Silence, Shame, and Screens: A Gendered Analysis of Online Harassment and Extortion Among Tunisian Adolescents

Background: Online violence is a growing child-protection and gender-equality concern in the Middle East and North Africa, yet little is known about the mechanisms that make girls disproportionately vulnerable to online sexual harassment and extortion.Objectives: This study examines how gender norms shape adolescents' exposure to online harassment and image-based extortion, their disclosure decisions, and the institutional response they encounter, extending a companion study that first identified this gender disparity.Participants and setting: Focus groups with 113 adolescents (64 girls, 49 boys, aged 13-17), 28 parents, and 22 educators, and 17 key-stakeholder interviews with child-protection officers, judges, police, and civil society actors, conducted across five governorates in Tunisia in 2022.Methods: Reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2019) was applied to three linked qualitative strands - adolescent, parent/educator, and key-stakeholder data - with themes developed and reviewed iteratively by a multi-disciplinary research team.Results: Four analytic themes were developed: perpetrators calibrate exploitation to gendered reputational stakes; shame operates as a social mechanism that actively suppresses disclosure; state protective institutions mirror rather than counteract the honour logic that silences girls at home; and individual and peer resistance narrows risk but cannot substitute for a functioning protective system.Conclusions: Online abuse against girls in this context is best understood as a gendered social problem sustained by intersecting family, institutional, and societal mechanisms, not simply a digital safety issue. Effective prevention requires legislative implementation, protection for mandatory reporters, and survivor-centred reporting pathways, alongside efforts to shift the gender norms that convert victimisation into family shame.