Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence Against Women Journalists in Southern Africa

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), with support from UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC), published A Study of Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence in Southern Africa in 2024. The regional study places online harassment, stalking, sexual harassment, defamation, hate speech and other digitally enabled or amplified harms within women journalists’ working conditions and media freedom. Its premise is important: digital space is not separate from social power. Attacks travel along existing gender inequalities and can affect psychological well-being, professional life and offline safety.

The study’s quantitative component was an online survey MISA conducted in September and October 2022 across 11 Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. It received 75 responses from people working in media: 52 women, 22 men and one person who preferred not to disclose their gender. Eighty-seven per cent lived in a city. Questions asked about respondents’ own experiences as well as whether they knew someone targeted or had witnessed attacks against women journalists. This distinction matters: some reported figures combine first-hand experience, knowledge and observation; they are not sampled prevalence estimates of victimization among women journalists.

The report maps unwanted sexual remarks, threats to expose private information or sexual images, threats of physical violence, stolen accounts or passwords, disinformation about individuals and large-scale negative campaigns. The harm is not limited to vulgar language. It can contest women journalists’ legitimacy as knowledge producers and public speakers. Time spent managing safety, defending credibility or avoiding further exposure can push journalists to speak less, withdraw from platforms, or change how they report and engage. The effects then extend beyond individual experience to who the public can hear and which issues can receive sustained coverage.

MISA connects media safety to regional institutions and obligations. The study refers to African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights Resolution 522 on the protection of women against digital violence and calls on governments, platforms, media organizations, civil society, academia and journalists to share responsibility for prevention, protection, accountability and partnership. That framework is more complete than simply advising journalists to block accounts or become more “digitally resilient”: personal safety tools can address only some risks and cannot replace newsroom support, effective platform appeals or serious responses from law enforcement.

The study’s contribution should be read alongside its methodological limits. An online sample of 75 people in 11 countries, with a strong urban concentration, can map regional concerns and provide a starting point for advocacy; it cannot represent all women journalists or the general population of Southern Africa, nor estimate an overall prevalence rate. The survey was also conducted in 2022 and cannot describe the rapidly changing platform and generative-AI environment that followed. Its value is not to provide a final answer, but to bring regional experience into a debate often dominated by global data and to show where further research needs wider rural, language and media-role coverage. Read it with UNESCO’s The Chilling and the later AI-age study to see how the same issue appears across different institutions and geographic scales.