The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> ISABELLE LOUIS: Hi everyone. Can we start? Thank you for attending this forum online. I'm Isabelle Lois. I work for the Online Safety of Journalists. We want to talk about at the IGF to exchange on this important topic with the woman presenting as my panelists and Jorge, my colleague, as well.
Let me take a minute to introduce my panel. So we have Bruna on my right, a member of the Brazilian Civil Society, a MAG member. On the other side, Gulalai Khan, and she teaches Internet Governance and Policy at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan's first consolidated university level on the topic. She's also the founder of Pakistan Professional Woman Forum, which provides mentorship and networking for professional women in Pakistan, including female journalists, so very relevant today. Last but not least, Giulia Lucchese, to draft the Council of Europe's recommendation on countering the use of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation and recommendation on combatting hate speech. She is currently acting as the Secretary of an Expert Committee on Generative AI Implications and Freedom of Expression, CDMSI and co-chair of the Steering Committee of Media and Information Society on Europe‑wide Campaign for Safety of Journalists, so an expert on the topic.
Welcome to all. This is a moment to reflect on journalism and share views to ensure it can continue to do important work, especially online.
This has been a super year. Online has faced harassment, surveillance, and this is in which we have planned the session.
It is divided in three parts. We will start discussing the problem and address the potential solutions and a way forward. Then I hope we can have discussions with people in the room. As you can see, we have an all‑female panel, but we have our online moderator, Jorge, who is here to try to balance the gender quota. So I would hope we would take this opportunity to link the gender perspective on the issues. I think it is an important point to take up, so I hope we can include that.
On the technical side, is it possible for us to be on video for our panelist online, so she can see the room, if possible? I will start with my questions.
Giulia, you have a lot of knowledge for the Council Of Europe. Could you share your most pressing issues for safety of journalists online at this moment.
>> GIULIA LUCCHESE: Good morning, can you hear me well?
>> MODERATOR: Yes.
>> GIULIA LUCCHESE: I'm sad I cannot join you in person, but thank you for inviting me on behalf of the Council of Europe. I will be providing an overview of what the organization is working on. Then to start. You did ask me which are the most topical issues at the moment when comes to the safety of journalism.
I think a very good overview is provided by the report of platform for Protection of Journalists and Report of Freedom of Expression, of Council of Europe States, both published recently. Worrisome data provides a panorama where journalists are tracked and threated online, and these threats have been considered new normal. I will also mention strategic lawsuits against public participation we see very well‑distributed in European Member States.
These incidents are so common, that in several occasions they are not even reported. Which is not just an issue for the journalists but for the audience, the public at‑large, which risks not being informed, not having access to information of public interest that it does have a right to get to know.
In this scenario, women journalists especially are targeted online because of their work but on the basis of their gender. Of course, such threats have increasingly very well ‑‑ have a chilling effect, which causes a significant psychological harm but leads journalists to a self‑censorship.
In other issues, what we have seen is journalists are facing verbal abuse and smear campaigns by politicians and figures holding authority to undermine credibility of the journalists, then suffer in several countries from low levels of public trust.
In this climate of growing mistrust towards the journalist, what happens is a cycle where distrust arises, and journalist can even be targeted by physical and online attacks. We have seen these, for example, from far right or far left groups.
Now I will not get to solutions. I know you will present the Swiss National Action Plan, but what I will say is, we are seeing a change at national level and hope we address them later in our conversation.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you, Giulia. I hope we can address that change in the session, and thank you for making us aware of the most pressing issues. I know you have more of a European perspective, but I guess these are reflected elsewhere. In that sense, I wanted to turn to you, Gulalai, if you could share maybe a bit of your main points you see in South Asia, especially Pakistan, for safety for journalists online. You had an election, so maybe you can have insights as well.
>> GULALAI KHAN: Thank you, Isabelle, and to your office for arranging this important session. I was not surprised when I heard Giulia say these things about Europe. I think it is across this world, especially with the new media coming in, journalism is under threat. Journalists are attacked. Online spaces are becoming very toxic for all professionals, especially journalists.
