Introduction

Online assaults targeting women journalists pose one of the gravest contemporary threats to their safety, gender equality, and media freedom. These attacks are often vicious, coordinated, highly sexualized, and malicious, particularly targeting women belonging to religious and ethnic minorities or gender non-conforming individuals.(1) Regrettably, the various manifestations of online violence faced by women journalists with various intersecting identities are the “new frontline in journalism safety.”(2) There are several distinct characteristics of online violence targeting journalists:

• Impact: Online violence targeting women journalists(3) aims to belittle and intimidate them, fostering a climate of fear and withdrawal.(4) It further seeks to tarnish their professional credibility, undermining trust in the media. This “amounts to an attack on democratic deliberation and media freedom, encompassing the public’s right to access information, and it cannot afford to be normalised or tolerated as an inevitable aspect of online discourse, nor contemporary audience-engaged journalism.”(5)

• Rights implications: The right to be free from discrimination, threats, and violence applies both off- and online. Countering online violence that targets women journalists is critical to the promotion of, among others, the rights to freedom of expression, media freedom, and privacy. It is not only limited to the digital sphere but frequently spills into physical spaces.(6)

• Targets: While any person can be a victim of online violence, women and those with marginalised or ‘at risk’ identities are disproportionately targeted and affected by online violence due to their gender, sexual orientation, identity, and other intersecting factors.(7) Often targeted as a result of their gender and their work, women journalists are exposed to threatening and intimidating content which has detrimental impacts on not only their personal lives and safety but also their ability to carry out their important work.(8)

• Digital tools and spaces: The evolution of new digital technologies and information and communications technology (ICT) tools and services has given rise to different and more pervasive forms of online violence against journalists.(9) These technologies have enabled coordinated attacks at a previously unprecedented scale and with anonymity that creates challenges for securing accountability for perpetrators. It is anticipated that these will continue to enable more attacks against journalists in the coming years.(10)

• Various forms of harm: Gendered online violence against women journalists is frequently perpetrated through and linked with other online harms. For example, orchestrated disinformation campaigns,(11) and being targeted with deepfakes to create false narratives and artificially generated or edited images to shame and undermine their credibility. Doxxing and cyber-stalking dealt with in greater detail in Module 2 in this series, are also common tools to attack journalists and inhibit reporting.

• Prevalence: Although violence against journalists, particularly women, is a widespread and serious issue, even existing estimates of prevalence are likely significantly undercounted. UNESCO reports that journalists, specifically women journalists, often do not lodge complaints or reports with law enforcement agencies, and even fewer pursue legal remedies, signifying the “need for improvement in legal and judicial responses to online violence against women journalists.”(12) In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), various states have enacted legislative prohibitions against online violence impacting journalists. However, their adequacy to effectively deal with online violence has been called into question, with gendered violence posing a specific challenge.

This module provides a high-level overview of this emerging trend and examines the international law framework as it relates to online violence against journalists, with a focus on the gendered impact on women journalists.