Online hate a regular occurrence for women, visible minorities in media
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Emilie Nicolas tries to take the good with the bad when it comes to social media.
As a columnist and commentator — for the Montreal Gazette and other outlets — who often broaches topics of race and social justice, she receives hateful, vitriolic messages on a weekly basis.
“I would say that in general, social media are both an incredible asset for people who do not have a voice in traditional media,” she said, “and also a very dangerous weapon.”
Nicolas has been subjected to “rape threats, insults, death threats,” and been told she is anti-Quebec, that she is the real racist, and that she should go back to her country.
“Basically, for different reasons, these people have come to the irrational conclusion that I don’t have a right to a space,” Nicolas said.
Women and visible minorities in media are disproportionately targeted by hate speech online, she noted, often as a form of retaliation against much needed social change.
She points to Carla Beauvais, a Black columnist for Journal Métro, who in a recent column in Elle Québec revealed she had taken several months off after reaching her limit with online abuse.
“The empathy isn’t there,” Nicolas said. “Precisely because our voices have been erased, historically, in traditional media, there’s this perception that we are not legitimate interlocutors, and there’s no need to hold punches.
“It’s very much about control, like most violence, and about who gets to have a voice. I think the goal of the way women and people of colour are targeted by online hate is really to make us shut up.”
Nicolas was barred from Twitter for 10 days last month, after a series of complaints by trolls about her tweets. It seems the platform’s AI monitoring technology couldn’t decipher irony in one of her tweets.
When it comes to online vitriol, one’s status in traditional hierarchies of power appears to play a part in the amount and intensity of the abuse one is subjected to.
In discussing his reasons for retiring from his role of court jester on hit Quebec talk show Tout le monde en parle, Sunday night, Dany Turcotte placed part of the blame on the hateful messages he has received for years on social media, including homophobic slurs that greeted his coming out on air in 2005.
Racism, sexism and homophobia are among the most common forms of online hate, and people from racialized groups are particularly vulnerable to such abuse, according to a recent poll by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and Abacus Data.
Canadian heritage minister Steven Guilbeault will table legislation against online hate speech in the coming weeks, a representative from Guilbeault’s office confirmed to the Gazette on Monday.
Concordia University’s Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights (MIGS) has received funding from Canadian Heritage for a study of how female journalists and politicians are disproportionately targeted by online hatred, titled the Canadian Leaders’ Digital Defence Initiative.
“In the U.K., we’ve seen a trend of female politicians leaving politics because of this,” said Marie Lamensch, communications and projects coordinator at MIGS.
In Canada, she cites the harassment received by female politicians including Ottawa MP Catherine McKenna in recent years.
“We decided to launch a project studying what is happening in Canada, looking at patterns and trends of how women are being attacked: What is the narrative? Are there differences across regions? We know in advance that (women of colour) are threatened a lot more on social media than Caucasians; we have seen that in other countries.”
The institute will submit its report on the topic this spring.
Fabrice Vil, a media commentator, lawyer and social entrepreneur, takes a hands-on approach to online attacks. He has muted Twitter comments from people he doesn’t follow, “because it bothers me to receive hate speech.”
He would rather not have to resort to such measures.
“It means I lose the benefit of reading comments by people I don’t know,” said Vil, who is Black. “It stops me from participating fully in exchanges. But I was receiving too many insults. It becomes too much for my brain to process.”
He also posted a code of conduct for those who post on his Facebook page, which has 19,000 followers; and he has hired someone to moderate the comments, in order to ensure that discussions remain civilized. Vil believes it’s part of the responsibility that comes with having a public tribune.
“I see how people communicate with each other, and how debates degrade into incivility,” he said. “People give themselves the right to be meaner on social media.”
Vil is disturbed by how he and others who speak up on issues of race are portrayed by some mainstream media commentators, which he believes has a carryover effect on public opinion and online abuse.
“People call us radical militants,” he said, “which can only serve to provoke hate.
“People don’t realize we are just citizens participating in the social project.”
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