When you talk about elections, yes, this has been a super‑election year. We saw a similar election happening in Pakistan also. But there is a slight shift from how it was reported this time. So most of the traditional media, the trusted big names, they were either on one side or the other, so the objectivity for traditional media was lost, which also meant that trust in them was lost.
So digital online journalists, or even online citizen journalists, were the main content creators, I would say, for this election. That is another story on election data, Internet went down, people could not connect. Most of the stories of election day of how well or not well the election went was on online spaces.
But the threats remain. Threats on how much you can say, what do you say, then what are the repercussions for journalists online. Especially in a very highly polarized society, like ours, it was very common that even journalists in online spaces were taking their own sides, either due to safety or other reasons, which, again, it comes down to the fact that then people start asking, who do we trust? Who do we trust as our ‑‑ for factual news sources.
That has become quite a big issue in a country like ours, where the government is struggling with big misinformation and disinformation companies, hate speech, a society that is highly polarized, so there is a control that is supported because there has to be legislation of hate speech and all.
There is another side where the freedom of expression and ‑‑ (audio difficulties) has been happening. This has been one of the biggest challenges for us. I want to go a little back to 2021 where Pakistan made history by passing two pivotal laws to support and protect journalists. One was Safe Protection of Journalists and the Act to 2021. These were regulations the National Assembly passed. I talked about right to protection and safety to journalists and sources for protection from harassment.
We saw the implementation has been slow, due to resources or other challenges. So this is an area I think internationally and nationally everybody has to work together on. Sometimes you have the best laws, but then they are not implemented. We are still waiting for a commission for Safety of Journalists to be set up, so that is one of the areas.
One point, Isabelle, if you will allow me, I know the time is limited, but I really want to talk about this new‑age journalism, which is now practiced by small media houses and small independent sources, where the digital platform is becoming newsworthy and the main sources of news for people or the public.
These digital platforms have challenges with financing, challenges with also sometimes harassment and content creation because they don't have as big and robust teams, but they are doing some incredible work. That is the kind of work that needs to be promoted because they are not just keeping journalism alive; they are also keeping the hope alive that our online spaces can be used for constructive purposes.
So for right now, this; then we come to solutions later on.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you so much for the positive spin at the end of this, because I know it can sometimes be a bit depressing when we are focusing on issues we are facing and problems we have. And now I will turn to another region of the world. I'm happy to have Bruna here, who can maybe tell us a bit about the pressing issues in Brazil or Latin America as a whole. I have heard there have been cases of gender‑specific targeting or harassment for journalists. Do you think this is a trend or isolated cases? I would love to hear about your opinion on this.
>> BRUNA MARTIN DOS SANTOS: Now it work. Thanks for the organisation on the rights of Human Rights on the IGF menu. I have been saying this a couple years now, it is sad we don't promote more and more debates on these topics, as the IGF should be the core space for these aspects.
I will focus a little on both places, like Brazil and the region. It is not like both Giulia and Gulalai say, the trends repeat themselves and are very much similar between countries. It is really ‑‑ (audio difficulties) can the microphones work sometimes?
Harassment campaigns have been facilitated to shut down journalists, especially ones reporting topics such as corruption, you know, elections and some of the most urgent or the most divisive topics in this space.
Then I am from Brazil. I'm proud the free press right is enshrined in the Constitution, and we have a rather positive progressive framework that come to mind for journalists. To come to my mind, (?) three European journalists harassed on Twitter during the campaign, a company, years ago go. Patricia was one of the most prominent, reporting on the (?) in the government and subjected to a smear campaign, featuring sexualizing and false allegations about her integrity. And the same with Juliana. During this period, she launched a book about the Bosonar (?)family and continues to be a target online.
That leads me to the first intervention. When we look to Latin America more broadly, journalists are ‑‑ as I said, the ones reporting on corruption, organised crime, Human Rights abuses, elections, they think the highest victims of online violence such as (?) targeting companies and attempts of discrediting their work. This doesn't just happen with female journalists but ones from marginalized communities such as indigenous communities, (?) in the case Brazil and also the queer community, where they have been great targets, in that sense.
