GENDER AND MISINFORMATION: DIGITAL HATE AND HARASSMENT (PART II)

Abstract

Social media platforms allow for free expression and speech, but also open possibilities for online misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, harm, and conspiracy theories (Nadim and Fladmoe, 2019). Here, gender as an analytical category plays a significant role in understanding how women, LGBTQ+ people, and members of various minorities, in particular, are disproportionately targeted by hate actors. In fact, through gendered violence and online hate, social media serves to promote structural inequality where gender minorities become the target of harassment (Jane 2014a; Jane 2017). Gendered violence and cyberhate have consequences that negatively impact women and queer groups and pose a threat to political goals through victimization and reinforcement of patriarchy (Jane, 2014b). Though anonymous in nature, mobilized and networked hate becomes a product of what Castells (1986) refers to as the culture of real virtuality where is a flow of capital, information, technology, images as well as organizational interaction. In particular, gendered cyberhate targets women in longstanding discourses that view men as superior to women (Jane, 2014b). Misogyny exists as a connective tissue that legitimizes the subjugation of feminine and othered identities in relation to heteronormative patriarchy (Kaul, 2021). In particular, online violence against women in politics poses a deepening challenge to democracy, serving as a key tool of illiberalism and democratic backsliding across the globe. Hate speech against women in politics, female journalists and other public figures encompasses all forms of aggression, coercion, and intimidation seeking to exclude women from the digital public sphere simply because they are women. Gender misinformation here itself becomes a form of violence that undermines women and othered identities and weaponizes gendered narratives to promote political, social, or economic objectives. This online behavior seeks to achieve political outcomes: targeting individual women to harm them or drive them out of public life, while also sending a message that women in general should not be involved in politics. It is important to note that digital misogyny may not be overt at all times but benign and subtle - involving “everyday, seemingly innocent slights, comments, overgeneralizations, othering, and denigration of marginalized groups” (Anderson, 2010; Anderson, 2015) that although unintentional is insidious and dangerous. Despite growing concerns about the increasing prevalence of misogynistic or sexist hate speech on different popular digital platforms, research in this field and the attention directed at ways to combat hate online is relatively recent. At this juncture, this panel on Gender Misinformation: Hate and Harassment will provide a forum to discuss how women in politics, journalism, and the film industry are perceived, and what the hate that targets these women looks like in practice in a global context. We bring together scholars whose interdisciplinary and comparative work in Germany, Azerbaijan, the Philippines, India, and Brazil focuses on prominent women in the digital public sphere and political leaders from racial, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups to demonstrate how misogynistic speech acts to exacerbate patriarchal norms and operationalize a relationship between gender and power. In addition to the focus on digital hate and harassment in the Global South, this panel also brings together a diversity of methodological interventions