IGF 2023 WS #546 Digital violence against women in politics

Subtheme

Human Rights & Freedoms
Non-discrimination in the Digital Space

Organizer 1: Sabrina Almeida, FGV
Organizer 2: Letícia Sabbatini Malta Amaral da Silva, FGV
Organizer 3: Anna Bentes , School of Communication, Media and Information of Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV ECMI)

Speaker 1: Victor Piaia, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 2: Roberta Battisti, Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 3: Liza Garcia, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 4: Anita Gurumurthy, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 5: Rachel Pollack, Intergovernmental Organization, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)

Moderator

Sabrina Almeida, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)

Online Moderator

Letícia Sabbatini Malta Amaral da Silva, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)

Rapporteur

Anna Bentes , Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)

Format

Round Table - 90 Min

Policy Question(s)

What are the limits of the platforms' current policies in protecting human rights, specially vulnerable groups online?
How should local specificities be considered and adapted in platform policies for the protection of human rights, especially vulnerable groups online?
How can independent monitoring of social networks help guide public policies to curb online gender violence?

What will participants gain from attending this session? Access to methodologies for monitoring debates and topics specifically aimed at political gender violence in social networks, as well as results and lines of action to combat it. Articulation with representatives of global groups and institutions to develop and collaborate on joint strategies specially focuses on global south regions. Deepen the discussion on the challenges to be faced based on the continuous monitoring of the debate in different countries and on how the public policies can be applied to avoid digital violence. Reflect on digital literacy initiatives to strengthen the skills of the general public in critical thinking, the urgency of the topic and promote the safe and ethical use of digital media, considering regional specificities.

Description:

Gender-based online violence has been known as one of the biggest risks of human rights violations and hazards on the Internet. Online evidence from the scientific community and civil society shows that advances are still not effective enough, nevertheless it has been consistently shown that hate speech and misinformation are often targeted at socially vulnerable groups making the Internet, as well as offline environments, unsafe and unwelcoming. As a result, there is also a certain amount of policy and grassroots initiatives developed in order to incorporate and face such challenges. This workshop will seek to advance the field by focusing on a specific type of violence, gender-based political violence, with specific negative impacts on democracy and human rights. In this sense, this activity will gather stakeholders that use their diverse epistemological experiences and empirical data to identify, analyze settings where, worldwide, political online violence harms political, civil, and human rights. Also, we seek to map consensus and dissensus on the up-to-date state of art in this field, focusing on Internet Governance. Combating gender based violence is one of the central vectors in promoting the values of equality and social justice that characterize democracies, the network actions brought by digital environments, in this sense, can act both in preventing and in aggravating these conflicts. In order to foster this debate and expand these strategies, the proposal starts from the on going work that has been developed with international partners composed by sectors of civil society, academia, fact checking agencies, and government actors to pursue the preservation of the integrity of democracies, monitoring and verifying main narratives spread out in digital environments aiming at generating counter-narratives of sustain actions, digital literacy and advocacy initiatives that will potentially mitigate gender-based online violence and prevent democratic conflicts.

Expected Outcomes

Systematize and publicize the efforts and strategies discussed at the table in a document translated into Portuguese and English in order to reach wider audiences, and that can also guide the action of audiences interested in confronting gender political violence online.
The creation of a network with workshop participants and audience, aiming to expand the reach of future productions, events and collaborations on the theme.
Invitation to the speakers to participate in meetings of the Council of the Media and Democracy project, developed by FGV and financed by the European Commission, which has the objective of promoting dialogue and developing guidelines that guarantee the integrity of digital environments and the strengthening of Democracy.
Strengthen relations between the Brazilian government's digital policies secretariat and research and international organizations that debate the theme.

Hybrid Format: The plan for implementation and engagement of the hybrid session will involve actions before, during and after the event. The pre-event actions will be divided between: 1) a webinar with international guests between in September, promoting the workshop theme; and 2) the dissemination of the webinar and the hybrid workshop on the social networks and partners of the FGV and the speakers' organizations, in English, Portuguese, Japanese and Hindi. During the event the actions will be divided between: 1) the allocation of time for questions from the audience, using Slido; 2) audience engagement, using Mentimeter; 3) circulation of a form to the audience aiming to create a network. After the event the actions will be divided between: 1) the production of short videos for social media with speeches of the participants; 2) the creation of an email list, aiming to update and share news related to the workshop's theme.