Whisper networks are informal channels that women use to warn each other about sexual harassment, abuse or assault. The reason they work isn’t because they are secret – they work because they are contextual.
The informal protective communication shared in schools, churches, workplaces and other organizations can be communicated and trusted based on the common language and cultural understanding of those giving and receiving the information.
Since 2017 when the MeToo hashtag went viral, people have been trying to create online whisper networks. Projects like the Shitty Media Men list and the Facebook group Are We Dating the Same Guy are both examples of trying to build a larger warning system. The Tea app sells itself as a digital platform that gives women tools to protect themselves and others when dating men.
However, important components of whisper networks get lost when they are moved to anonymous nationwide warning systems.
I’m an organizational communications and gender scholar. My research focuses on whisper networks and how people use them to keep safe in organizations. When this idea moves to a digital platform, the information may still be useful, but it is harder for participants to gauge how reliable it is.
What makes whisper networks work
Whisper networks form when there is an environment of shared risk. Their purpose is protective. In other words, the people in whisper networks do not share information for punitive reasons, but to protect each other and to make sense of their experiences. There is an unspoken expectation that the receiver of information will also share only with people they trust.
In my study of whisper networks, participants talked about how they could assess the information they receive and give through personal interactions in their offices, congregations, schools and other organizations. They felt like they could measure the trustworthiness of the person sharing information and the trustworthiness of the people with whom they share information.
They also talked about cues, including noticing how the person sharing information treats other people in the office and how they talk about other people when they aren’t around. This important component of whisper networks is difficult to translate to an app, even when the app claims to verify people as members.
Women use coded messages and actions in whisper networks to figure out who is safe in any given room, who is in need of whisper network information, and when they decide that whisper network information is worth listening to.
These protective messages tend to be shared either one on one or in small groups. Women know the information is reliable because of how it is shared and who shares it. For example, someone might say, “He is a little creepy toward the undergraduate women.” The person receiving the message uses the surrounding context codes to understand the seriousness of the situation.
Another person might say, “He…
