Gendered online violence is silencing women journalists in Fiji, says Pacific media scholar Dr Shailendra Singh.

The harmful trend involves unwanted private messages, hateful language and threats to reputation, often from anonymous sources.

The visibility of women journalists has made them frequent targets, while perpetrators can harness popular online platforms to shame or embarrass them in the public eye.

Dr Singh has dedicated extensive research to this dangerous phenomenon, including a 2022 study with Geraldine Panapasa and other colleagues from The University of South Pacific and Fiji Women’s Rights Movement.

The research found 83 percent of female Fijian journalists who completed their survey had experienced online harassment.

Significantly, the women journalists reported changes to their journalistic practice because of abuse, such as self-censoring their content or avoiding certain sources or stories.

“The aim is to embarrass female journalists into silence, or punish them for writing a report that someone did not like,” Dr Singh says.

The researchers said the valuable role of the Fourth Estate in protecting the public interest makes harassment of journalists a critical concern.

Eliminating the problem will need further action, as 40 per cent of the women journalists who responded said their employers had no systems in place for dealing with online violence.

Islands Business magazine manager Samantha Magick says her staff can come to her for support, but even so, harassment adds another barrier to attracting and keeping journalists in the industry.

“We’re competing with marketing, or competing with UN agencies that will snap up a great young communications officer after they’ve done a year in a newsroom, and pay them a lot more,” she says.

“The people who stick with the profession are either super passionate about it and willing to sacrifice certain things or are in a position where it can be viable for them.”

Fiji adopted its Online Safety Act in 2018, which bans harmful online communications and appoints the Online Safety Commission to investigate offences.

Fiji TV news editor Felix Chaudhary says journalists often do not report online abuse because of a lack of faith or awareness around reporting procedures.

“You can have the best laws, but if you aren’t able to enforce the law or have reporting mechanisms in place, then the laws are useless because they’re not going to serve their purpose,” he says.

Until these mechanisms are developed, media employers should build a zero-tolerance workplace culture and establish their own protocols to deal with online violence, Chaudhary says.

“You get very clear from the beginning that you will not tolerate any form of harassment – abuse, verbal, written online,” he says. “So it’s very clear from the get-go that kind of behaviour is not accepted.”

There is a growing body of data to suggest women’s online safety is a critical concern across Fiji, with research from the Online Safety Commission revealing that 61.44 per cent of women in Fiji experienced cyberbullying in 2023.

Chaudhary says the online harassment of women journalists reflects ongoing issues for women that stem from the explosion of internet use in Fiji.

“Facebook, Twitter and Instagram gave people open territory to abuse anyone and everyone at will, whenever they wanted to.

“I think there should have been a lot of education on social media etiquette, what’s acceptable and what’s not,” he says.

• Fijians can directly report online violence on social media platforms or lodge a complaint with the Fiji Online Safety Commission: https://osc.com.fj/

Brooklyn Self is a student journalist from the Queensland University of Technology who travelled to Fiji with the support of the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan Mobility Programme. This article is republished by Asia Pacific Report in collaboration with the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), QUT and The University of the South Pacific.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has delivered the highly regarded Harvard Commencement address, calling out social media as a threat to modern day democracy.

She was also awarded an honorary doctorate from the university.

The Commencement is steeped in history with Ardern’s predecessors including Winston Churchill, JFK, Angela Merkel — and topically for today’s speech — Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Capping off her day, Ardern confirmed to media afterwards that she would meet US President Joe Biden at the White House on Tuesday (Wednesday NZ time).

She invoked the memory of the late Benazir Bhutto, the first woman to head a democratic government in a Muslim country, and to give birth while in office with Ardern being the second.

Seven months after the two women met Bhutto was assassinated, Ardern said.

‘Path carved still relevant’
“The path she carved as a woman feels as relevant today as it was decades ago, and so too is the message she shared here.

“She said part way through her speech in 1989 the following: ‘We must realise that democracy… can be fragile’.

“… while the reasons that gave rise for her words then were vastly different, they still ring true. Democracy can be fragile.”

Ardern told her audience of thousands that because of the speed of social media, disinformation is creating an ever increasing risk.

Watch the address

The Harvard Commencement address.    Video: RNZ News

“Social media platforms were born offering the promise of connection and reconnection. We logged on in our billions, forming tribes and subtribes.”

While it started as a place to experience “new ways of thinking and to celebrate our difference” it was now often used for neither of those things, she said.

However, just two days after the massacre in a school in Texas that saw 19 students and two teachers killed, the biggest response she got from the audience was when she referred to changes to firearms law.

Standing ovation over guns stance
She received a standing ovation when she said the government had succeeded in banning military style semi-automatics and assault rifles, in the wake of the Christchurch mosque attacks.

“On the 15th of March 2019, 51 people were killed in a terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The entire brutal act was livestreamed on social media. The royal commission that followed found that the terrorist responsible was radicalised online,” she said.

“In the aftermath of New Zealand’s experience, we felt a sense of responsibility. We knew we needed significant gun reform, and so that is what we did.”

