The Chilling: Online Violence Against Women Journalists and Press Freedom

UNESCO and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) place online attacks against women journalists within a larger question of press freedom and the public’s right to know. The Chilling drew on a global survey involving more than 900 journalists from 125 countries, in-depth interviews with 173 journalists and experts, 15 country case studies, and analysis of more than 2.5 million social-media posts directed at Maria Ressa and Carole Cadwalladr. UNESCO reported that nearly three-quarters of the women journalists surveyed had experienced online violence in the course of their work. That proportion describes participants in this research, not a census of every woman journalist worldwide: it demonstrates how common the experience was within the study, but should not be mistaken for a precise rate across all journalists, countries and platforms.

The “chilling” in the title describes more than receiving hostile comments. Gendered insults, threats of sexual violence, exposure of private information, hate speech and coordinated attacks can be used together to intimidate journalists, undermine their professional credibility and redirect attention from their reporting to their bodies, identities or private lives. The cases discussed in the report also show how attacks can connect with political messaging, partisan media and disinformation networks. Their purpose is not only to frighten one person; they can create an environment in which journalists anticipate a cost for speaking, and consequently report, interact or publish less.

The study’s intersectional analysis recognizes that racism, religious bigotry, sexuality and other forms of discrimination can deepen both exposure and harm. Reducing the findings to “women are unsafe online” risks obscuring how the content, intensity and consequences of attacks differ. Black, Indigenous, Jewish, Arab and lesbian journalists, among others, reported particularly high or severe experiences in the research. This is not a reason for newsrooms to treat some journalists as inherently vulnerable. It is a reason to understand that one generic safety protocol may not address everyone’s risks—especially when harassment combines identity-based abuse, disinformation and threats that can spill into offline life.

Accordingly, The Chilling places responsibility on platforms, news organizations and public institutions as well as individuals. Personal safety training, documentation and access to support matter, but they cannot substitute for institutional action. Newsrooms need clear reporting and response procedures, managerial support, psychological and legal resources, and plans for situations in which attacks affect family members or offline safety. Platforms need to explain how they detect coordinated attacks, handle appeals and enforce rules across languages and regions. Otherwise, “resilience” becomes a polite way of asking the targeted person to adapt alone to an unjust environment.

The study is powerful because multiple methods can be read together, and because it does not treat isolated hostile comments as a complete explanation. Its limits should also remain visible: survey participants and case studies have defined scopes, and two large-scale post analyses cannot represent every region, medium or journalist. Nor does a survey percentage prove that every attack was organized by the same actors. Naming these boundaries does not weaken the research; it makes the evidence more useful for policy and action. Read it alongside FemRes’s study of women journalists in Southern Africa and the later AI-age comparative study: online violence is not a private quarrel, but an institutional question about who can continue to participate in public life.