Mirrors and daggers: How journalists pay the price of 24/7 screen access

By Amantha Perera, Project Lead, Dart Centre Asia Pacific

“It is million mirrors, a million daggers, all drawn out together, all the time”: That’s how a Philippines colleague describes her workspace.

Until the pandemic, she worked in a Manila office. But, between being locked down due to COVID-19 in 2020 and returning to work in that office, she stopped considering the physical building as her “workspace”.

She now considers her workspace is a screen: her computer, a giant screen in her newsroom or the 15x13cm screen of her phone, active anywhere, any time.

The daggers in her work life, she says, are a constant stream of online abuse, threats, graphic content and vitriol because of her work as a journalist.  She is not alone.

During interviews for a short research project, Asia Pacific journalists noted exposure to online and digital trauma dangers – technology-facilitated violence (TFV) – had risen, but only partly due to changes wrought by the pandemic.

Close to 70 per cent of all journalists I surveyed in 2021 said they spent more than five hours online a day for their work. Before COVID-19, they said, it was just above 45 per cent. 

The pandemic may have moved most of their workload online. But, as my research confirms, that’s not the only cause for TFV, which has become an urgent concern.

Over the past few years, threats and dangers, as well as their sources, have evolved rapidly. 

To circumvent detection by platform-appointed content moderators or automated detection, they said, those hurling this abuse at them now often:

  • use vernacular languages and dialects
  • create content that includes complicated graphics
  • deploy a mixture of languages, sometimes within one word or phrase.

In one South East Asian country, harmful content arrived via online delivery services. 

To describe the threats received, journalists often used words such as “sophisticated”, “complex” and “organised”.

Indeed, threats appeared to be strategically deployed, at a mass level, to fit powerful political or racial narratives. This was common in countries from India to South Korea. 

TFV can be easily deployed at scale, anonymised, personalised and weaponised, not only to suit localised contexts, but also to target individual journalists. 

The hostility generated by their work is following journalists home, with disturbing content tucked in their pockets. 

Where those in power lean towards autocratic control – and there are many instances across the Asia Pacific – abusers eagerly take advantage of the digital realm.

In Cambodia, suppression of independent media has denied journalists viable outlets. In turn, journalists use social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to tell stories, making them targets for a police unit set up with the sole task of monitoring posts.

When critical voices are detected, journalists are remanded in custody. With lengthy legal procedures inevitably following, this is now a cheap, effective dissent deterrent. 

One positive change within the Asia Pacific journalism community has been emerging dialogues around psychosocial safety.

There is more awareness now than a decade ago about mental health and safety among journalists. (Back then, the slightest mention of “vulnerability” would set eyes rolling among my conflict-hardened Sri Lankan colleagues.) 

Fast forward to this past year and 40 Sri Lankan journalists gratefully completed multi-day Dart Centre Asia Pacific trauma training programs. 

This is not to say that conversations around mental health and safety are wholeheartedly welcomed. In some places, there’s still resistance, especially among top-level executives.

A colleague from South Korea was asked to ignore online sexualised abuse she was receiving online and to “not to be weak”. She did that, because to do otherwise would have made her appear not tough enough for the editorial job she had. But, as a result, she has limited her online engagements as a journalist. 

My research showed that coping mechanisms, for the most part, are rudimentary, usually individuals simply remove themselves from online platforms presenting potential dangers.

However, this silencing of journalists’ voices online takes place at a time when communities across the region are relying ever more on online information. 

This is why all media personnel need to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to the threats posed by TFV.

Pleasingly, there are some important advances being made in Australia. This is a strong reason why Australia – with our access to high-level journalism skills and resources – could be an Asia Pacific hub for modelling and promoting solutions to TFV.

It can be the incubator for fostering a safer, a more robust journalism culture across the region. 

The Dart Centre Asia Pacific is conducting in-depth research with editors and newsroom leaders to understand the challenges and strategies for dealing with staff exposed to TFV. If you or your organisation would like to be a part of this research, please contact erin.smith@dartaspac.org

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