Women journalists in the age of online trolls
On July 13, 2018, journalist Asma Shirazi interviewed former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif when he was coming back from London, along with his daughter Maryam Nawaz, to face a prison sentence. The interview was not telecast due to censorship, but trolls immediately started an online campaign targeting Ms. Shirazi. “It left a psychological impact on me. I wouldn’t like to go in the details as I don’t want my trolls to get any satisfaction from it. While it affected me for a short while — I took a break from Twitter, or became more cautious about what I wrote or said — I took it positively in the long run as I learned a lot from this episode.”
Ms. Shirazi said she deals with such negative campaigns by not checking her mentions on Twitter.
This was not an isolated incident. Last month, several journalists critical of the government, including Marvi Sirmed, Mubashir Zaidi and Umar Cheema, were abused on Twitter with trending hashtags. Women are particularly targeted.
A report by Digital Rights Foundation noted that “55% respondents said they had been subjected to online abuse and/or harassment. Ninety-one percent women feel abuse is gendered and its nature is rarely professional but mostly personal.”
Ms. Sirmed, a journalist and rights activist, said women are targeted because of the general lack of acceptance for them as opinion leaders or figures of authority on any subject other than household or the care role society expects them to be in. “Having a dissenting opinion or adopting a role divergent from the ages old image of ‘good’ and ‘chaste’, women are a perfect recipe for society’s collective outrage and ridicule. This is why women journalists have to face far more violent speech, online attacks on their integrity and physical security, body-shaming, slut-shaming, etc.”
On April 24, the campaign against Ms. Sirmed generated over 11,000 tweets within a span of two hours, according to a DAWN analysis. Many trollers were supporters of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and the military establishment.
Soft targets
While online abuse has in any case increased in Pakistan, women in the media face this especially more, said Zebunnisa Burki, journalist at The News. “I think women are perceived as ‘soft targets’ online too, due to the immediate ‘shaming’ of women through sexualised abuse, which is the most common way to threaten a woman online, and of course the inherent blind animosity against women in the public sphere is strong even now.”
Marium Chaudhry, founder of digital news platform The Current PK, said women are easily trolled on social media because like in the real world, they are considered to be an easier target online. “A woman anchor, who was being badly trolled once, told me that she didn’t read what people were saying; she just couldn’t pick up her phone knowing that there were foul messages about her on the other end. It makes women reporters feel uncomfortable and gets under their skin — which is exactly what these trolls want.”
Ms. Sirmed, the rights activist, explained how she feels when she’s insulted online. “I keep ignoring such stuff but then it starts becoming a sore in my soul, it starts enraging me bit by bit and a time comes when I just want to yell at the person sending those tweets or posts, and throw back the most humiliating insults. I have done that in the past and I am not very proud of those unnecessary outbursts. So then, I started blocking everyone who sent insults, expletives, accusations or threats. But it doesn’t stop hurting. The problem with online bullying is, it keeps coming back. There is no end to it.”
There is certain legal framework for the redress of online threats, bullying and libel, but even that framework doesn’t come for the rescue of the victims, Ms. Sirmed said.
“Unfortunately, it is quite actively followed and used by the state authorities when it comes to political, ideological and religious dissenters. But when these dissenters want to use it, the entire system appears to be absolutely paralysed... The state of Pakistan seems to have failed in meting out justice to dissenting voices,” she added.
(Originally published in The Hindu)
Ms. Shirazi said she deals with such negative campaigns by not checking her mentions on Twitter.
This was not an isolated incident. Last month, several journalists critical of the government, including Marvi Sirmed, Mubashir Zaidi and Umar Cheema, were abused on Twitter with trending hashtags. Women are particularly targeted.
A report by Digital Rights Foundation noted that “55% respondents said they had been subjected to online abuse and/or harassment. Ninety-one percent women feel abuse is gendered and its nature is rarely professional but mostly personal.”
Ms. Sirmed, a journalist and rights activist, said women are targeted because of the general lack of acceptance for them as opinion leaders or figures of authority on any subject other than household or the care role society expects them to be in. “Having a dissenting opinion or adopting a role divergent from the ages old image of ‘good’ and ‘chaste’, women are a perfect recipe for society’s collective outrage and ridicule. This is why women journalists have to face far more violent speech, online attacks on their integrity and physical security, body-shaming, slut-shaming, etc.”
On April 24, the campaign against Ms. Sirmed generated over 11,000 tweets within a span of two hours, according to a DAWN analysis. Many trollers were supporters of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and the military establishment.
Soft targets
While online abuse has in any case increased in Pakistan, women in the media face this especially more, said Zebunnisa Burki, journalist at The News. “I think women are perceived as ‘soft targets’ online too, due to the immediate ‘shaming’ of women through sexualised abuse, which is the most common way to threaten a woman online, and of course the inherent blind animosity against women in the public sphere is strong even now.”
Marium Chaudhry, founder of digital news platform The Current PK, said women are easily trolled on social media because like in the real world, they are considered to be an easier target online. “A woman anchor, who was being badly trolled once, told me that she didn’t read what people were saying; she just couldn’t pick up her phone knowing that there were foul messages about her on the other end. It makes women reporters feel uncomfortable and gets under their skin — which is exactly what these trolls want.”
Ms. Sirmed, the rights activist, explained how she feels when she’s insulted online. “I keep ignoring such stuff but then it starts becoming a sore in my soul, it starts enraging me bit by bit and a time comes when I just want to yell at the person sending those tweets or posts, and throw back the most humiliating insults. I have done that in the past and I am not very proud of those unnecessary outbursts. So then, I started blocking everyone who sent insults, expletives, accusations or threats. But it doesn’t stop hurting. The problem with online bullying is, it keeps coming back. There is no end to it.”
There is certain legal framework for the redress of online threats, bullying and libel, but even that framework doesn’t come for the rescue of the victims, Ms. Sirmed said.
“Unfortunately, it is quite actively followed and used by the state authorities when it comes to political, ideological and religious dissenters. But when these dissenters want to use it, the entire system appears to be absolutely paralysed... The state of Pakistan seems to have failed in meting out justice to dissenting voices,” she added.
(Originally published in The Hindu)
Comments
Best ignore them.
Regards from Dublin, Ireland.
Maria Buckley