SILLY SEASON MIGHT be looming for journalists, but in this line of work, some things are year round – particularly if you’re a woman.

You may have been shocked to read earlier in the summer the extent to which female journalists in Ireland are subject to harassment and abuse online – but for those of us in the job, it was simply a formal compilation of what we already knew.

Extensive research carried out by Dr Dawn Wheatley of DCU’s School of Communications outlined how women in Irish journalism are routinely vilified, undermined and humiliated online, from degrading remarks about their appearance to violent threats.

The report, Social media and online hostility: Experiences of women in Irish journalism, organised this abuse into 15 categories, which included accusations of bias, ‘shooting the messenger’ and threats to their safety. Other research on this issue has found that the effects of this persistent vitriol include real psychological injury and damage to women’s careers.

Wheatley’s research detailed female journalists’ experience of, to name a few, late-night threats from people they approached for comment:

He was sending veiled threats and text messages at 4am and being like, ‘if you post a story, I’m going to make sure your career is ruined. I’ll sue you for defamation’.”

Barrages of hateful messages in response to opinions they shared online:

I got about 2,000 abusive responses, quote tweets, retweets. One of them told me I should die and they sent me an image of my Photoshopped face on a body on top of a pile of people being burnt. And lots of really horrible Nazi imagery.”

And having their work undermined by sexualised or degrading comments:

I remember this series I had done on hospice care … I was so delighted with it and all the messages I got were ‘have you lost a bit of weight?’ ‘I liked your dress in that second piece.’”

We often discuss online trolls in abstract terms, making them out to be shadowy, faceless individuals floating through cyberspace with no identity. But these are real people, saying and writing things that most civilised humans wouldn’t dream of saying in real life. So why do they do it online? And how can we stop them?

Impunity

One of the defining characteristics of an online troll is a sense of invincibility. Ciarán O’Connor, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, says that “online trolling creates a sense of distance between someone and their targets, and it can create the perception that they can act with impunity”.

Because the trolls believe – often correctly – that there are no consequences to calling someone a slut or a government shill through the medium of, say, Twitter, they act in ways they never would on the streets, in school or work.

Wheatley’s report noted that social media companies’ approach to policing hateful and abusive content leaves much to be desired: the bar for having a post removed is too high in many cases, and moderators are slow to act on abusive content. Notably, the interviews with journalists were carried out before Twitter came under the control of Elon Musk, and the site under his watch has become even more of a cesspit of abuse and vitriol.

Why do people troll?

Previous research on trolling has found that people are more likely to post hateful tweets or send abusive messages if they’re in a bad mood. It’s generally off the cuff and not particularly thought through. But in the case of right-wing trolls, there is a concerted effort to silence certain people or perspectives.

According to Debbie Ging, an associate professor of digital media and gender in DCU, those telling women journalists to sit down and shut up often do so because they are happy with the status quo and see these women as attempting to change things.

Ging says: “Vitriol and abuse are deliberately used to silence and intimidate certain people or perspectives.”

She adds that not all trolls have an agenda, and some merely harass and abuse people online for amusement. Other research suggests that trolls are more likely to take pleasure in hurting others. They are also likely to lack a sense of personal responsibility for their actions.

Of course, it’s not just women in journalism who are subject to abuse, but Wheatley’s research found that there is a definite gendered element to a lot of the hateful messages and comments that women receive. One woman interviewed for the research recalled her male colleagues expressing genuine shock about the abuse she received:

“If I’m having a conversation like that with a female colleague and there are male colleagues in the room, they will be shocked. They will be really, really surprised … they didn’t even realise that it was happening to us because it hasn’t touched their lives at all.”

To their credit, a lot of men I have worked with are painfully aware of the vitriol their female colleagues have to put up with, but that awareness of it merely confirms that online trolling isn’t equal-opportunity hatred. Some of the comments detailed in the report are truly repulsive, particularly those concerning a woman’s appearance. One woman said she was called a “wh*ore” for wearing hoop earrings on television.

Moreover, Wheatley points out in the report that even trivial comments about a journalist wearing the same outfit two days in a row represent a “fundamental dismissing of their work’s value”

O’Connor points out that abuse of women in online spheres is a common thread in areas such as activism and politics, as well as journalism.