She went on to say that if genuine solutions were to be found to the issue of violent extremism online, “it would take government, civil society and the tech companies themselves to change the landscape. The result was the Christchurch Call to Action.

“And while much has changed as a result, important things haven’t.”

Ardern called on social media companies to recognise their power and act on it and acknowledge the role they play in shaping online environments.

“That algorithmic processes make choices and decisions for us — what we see and where we are directed — and that at best this means the user experience is personalised and at worst it means it can be radicalised.

‘Pressing and urgent need’
“It means, that there is a pressing and urgent need for responsible algorithm development and deployment.”

She said the forums were available for the tech companies to work alongside society and governments to find solutions to the issues.

She encouraged her audience to realise that their individual actions were also important.

“In a disinformation age, we need to learn to analyse and critique information. That doesn’t mean teaching ‘mistrust’, but rather as my old history teacher, Mr Fountain extolled: ‘to understand the limitations of a single piece of information, and that there is always a range of perspectives on events and decisions’.”

While the prime minister’s US trip was planned around the Harvard Commencement, there is a trade and tourism focus, but also a chance to check in with some of the tech giants at whom she delivered her message, in particular around the Christchurch Call, during the next few days.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Mong Palatino of Global Voices

Fiji’s Online Safety Act took effect this month amid concerns that it will be used to censor the internet.

The law was passed in May 2018 two months after the Attorney-General’s office submitted it for Parliament deliberation. The government deemed it necessary to make the internet a safe space for women and children:

The Fijian Government in its commitment to ensure access to connectivity for all Fijians, has embarked on promoting a safe online culture and environment in hindsight of the recent increase of reports on harmful online behaviour such as cyberbullying, cyber stalking, Internet trolling and exposure to offensive or harmful content, particularly in respect of children.

Fiji has an estimated 500,000 active online users.

The Fiji media was placed under state control after the military staged a coup in 2006. In 2010, the Media Industry Development Decree was passed which noted press freedom but fears of state reprisal led to self-censorship in the media sector.

Meanwhile, the growing use of social media in recent years has allowed citizens to use this platform to share their views, report alternative news, and engage public officials.

-Partners-

Some reports mention that if the Media Industry Development Decree dealt with mainstream press, the Online Safety Act is designed to regulate social media.

Fourteen members of the opposition voted against the Online Safety Bill which they claimed would undermine democracy.

But some supporters of the law disputed this:

Fiji Sun Online, a major news portal, published an editorial endorsing the measure:

The Online Safety Bill if passed will protect Fijians from being victimised on social media as is rampant today. It will make online users think twice before they post things online.

Critics cited part four of the law as problematic since it could be arbitrarily used to intimidate internet users. This particular provision considers “the posting of an electronic communication with the intention to cause harm to an individual” as an offence and is punishable by five to seven years in prison.

Aside from the prison sentence, those found guilty of violating the law will be fined up to F$20,000 (US$9,440) for individual offenders.

Opponents of the law warned that “causing harm” as an offence was too broad so that any dissenting opinion could be interpreted as illegal content.

Jope Tarai from the University of the South Pacific noted in Pacific Journalism Review that the proposed Online Safety Commission as stipulated under section six of the law appears to mimic and repeat the functions of the police-based Cyber Crime Unit. Aside from creating a new agency that will police internet content, the law gives broad powers to the Online Safety Commission which “has raised concerns on its possible threat to free speech.”

The PJR scholar also warned that despite the avowed intent to promote safety, the law could lead to the censorship of free speech:

The Act on the surface professes online ‘Safety’, while its vagueness on responsible free speech leaves the act open to being a Trojan horse for online ‘Regulation’ and censorship of dissenting voices.

The claimed intent behind the Online Safety Act is certainly a noble one and long overdue in so far as protecting women, children and victims of irresponsible online behavior is concerned. However, the ‘danger’ narrative creatively cultivated by Fijian state officials ignored the strengths of social media.

During the Parliament deliberations, a group of young people enumerated their concerns about the proposed legislation:

We are a group of individual youth concerned about the effect of this Bill on free speech in Fiji. While we appreciate the need to protect children and men and women against revenge porn or unauthoriSed sharing of their intimate images or videos, we are concerned that this Bill is too widely drafted, that it can be misused by those in authority to punish and prosecute those who share their views, who do not share the same political views i.e. it can be misused to prosecute political opponents, rather than serve its purpose to protect children against cyberbullying or other online abuse.

Finally, Pacific Freedom Forum (PFF), a media network, warned that the new online safety law will “muzzle” rather than protect Fiji’s citizens. PFF Polynesia co-Chair Monica Miller said:

More than half a million citizens are now affected by this law and they need to be reassured that their rights to share ideas and information won’t be compromised even furTHER.

Mong Palatino is regional editor for Southeast Asia of Global Voices. He is an activist and two-term member of the Philippine House of Representatives, and has been blogging since 2004 at mongster’s nest. This article is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz