Gendered Disinformation Against Women in Politics: A Factor Weakening Democratic Systems

19/06/2023

Written by: Philippine Sottas

Translated by: Zoé Llacer

Gendered disinformation against women in politics is a lingering and worrisome phenomenon that sets significant challenges for the promotion of gender equality and the democratic process as a whole. The gender expert, Lucina Di Meco, defines gendered disinformation as the diffusion of deceptive or incorrect information and images against female political leaders, journalists and public figures, following misogynistic and gender stereotypes scenarios^[1]Di Meco, L. (2020). Online threats to women’s political participation and the need for a multi-stakeholder, cohesive approach to address them, 65ème commission sur le Statut des femmes, Nations … Continue reading. The intended broadcasting of false information^[2]Unlike misinformation, which is the sharing of false information with no intention of causing harm, the primary aim of disinformation is to harm the individual targeted., rumours, and prejudices targeting specifically women in position of power not only affect their credibility and their legitimacy but also perpetuates stereotypes and gender prejudices deeply rooted, thus reinforcing power discrepancies.

Gendered disinformation hinders progress toward gender equality and inclusive social structures. It aims to undermine women’s leadership and dissuade them from participating in political life by distorting facts, manipulating public opinion, and altering narratives. As online violence increases, it becomes clear that the fight against gendered disinformation is not only essential to the promotion of women in politics but also to the overall health of democratic societies that aspire to equality and representation for all its citizens. This phenomenon influences social perceptions, behaviours, and broader politics regarding gender roles and the participation of all. Also present in India, the United States, and Ukraine, gendered disinformation is a universal contemporary issue, continuously growing as technology develops and social networks multiply. The latter are also creating a new terrain for aggression against women, who are now subjected to online violence. The researcher Sarah Sobieraj uses the expression “numerical misogyny” ^[3]Sobieraj, S. (2020). Credible threat: attacks against women online and the future of democracy, Oxford University Press. to refer to this online violence based on gender. It is interesting to note that, while men can also be targets of disinformation regarding their professional and political lives, attacks on women mainly target their physical appearance and are most often of a pornographic, sexual, or sexually threatening nature^[4]The study “Sex, lies, and stereotypes: gendered implications of fake news for women in politics” highlights this fact. Based on the false information relayed during the 2016 American … Continue reading. This article aims to shed light on how gendered disinformation hinders the inclusion of women in politics, by analysing the factors that encourage it, the actors involved in its production, its dissemination, and its individual and collective effects.

Media and Technological Breeding Ground for Gendered Disinformation

Several factors contribute to the development of gendered disinformation, both in society and in the media, which institutionalise gender stereotypes and prejudices. It is common to see women in politics presented as weak, emotional, or incompetent for leadership jobs. It is for instance the BBC World channel that, beginning of 2023, from the resignation of the Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern, titles “Jacinda Ardern’s resignation: can women have it all?”^[5]AFP, (2023). BBC admits error over ‘Can women have it all?’ headline on Jacinda Ardern resignation story, The journal. … Continue reading. The media can influence the way information is presented and reinforce gendered narratives by portraying women politicians in biased ways or by invariably referring to them as women or mothers. This normalisation of sexism creates a favourable breeding ground for the development of gendered disinformation.

Disinformation also thrives on behaviours and societal prejudices concerning genders. Preconceived ideas about women’s abilities and social expectations about their legitimacy in politics contribute to the acceptance of narratives denigrating their value in the spheres of power. Such biases may be reinforced by cultural norms, educational systems and historical power structures that have traditionally marginalised women in positions of political responsibility.