***

When I was editor of my college newspaper, I was regularly on the receiving end of virtual insults and degradation that I could never imagine being said to a person’s face. My motives and decisions were constantly questioned and I was told I was conniving, calculating, self-interested – not by sock-puppet Twitter accounts with two followers and no profile picture, but by people I knew, had spoken to, had to encounter in the shop and on the street.

During my year as editor, a student died tragically in one of the college libraries. I, like everyone else in the college community, was deeply shaken by the incident. Because the tragedy occurred in a public place, in the vicinity of other students, I felt I had a duty to report on the death and clarify what had happened. The college itself had issued a statement to offer supports to students.

I received several emails telling me I was a disgrace, that I should resign for reporting on the incident, that I was an insult to the university. I appreciate that everyone on campus was hurting. But those comments – made in response to decisions I took on a story that was deeply upsetting – really stung.

Most women journalists will tell you at this point that they’re not looking for sympathy, that they love their jobs and this is just part of it. But does it have to be?

Axe to grind

I always struggled to understand why apparently ordinary people engage in such hateful, abusive rhetoric online. Scrutiny and criticism is unavoidable for journalists of any gender. But the abuse the report discusses doesn’t come from a place of good faith.

For reporters, this is coupled with a lack of understanding about what we actually do all day. Ging says that some of this is genuine, but some is also wilful ignorance: “People who have a very specific political agenda don’t want to acknowledge the complexities of the news cycle or of how newsrooms work or the kinds of pressures and limitations that journalists work on.”

Twitter, as we know, is where nuance goes to die. In my experience, Twitter users generally aren’t interested in being educated on how a reporter does their job. To take one example, whenever a reporter writes a story that levels criticism against an individual or an organisation, accuses them of wrongdoing or generally paints them in a bad light, they have to be given the opportunity to respond. They will be asked for a comment which will be included somewhere in the article. This process, known as right of reply, often results in accusations of journalists “platforming” individuals who don’t deserve it.

But, as the research points out, responding reasonably to every hateful tweet or message is a fool’s errand. The report noted that “many journalists felt there was simply “no point” in engaging with people who seemed to have “little interest in the truth or in having a civilised exchange of views”. It’s exhausting trying to correct the record and maintain some form of credibility and respectability when you’re being hounded from all sides. And, as Ging points out, conflict is profitable for social-media companies. Pile ons, feuds and ‘drama’ keep people scrolling.

So instead, I and many other female journalists simply ignore the abuse, because it’s easier than playing an endless game of whack-a-mole with the Block and Report buttons. But then the prevailing narrative is the one peddled by the far-right bots and the spiteful commentators with an axe to grind – that women journalists are not to be trusted and are fair game for abusive criticism.

Human impact

The report details how many journalists interviewed downplayed the effects of online abuse, believing it was merely part of the job. But, as pointed out by Ivanna Youtchak, the Violence Against Women Coordinator at the National Women’s Council, this ongoing abuse is a barrier to achieving equality in journalism. Without that, issues and stories affecting women and marginalised groups in Ireland will go untold, and the news the public receives will be inferior.

On a human level, ignoring this abuse hasn’t made it go away, and recent developments like the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk has arguably made it worse. Choosing not to engage with the abuse doesn’t diminish the effects it has on a person. Being subject to a barrage of tweets describing you as monstrous, calculating or conniving eats away at your sense of professional and personal worth, as much as you try to tell yourself it’s not true.

So what do we do? The journalists interviewed for the DCU research expressed a desire for social media platforms to take a pro-active, rather than reactive, approach to online abuse. Instead of having moderators – some of whom are volunteers or AI – responding to flagged tweets and deciding whether they should be taken down, users could simply be prohibited from publishing tweets containing certain words or phrases.

Bolstering the law around social media platforms’ positions as publishers of content would make it easier to take legal action for defamation. As the report points out, this could force the platforms to clean up their act, “because they’re about money”.

Without changes such as these, many women will simply choose to walk away for their own sakes. Journalism is at risk of becoming a cold house for women – some would argue it already is. Women from ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ+ community and the Travelling community are doubly at risk of being bullied and abused out. If abuse of female journalists online is left to fester, Irish journalism will be worse off, and the safety of women in the newsroom will be at risk.

Both O’Connor and Ging tell me that a multi-faceted approach is needed to tackle online trolling. Ging believes that “legislation against hate speech and digital harms, stricter platform governance and educational intervention” will all help. These will take time, but one thing that we can do right now is to stop accepting this abuse as ‘part of the job’. It doesn’t have to be inevitable.