"This study used in-depth interviews and focus groups of editors and journalists in Kenya (N*=*55) to show how news organizations fail to prioritize gender equality. All participants identified a gendered hierarchy in newsrooms, which participants believed connects to other inequalities such as stor
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y assignment, pay, safety, and promotion. Most women participants had experienced sexual harassment at work multiple times. Participants also stated exclusive socialization for men, aka a “boys’ club,” was central to how newsrooms function and advantaged men in terms of building networks, promotions, scoops, work assignments, and increased job security. By linking the various negative outcomes of gendered work environments, this study adds to feminist communication scholarship by showing how organizations reinforce gendered inequalities rather than eliminating them. It also calls on gatekeeping research to focus on meso- and macro-level influences as a necessary shift away from placing responsibility on the individual level alone." (Abstract)
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"The abuse and harassment against women journalists has become increasingly frequent and more coordinated in Mexico. As demonstrated throughout this study, it aims to threaten, silence, and stigmatize women journalists, with the potential to keep them out of public spaces. Despite the importance of
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selfcare actions and collective care, State responsibility in Mexico and its institutions at national and local levels to guarantee journalistic work that is free of violence is vital for any democracy. Currently, there are no public policies based on an intersectional approach that would allow a proper and relevant response to the patterns of violence against women journalists. The shortsightedness with which institutional responses have been developed has failed to generate protections or reparation. It has not managed to change the context of violence to which women journalists are subjected, nor modify the structural inequality between men and women. Moreover, the levels of impunity in the country still lead to violence materializing into crime. The recommendations of this paper seek to share the best practices from civil society groups and networks working to enhance existing protocols while defending women journalist´s freedom of expression and freedom of the press." (Conclusions)
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"This article discusses online harassment against women journalists exploring self-reported incidents, effects, and trust in safety mechanisms. Drawing on twenty-five semi-structured interviews of women journalists in Portugal, we use a feminist and critical realist framework to explore the causal s
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tructures and generative mechanisms that explain their vulnerability to online abuse. We identify three overarching themes: increasing visibility in a context of higher hostility towards journalism and insufficient safety mechanisms; intersectional gender inequality and cultural mores that foster it; and (individual) responses to harassment. These themes show that women journalists’ actions are both constrained and enabled by existing structures and cultural attitudes. While they tend to deny harassment is caused by their gender, seeing it mainly because of their job, they admit the sexualised and gendered nature of the insults, seeing this as an added offence not experienced by their male counterparts. They also see harassment as a continuation of inequality and prevailing sexism and find the protection mechanisms insufficient and ineffective. As a result, they assume an extra burden of emotional labour to deal with online bullying, admitting self-censoring and the need to develop resilience strategies." (Abstract)
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"Concerns about the disproportionate levels of online gender-based abuse experienced by female journalists when compared to their male counterparts have attracted sizeable scholarly attention in the last few years. Extant studies have highlighted that female journalists experience online forms of ha
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rassment such as name calling, body shaming, trolling, verbal abuse, sextortion, non-consensual sharing of intimate images, manipulation of photos, cyberstalking, doxing, hacking, receiving unwanted, offensive sexually explicit emails or messages, and inappropriate advances on social media platforms, in the line of duty. Although these findings are true in some of the newsrooms in the global North, there is a disconcerting absence of systematic studies looking at the experiences of female journalists in selected newsrooms in Africa in general and Namibia in particular. This article seeks to fill this lacuna by empirically investigating the extent to which online gender-based violence is deep-seated social problem in selected Namibian newsrooms. It deploys the intersectional approach to analyze the online gender-based violence experienced by female journalists in Namibia. Drawing our data from interviews with female journalists in selected Namibian newsrooms, overall, our findings suggest that cases of online gender-based violence against female journalists are still negligible when compared to other contexts, it is happening, nonetheless. This emerging phenomenon is largely underreported. Furthermore, it is occurring in an environment devoid of legislative, institutional, and newsroom-specific mechanisms aimed at ensuring the safety of female journalists. Namibian female journalists are facing unique online gender-based violence, which contributes immensely towards self-censorship and retreating from the public sphere." (Abstract)
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"The topic of violence against women in journalism has received growing attention in scholarship, especially in terms of digital forms of harassment. At the same time, many women journalists continue to experience direct forms of harassment in the pursuit of their work. Focusing on the Pacific Islan
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d nation of Fiji, this study contributes to scholarship on sexual harassment in journalism by examining the experiences of more than 40 journalists, employing both a standardized survey and in-depth interviews. Our findings demonstrate how widespread sexual harassment is, with colleagues and superiors, as well as politicians and businesspeople the most frequent culprits. Women journalists report a harrowing range of cases, and the results show that inadequate safeguards contribute to sexual harassment’s wide-ranging effect on their personal and professional lives." (Abstract)