Technology strengthens disinformation campaigns towards women, through the possibility of producing “memes”^[6]According to Le Robert, which added the word to the dictionary in 2013, a ‘meme’ is “a humorous image, video or text that spreads widely on the Internet, particularly on social … Continue reading or Deepfakes videos^[7]The term “Deepfake” refers to a technique that uses artificial intelligence algorithms to create or alter digital content, usually videos or images, in a convincing way by replacing the … Continue reading, most of which are pornographic videos staging the targeted women^[8]A report by the Deeptrace institute warns of the number of sexual deepfakes. Out of an analysis of 14,678 online deepfake videos, 96% are sexual and pornographic in nature. Deeptrace, (September … Continue reading. In other cases, bots^[9]A bot is a software agent that operates automatically on the Internet and performs repetitive tasks. on messaging applications can create thousands of pornographic images using photos of female politicians. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the United States House of Representatives, is among those Deepfakes video victims. In 2019, a video shared on social media presented her in a definite state of drunkenness^[10]Reuters, (2020). Fact check: “Drunk” Nancy Pelosi video is manipulated, Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-nancypelosi-manipulated-idUSKCN24Z2BI. This video, which has gone viral, is an alteration of the original video, which is 75% slower, in order to distort the speech and make the politician appear drunk. Viewed by more than 2.3 million people, the video was largely broadcast by Donald Trump supporters. Social media platforms play a significant role in the spread of gendered disinformation and online violence. The nature of these platforms, characterised by their rapid and widespread reach, can amplify rumours and other false information about women in politics. Online spaces provide a propitious ground for the multiplication of phenomena due to the lack of fact-checking mechanisms, the “echo chamber” effect, and the algorithmic biases that perpetuate existing beliefs. The anonymity and distance offered by a computer screen or smartphone encourage individuals to engage in online violence, threats, defamation, and rumours against female politicians.

A Wide Range of Players Are Involved in the Dissemination of Gendered Disinformation

Who are those actors that produce, share, and amplify gendered disinformation? Its creation and dissemination are the result of a plurality of individuals from different backgrounds, as well as organised groups or networks with specific agendas. Those actors can have various motivations to discredit, question, or hinder the legitimacy and progress of women in politics. Individuals and groups who intentionally create and disseminate disinformation do so for political gain, to defend an ideological agenda or as part of personal attacks. Two categories of actors can be identified: individual protagonists and organized networks.

Online violence against female politicians is the product of everyday misogyny. Individuals are attacking women who, in their view, are challenging the traditional pattern of political careers, which should be the preserve of men. These individuals are known as masculinists^[11]French historian Christine Bard, a specialist in the history of women and gender, describes masculinism as “one of the contemporary manifestations of anti-feminism in Western countries. … Continue reading and their voices are increasingly present on social networks, where they disseminate misogynist content based on arguments of male superiority and the perpetuation of relations of domination over women^[12]Wagner, T. (2022). Toxic masculinity on social media, Bonpote. https://bonpote.com/en/toxic-masculinity-on-social-media/. The phenomenon is all the more worrying in that it is tending to become commonplace and to intensify, particularly among younger people. The Haut Conseil à l’égalité (High Council for Equality) points out that “among men under 35 ‘masculinist’ clichés are more deeply entrenched and a ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is more strongly asserted”^[13]Haut Conseil à l’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes, (23 janvier 2023). Rapport annuel 2023 sur l’état des lieux du sexisme en France.. Gendered disinformation against women in politics perpetrated by masculinists is reinforced by the anonymity of the Internet. Most of the attacks from these individuals are sexist insults and daily messages claiming that women are not sufficiently educated and should not have a place in politics^[14]Dafyyd, M. (2020). Women in politics face ‘daily’ abuse on social media, BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-politics-52785157.

Gender disinformation can also be the result of a campaign of harassment launched by organized networks or by individuals close to a government. For instance, in India, an army of far-right trolls^[15]A troll is an Internet user who deliberately engages in behaviour designed to provoke, irritate, criticise or upset others. They post offensive comments on social networks in order to provoke strong … Continue reading attacked women in national politics through pornographic videos, sexual threats, and Deepfakes. Hence, in 2020, criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) earned activist Kavita Krishnan between 50 and 100 messages a day on Twitter. She asserts, “These trolls regularly attack me for my skin colour, my physical appearance, telling me I am not enough worth getting raped, what kind of torture and rape I should be subjected to” ^[16]Mackintosh, E. & Gupta, S. (2020). Troll armies, ‘deepfake’ porn videos and violent threats. How Twitter became so toxic for India’s women politicians, CNN. … Continue reading. The Prime Minister himself encourages those practices by following the harassing accounts. Swati Chaturvedi, writer of I am a Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP’s Digital Army, writes that: “the BJP has this ecosystem where everything is geared towards attacking people, particularly sexually. It shares defamatory insults, sexual insults against women, journalists, activists, women politicians, with whom it essentially disagrees” ^[17]Chaturvedi, S. (2016). I am a troll: Inside the secret world of the BJP’s digital army, Juggernaut Publication..

