Online harassment makes world press less free
A conversation with Elodie Vialle, affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center and Senior Advisor on Digital Safety and Free Expression at PEN America
Death threats. Defamation campaigns. Doxxing.
These are just some of the threats journalists face in their day to day, especially women and journalists of color who are disproportionately targeted for their work. Online harassment remains one of the largest threats to world press freedom, with 73% of women journalists worldwide experiencing online violence in their course of work, according to UNESCO and ICFJ. To combat this issue and preserve press freedom around the world, it is crucial to increase safety measures for journalists in online spaces.
In her work as a 2022–2023 RSM Assembly Fellow with the Institute for Rebooting Social Media at the Berkman Klein Center, journalist and press freedom defender Elodie Vialle proposed creating an escalation channel within social media platforms to better support journalists and human rights defenders harassed online. While social media platforms do have features like “reporting” and “blocking,” Vialle’s proposed system would provide customized support in emergencies and situations of severe online abuse such as doxxing or coordinated attacks. The “Escalation Channel 2.0” would act as customer service for journalists and human rights defenders, making targeted, trauma-informed support more accessible to journalists around the world with a focus on protecting marginalized voices.
“What I felt in my own experience is the feeling of being powerless when your peer journalists reach out to you being traumatized, facing a situation that no one can help with or that no one is listening to. I wanted to listen to them, and I wanted to find a solution,” Vialle said when I asked her about what led to the creation of Escalation Channel 2.0.
As we talked, I thought about my own experiences as a young woman of color, GenZ journalist, and a student press freedom activist. Malicious online comments about my age, race, and gender are not unique to me, as these proliferate for young women and journalists of color everywhere. Online harassment is creating a chilling effect on free speech, not just through censorship but also through self-censorship.
I sat down with Vialle to further discuss her proposal, her work preserving press freedom online, and challenges with press freedom around the world.
Pratika Katiyar: How do you approach women, people of color, or younger, student journalists facing harassment? These are three different groups who receive uneven support and attention when it comes to harassment online. Do you find that focusing on women or other marginalized groups is effective?
Vialle: Women and marginalized groups are becoming deplatformed because of online harassment. And, we have research in the US showing that journalists of color are particularly targeted. Trying to build solutions to tackle this issue is a way to better enhance diversity. There’s a lot of interest in promoting diversity, but actually, it’s only a layer of communication if you don’t create the conditions to make sure that people can work safely within the newsroom. So acknowledging that women and marginalized groups are disproportionately targeted by online harassment, newsrooms that are committed to work on enhancing diversity can put in place better safety measures.
There’s a lot of interest in promoting diversity, but actually, it’s only a layer of communication if you don’t create the conditions to make sure that people can work safely within the newsroom.
Katiyar: In your presentation, you briefly discussed Taylor Lorenz’s article on how online groups and mobs are coming for student journalists, who already don’t have a lot of protections. Aspiring journalists or younger, GenZ journalists are dropping out of the journalism industry in large numbers because of both online harassment and the tumultuous nature of the media industry right now. How can solutions combating online harassment help bring some younger journalists back into the field or encourage them to continue pursuing journalism?
Vialle: We cannot do our work as journalists without being on Twitter or on Facebook. We have to be visible and engage with our readers. As journalists, this is a tool we have to use for our work. I cannot just stop tweeting; freelancers need to be visible. The same goes for young journalists entering the field; they need their work to be visible.
I spoke with student journalists in the US facing death threats, and they didn’t have any idea how to deal with that. There’s two layers of action here. One is institutions. The institution or organization has to set up and implement safety protocols and training. And as always, we acknowledge that newsrooms today are struggling to survive, and that it is difficult to implement additional costs. So when we have these discussions about safety, we really want to acknowledge the limited [financial] constraints for student newspapers too. In universities, building connections between the existing support helplines to get access to therapists or getting a special connection with safety hotlines for students in journalism, because we do know that they face a higher level of risk. Students can also learn how to better protect themselves using PEN America’s resources.
Katiyar: There is a lot going in terms of press freedom around the world. The recent arrest of WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia is an example of a physical violation of press freedom, but there’s also a lot of online censorship in countries like India, where the government is blocking access to information. Additionally, in the United States, there’s so many news outlets shutting down or laying off staff, with BuzzFeed News being one of them recently. The landscape for the future of journalism looks very uncertain right now. What challenges do you anticipate in preserving press freedom around the world right now, and is there any hope?
Vialle: Today, journalists are facing, I will say, a new array of threats, between arbitrary detention, physical attacks, arrest, murder, online harassment, intimidation, and defamation campaigns. The situation is really bad for the journalism field. The fact that in democracies now, we are facing threats that are similar to the one we’re used to in authoritarian regimes, that’s also a signal that things are going badly.
The fact that in democracies now, we are facing threats that are similar to the one we’re used to in authoritarian regimes, that’s also a signal that things are going badly.
The rise of disinformation and the lack of trust in the media normalizes attacks against journalists. All these narratives developed by governments and enemies of the free press, trying to use journalists as scapegoats, leads to direct physical attacks. I observed this in France because we had some protests, of course during COVID. The rise of disinformation led to attacks on journalists and attempts to censor content. A Reuters Institute report saw that there’s a lot of disinformation that exploits the fact that underrepresented communities don’t feel served, they don’t feel represented well in the media outlets.
I want to give you a sign of hope though. We’ve mentioned the social media platforms relating to my project. These platforms are being used to amplify online abuse and gender-based violence, but but they can be a part of the solution as well, if they implement features to mitigate the impact of online abuse and proactively work with civil society on code signing solutions
Katiyar: Thank you for that answer and for your time today.
The theme for World Press Freedom Day 2023 is “Freedom of expression as a driver for all other human rights.” When freedom of expression is suppressed, access to information and all other human rights are put at risk. It is more important than ever to ideate and implement sociotechnical solutions to better support journalists who are attacked and abused online beyond the traditional methods within social media platforms. That rings especially true with the recent layoffs of trust and safety roles in the tech industry, specifically at Twitter, a platform known extensively for the presence of journalists.
Centers like Berkman Klein showcase how to best combat this pervasive issue: by putting practitioners — civil society folks, technologists — and academics together. But more attention needs to be paid to including young journalists. GenZ is chronically online, and solutions to combat online harassment should start at the university/journalism school level. That includes advocating for classes on online safety, working on public policy efforts in conjunction with social media companies to educate GenZ on online abuse, and pressing news organizations and journalists to prioritize hiring young journalists of color. Newsrooms highlight their innovation and diversity efforts, but those efforts cannot succeed if journalists are currently under threat and if the next generation is dropping out of the industry altogether.
Pratika Katiyar is a research assistant at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, a student at Northeastern University, and a board member for the Student Press Law Center, a nonprofit that defends students’ press freedom rights. She is a GenZ free expression activist that has been profiled in Teen Vogue, NBC Washington, and ABC for her work and has spoken on panels for the United Nations, PEN America, and Georgetown Law School.
