Understanding, Detecting, and Mitigating Online Misogyny against Politically Active Women

Painting; male head on the left side of the picture; Woman in the background — Credit: Wikipedia Common by Gucora Andu (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Internalized_Misogyny.png); Creative Commons 4.0 share alike + attribution (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en); no changes made

Project Description

Billions of people use social media every day. Many of them discuss political topics online. Radicalization, extreme speech, and in particular online misogyny against politically active women have become alarming negative features of online discussions. In this interdisciplinary project, we will employ mixed-methods approaches to three case studies in Germany, India, and Brazil to better understand the content and dynamics of online misogyny against politically active women and to develop methods for early identification of such emerging dynamics. We will collaborate with subject matter experts in India and Brazil as well as with media partners and affected female politicians. With citizen social science tools we will involve the general public in the process of identifying emerging campaigns of online misogyny against politically active women. This project will also develop policy briefs and regulatory approaches to address online misogyny.

Collaborators:

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Pfeffer (Associate Professor of Computational Social Science & Big Data at the Munich School of Public Policy at the Technical University of Munich)
Prof. Dr. Sahana Udupa (Professor of Media Anthropology at LMU Munich)
Luise Koch (Research Associate and PhD candidate at the professorship for Global Health at the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology)
Dr. Raji Ghawi (Post-doctoral research fellow at the Chair of Computational Social Science at the Munich School of Politics and Public Policy at the Technical University of Munich)
Leah Nann (Research Associate at the Professorship of Media Anthropology at LMU Munich)

This project is funded by the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt).

Project Publications

Souza L, Koch L, Russo Riva MP, Leal N. Viewpoint: Protecting Women Politicians from Online Abuse. Political Violence @ A Glance. 2023; blog post.

Souza L, Koch L, Russo Riva MP, Ghawi R. Hate messages received by black and white candidates during the 2022 brazilian elections, and its potential implications. Estudos Eleitorais. 2023; 16(2), 96-98.

Udupa S, Koch L. Tackling online misogyny in political campaigns: Promise and limitations of artificial intelligence. Feminist Media Studies. 2024; Online First.