International Study Finds Online Violence Against Women Journalists Encourages Physical Violence Too
Every single day a woman is harassed in some part of the world – and this is true irrespective of whether it is in real life or online. In fact, online violence against women is a very big concern in today’s time. And out of all the women who are victims of this online violence, it is the women journalists that have it the worst. Don’t believe me? Well, you don’t have to because a recent international study found this to be true. Yep, according to an international study, online violence against women journalists is getting so bad that it even encourages physical violence such as assault and murder.
The study titled ‘The Chilling: A global study of online violence against women journalists by International Center for Journalists (ICF)’ highlighted that the online violence that is committed against female journalists is done with the purpose to silence, humiliate, and discredit them. The research for the study was done in 15 countries over a three-year span.
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The study said, “It inflicts very real psychological injury, chills public interest journalism, kills women’s careers and deprives society of important voices and perspectives”. The report of this study is one of the most linguistically, geographically, and ethnically diverse when it comes to online violence against women journalists.
The study was led by Dr. Julie Posetti who said, “Online violence towards women journalists aids and abets impunity for crimes against journalists, and it must be tackled urgently.” And for this to happen there have to be people who have a political holding so that they can instigate and amplify this kind of violence to be restrained and even penalised.
As per reports, Dr. Julie Posetti even pointed out that the social media platforms where this kind of violence is happening should be held accountable as they are the ones who in a way promote online violence through their freedom expression-respecting respecting regulation.
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The 313-page-long study on online violence against women journalists openly calls out governments, tech companies, the news industry, legal and judicial people, and civil society to take more steps in order to curb this kind of violence.
The study showed that 48% of the women journalists surveyed reported being harassed with unwanted private messages on social media. This emphasised the fact that most online violence occurs in the shadow. In fact, some of them even shared their experience of being stalked offline which began with online messaging.
The study concludes by putting forward a list of steps and recommendations that governments, policymakers, etc. can make to ensure that online violence against women journalists is curbed and to protect their safety.
First Published: November 08, 2022 11:27 AM
