The struggles of women politicians in Uganda & journalists in Afghanistan
We hope you're doing well and staying safe. This week in The Checklist, we have a statement from the Check Global Network that is committed to supporting and strengthening the work of women journalists in Afghanistan. We also have a grim update on the drop in the number of women journalists currently working in Afghanistan.
This week we share highlights from Uganda and the United States on how certain groups like women and academics are being targeted and trolled. And, an update from Brazil on how the president is attempting to control social media.
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The latest top stories
Just 39 Female Journalists Are Still Working in Kabul After the Taliban's Takeover (TIME)
Just 39 women journalists are still formally working in privately-owned radio and TV stations in the Afghan capital, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF) its partner organization, the Centre for the Protection of Afghan Women Journalists (CPAWJ). That’s a precipitous drop from the 700 women journalists working in 2020.
"Women journalists must be able to resume working without being harassed as soon as possible, because it is their most basic right, because it is essential for their livelihood, and also because their absence from the media landscape would have the effect of silencing all Afghan women. We urge the Taliban leadership to provide immediate guarantees for the freedom and safety of women journalists." -- Christophe Deloire, RSF secretary-general
How Facebook Undermines Privacy Protections for Its 2 Billion WhatsApp Users (ProPublica)
WhatsApp assures users that no one can see their messages — but the company has an extensive monitoring operation and regularly shares personal information with prosecutors.
WhatsApp’s director of communications, Carl Woog, acknowledged that teams of contractors in Austin and elsewhere review WhatsApp messages to identify and remove “the worst” abusers. But Woog told ProPublica that the company does not consider this work to be content moderation, saying: “We actually don’t typically use the term for WhatsApp.”
How harassment keeps women politicians offline in Uganda (Rest of World)
A new study by Pollicy, a Kampala-based feminist civic tech organization, suggests that Ugandan women in politics use social media far less than their male counterparts, which could be related to the abuse they experience across platforms. The study, which analyzed social media accounts belonging to politicians and high-profile political figures in Uganda six weeks before the January 2021 election and ending two weeks later, found that women in Ugandan politics experienced higher levels of online violence in the forms of trolling, body shaming, sexualized and gendered insults, and gendered disinformation, leading the women politicians to campaign far less on social media than their male counterparts.
"Women do not want to join politics because of the associated violence, and they refrain from using online spaces when they realize that there’s violence online too." — Winnie Kiiza, Ugandan Member of Parliament
US academic conference on ‘Hindutva’ targeted by Hindu groups (Al Jazeera)
For the first time in the United States, scholars and academics from various American and international universities have come together to organise a major online conference on Hindutva to discuss various issues relating to the Hindu supremacist ideology in India and elsewhere. The organisers and speakers of the conference have been on a receiving end of harassment and intimidation by various Hindu right-wing groups and individuals staunchly opposing the conference, calling it a “Hinduphobic gathering”.
"This is the textbook Hindutva approach. They just indulge in character assassination, slandering my personal life, questioning the parentage of my children, asking if they were born to one father. The Hindutva groups both in the US and India are miffed at the huge academic support for the conference and they just want to silence us at any cost". — Meena Kandasamy, poet and caste activist
Brazil’s President Bans Social Networks From Removing Some Posts (The New York Times)
President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil is temporarily banning social media companies from removing certain content, including his claims that the only way he’ll lose next year’s elections is if the vote is rigged — one of the most significant steps by a democratically elected leader to control what can be said on the internet.
The new social media rules, issued this week and effective immediately, appear to be the first time a national government has stopped internet companies from taking down content that violates their rules, according to internet law experts and officials at tech companies. And they come at a precarious moment for Brazil.
“If platforms have to carry every single thing that’s legal, they’ll turn into horrible cesspools that no one wants to use. It’s a mechanism for the government to put their thumb on the scales to say what gets seen on the internet.” — Daphne Keller, Lecturer, Stanford University
What’s new at Meedan
Check Global Network Stands In Solidarity With Women Journalists In Afghanistan
The Check Global Network is committed to supporting and strengthening the work of women journalists and media professionals from Afghanistan. As a network, we will continue to monitor the situation in Afghanistan closely and extend our support to interventions designed to support women journalists from the country.
Read the full statement.