In the instance of the pursuit of a political or ideological agenda, gendered disinformation can exceed the internal frontiers of a country to be organized by foreign actors. It is often through media resources, social networks, and the control of information that foreign state actors spread this type of disinformation. The offensive in Ukraine has catalysed attacks by pro-Russian individuals on Ukrainian women politicians. It should be remembered that while Russian disinformation in Ukraine can affect women involved in politics, it is more generally all Ukrainian women who are being targeted, with particularly violent attacks on issues that could be the subject of war crimes: rape and sexual assault of female citizens by the Russian armed forces, for example^[18]A study entitled “Prostitution will save Ukraine from the default: Investigating Russian gender disinformation in social networks” deals with this issue and gives several examples of … Continue reading.

Detrimental Effects of Disinformation on Women and Democratic Systems

The primary aim of disinformation is to silence women and encourage them to leave the political sphere and the public arena in general. Gender-based disinformation is a real strategy for making women invisible and depersonalising them in the online space. Moreover, the viral aspect of social media allows for disinformation campaigns to reach a broad public swiftly, harming female politicians’ reputations and credibility. The actors producing and transmitting gendered disinformation play on the emotional capacities of their targets, one in particular: fear. Scare women politicians, in particular with threatening messages, so that they themselves withdraw from the public arena.

Gendered disinformation is also a means of shaping the debate among women politicians by reducing their space for expression. These rumours and false information force them to deny, denounce and justify themselves. The time they spend defending themselves is time they don’t have to put forward their political ideas. Disinformation steers the debate so that instead of presenting their programme and party line, they are often encouraged by the media to counter the disinformation narrative. Above all, this false information can follow them over a long period and become embedded in the minds of some people.

In 2017, Ukrainian Member of Parliament Svitlana Zalishchuk fell victim to disinformation when a fake tweet appeared claiming she had promised to run naked through the streets of Kyiv if the Ukrainian army lost a major battle. The tweet, originating from pro-Russian platforms, was joined with fake pictures of the supposedly naked politician. Multiple months after this tweet, a German journalist asked her, at the end of an interview if she really was going to run naked^[19]Jankowicz, N. (2017). How disinformation became a new threat to women, Coda. https://www.codastory.com/disinformation/how-disinformation-became-a-new-threat-to-women/. This example perfectly illustrates two major issues. The first one regards the difficulty of countering disinformation on the Internet, this universal space where information is hardly removable. The second is on a broader scale: the perpetuation of gender prejudices and the imprinting of false rumours in people’s memories. These rumours, which are often only denounced at the level of the victim, become embedded in people’s minds and mentalities over time and can maintain a reductive vision of women.

If, in general, gendered disinformation is not yet sufficiently studied by the scientific community, its consequences on people of colour are even less analysed. Few research papers describe the gendered disinformation phenomenon and its mechanics on categories of racialised people. The results of one of these studies, entitled “An unrepresentative democracy: how disinformation and online abuse hinder women of colour political candidates in the United States”, nevertheless indicate that these women are more likely to be targeted by disinformation, based on their skin colour^[20]Thakur, D. Handerson, D. (ed.), (2022). An unrepresentative democracy: how disinformation and online abuse hinder women of color political candidates in the United States, CDT Research.. Researchers assert that “attacks are based on racist beliefs, such as the belief that a candidate is ‘too dark’, that she may be an immigrant as evidenced by her complexion, or that she is not white enough to be considered a leader”^[21]Thakur, D. Handerson, D. (ed.), (2022). An unrepresentative democracy: how disinformation and online abuse hinder women of color political candidates in the United States, CDT Research.. Here, it is through racist rhetoric that individuals attempt to denigrate and discredit female politicians. Research conducted in 2018 by Amnesty International reveals that black women are 84% more likely to be targeted by online violence on Twitter than white women^[22]Rapport Amnesty International (2018). Toxic Twitter is failing women by letting online violence thrive..

