Gendered disinformation, elections, and more Meedan updates
Look inside for news about our work in the Larger World and a link to the 2023 annual report.
Hey Checklisters!
It’s been a busy time for Meedan, and we’re excited to take this opportunity to share with you some early insights about our recent collaborations in South Asia and throughout the globe.
If you’re running late, here’s your TL;DR Checklist:
✅ With our partners in South Asia — Chambal Media, Digital Rights Foundation, and The Quint — we compiled a dataset of gendered disinformation instances.
✅ We have updates from our Togo and Kurdistan election work.
✅ The 2023 annual report is ready. Feel free to take a look and share with your network.
Top Comment
Just as our identities shape how we carry ourselves through the world, they also influence how the world operates to, around, within, and, sometimes, against us. This is as true online as it is offline.
A recent Amnesty International report on technology-facilitated, gender-based violence in Thailand outlined how attackers targeted women and LGBTI activists with intensive digital surveillance and harassment campaigns. These efforts often included coordinated smear campaigns that leveraged gendered disinformation.
This is a global problem for truth-tellers and those who challenge the status quo. To help identify the different forms gendered disinformation can take, we’re sharing with you some of what we’ve learned so far from our initiative on gendered disinformation in South Asia.
Building a dataset and conducting an analysis on gendered disinformation in South Asia
Last April, we launched a transnational research project to examine South Asian gendered disinformation issues. Alongside our partners in India — Chambal Media and The Quint — and Pakistan — Digital Rights Foundation — we set out to better understand the ways in which women, trans people of all genders, and nonbinary individuals are impacted by disinformation.
We looked for ways to respond to these gender-based, misogynistic, and transphobic campaigns. Ultimately, our efforts resulted in a dataset composed of 450 instances of gendered disinformation.
We learned that the spectrum of gendered disinformation is quite broad, encompassing not only outright lies, but also rumors, stereotypes, judgmental attitudes, and more. We also discovered that intersectional identity markers contribute greatly to the myriad ways different people experience these kinds of attacks. An in-depth understanding of the local context greatly enhanced our analysis of the issue in South Asia. The documented instances we explored clearly demonstrated that survivors often experience significant offline consequences as a result of the online hate and abuse directed toward them.
As we wrap up the project we look forward to sharing findings from the study and information from the dataset. We’ll also distribute partner case studies that highlight local and hyperlocal instances of gendered disinformation from various communities in the countries where the project was based. In addition, we'll share policy recommendations for different stakeholders as they seek to address gendered disinformation and build connections and strategies for tackling technology-facilitated, gender-based violence in systemic ways.
Dispatches from the Digital Rights in the Asia-Pacific (DRAPAC) Assembly
Meedan recently attended DRAPAC24, an event hosted by EngageMedia in Taipei from Aug. 18-19. Sneha Alexander, Meedan’s senior program manager for the region, participated in a panel on technology-facilitated, gender-based violence throughout Asia and the Pacific. During the session, she discussed Meedan’s work on understanding gendered disinformation and how it affects women, as well as gender and sexual minorities, and influences their public participation.
With Digital Rights Foundation, Chambal Media, and The Quint, Meedan also organized a colearning session on gendered disinformation to share findings from our work in South Asia and to learn from feminists, gender advocates, and other groups who work at the intersections of gender and technology.
Quick updates from 2024’s ongoing elections
As the year of elections continues, we have additional insights and updates to share about our work with partners throughout the Larger World.
Togo elections
The Togolese legislative elections took place on April 29, 2024, following several postponements and amid a period of political instability in the country.
The team from the Africa Women Journalism Project (AWJP) has been working on an upcoming report about their collaboration with TogoCheck on election-related gendered disinformation — a cross-regional, multilingual project supported by Meedan.
The partners used Meedan’s flagship product, Check, to launch a Messenger tipline, and they collected and annotated gendered disinformation claims — both offline and online through Check. Text-based content, including screenshots of posts on social media, featured prominently among the submissions.
AWJP researchers found that the content emphasized the constraints of traditional gender roles, and there were a number of localized gender-based slurs present in the submissions. These slurs were used to denigrate women online and damage their reputations. The analysis also showed that no particular political party was singled out, as most claims focused broadly on the participation of women in electoral politics. Of the political claims, 36.5% were categorized as gendered disinformation, revealing significant levels of sexism.
Elections in Iraq’s Kurdistan region
Elections in the Kurdistan region of Iraq are now scheduled for Oct. 20, and the Network of Iraqi Reporters for Investigative Journalism (NIRIJ) and Fatabyanno have been getting ready. These two Meedan partners worked together to co-host a series of online workshops about how to identify and counter election-related misinformation.
Over the course of four days, trainers from Fatabyyano shared techniques and skills with the participants — mostly NIRIJ journalists from the region — to support them in their efforts to verify news and information throughout the parliamentary election cycle.
The Kurdistan workshops are part of a series of election integrity events taking place across the Larger World through the support of Meedan and organized by local media and fact-checking groups.
Our 2023 annual report is live!
We encourage you to take a look at our 2023 annual report and find out what Meedan and its partners worked together to create last year. Please feel free to share it with your network too. Inside, you’ll find a note from CEO Ed Bice and specific sections covering each department in our organization, including programming, product, research, and internal operations, as well as overviews of our efforts to support elections, crisis response strategies, and media ecosystems.
Website refresh
We’re excited to share the latest version of our website with you. Take a look to learn more about our mission, vision, and values, as well as our latest efforts in codesigning initiatives with a network of more than 170 global partners.
Contact us to explore collaboration opportunities today.
Define_technology-facilitated, gender-based violence
“Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence (TFGBV) is an act that is committed using information communication technologies or other digital tools which results in physical, sexual, psychological, social, political or economic harm or other infringements of rights and freedoms.”
— The Sexual Violence Research Initiative, “Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence”
Townsquare
Sept. 5
Grants for Palestinian media are being made available from the International Federation of Journalists through a new dedicated fund totaling almost $1 million to sustain public interest journalism. Applications are now open.
Sept. 6
The COP29 Caribbean Climate Justice Journalism Fellowship from Climate Tracker is now accepting applications. Fellows will join the group’s international reporting team at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. Submit your application today.
Ongoing
Explore the Jornalistas Pretos Network and register for free to attend their events and meet other members. If you know anybody who deserves to be highlighted, don’t hesitate to let them know.
What else we’re reading
“Wimbledon said Threat Matrix had conducted a study in which it monitored more than 1.6m public posts on X and 19,000 Instagram comments sent to 454 players competing at a range of professional tennis tournaments in 2022 and found that one in four players were subject to abuse. It identified 546 offensive posts from 438 accounts.”
(Emine Sinmaz, The Guardian)
“One thing I’ve learned from studying information operations around the world is that gendered disinformation should also be seen through the national security lens. In countries with tense geopolitical situations, misogyny and gendered disinformation are exploited by foreign actors to sow division, make the public more vulnerable to manipulation, and ultimately undermine democracy.”
(Gaby Baizas, Rappler)
“Grok is available only to subscribers of the premium versions of X. But the five secretaries of state who signed the letter said election misinformation from Grok has been shared across multiple social media platforms, reaching millions of people. Grok continued to repeat the false information for 10 days before it was corrected, the secretaries said. The platform did not respond to a request for comment.”
(Christine Fernando, The Associated Press)
Did you miss an issue of the Checklist?
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If there are updates you would like us to share from your country or region, please reach out to us at checklist@meedan.com.
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