Addressing Gendered Disinformation: Review of Current Recommendations and the Case for Broadening Responses

"Gendered disinformation poses a pervasive threat, particularly impacting women and girls from marginalized groups and those in the public eye, intertwining with other social identities targeted by malevolent actors."

This report, published by IREX, is based on a literature review, focusing on publications that analyse the specific threat of gendered disinformation, online harassment against women, or the intersection of gender and social media. The report summarises and groups the most common recommendations for intervention across six stakeholder types: government, civil society, social media platforms, academia, media organisations, and political parties. It also analyses gaps between the evidence base and the recommendations made to date and offers additional ways forward for tackling gendered disinformation.

As explained in the report, "Disinformation is widely recognized as a threat to individuals, communities, and institutions across the globe. Gendered disinformation, however, disproportionately affects women and girls, especially those from marginalized groups for whom gender intersects with other social identities targeted by malevolent actors (e.g. LGBTQI+ and racialized minorities) and those active in public life (e.g. politicians, journalists, and human rights defenders). It is a tactic commonly used by authoritarian regimes to fuel divisive public debate, undermine democratic principles, institutions, and human rights, and silence women's voices in digital spaces, threatening both individual well-being and democracy globally."

The review found that many of the common recommendations emerging from the review across all stakeholder groups include collecting data, raising awareness, strengthening capacity, and improving regulation. For technology companies and social media platforms, for example, it recommends:  

• Developing base standards for the prevention of and response to gendered disinformation;
• Providing support for digital, media, and information literacy trainings;
• Moderating content related to gendered disinformation and related harms; and
• Improving reporting mechanisms for women experiencing gendered disinformation and other online attacks.

For the media sector, the most common recommendations include:

• Investing in organisational capacity strengthening to protect staff against online attacks;
• Strengthening media stakeholders' capacity to address gendered disinformation;
• Serving as a watchdog for gendered disinformation topics and trends; and
• Engaging in cross-sectoral collaboration to amplify impact.

From an analysis of the results, the report highlights a number of gaps in the recommendations:

• Overall insufficient focus on prevention and lack of recognition and recommended action that get to the roots of the problem;
• Lack of connection to the education sector and other norm-formative institutions;
• Lack of specificity on how to productively engage men and boys;
• Lack of distinction between types of gendered disinformation and how different solutions are best suited to address them; and
• Inadequate actions to reach bystanders and perpetrators.

The report makes the point that all proposed mitigation actions should recognise that gendered disinformation, more so than other types of disinformation, creates offline consequences for its subjects. Therefore, responses should require:

• Deliberate inclusion of survivor-focused, trauma-informed approaches;
• Explicit mitigation strategies to redress the intersectional nature of abusive content;
• Differentiated solutions for the evolving types of gendered disinformation;
• Strong connection to digital citizenship and digital ethics education;
• Attention to creating incentives for those who create and share gendered disinformation;
• Addition of comprehensive follow-through on the connection between digital and physical harm that gendered disinformation carries; and
• Linkage to the broader impact that gendered disinformation has on communities, governance, democracy, economy (and more) to engage relevant power-holders and organisations in solutions.

In addition, the report advocates for cross-sectoral collaboration. As no single intervention or stakeholder alone can effectively combat gendered disinformation, there is a need for coordinated efforts across government, tech platforms, civil society, academia, media, and political parties.

In conclusion, the report emphasises the need for global collaboration and the inclusion of strategies from adjacent sectors, such as technology-facilitated gender-based violence, violence against women in politics, and behaviour change communication, to meaningfully address this multifaceted threat.