Online Violence: The New Front Line for Women Journalists*

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Content warning: This story inclu­des grap­hic content that illus­tra­tes the seve­rity of online abuse of women.



There is a new front line in jour­na­lism safety – it is where female jour­na­lists sit at the epicen­tre of risk. The digi­tal, psycho­lo­gi­cal and physi­cal safety thre­ats confron­ting women in jour­na­lism are over­lap­ping, conver­ging and inse­pa­ra­ble. Where and when they inter­sect, they can be terrifying – they are also poten­ti­ally deadly.



The risks requi­ring iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and exami­na­tion range from brutal, proli­fic online harass­ment and abuse to overt, targe­ted attacks that frequently involve thre­ats of sexual violence. Incre­a­singly, they also include digi­tal privacy and secu­rity brea­ches that can expose iden­tifying infor­ma­tion and exacer­bate offline safety thre­ats facing women jour­na­lists. Disin­for­ma­tion tactics, like mali­ci­ous misre­pre­sen­ta­tion using Arti­fi­cial Inte­lli­gence tech­no­lo­gies, are also a feature of the pheno­me­non. These combi­ned thre­ats can be termed ‘gen­de­red online violence.’ The perpe­tra­tors range from indi­vi­dual misogy­nists and networ­ked mobs seeking to shut women up, through to State-linked disin­for­ma­tion agents aiming to under­cut press free­dom and chill criti­cal jour­na­lism through orches­tra­ted attacks.



That is why the Inter­na­ti­o­nal Center for Jour­na­lists (ICFJ) is part­ne­ring with the United Nati­ons Educa­ti­o­nal Scien­ti­fic and Cultu­ral Orga­ni­za­tion (UNESCO) on a global survey into the inci­dence and impacts of online violence against women jour­na­lists, and effec­tive measu­res to combat the problem. The survey, laun­ched today, will help us unders­tand the mani­fes­ta­tion of online violence in 2020 – in the context of COVID-19 and the #Black­Li­ves­Mat­ter move­ment.



To combat online violence, the scale, types, impacts and inter­sec­ti­o­nal charac­te­ris­tics of the perni­ci­ous problem first need to be mapped globally – paying appro­pri­ate atten­tion to under-studied deve­lo­ping coun­tries. But being able to describe and unders­tand the problem is just the first step. To respond to it effec­ti­vely, we need to know what coun­ter­me­a­su­res are being tested and imple­men­ted, how they are (not) working, and what women jour­na­lists most need on the front line of this chilling crisis.



How Do Women Jour­na­lists Expe­ri­ence Online Violence?



This scourge thre­a­tens women jour­na­lists around the world, across a range of plat­forms and digi­tal commu­ni­ties. From news website comments to social media chan­nels like Face­book, Twit­ter and YouTube, women in jour­na­lism are confron­ted daily by online violence which follows them from work to home, inva­ding their profes­si­o­nal and private spaces. The abuse can be proli­fic and feel unre­len­ting. It can inflict psycho­lo­gi­cal injury, cause profes­si­o­nal harm, force women out of jour­na­lism, and lead to physi­cal violence. It has also been linked to the murder of women jour­na­lists.



Regard­less of whet­her or not the women endu­ring these attacks are repor­ting from conflict zones, many use terms commonly asso­ci­a­ted with physi­cal warfare to describe their expe­ri­en­ces of online violence, giving us insight into the visce­ral nature of the harm inflic­ted. Phra­ses deployed by the women jour­na­lists I’ve inter­vi­e­wed on this theme over the past nine years include: “It’s like a low-intense, cons­tant warfare;” “A barrage of hate;” “It’s like a bombard­ment;” “It feels like trench warfare.” As proli­fi­cally trolled Finnish jour­na­list Jessikka Aro has said: “Women are targe­ted in cyber­wars the same way they are in kine­tic wars.”



