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Although digital technologies have created new opportunities for women journalists and activists to communicate and organise, they have also reproduced patterns of harassment and abuse that women journalists face throughout their journalistic or public interest activities, in a wide range of digital forms.
The growth of online abuse and harassment, which has become both more prevalent but also more coordinated, is intended to threaten, silence and stigmatise women journalists, with the potential to lock them out of public spaces.
Tackling online abuse against women journalists is therefore essential to ensuring the full enjoyment of the right to free expression, and creating an environment where women can participate in online and offline spaces
Briefing on online harassment and abuse against women journalists in the Iranian diaspora
ARTICLE 19’s briefing on Online harassment against women journalists in the Iranian diaspora, produced in collaboration with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), looks into the toxic and often violent space women journalists reporting on Iran inhabit.
In March 2021, ARTICLE 19 interviewed women journalists from the Iranian diaspora who cover Iran for various media outlets and who face increased and concerning levels of online harassment and abuse as a result of their work.
The testimonies indicate that the attacks faced online often include but are not limited to direct death threats against them and their families and the dissemination of their personal information, known as doxing. Many of these forms of online harassment and abuse have a clear sexualised and gender-based pattern.
Women journalists based in Iran are also frequently subject to other severe forms of discrimination, harassment and — in the case of arrests — torture, sexual assault, and lack of due process.
Governments, media organisations and social-media companies must support Iranian journalists in the diaspora.
Understanding online abuse
What do we mean by online abuse and harassment?
Online abuse and harassment manifests in various forms and can encompass a huge range of attacks on the Internet, including on major social media platforms, or through the use of specific apps, platforms or technologies. Many of them are gender-based attacks targeted at women journalists as a result of their journalistic activities with the purposes of threatening, intimidating and silencing them, and can range from unauthorised access to their personal accounts to threats of sexual violence. They can have a detrimental impact on women journalists’ ability to carry out their journalistic activities, their personal lives, and their safety.
The abuse can include the following forms:
- Doxxing – This involves the public dissemination of a woman’s personal information, such as email, telephone or home address. This can often result in increased harassment, and create a safety risk.
- Surveillance – Whether perpetrated by public or private entities, the monitoring of a woman’s online and/or offline life through technological means.
- Threats – These are targeted through digital platforms or apps, and often include threats of physical or sexual violence.
- Harassment – Like offline harassment, this can include a range of unwanted and intimidatory activities including contact through messages or apps. Online this can often take the form of ‘pile-ons’, with multiple perpetrators.
- Non-consensual distribution of intimate or sexual images – This refers to the sharing of sexual or intimate images of a woman, which can be taken with (or by her) or without her knowledge, and either by someone who has access to them with consent (but there is no consent for them to be further shared), or by someone who gains access through other means. This can have serious psychological and reputational consequences.
- Stalking – Includes a range of behaviours, similar to offline stalking, such as continued monitoring through technology, the pattern of which leaves the woman feeling unsafe or restricted in her freedoms online.
- Hacking – This is when someone gains access to a woman’s private accounts or devices through malicious means. This can often lead to another form of attack, including blackmail.
- Identity theft or unauthorised use of accounts – Where someone is able to take control of or in some way impersonate a woman’s online presence.
- Discriminatory and sexist speech and gender stereotypes – This can include a wide range of types of speech based on negative stereotypes or on the basis of a woman’s gender, nationality, religious belief, race, among others.
This list is not exhaustive, and women facing online harassment and abuse may experience multiple different attacks of this type, from more than one attacker.
Why is online abuse a free expression issue?
Women journalists and human rights defenders who speak out against government abuses, corruption related and women’s rights issues, or who report on issues which have traditionally been considered more “adequate for men”, are already at particular risk of attack, as part of efforts to silence them and restrict their free expression. This is also the case when it comes to online abuse.
Women’s right to freedom of expression requires them to have equal access to the spaces for public debate, and be equally able to share their ideas and opinions without censorship, or fear of retaliation. When women using technology are routinely faced with threats or other digital attacks, it can have the effect of driving them offline and out of debate, whether because they fear for their safety, or the barrage of abuse becomes unbearable whenever they open their devices. This may operate as a form of self-censorship – women face the issue of deciding to access certain forms of technology or speak out online when they are at risk of abuse, which can often escalate to threats to their physical safety. Restriction of women’s access to information and expression online in this form therefore often has a similar impact to offline attacks, and is often accompanied by them, and must be taken seriously as a free expression concern.
How should we tackle it?
Harassment and abuse against women journalists online is rooted in gender inequality in societies, which also plays out in the media environment. Given this, and the variety of attacks and actors involved, the response to online abuse and harassment of women journalists requires a multi-stakeholder approach.
Women must be at the centre of and involved in efforts to tackle the problem, and governments and other actors should involve civil society, especially women’s rights and freedom of expression organisations, in formulating responses, as well as in broader policy discussions concerning the use of digital technologies.
Governments should not only legislate and adopt comprehensive public policy measures to protect free expression, guarantee gender equality and counter discrimination, but also create comprehensive prevention-based mechanisms and monitoring and response measures that include efforts to tackle the gender digital divide and ensure women’s privacy is protected.
Businesses, particularly social media platforms, have a role to play, as developers and moderators of the products and platforms through which this abuse often takes place. They should include specific gender-based harassment and abuse sections in community guidelines, and conduct freedom of expression and non-discrimination impact assessments, as well as reviewing the effectiveness of reporting mechanisms for online abuse and increasing transparency on content moderation.
It is only through these combined efforts, to improve women’s equality online and off, that we will be able to bring an end to online abuse, and enable women journalists to participate and enjoy their human rights free of discrimination.
Responding to online abuse
ARTICLE 19 believes that international standards and guarantees of freedom of expression provide the framework to resolve tensions and maximise women’s enjoyment of both the right to freedom of expression and information and the right to equality. We believe that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to these challenges. What is needed is a holistic approach combining political commitment to the protection of human rights, a robust legal and policy framework and comprehensive and well-resourced implementation.
ARTICLE 19’s briefing papers set out recommended approaches to tackling online abuse and harassment against women journalists.
• The first brief looks at States’ obligations to adopt and implement measures to protect and promote both the right to freedom of expression and gender equality, based on existing international human rights standards.
• The second brief looks at policies and practices of three dominant social media companies and their role in addressing online harassment and abuse against women on their platforms.
• The third brief examines the scope of State obligations to address online harassment and abuse of women journalists, and to conduct effective investigations into the online harassment and abuse.
This work is guided by the principle that coordinated and focused action in promoting the rights to freedom of expression and equality is essential for fostering a tolerant, pluralistic and diverse democratic society in which all human rights can be realised.
We hope that these briefs will provide support to those working toward women’s rights and freedom of expression activists to guide for action in countering gender-based discrimination and violations of freedom of expression and discrimination online and offline.
Free expression and the Internet are key to combating violence against women
On International Day to end Violence Against Women, ARTICLE 19’s Head of Gender and Sexuality Judy Taing discusses how securing an internet free of abuse is vital to efforts to end VAW.
