Magdalena Celuch presented the poster “Reporting online harassment to the police: Predictors and associations with online behavior and institutional trust. A cross-national longitudinal study” at EASP. The study was conducted together with Nina Savela, Iina Savolainen and Atte Oksanen.
The study examines online harassment reporting across six European countries: Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Poland. Using longitudinal survey data from 8,806 adults collected over four yearly waves from 2022 to 2025, the study focuses on respondents who experienced online harassment during at least one wave.
The findings show that only 12.65% of online harassment episodes were reported to the police. Reporting was more likely when harassment was more frequent, involved multiple harmful behaviours, or included serious forms such as reputational harm and threats of violence. The study found no clear association between reporting and trust in the police, but active social media users were more likely to report harassment, likely reflecting their greater online engagement and exposure.
The study contributes to ETL’s cyberhate and cyberharassment research stream by highlighting the conditions under which victims seek institutional support and the challenges involved in responding to online abuse. Magdalena Celuch’s post-doc project is funded by the Wihuri Foundation and she received a travel grant from The Foundation for Economic Education.