Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MA

Department

Sociology and Anthropology

Committee Chair

Walter DeKeseredy

Committee Member

Karen Weiss

Committee Member

Joshua Woods

Abstract

As artificial intelligence (AI) evolves, social issues associated with this technology are also perpetuated. This is especially pertinent to online violence against women. In April 2016, fictional character “Lil Miquela,” an AI robot who would quickly rise to fame as a social media influencer, was created using Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI). Significant backlash has persisted against Lil Miquela throughout its existence, which has typically taken the form of demeaning comments made by other users on Lil Miquela’s social media pages. As the robot looks deceptively like a human female, the robot receives online treatment that mimics that of human women. Utilizing thematic content analysis of comments left by users on Lil Miquela’s Instagram page from late April to early May 2019 (N= 2719), I argue that misogyny, under the guise of aggrieved entitlement, is a significant driver of the demeaning comments directed at Lil Miquela, and that this is reflective of misogyny towards women in general. Furthermore, I discuss the role of male peer support in perpetuating this misogyny. By creating a typology of the different types of sexism that women experience and applying it to the case of Lil Miquela, it demonstrates how comfortable users are to degrade the bot, simply because it is a female AI that cannot feel or respond to insulting comments. Ultimately, the cyberbullying of the bot does cause harm to human women because the bot is representative of human women. This study examines the following questions: (1) How prevalent is sexism in Lil Miquela’s Instagram comments? (2) How does Lil Miquela’s sexist treatment online represent the sexist treatment that human women face? It was discovered that 15.7% of the comments on Lil Miquela’s Instagram are sexist in nature. Of those sexist comments, the majority (91.5%) reflected hatred of women in general, while other comments (7.1%) objectified women by reducing Lil Miquela to female genitalia, and the remaining comments were outright sexually violent towards women (1.4%). Undoubtedly, this breakdown reflects the association between abusive male peers, aggrieved entitlement, and sexism online that contributes to violence towards women as a norm.

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