#SHEPERSISTED GLOBAL INITIATIVE
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#SHEPERSISTED GLOBAL INITIATIVE: TACKLING GENDERED DISINFORMATION & ONLINE ATTACKS AGAINST WOMEN IN POLITICS
Transcript of #SHEPERSISTED GLOBAL INITIATIVE
#SHEPERSISTED GLOBAL INITIATIVE: TACKLING GENDERED
DISINFORMATION & ONLINE ATTACKS
AGAINST WOMEN IN POLITICS
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TACKLING GENDERED DISINFORMATION & ONLINE ABUSE AGAINST WOMEN IN POLITICS IS NECESSARY TO PROMOTE PEACE AND DEMOCRACY GLOBALLYThe January 6th storming of the Capitol was the horrific ex-pression of a political movement grounded in misogyny and white supremacy which had been in the making for years, fueled by the misinformation and online violence thriving on social media.
While there are high profile women aligned with the efforts to undermine democracy, let’s be clear, the storming of the Capitol was led by an angry mob of white, mostly male Trump supporters, waging war against democratic institutions, trashing Congresswomen’s offices to symbolically r e st ore “a retrograde world in which men, especially white men, hold all the power”. The crowd that descended on the Capitol was a byproduct of an online world increasingly dominated by the “Manosphere”, a global conglomerate of web-based misogynist movements, that have in recent years grown and gathered political strength.
Women, particularly those in politics, have been bearing the brunt of online attacks, fake stories, humiliating or sexually charged images, with posts framing them as untrustworthy, unintelligent and unqualified to hold office, as well as incredibly offensive content featuring women as emotional/angry/crazy sex objects.
A deep program of disinformation and harassment was actively at work against Vice President Elect Kamala Harris throughout the 2020 election cycle, including attacks on her criminal justice record and claims she used sex to gain prominence and power. A recent analysis of the 2020 U.S. congressional races conducted by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that female candidates were significantly more likely to receive online abuse than their male counterparts. Such online attacks have very real consequences, as disinformation campaigns and online attacks have in fact been shown to discourage women from running for office, push them out of politics, or lead them to disengage from online political discourse in ways that might make them less politically effective, visible, or electable.
This isn’t an American problem only, but a worldwide phe-nomenon, and one that is increasingly coming at odds with American foreign policy and international aid efforts to pro-mote democratic institutions and women’s rights abroad.
Why women?In many countries, women politicians, journalists and activists are among the most outspoken critics of macho, populist political leaders, and gendered disinformation campaigns and online abuse are being used to silence them, in an effort to stifle democratic processes and undermine calls for better governance.
Putin in Russia, Duterte in the Philippines, Orban in Hunga-ry, and Erdogan in Turkey are all examples of political leaders using misogyny’s playbook to eliminate political competitors and push back against women’s rights. In other European countries also, recent studies from Demos and the EU Disinfo Lab unveiled a vast network of state-aligned actors at work to delegitimize women in politics, by weaponizing sexist narratives and gendered disinformation.
Like the mob that stormed Congress, the ultimate goal of these actors is to erode liberal values and democratic principles all together, and they have found in social media’s anonymity and lawlessness an ideal breeding ground.
A unique window of opportunity to actAfter the assaults on the Capitol, a growing number of actors in the United States are demanding for social media companies to be held accountable for allowing and incentivizing misogynist, fake and outrageous content, and similar initiatives are taking place on the other side of the ocean.
The Biden-Harris Administration has committed to creating a National Task Force on Online Harassment and Abuse to study the connection between this harassment, extremism and violence against women. They also have explicitly moved away from the isolationist “America First” approach that characterized the Trump era, launching a new EU-US agenda for global change and opening a transatlantic dialogue on the responsibility of online platforms and Big Tech.
This context provides a unique window of opportunity for an American-led, global civil society effort to address malign influence campaigns and how they work online against women, with the larger goal of eroding democratic processes and values.
#SHEPERSISTED GLOBAL INITIATIVE: TACKLING GENDERED DISINFORMATION & ONLINE ATTACKS AGAINST WOMEN IN POLITICS
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#SHEPERSISTED GLOBAL INITIATIVE: TACKLING GENDERED DISINFORMATION & ONLINE ATTACKS AGAINST WOMEN IN POLITICS
Disinformation, sexism, and hate are features of social media today. This dangerous mix of extremism is being fomented by algorithmic preferences that values profit over safety and inclusion. Women in politics and leaders of activist movements have borne the brunt of vicious online abuse and gendered disinformation campaigns, aimed not just at silencing their voices, but at destabilizing democracy.
We can no longer allow illiberal actors and authoritarian leaders to take advantage of technology to threaten our values and lives.
In 2020, Lucina Di Meco and Kristina Wilfore built the foundation of the gendered disinformation field, by creating taxonomy, tools, and a coalition of organizations and individual women legislators globally invested in promoting women’s digital rights and pushing back against platform inability to protect women in politics from harm and abuse. Building on those experiences and learnings, they launched #ShePersisted Global.
