Increasing attacks on women journalists & internet shutdowns
Happy Friday! Welcome to our new subscribers. It's great to see you here. In this issue we have an update on the increasing attacks on women journalists. This time we look at the growing wave of attacks on Brazilian women journalists on Twitter.
In another update, a parliamentary committee on communications and information technology has suggested to the Indian government the possibility of banning particular internet services instead of placing blanket internet bans. This is in the context of India's numerous internet shutdowns that disrupt people's access to information and civil rights.
In this issue we also have an update from Meedan. The Meedan team is expanding and we are looking for a talented Program Manager on a full time basis to sustain and expand our presence & partnerships in the North Africa / Western Asia region (NAWA) to join our Check Global team. We welcome applications until Jan 17, 2022! Apply here: https://meedan.com/jobs/program-manager-nawa/
That's it for your weekly roundup of misinformation news, updates and threats. Please share your feedback and invite your friends to sign up here.
The latest top stories
In Brazil, female journalists receive more than twice as many offenses as their male counterparts on Twitter (Knight Center LatAm Journalism Review)
Female journalists receive more than twice as many insults on their Twitter profiles as their male counterparts. This was one of the worrying findings of a data investigation carried out by Revista AzMina and InternetLab, together with the Volt Data Lab and the INCT.DD, with support from the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). The growing wave of attacks on the Brazilian press also appears in reports by the National Federation of Journalists (Fenaj) and the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji). Whether offline or online, violence has the female gender as its main target.
Journalist Mariliz Pereira Jorge says that she has already reported several attacks, but did not get support. The responses she received were that it did not hurt the platform's policies. "A woman who posts a photo of her breast can be banned because it hurts the platform's policies much more than a threat of rape, of death, as happened to me and other colleagues."
Facebook: Fake scientist used to spread anti-US propaganda (AP News)
A disinformation network with ties to China used hundreds of fake social media accounts to spread an unfounded claim that the U.S. pressured scientists to blame China for the coronavirus, according to Facebook. Meta noted that employees of Chinese state-run companies, and the country’s state-run media, worked to amplify the misleading claims, which were soon the subject of news headlines in China. The network unearthed by Facebook show that the Chinese are still working on their influence campaign strategy, unlike Russia, which has spent decades crafting disinformation campaigns that target unwitting Americans online and go undetected for years.
"China’s disinformation networks have consistently been haphazard. It didn’t take long for this to be unraveled...The Chinese are still a bit sloppier with what they do. I can’t imagine the Russians doing something like this, where they just create a persona out of thin air." — Bret Schafer, Head of the information manipulation team at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, Washington
No checks on net shutdowns in India, govt must explore app blocking: House panel (Hindustan Times)
The government should explore the possibility of banning particular internet services, such as messengers like WhatsApp and social media websites like Facebook, instead of putting in place blanket internet bans, a panel looking into shutdown of telecommunications and their impact said in its report to Parliament.
The government must “lay down a clear cut principle of proportionality and procedure for lifting of shutdowns so that these are not extended indefinitely even when the situation comes under control affecting the life and liberty of people” — The standing committee on communications and information technology
What’s new at Meedan
Health Desk Reaches 1.5 Million Users
Health Desk launched on April 15, 2021,and as of October 12 of this year more than 1.5 million people have visited health-desk.org. Over the last year and a half, the Health Desk team has been receiving health and science-related questions from journalism partners including Africa Check, CITE, AFP Fact Check, Full Fact, The Africa Women Journalism Project, VERA Files, and Tayo, a virtual help desk serving the Filipino community during COVID-19.