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"Technology-facilitated abuse and violence disproportionately affect marginalized people. While researchers have explored this issue in the context of public-facing social media platforms, less is known about how it plays out on more private messaging apps. This study draws on in-depth interviews wi
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th women and queer journalists and activists in Lebanon to illustrate their experiences of infrastructural platform violence on WhatsApp. Specifically, we distinguish between identity-based violence propagated on platforms, and violence propagated by platforms due to infrastructural neglect of vulnerable populations. Our results document how perpetrators employ the affordances of WhatsApp in harmful ways. We highlight the individual emotional and reputational toll of doxxing and harassment campaigns. The study also showcases the societal ramifications of silencing and self-censorship, as well as infrastructural platform failures. Findings underscore the need to shift attention in platform studies toward populations and geographies whose safety has systemically been neglected by technology companies." (Abstract)
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"This paper presents an exploratory study aimed at systematically mapping the public actions taken by OSCE participating States to combat online violence against female journalists. Adopting a qualitative large N research design, the study examines national policies and initiatives across all 57 OSC
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E participating States. Through extensive desk research of official government documents and gray literature qualitative data is collected. The analysis thereof is guided by three research aims: (a) identifying actions implemented by participating states, (b) examining the roles of public sphere actors, and (c) assessing the approaches adopted to combat online violence. The paper discusses best practices identified in eleven OSCE participating States, shedding light on strategies for addressing online violence against female journalists. However, the findings highlight significant disparities in policy implementation and acknowledgment of the issue, with only a minority of states demonstrating proactive measures on the safety of journalists (11 states; 19.3%). Of these 11 States, only 7 participating States (12.28%) were found to have a gendered approach. 47 (80.7%) participating States lack information and/or targeted action on violence against journalists. Challenges including the legal gray area surrounding online violence, limited response from tech platforms, and the complexities of transnational collaboration are discussed. Finally, based on these insights, policy recommendations are proposed to enhance to address the multifaceted challenges more effectively. These include working towards multinational definitions and approaches on online gender-based violence against journalists, and developing international multi stakeholder cooperation and peer education." (Abstract)
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"Digital tools, such as safety apps, reporting portals, and chatbots, are increasingly being used by victim-survivors of gender-based violence to report unlawful activity and access specialized support and information. Despite their limitations, these interventions offer a range of potential benefit
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s, such as enhancing decisional certainty, promoting safety behaviors, and fostering positive psychological outcomes. In this paper, we introduce an innovative ‘design justice’ approach to the development of digital tools for addressing genderbased violence. Drawing on our experience of building a feminist chatbot focused on image-based sexual abuse, we argue that the integration of feminist principles throughout the design, content, and evaluation stages is crucial for mitigating the risk of harm and promoting positive outcomes. Our theory-informed and practice-led approach can help to guide the development of other digital tools for addressing gender-based violence. Nonetheless, more scholarly research is needed to investigate the use, efficacy, and impacts of such interventions, at the core of which should be interdisciplinary collaboration between subject matter experts, victimsurvivors, technical specialists, and other key stakeholders." (Abstract)
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"We undertook a systematic review to understand (i) how motherhood is represented across different media, (ii) how the modalities of media domains influence the motherhood representations that they offer, (iii) the gaps in recent research on the subject. We searched 7 databases for all studies inves
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tigating the representation of motherhood in media texts, in any geographical location, published after 31 December 2016. We identified 55 studies as relevant to the search criteria and undertook a thematic analysis of their findings. Our contribution is to offer a framework that summarizes and contrasts key themes of motherhood and tensions within and between motherhood ideologies as identified in different media domains." (Abstract)
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"This study explores self-visual presentation practices by female political candidates on Facebook during Kenya’s political campaigns that culminated in the national elections of 2022. The unit of analysis is the Facebook profile image of the women leaders. Image-centrism is operationalized as the
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extent to which ‘the image’ becomes the primary mode of self-presentation in political communication discourse. The study adopts a social semiotic approach to image interpretation postulated by Roland Barthes (1972) and Kress and van Leeuwen (1996). Using Kress and van Leeuwen’s approach, images are studied as ‘linguistic codes’ that have their own ‘grammatical’structure. Barthes’s approach explores the cultural dimension of the images. The argument here is that visual communication is context-bound, and the theoretical premise laid is that politics is given direction, shape, and impetus by the culture of a people. In order to understand visual political communication in Kenya, therefore, the study analyses and interprets images from the lens of the wider African cultural contexts within which this communication takes place. The overarching questions in this study include: a) How did female politicians in Kenya strategically use Facebook images for self-representation during the political campaigns in 2022? b) How have women politicians in Kenya interwoven cultural ideology with visual political communication on their Facebook pages? The ultimate conclusion is that political images not only serve as discourses for communicating political ideas and making political statements, but they also serve as self-representation modes as well as cultural manifestation codes that illuminate specific societal concepts." (Abstract)
