WebinarTuesday 21 July 2020
12:00pm – 1:00pm
The Digital News Media and Online Harassment
This event will start at 12pm BST (British Summer Time)
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
Fully bookedThe digital transformation of news media has accelerated in recent years, facilitating access to information for millions of people worldwide. But the rise of digital news has also been accompanied by an increase in disinformation, fake news, and online harassment, prompted by the anonymity offered by the internet and social media sites. In some cases, the use of social media to target and bully news organizations, individual journalists, and celebrities may even lead to fatal consequences, as seems to have happened in the recent case of a participant in a Japanese reality TV show.
In this webinar Shiori Ito, an independent Japanese journalist who has been harassed online, spoke about the current situation in Japan and the major challenges faced by efforts to address online harassment.
Dr. Julie Posetti, Global Director of Research at the International Center for Journalists, and a UN-commissioned researcher on gendered online violence against journalists, then explained the complex challenges news organisations face to protect journalists online while facing political pressures, engaging effectively with audiences, defending freedom of expression and access to information, and avoiding what she calls “platform capture”.
A poll of our audience revealed that 22% had very sadly been victims of online harassment, and roughly half of this number had not taken any action in response. If you have been a victim, you are encouraged, if you feel able, to report it to the social media site or website on which it occurs. It may also be a criminal offence, in which case you are encouraged to report it to the police, if you feel able to. More advice can be found by following this link.
WRITTEN SUMMARY, THE DIGITAL NEWS MEDIA AND ONLINE HARASSMENT, PDFA video of the webinar can be found here:
About the contributors
Dr Julie Posetti
Dr Julie Posetti is the Global Director of Research at the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). She was previously a Senior Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, where she led the Journalism Innovation Project. She remains academically affiliated with the Reuters Institute, and she is also a Senior Researcher attached to the Centre for Freedom of the Media (CFOM) at the University of Sheffield. Her research focusses on the intersection of journalism, digital media transformation, and freedom of expression, and she is at the forefront of understanding and documenting converging Digital Age threats to investigative journalism. In addition to several decades of high-level international journalism and a range of published academic research, she is the author of Protecting Journalism Sources in the Digital Age (UNESCO 2017) and the co-editor of Journalism, ‘Fake News’ and Disinformation (UNESCO 2018). She is currently leading a UN-commissioned global study on online violence against female journalists. During her time as a journalist and editor with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, she was awarded the Australian Human Rights Awards for Radio for her coverage of Indigenous affairs, the resurgence of the ‘racist right’, and systemic child abuse in state care.
Shiori Ito
Shiori Ito is an independent Japanese journalist, documentary film-maker and author of Black Box (2017). Her work is mainly distributed overseas, and has been shown on international media outlets such as Al Jazeera and Reuters. At the 2018 New York Festivals, an international media competition, Ito won two silver medals in the Social Issues and Sports Documentary categories. She also won the 7th Free Press Association Award Grand Prize in Japan for Black Box. This book is about her own investigation and experience of Japan’s sexual violence situation.