Technology to help women journalists document and manage online abuse
For prominent journalists and activists today, especially those covering controversial topics or living under autocratic governments, online harassment is a constant challenge. The threats loom larger for women and can range from nuisances to matters of life and death. Filipino-American journalist and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Maria Ressa, has spoken powerfully about the often dangerous and life-altering repercussions that women journalists face when they bring light to injustices and demand change.
Jigsaw has made long-standing investments in user experience research, technology, and other initiatives to help women navigate instances of targeted, coordinated harassment online. We have also collaborated with journalists, activists and several non-governmental organizations to explore how breakthrough technology can help reduce gender-based online violence, by improving how it is documented and reported.
Today we are open sourcing the code for Harassment Manager, a tool that allows users to document and manage abuse targeted at them on social media, starting with Twitter, who partnered with us on the project. Harassment Manager helps users easily identify and document harmful posts, mute or block perpetrators of harassment and hide harassing replies to their own tweets. Individuals can review tweets based on hashtag, username, keyword or date, and leverage our Perspective API to detect comments that are most likely to be toxic.
We worked with journalists and activists with large Twitter presences throughout the whole development cycle to build Harassment Manager to address their unique and immediate needs. In addition to our partnership with Twitter, the effort also involved collaborations with several NGOs in the journalism and human rights space, including Article 19, Code for Africa, European Women’s Lobby, Feminist Internet, Glitch, International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), Online SOS, Paradigm Initiative, PEN America, Right To Be (formerly Hollaback!), The Thomson Reuters Foundation, and others, to incorporate their perspectives regarding their communities’ needs.
The Harassment Manager code is now available on Github, open sourced for developers and non-governmental organizations to build and adapt for free. The Thomson Reuters Foundation, a leading defender of press freedom and human rights for over 30 years, will be the first partner to bring it to their community of journalists around the world.
Our hope is that this technology provides a resource for people who are facing harassment online, especially female journalists, activists, politicians and other public figures, who deal with disproportionately high toxicity online. We also look forward to seeing developers and organizations tailor it to their specific needs and use the technology to help other at-risk populations.
Contributors: Tin Acosta, Alyssa Chvasta, Lucas Dos Santos, Patricia Georgiou, Tesh Goyal, Tara Hosseinipour, Charlotte Rea, Rachel Rosen, Raquel Saxe, Adesola Sanusi, Monique Smith and Lucy Vasserman