STATE OF PRESS FREEDOM IN SOUTHERN AFRICA 2022 the effects of harassment for women journalists. The most recent, a global study under UNESCOICFJ(4), looks into 16 countries and reveals that there has been “sharp increase in online violence against women journalists and reveals how these attacks are now inextricably bound up with disinformation, intersectional discrimination, and populist politics”. The revelations based on experiences of various women journalists point to how online harassment is growing and has become a ubiquitous problem faced by women journalists around the world. It demonstrates the psychological distress and impact of threats and other acts of intimidation on women journalists’ work. The hard facts from this study, “The Chilling: Global trends in online violence against women journalists” were summarised as follows: l Online attacks have real-life impacts. Not only do they affect mental health and productivity, but physical attacks and legal harassment are increasingly seeded online. This indicates that many women journalists, who are frequently structurally disempowered and disadvantaged in newsrooms only escalate the more extreme instances of online violence with their employers. The reluctance to report and escalate when attacks occur can be linked to systemic failings such as unsympathetic, misogynistic, patriarchal or otherwise hostile workplace cultures, poor leadership, fear stemming from a lack of clear and established reporting procedures, and/ or a lack of a formal protocol to deal with the problem. These findings echo those of similar research done on sexual harassment in the media by WAN-IFRA Women in News in 2020-2021(5). The research covered 20 countries in subSaharan Africa, the Arab region, Southeast Asia, Central America and Russia. In Africa, study respondents came from eight countries — 40% of them reported having faced physical or verbal sexual harassment. l Misogyny intersects with other forms of discrimination. Women journalists, who are also disadvantaged by racism, homophobia, religious bigotry and other forms of discrimination face additional exposure to online attacks, with worse impacts. Yet, 73% of those affected did not report these attacks. The reasons for remaining silent included a fear of facing negative consequences, a lack of reporting mechanisms, fear of being labelled negatively and the fear of being out of a job. l Gendered online violence intersects with disinformation. While orchestrated disinformation campaigns weaponise misogyny to chill critical reporting, reporting on disinformation can be a trigger for heightened attacks. A lot of the examples in the UNESCO-ICFJ study reveal examples of women being attacked for not only being journalists, but also being women: calling their credibility into question, compromising their personal safety and having facts about their work ethic questioned. l Online attacks against women journalists have political motives. Political actors, extremist networks and partisan media are identified as instigators and amplifiers of online violence against women journalists. This shows how abuse of online platforms to further agendas (political or otherwise) brings in the complications associated with making social media companies accountable for the actions that occur on their platforms. l Social media platforms and news organisations are still struggling to respond effectively. In the context of an increasingly toxic information ecosystem, platforms are seen as major enablers for online violence. When women journalists turn to them or their employers in the midst of an online violence storm, they often fail to receive effective responses and even face victim-blaming behaviour. While various countries have protection mechanisms in place to provide a relatively quick and easy way for harm to be reduced, including by getting harmful posts or messages taken down or disabled, while at the same time giving people appropriate room for freedom of expression; it is clear that addressing the challenge of online harassment is bigger and requires concerted efforts from various players. Although 73% of women respondents in the UNESCO-ICFJ global survey underpinning this study said they had experienced online violence in the course of their work, only a quarter (25%; n=179) had reported this to their employers. In Zimbabwe, Faith Zaba, editor of the Zimbabwe Independent, endured online attacks(6) after being appointed as editor for that publication in 2019. 26