Gende­red harass­ment and abuse are key aspects of online violence against jour­na­lists. When it first emer­ged in the early 21st century, it was too often dismis­sed by media employers and social media compa­nies as somet­hing that requi­red accep­tance as an “unin­ten­ded conse­quence” of online enga­ge­ment with audi­en­ces. Frequently, the respon­si­bi­lity to manage the problem was placed on the targe­ted women them­sel­ves, who were told to “toug­hen up” and grow a “thic­ker skin” because it was “only online” and there­fore not “real” or “seri­ous.” Howe­ver, exten­sive repor­tage, rese­arch and civil soci­ety advo­cacy since 2014 has resul­ted in the problem and its impacts being widely recog­ni­zed inter­na­ti­o­nally, inclu­ding at the UN level, and there are seve­ral colla­bo­ra­tive initi­a­ti­ves in deve­lop­ment desig­ned to support those targe­ted. But at the same time, online violence has become incre­a­singly complex, wides­pread and entren­ched, posing signi­fi­cant challen­ges to efforts aimed at effec­ti­vely coun­te­ring the problem.



One of the most chilling exam­ples of online violence against a female jour­na­list remains the 2013 case of Caro­line Criado Perez in the UK. This is the kind of abuse that she suffe­red for daring to suggest that lite­rary icon Jane Austen’s head should be on a bank note:



There were thre­ats to muti­late my geni­tals, thre­ats to slit my throat, to bomb my house, to pistol‑w­hip me and burn me alive. I was told I would have poles shoved up my vagina, dicks shoved down my throat. I was told I would be begging to die, as a man would ejacu­late in my eyeballs. And then they star­ted posting an address linked to me around the Inter­net. I felt hunted. I felt terri­fied.



Three Conver­ging Threat Types



There are three conver­ging online thre­ats currently confron­ting women jour­na­lists. They can be iden­ti­fied as follows:

   1. Misogy­nis­tic harass­ment and abuse

This inclu­des patterns of targe­ted, sexu­a­li­sed abuse and harass­ment, ranging from thre­ats of violence (such as sexual assault, rape and murder) against the women jour­na­lists (and their daugh­ters, sisters, mothers, etc.), through to gende­red swea­ring and insults targe­ting their appe­a­rance, sexu­a­lity and profes­si­o­na­lism which are desig­ned to dimi­nish their confi­dence and tarnish their repu­ta­ti­ons. Such abuse can come from indi­vi­du­als, form part of an orga­nic ‘pile on,’ or be a feature of a networ­ked attack driven by misogy­nis­tic groups, for exam­ple.

   2. Orches­tra­ted disin­for­ma­tion campaigns that exploit misogy­nis­tic narra­ti­ves

Women jour­na­lists are frequent targets of digi­tal disin­for­ma­tion campaigns, inclu­ding orches­tra­ted efforts with links to state actors. Disin­for­ma­tion tactics, such as falsely accu­sing them of profes­si­o­nal miscon­duct, spre­a­ding smears about their charac­ter desig­ned to damage their perso­nal repu­ta­ti­ons, and mali­ci­ous misre­pre­sen­ta­tion (e.g. ‘deep­fake’ porn videos, abusive memes, mani­pu­la­ted images) are typi­cal featu­res of these attacks. The objec­tive is to under­mine the jour­na­list’s credi­bi­lity, embar­rass them into retreat, and chill criti­cal jour­na­lism.

   3. Digi­tal privacy and secu­rity thre­ats that incre­ase physi­cal risks asso­ci­a­ted with online violence

Privacy erosion – a combi­na­tion of the crimi­na­li­za­tion of inves­ti­ga­tive jour­na­lism via nati­o­nal secu­rity over­re­ach and digi­tal secu­rity thre­ats like mass survei­llance, device seizure and inter­cep­tion – also heigh­tens the safety thre­ats faced by women jour­na­lists in the Digi­tal Age. Methods of attack desig­ned to compro­mise women jour­na­lists’ online privacy, secu­rity and safety include malware, hacking, doxxing and spoo­fing. They esca­late the physi­cal thre­ats faced by women jour­na­lists because these acts can involve reve­a­ling their resi­den­tial and work addres­ses, along with their patterns of move­ment.



Featu­res of Online Violence



Online violence targe­ting women jour­na­lists mani­fests itself in a vari­ety of ways, but it has a number of common charac­te­ris­tics. These include:

1. It is networ­ked: Online violence is often orga­ni­zed and orches­tra­ted. It can include State-spon­so­red ‘sock puppet networks, ’ acts of ‘patri­o­tic trolling, ’ and involve misogy­nis­tic mobs who seed hate campaigns within one fringe network (e.g. 4chan) before pushing it into more mains­tream networks.
2. It radi­a­tes: Online violence against women jour­na­lists radi­a­tes, with women in their fami­lies, among their sour­ces and in their online audi­en­ces that are also targe­ted.
3. It is inti­mate: In detail and deli­very, the thre­ats are perso­nal. They arrive on mobile phone scre­ens first thing in the morning and last thing at night, and they are often highly sexu­a­li­zed.

The Link between Online Violence and Offline Attacks



A new pattern has emer­ged, connec­ting online violence campaigns and offline attacks, high­ligh­ting the esca­la­ting threat levels faced by women jour­na­lists globally.



In Octo­ber 2017, the inves­ti­ga­tive jour­na­list Daphne Caru­ana Gali­zia was killed when a bomb placed under her car deto­na­ted close to her home in Malta. She was inves­ti­ga­ting corrup­tion with ties to the state. Since her death, inter­na­ti­o­nal NGOs, Euro­pean parli­a­men­ta­ri­ans and media support orga­ni­za­ti­ons have called on the Maltese govern­ment to iden­tify and prose­cute her killers, amid accu­sa­ti­ons of impu­nity. Before she was murde­red, Caru­ana Gali­zia endu­red frequent online thre­ats and spoke about being called a ‘witch.’ There were clear gende­red aspects to the inti­mi­da­tion she suffe­red and the impu­nity that surroun­ded those thre­ats and prece­ded her killing.



The pattern of online violence asso­ci­a­ted with Caru­ana Gali­zi­a’s death is so simi­lar to that being expe­ri­en­ced by anot­her high profile target – Philip­pi­nes-based editor and CEO Maria Ressa – that the murde­red jour­na­list’s sons issued a public state­ment expres­sing their concerns that Ressa was also at risk of murder when State-spon­so­red harass­ment against her rose drama­ti­cally in 2020. “This targe­ted harass­ment, chillingly simi­lar to that perpe­tra­ted against Ressa, crea­ted the condi­ti­ons for Daph­ne’s murder, ” they wrote.



Like­wise, the death of the Indian inves­ti­ga­tive jour­na­list Gauri Lankesh also drew inter­na­ti­o­nal atten­tion to the risks faced by women jour­na­lists openly criti­cal of their own govern­ments, amid calls for their killers to be brought to justice. Lankesh, who was shot dead outside her home, was known for being a critic of right-wing extre­mism and she was subjec­ted to signi­fi­cant online abuse before her death. In the days after Lankesh’s killing, trolls took to social media to cele­brate, descri­bing her as a ‘bitch.’ Again, poin­ting to the emer­gence of a pattern, the case of anot­her Indian jour­na­list – Rana Ayyub – led five United Nati­ons special rappor­teurs to inter­vene in her defense follo­wing the mass circu­la­tion of false infor­ma­tion online desig­ned to coun­ter her criti­cal repor­ting. The inde­pen­dent jour­na­list was on the recei­ving end of disin­for­ma­tion publis­hed on social media, inclu­ding ‘deep­fa­ke’ videos, as well as direct rape and death thre­ats. The UN experts issuing the state­ment in defence of Ayyub poin­ted to the murder of Lankesh, and called on India to act to protect Ayyub, stating: “We are highly concer­ned that the life of Rana Ayyub is at seri­ous risk follo­wing these grap­hic and distur­bing thre­ats.”



Recog­ni­zing the like­li­hood of online violence cros­sing over into the offline world, and under­li­ning the seri­ous mental health impacts of online abuse, the United Nati­ons Gene­ral Assembly has adop­ted a reso­lu­tion on the safety of jour­na­lists with a parti­cu­lar gender focus, «condem­ning unequi­vo­cally» all "speci­fic attacks on women jour­na­lists in the exer­cise of their work, inclu­ding sexual and gender-based discri­mi­na­tion and violence, inti­mi­da­tion and harass­ment, online and offline.”



