The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (OSCE RFoM), Dunja Mijatovic, has released a list of recommendations directed at OSCE states, media organisations and social media platforms for countering the online harassment and abuse of female journalists.
The recommendations aim to combat a new form of silencing critical journalism that, paradoxically, has emerged from an otherwise indispensable tool for free expression: the Internet. On the one hand, social media and online news platforms have contributed to boosting the dissemination of information and have provided immediate access to news and information from every corner of the globe. They have also opened a line of communication between journalists and readers while putting an end to the asymmetric relationship between the two groups, since anyone with a smartphone can now contribute to the news cycle.
On the other hand, these new media, and social media in particular, are also being employed to intimidate and harass journalists, bloggers and citizen reporters. This phenomenon, as the recommendations and various studies have pointed out, disproportionately affects female journalists, who are targeted for both their journalistic work and their gender. In some cases, female victims of threats and sexually charged verbal abuse on social media endure private distress for months before speaking out. This situation jeopardises not only the victim’s physical safety, but also her ability to do her job, and by extension the public’s access to news and information.
In her recommendations released this week, Mijatovic argues for a holistic approach. First, states must recognise online abuse as a threat to free expression and combat such abuse by means of already existing laws that meet international human rights standards. Moreover, states should provide technical, legal and awareness training to law enforcement agencies in order to identify threats and protect individuals in danger.
Secondly, media organisations should, among other measures, adopt industry-wide guidelines on monitoring online abuse and adopt support systems to counter cyber harassment against their journalists.
Lastly, intermediaries, such as social media platforms, should coordinate with civil society organisations to counter abusive behaviour online and promote best practices for online safety within their platform.
The recommendations are the result of an expert meeting held in Vienna in September 2015 on “New Challenges to Freedom of Expression: Countering Online Abuse to Female Journalists”. Organised by the OSCE RFoM, the event brought together over 80 media experts, government representatives and policy makers.
Among the concerns shared by many in the meeting was the lack of data in many countries related to online abuse of female journalists, which hindered understanding the dimension of the problem and designing solutions to combat it.
International Press Institute (IPI) Executive Director Barbara Trionfi, who chaired a panel at the event, used the opportunity to highlight IPI’s own efforts to overcoming the lack of data: “The systematic collection of data on online harassment is vital to develop strategies to confront it. That need lies at the very heart of IPI’s new digital initiative, On</the>line, which aims to track digital attacks against journalists and provide legal and technical support whenever possible.”