While the consequences of gendered disinformation are numerous, the phenomenon also exerts influence on the democratic systems’ good health. By targeting female politicians and forcing them to withdraw from the political scene, gendered disinformation limits the participation of part of the population and undermines the dynamics of representation and inclusion in politics. However, the very essence of democracy is to include all voices, and above all to protect this diversity by taking measures to counter any form of potential attack. Gendered disinformation is therefore a clear attack on women and democratic systems, which must be taken into account both by the political class and by the media platforms and social networks that allow this phenomenon to develop without taking sufficiently strong measures to prevent it.

In this drive to undermine a democratic system, disinformation campaigns are organised by individuals close to governments, police forces, the army and political parties. This is the case of President Paul Kagame’s party, the Rwandan Political Front (RFP), which the candidate in Rwanda’s 2017 presidential election has accused of having tampered with and distributed false nude photos of herself^[23]Shima Rwigara, D. (2017). I wanted to be Rwanda’s first female president. Then fake nude photos appeared online, The Washington post.. The photos of Diane Shima Rwigara were circulated just one day after she declared her intention to run in the presidential elections. The candidate accuses her political opponents of being responsible for this tactic aimed at discrediting her: “Fake nude photos are just one of the many tactics used to silence me”. The aim of circulating these photos is to avoid any form of political debate so that the candidate cannot present her arguments and her political project for the country without her public image being associated with these photos. A few months later, in July 2017, when Shima Rwigara was supposed to announce the launch of her election campaign, new nude photos purporting to represent her circulated on the Internet. In the end, Diane Shima Rwigara’s candidacy was disqualified by the National Electoral Commission, which claimed that the candidate had not collected the required 600 signatures, even though she had provided more than 1,100.

Still, in this spirit of undermining democratic systems, the issue of cyber operations^[24]According to an updated definition from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a cyber operation is “the use of hacking, viruses, or other methods to wage information warfare, … Continue reading carried out by trolls and state agents to influence the political outcome of a particular country is also a cause for concern. It is all the more worrying because disinformation campaigns fomented by foreign agents are on the increase, as was the case with Russia’s involvement in the 2016 US elections^[25]Marineau, S. (2020). Fact check US: What is the impact of Russian interference in the US presidential election?, The Conversation. … Continue reading. At a time when conspiracy theories are gaining ground and citizens are losing confidence in their public institutions, gendered disinformation is yet another factor undermining the credibility of democratic processes and institutions. The threat is all the more worrying given that social networks are becoming the primary source of information for some people^[26]Coleman, V. (2013). Social media as a primary source: a coming of age, Educause. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2013/12/social-media-as-a-primary-source-a-coming-of-age.

Insufficient Measures to Counter Gendered Disinformation

While disinformation undermines female politicians, liberal values, and democratic principles, it remains a little-studied subject. For the moment, there is no universal scientific definition of this type of attack. However, such a definition would be necessary if the issue is to be better considered and dealt with effectively. It should be a priority for the major platforms to deal with online violence. Fighting against gender-based disinformation requires a multidimensional approach, involving individuals, organizations, and society as a whole in order to put an end to the climate of impunity that reigns for the perpetrators of online violence. This cannot be achieved without a strategy for regulating content, including issues of disinformation. Online platforms must be able to rely on government policies that are aware of and willing to strengthen the representation of women in politics. States must also invest in campaigns to denounce, publicise and combat this form of disinformation. Awareness must also be raised upstream, particularly among young people, to inform them about the mechanisms of disinformation and teach them critical thinking and fact-checking techniques. This should be done by encouraging media literacy programmes in places of learning. Finally, it is essential to support women’s voices and amplify them by highlighting their expertise. This means encouraging diverse representation in the media, in political arenas and other areas of influence in order to counter stereotypes and combat disinformation.