Online violence against female jour­na­lists is a core tactic desig­ned to belittle, humi­li­ate, discre­dit, induce fear, cause retreat, under­mine accoun­ta­bi­lity jour­na­lism and chill the active parti­ci­pa­tion of women jour­na­lists, their sour­ces and audi­en­ces in public debate. This amounts to an attack on media free­dom, encom­pas­sing the public’s right to access infor­ma­tion, and it cannot afford to be norma­li­zed as a tole­ra­ble aspect of online discourse, nor ‘audi­ence -enga­ged’ jour­na­lism.



About the ICFJ-UNESCO Action Rese­arch Project and How to Parti­ci­pate



The survey we’re laun­ching today was produ­ced in colla­bo­ra­tion with the Centre for Free­dom of the Media (CFOM) at the Univer­sity of Shef­field. It is part of an ongoing UNESCO-ICFJ study into online violence against women jour­na­lists, invol­ving a multi­dis­ci­pli­nary inter­na­ti­o­nal consor­tium of acade­mic and civil soci­ety rese­ar­chers (ranging from those invol­ved in jour­na­lism studies, to poli­ti­cal scien­tists and compu­ter scien­tists).



Toget­her, we are mapping the problem as it mani­fests in 15 coun­tries: Brazil, Kenya, Leba­non, Mexico, Nige­ria, Pakis­tan, the Philip­pi­nes, Poland, Serbia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Tuni­sia, the United King­dom and the United States. In para­llel we are produ­cing three novel case studies on proli­fi­cally targe­ted women jour­na­lists, combi­ning Natu­ral Language Proces­sing (NLP) – a rese­arch method that combi­nes linguis­tics, compu­ter science, and Arti­fi­cial Inte­lli­gence – to analyze perpe­tra­tor networks and the charac­te­ris­tics of the abusive content, along­side deep-dive inter­vi­ews with the women at the recei­ving end of online violence.



Our objec­ti­ves include:

• Mapping the scale and breadth of the problem inter­na­ti­o­nally – espe­ci­ally in the under-studied Global South.
• Esta­blis­hing how patterns of online violence against women jour­na­lists vary around the world.
• Exami­ning how women jour­na­lists expe­ri­ence online violence in an inter­sec­ti­o­nal way. For exam­ple, are the impacts more seri­ous when they are from a speci­fic racial group, or iden­tify as LGBTQI?
• Asses­sing the effec­ti­ve­ness of attempts to address the crisis.
• Making recom­men­da­ti­ons to the UN, govern­ments, industry, civil soci­ety orga­ni­za­ti­ons and tech­no­logy compa­nies for more effec­tive ways to coun­ter the problem

We are suppor­ted in our work by project part­ners the Ethi­cal Jour­na­lism Network (EJN), the Dart Center Asia Paci­fic, and the Inter­na­ti­o­nal Asso­ci­a­tion of Women in Radio and Tele­vi­sion (IAWRT).



This survey is now closed. Please send any ques­ti­ons to:



ICFJ: Dr. Julie Posetti (jposettiicfj [ punto ] org) or Fatima Bahja (fbahjaicfj [ punto ] org) UNESCO: Saorla McCabe (s [ punto ] mccabeunesco [ punto ] org) or Theresa Chor­ba­cher (t [ punto ] chor­ba­cherunesco [ punto ] org)



Note:

If you’ve found this content distres­sing or diffi­cult to discuss, you’re not alone. There are resour­ces avai­la­ble to help. Start by explo­ring the resour­ces from the Dart Center for Jour­na­lism and Trauma, and please seek psycho­lo­gi­cal support if needed.



*This arti­cle draws on a keynote address the author gave to the Oslo Safety of Jour­na­lists confe­rence – in Novem­ber 2019 – titled The New Front­line: Female Jour­na­lists at the Inter­sec­tion of Conver­ging Digi­tal Age Thre­ats. It also inclu­des content from a book chap­ter of the same title, writ­ten for a forth­co­ming antho­logy on peace and conflict repor­ting to be publis­hed by Rout­ledge, and edited by Prof. Kris­ten Skare Orge­ret.



Disclai­mer: The ideas and opini­ons expres­sed in this arti­cle are those of the author; they are not neces­sa­rily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Orga­ni­za­tion