reactivated quickly when economic or cultural shocks hit.
And if we take a long-term historical view from the early modern witch-hunts to today’s digital attacks, we can see a long arc of gendered accusation. The public head-shaving of women in liberated France, the Victorian policing of ‘fallen women’, the sexualised smears used against suffragettes, and the child-abuse accusations of the Satanic Panic all appear to rest on the same logic: suspicion attached to women’s bodies, spectacle used to enforce moral order, and punishment delivered through shame rather than evidence. These episodes span centuries, showing that while the infrastructure may have changed, the underlying logic of gendered accusation has been shockingly durable.
Where does misinformation sit?
On the same basis, it is worth considering whether witch-hunts can sit within the broader category of misinformation. Just as situating today's online misogynistic abuse as witch-hunts offers visibility and policy leverage, so would defining this as a form of misinformation.
However, we quickly encounter challenges to suggest that they are not the same: the dominant frame used to define misinformation is an information-processing one, focusing on how information is produced, transmitted, and consumed. Within this framework, misinformation is typically understood as false or misleading content that distorts belief or knowledge. The focus lies on the mechanics of diffusion and cognition: how people encounter, assess, and share claims.
From this vantage point, misogynistic attacks online appear less as ‘misinformation’ and more as smears, as their harms arise through narrative framing and amplification rather than factual inaccuracy. As Deen Freelon and Chris Wells observe, we can see how truth-centric definitions of misinformation overlook the political and social harms that narratives inflict, regardless of whether they contain verifiable falsehoods.
Seen through that lens, the online vilification of women falls outside the definitional frame as it typically manipulates stereotypes and emotion, rather than verifiable facts. Yet, as Rachel Kuo and Alice Marwick argue, this narrow reading of the issue reflects a depoliticisation: focusing on accuracy, misinformation research often ignores the power structures that give false claims their force.
The same principles surely apply now as we saw with the definition of witch-hunts: misinformation based on information processing obscures the underlying gendered dimensions, making the problem one of individual reasoning.
Misinformation frameworks tend to privilege perspectives that fit cleanly within an information-processing model: for example, political misinformation (e.g., false claims about elections), or public-health misinformation (e.g., misleading vaccine content), are treated as reporting core, legitimate harms. Likewise, accounts that involve verifiably false statements, something a fact-checker can label true or false, are granted immediate credibility because they align with the tools the system knows how to use.
These experiences are seen as central evidence of what misinformation is. But women targeted with gendered online abuse don’t fit this template: they are rarely being ‘misled’ so much as being undermined. Their harm comes from smear campaigns, insinuations, and reputational attacks - all forms of narrative manipulation that are harder to categorise as ‘false claims.’ As a result, their voices are pushed to the margins.
A socio-cultural lens can restore what that framework misses out: the histories and narratives that shape the behaviours. When online abuse of women is excluded from misinformation frameworks, the result is a blind spot: it contributes to an invisibalisation of this type of abuse that requires a focused response.
This is why we need a plurality of lenses. Cognitive perspectives explain mechanisms of spread; socio-cultural perspectives explain meaning, power, and vulnerability. The question, then, is not simply whether today’s attacks count as witch-hunts or misinformation. It is whether our definitions help us see the pattern clearly or whether they leave the experiences of some groups of the population, in this case, women, out of the frame.
Conclusions
Debates about definitions can sound abstract, the kind of thing only academics care about. But in practice, definitions are some of the most powerful tools we have for making sense of the world. They determine what we notice, what we name, and what we treat as worthy of action.
The question of whether today’s digital targeting of women constitutes a witch-hunt, or whether it belongs within the domain of misinformation, is not simply semantic but shapes which harms come to the attention of policymakers, platforms, and the public. A definition built around the mechanics of accusations will see one kind of pattern; a definition built around the experiences of those being targeted will see another. Both viewpoints reveal something important, but neither is sufficient on its own.
And as the history of witch-hunts teaches us, societies are often most vulnerable to their most enduring patterns when they fail to name them. The challenge, then, is not simply to decide whether modern attacks ‘are’ witch-hunts or ‘are’ misinformation, but to ensure that our definitions, whichever we use, are reflected on and allow us see clearly rather than look away.