Towards an early warning system for online violence: how to monitor digital attacks on women journalists and prevent escalation

The Chilling, a major global study produced by UNESCO and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), found a clear link between online violence and offline harm. 20% of survey respondents and dozens of women journalists interviewed by the researchers described offline attacks, abuse and harassment that they connected to online violence. There is now an urgent need to mitigate the surge of online violence into the physical world.

So, what can be done to monitor, predict and ultimately prevent the escalation of online violence?

In this session, Julie Posetti - the lead author of The Chilling and the chief researcher on a new projects developing tools to help monitor and predict online violence escalation - and computer scientist Diana Maynard will present a new set of research-informed indicators for gendered online violence escalation and a companion monitoring tool for gendered digital attacks on journalists developed for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). They will also demonstrate a new interactive system for monitoring and measuring online attacks.

Research underpinning these new tools focuses on emblematic gendered online violence cases like prominent Indian journalist Rana Ayyub, and the terrifying accounts of journalists like Northern Ireland crime reporter Trish Devlin - both of whom will join this panel discussion.