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"Understanding the ubiquitous digitalization of everyday life and associated inequalities presupposes rich conceptualizations of the associated social dynamics. Accordingly, we investigate digital service domestication as a social dimension of people’s lives, building on concepts that center users
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’ everyday lives and agency. We adopt the perspective of people who find the use of digital services difficult and examine the hurdles they face when attempting access. Our data consists of semi-structured interviews with migrant women (N = 22) living in Finland, where most essential services are digitalized. The study highlights the societal boundedness of the participants’ agency, which we maintain is a key dynamic of inequality. We classify digital services in four categories, interactive communication services; information, media, and entertainment services; private customer services, and public health and social welfare services. The first two are voluntary digital services that did not create insurmountable barriers for the participants, but enabled them to conduct action they valued. By contrast, essential private and public services require mastering more complicated service technologies, a foreign language, and complex contents. Our results highlight how diversity-blind essential digital services produce and reinforce inequalities. Our analysis emphasizes the need for researchers to consider the coercive dimensions of digitalization." (Abstract)
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"Academic discourse frequently speaks of a gender violence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), suggesting a distinctive gender violence that is tied to a geographic location. Within the framework of a digital ethnography, this research examines whether gender activists operating in digital s
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paces themselves conceptualise and mobilise around their struggle using a regional lens, combining observations, a multimodal analyses of social media content, and interviews with 20 digital activists to do so. Challenging orientalist narratives, I centre the ontological agency of these (predominantly) young, (predominantly) women digital activists from and within the region in defining, contesting, and (re)producing the MENA within their resistance to gender violence. This timely intervention comes after a string of feminicides in June/July 2022 led to calls for a regional Women’s General Strike going viral across social media platforms. Following the strike’s slogan, ÊÖÇãä ÚÇÈÑ ááÍÏæÏ (Solidarity Across Borders), this research explores the potentialities and limitations of regional solidarities as a vehicle for building feminist public spaces. Contributing to debates within transnational feminist research regarding activism’s multiple spatialities, I examine how strike participants, through their framings of regional gender-based violence and the networks and identities built around said framings, navigate sameness and difference in dynamic and sometimes divisive ways. Within the strike context, we see a fragile regional public being formed that simultaneously challenges and reproduces narratives of gender violence in the MENA in ways that demonstrate both the salience of regionality and the importance of including activist voices in our regional constructions." (Abstract)
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"The Woman, Life, Freedom movement, beginning in September 2022, is a key chapter in the ongoing process of women’s rights activism in Iran. Social media has constituted a significant arena for asking for global solidarity with women in Iran since the initial days of this movement. The overall aim
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of this paper is to understand how TikTok users, including Iranian young women, have used the digital platform and transformed it into a virtual public space for media solidarity and transnational feminist activism. More precisely, it aims to shed light on how content creators, via their agency, rhetorically utilise and politicise the TikTok platform. In particular, we examine how they engage with audiences via the embodied form and affective performances in their attempt to persuade their audiences to viewership and solidarity action. The data in this paper consist of 107 top-ranked videos appearing under the hashtag #mahsaamini viewed through netnography, while the analytical method is multimodal rhetorical analysis with a focus on the mediality of the body in interaction. In addition, we adopt an embodied feminist framework and a decolonial perspective. The resulting analysis demonstrates how emotions function as one of the key elements in online mobilisation and protest in social media, not only as a motivational force but also as a part of the persuasive argument visually presented." (Abstract)
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"This study investigates the participation of Iranian women in hashtag feminism on Farsi Twitter as a means of resistance against marginalization. Using frameworks of hashtag feminism and media solidarities, the research analyzes Bidarzani—a grassroots feminist campaign—tweets and online convers
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ations around these tweets in 2020. Key themes include naming sexual violence experience, the transition from victim-blaming to systemic condemnation, and affective digital witnessing of pain. This moment of accumulation of personal narratives and users’ affective attunement in a context where rape discussions are silenced provides the possibility for collective survival. However, despite Bidarzani’s efforts to offer an intersectional feminist approach, limitations in users’ participation suggest a hierarchy of solidarity and deservingness, where affective practices are not equally expressed across class and geographical lines. Through these findings, the research contributes to the ongoing dialogue about the implications of digital feminism in the Middle East." (Abstract)
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