A/HRC/44/52 perpetrated across distance, without physical contact and beyond borders, with anonymous profiles to amplify the harm to the victim (see A/HRC/38/47). 43. A study carried out by the International Press Institute in 2019 across 45 newsrooms in five countries revealed that women and minority journalists were not only more often targeted online but that the attacks experienced were particularly malicious and often highly sexualized. The study also revealed that muzzling journalists who report on certain politically or socially disputed topics and who express different opinions, is the principal purpose of online attacks. Breeding fear and self-censorship among journalists and publicly demeaning them is a key method of silencing them. 31 44. Campaigns aimed at discrediting women journalists professionally are frequent and often infer that women journalists rely more on personal interest or opinion rather than intellectual analysis. The attacks are usually accompanied by messages of a macho nature and of belittlement and humiliation. Messages aimed at humiliating women journalists for their physical appearance, without necessarily referring to their journalistic skills, are also common, often comprising nasty or degrading comments in connection with their style of dress.32 45. One clear tactic is the smearing of women journalists who challenge power or question the status quo as threats to security, stability and national identity, or as purely political actors whose criticism is ideologically driven and therefore biased. Closely connected to that development is the phenomenon of online harassment targeting journalists, especially women journalists. While in some cases such harassment may reflect organic expressions of anger at journalistic content, in others it is orchestrated, or at least tacitly encouraged, by politicians and political parties. 46. Many women journalists are subjected to angry messages, threats and taunts online in response to their reporting. As part of a series on the rising global phenomenon of online harassment, The Guardian commissioned research into the 70 million comments left on its site since 2006 and discovered that of the 10 most abused writers 8 were women, the 2 men were black and 2 of the women were lesbians. The study found that on all news sites where comments appeared, too often things were said to journalists and other readers that would be unimaginable in person. It also found that articles written by women attracted more abuse and dismissive trolling than those written by men, regardless of what the article was about. The study revealed that since about 2010, articles written by women consistently attracted a higher proportion of blocked comments than articles written by men. Articles about feminism attracted very high levels of blocked comments, as did rape. 33 47. Another example of online harassment was the creation of the Ligue du LOL (Laugh Out Loud League), a private Facebook group initiated by a number of renowned male journalists and commentators in 2009. The platform was used by some of its followers to instigate group harassment of other journalists, principally women. When the group was exposed, several of the complicit journalists were dismissed and court proceedings were launched against the media outlets for which they worked. 48. Perhaps one of the most chilling factors is that for a number of women journalists harassment does not always remain online and has often spilled over into reality. In November 2017, shortly after publishing a report criticizing Internet trolls for sabotaging an application (app) used by women to report instances of harassment in the street, a woman journalist was the target of cyberattacks herself. She received a flood of emails threatening her with rape and violence, and attempts were made to hack her social networks and accounts. The attacks escalated with “doxing” attacks, meaning that her personal details 31 32 33 10 See International Press Institute, “Newsroom best practices for addressing online violence against journalists. Perspectives from Finland, Germany, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom” (2019). Ibid. See Becky Gardiner and others, “The dark side of Guardian comments”, 12 April 2016.