Breaking the chains: Reconfiguring the cycle of online violence against female journalists

[mozfest-bot]

[ ID ] c1220c15-a79c-4430-9986-c96ce75ffc1a

[ Submitter's Name ] Sana Malik [ Submitter's Affiliated Organisation ] Mozilla Foundation/ This is Worldtown [ Submitter's Twitter ] @Sanomaly

[ Space ] journalism [ Secondary Space ] cities

[ Format ] learning-lab, hands-on

Description

Overwhelmingly, women who are in the public eye, and those whose jobs require them to maintain a public profile are subject to the most vicious forms of harassment. In fact, 95% of aggressive behaviour, harassment, abusive language and denigrating images in online spaces are aimed at women -- making this a gendered issue.

This session is highly interactive, and the goal is for participants to come out with strategies that allow them to be effective allies for vulnerable female journalists. Participants will use three global case studies and work on designing effective allyship strategies. The workshop will intend to design a prototype for allyship that can be employed in numerous ways. There will also be a chance to discuss positive online spaces and examples that are attempting to break through online harassment. Any online solution will be accompanied by offline strategies that can work in tandem.

Agenda

In groups, participants will design and strategize to answer the question “how might we help female journalists facing online abuse?” Each group will focus on a single case study, which are based in three different countries to show the prevalence of this abuse across regions, and the ways in which it intersects. In groups, participants will identify: patterns of abuse, what systems perpetuate it (How are news and social media sites complicit? What role do/should intermediaries play?)? How can the public help? What design features are important to prevent this abuse from taking shape? What resources can be pooled to help the victim of this abuse?

At the end, participants will leave with a number of collective strategies and hopefully come up with a campaign that participants can engage in following the workshop.

Participants

If we are a smaller group of less than five, then we will all work on the same case study. If there is enough time, we will work together as a group on 2 different case studies -- to get a better comparative perspective.

Fifteen participants will break out into three groups of five and each will work on a case study that identifies the right patterns and approach to remediation and allyship. Twenty-five participants will be split into three groups of 7 or 8 with the same approach as above. One person will be assigned by each group to report on their work and findings, and we will all work together at the end to identify a collective strategy we can work on.

Outcome

This workshop will help develop an initial prototype to create better allies. This might be in the form of a social media campaign or a design strategy that women who face online abuse can use. It’s important that any online solutions also be accompanied by offline help -- so participants will leave with a toolkit to help women who are facing online abuse and violence in the most effective way possible. The most important thing will be to carry on a global network built from the MozFest session that can “check in” on the online world and call out negative behaviour and abusers from the outset, as well as be a supportive network for women online. Currently, there are limited approaches to dealing with online harassment in an effective way leading to inertia in changing behaviours, but building a community with a common goal can help to reconfigure this norm.

[cubicgarden]

Sounds much more like Journalism than physical/cities

[amirad]

This is a great follow-up from a lot of work we did this year on issues related to women and the web and conversations we've been looking at on how to create better allies for people of diverse backgrounds! I can definitely share more of the work Sana and I have been doing if any of the wranglers or others and interested in hearing how we're tackling gender issues online.

[ryanpitts]

Checking in with @amirad here