IPI’s research on online harassment of journalists has clearly highlighted that attacks targeting female journalists are not only more frequent but also more vicious and often adopt a highly sexualized language that is difficult to counter through rational arguments and professional tools and results. Therefore, they affect the person beyond their professional identity, leaving a sense of vulnerability.
In extreme cases these attacks lead to self-censorship or worse: They may cause women to retreat from the public sphere, leaving the male-dominated field of journalism with even fewer female voices
IPI has worked with the Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (RFoM) as part of its #SOFJO (Safety of Female Journalists Online) project to analyse specific challenges women face in this area and the newsroom practices aimed at addressing them.
This section presents IPI’s work in three areas:
- Reports and documents examining and framing online harassment of female journalists and putting forward recommendations so as to create a basis for a solutions-oriented approach.
- Interviews with experts that provide in-depth analyses of specific aspects of the problem and suggestions on how to address them.
- Interviews with journalists targeted by online harassment campaigns that illustrate the consequences of this phenomenon on journalists and journalism.