#ShePersisted Global is a cross-national initiative to tackle gendered disinformation and online attacks against women in politics through a three-pronged strategy: increase understanding of gendered disinformation; support women leaders who are targeted by online attacks; and influence transatlantic conversations on digital platform standards.
1. Increase understanding of gendereddisinformation and online campaignsagainst women in politics#ShePersisted Global creates taxonomy and awareness around gendered disinformation. We produce original research and write articles on some of the major gendered disinformation initiatives and their link to authoritarianism, working with some of the world’s most authoritative media outlets and think tanks to ensure that gendered disinformation and online abuse against women in politics are recognized and addressed as threats to national security, democracy, liberal values and the entire human rights system. We influence strategic conversations on democracy, technology and women’s rights through events, webinars and digital roundtables with some of the most powerful transatlantic actors and institutions in this field.
A THREE-FOLD STRATEGY TO TACKLE GENDERED DISINFORMATION AND ONLINE ABUSE AGAINST WOMEN IN POLITICS
2. Support Women Leaders FightingDisinformation
#ShePersisted Global bolsters the work of women political leaders who are at the forefront of democratization efforts and calls for good governance across various countries, creating a space for them to build alliances across countries and influence platform decisions. We coordinate and support a network of women political leaders who are at the forefront of democratization efforts and calls for good governance across various countries, and are becoming targets of gendered disinformation attacks as a result of their political engagement. This initiative provides them with comprehensive media strategies, including tailored trainings on how to respond to gendered disinformation and online abuse, based off the latest research and tools available in this field, including Ultraviolet’s innovative media toolkit for reporting on sexist and racist disinformation without replicating it.
3. Influence Digital Platform Standards
#ShePersisted Global partners with international and domestic organizations, digital experts, parliamentarians and civil society leaders to advocate for the creation of better standards for digital platforms. We work to make sure that these standards take into account the real-life harms and abuse that women face, and proactively address them through better product and algorithmic designs, as well as sounder risk assessment strategies. In 2019, #ShePersisted supported the office of U.S. Representative Jackie Speier in writing a letter to Facebook, co-signed by 100 women lawmakers from 30 countries. In the letter, the women legislators specifically called out the platform’s role in artificially amplifying gendered disinformation through algorithmic preferences.
To learn more about the work of #ShePersisted Global, visit our website at: https://www.she-persisted.org/.
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#ShePersisted Global Initiative is finalizing its core group of institutional partners and supporters, and getting ready to launch. If you’d like to join us in this pioneering effort, please write to us at: [email protected] and [email protected].
Co-Founders
Kristina Wilfore
Lucina Di Meco
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Kristina Wilfore is a global democracy activist, working with political leaders and NGOs around the world to help improve the quality of campaigns and elections and bring new voices into politics. Kristina is a specialist in respond-ing to the threat of disinformation and building transatlantic networks to weaken its impact, with on the ground experi-ence in over 27 countries.
Kristina currently serves as Senior Advisor of Disinfor-mation Strategies at the Strategic Victory Fund; Adjunct professor with The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs; Producer and Host of Fati-ma’s Hand, a podcast featuring women fighting for gender equality, and serves on the United States Institute for Peace Civil Society Working Group. In 2020, Kristina co-founded The Women’s Disinformation Defense Project. Comprised of some of the most influential women’s political groups, in-cluding UltraViolet, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Emily’s List, Women’s March, Colors of Change.
The Women’s Disinformation Project was the first disin-formation monitoring, coordination and response table for women ever, aimed at holding platforms accountable, and providing clear, coordinated talking points and message content for journalists and women’s organizations respond-ing to gendered disinformation attacks.
Lucina Di Meco is a gender equality expert, recognized by Apolitical in 2021 as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Gender Policy for her work on gendered disinformation. Throughout her career, Lucina has worked with a wide range of international actors promoting women's rights in the Global South, including Vital Voices, The Wilson Center, International IDEA, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, UNDP and UN Women.
Her research, #ShePersisted. Women, Politics & Power in the New Media World, investigates the relationship between women in politics and social media in 30 countries, and was featured on Time Magazine, The Washington Post, Politico, El Pais and Voice of America, among others. Lucina has written on gendered disinformation for multiple think tanks and outlets, including T h e Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, T h e Council of Foreign Relations, The National Endowment for Democracy, and The Hill.
#SHEPERSISTED GLOBAL INITIATIVE: TACKLING GENDERED DISINFORMATION & ONLINE ATTACKS AGAINST WOMEN IN POLITICS
Lucina currently serves as Senior Director for Gender Equality at Room to Read; co-founder of The Gender Breakfast, a network of 150+ gender professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Advisory Board Member of FundHer, an organization working to elect progressive women to State legislatures.