Last but not least, some of those cases, maybe Maxco is relevant example, but Brazil is, as well. We practice, sadly, a fair amount of political and state‑sponsored companies, where some of the political actors are governments. They have been implicated in orchestrating this online harassment of companies. They often employ gender‑specific narratives, as in -- like attempts of claiming this person is not clever enough, that they came from a different place, they were funded by a different kind of political party and so on in order to polarize the public opinion, but also to undermine the credibility of all those journalists.
Maybe I will stop here, and we can continue later.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you, Bruna, and setting scene. As the three of you pointed out, the issues are similar in different regions of the world. Maybe if someone from the audience later would want to share points on the areas we have not covered in missing regions, that would be interesting to hear. We keep coming back to different context but similar issues.
So in order to not stay in this more sadder part of looking at what is wrong or what is not functioning or what could be better, I want to look at what we can do, or what we should do. How can we ensure we have a better protection for journalists online. How can we work with or ‑‑ for media edge outlets, education, international organisations, states, journalists, all stakeholders in this area, how can we provide solutions.
I want to give the word first to Giulia, who has done a lot of work on this at the Council of Europe. And I would love for you to share some of the important work you have done and maybe insights you have gained, could share, and used in different countries or areas.
>> GIULIA LUCCHESE: Yes, thank you. I'm really glad to pass to a more positive side of the conversation, so we are looking to the potential solutions or positive results or what we see advancing. I will again provide a perspective that is of an international, inter‑governmental organisation. The first example I can provide, which I think it is already getting a lot of attention and achieving results, is the (?) Campaign, a Europe‑wide campaign that was decided to be initiated by the 46 Member States of Council of Europe. It was launched 14 months ago, in October of last year. The campaign goal is pretty much translating standards into action. Operationalize, intention and achieve pragmatic results. How to do this. First, we have a methodology, which is to look into four main pillars of the safety of journalism. There are four: The protection, persecution fighting against impunity, prevention and promotion of education and awareness.
Through these four pillars, the goal is to really stimulate the states to do something effective and the effectiveness comes from changes in legislation, setting support programmes and mechanisms and raising awareness on why it is important to ensure the safety of journalists. Sounds evident but, at so many different levels, it is not.
So the most urgent task is of course to establish effective protections against the online attacks, misuses of law, systemization and treatment of judicial protection and impunity. Specifically, when comes to training Member States, should be encouraged to give prominence to the available standards and to educational materials addressed, including gender‑specific issues, and put forth tailor‑made rights, with strong solid case law on freedom of expression issues. But also taking into account existing procedural tools, substantive standards and core values and the ideological rules of journalists.
Then when comes to resources, what is necessary to ensure a rapid access to a wide range of different support and protective measures. First and foremost against physical protection, but also the provision of support, for example, by relevant actors such as those are locating adequate resources to provide such support.
In order to be effective in practice, it should be considered the role that can be played by the specific (?) of journalists and tailored to victims online. These measures should be made available for secondary and direct victims of attacks online.
Now, as I said, we are looking to promising results. Some are already very clear, but we also see how they greatly are different in practice from a state to the other. So the starting point differs very much. So they are different in nature, in mission and degree of development. What we see is that 14 months after the launch of the campaign, we count today 39 appointed national focal points. 23 national communities and eight countries, which are currently implementing national action plans. Among these we count Switzerland but have notable models such as, for example, the (?) Project in the Netherlands.
The campaign insists it is necessary to have a multi‑stakeholder approach, so really is the encouragement to set up at the national level this committees. The reason why, for example, as I said, as a leading example in the subject, it has managed to bring together relevant actors, which are, of course, the journalists, but the national police, public persecutor's office, relevant ministries, relevant media houses.
All these actors can affect in relevant change at the national level. I will not comment on what is happening on national level in Switzerland, but leave it on a positive note. Much is happening. We will be able to assess the effectiveness of Member State during these years. The company will last until 2027 and possibly look into the legacy of the campaign in years to come.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you, Giulia, for this overview and these very positive notions of what is happening, what is being done and the will to actually work on this. I'm happy to ‑‑ I look forward to, in a couple of years, to see how this campaign has affected and hopefully helped the situation.
I will take this opportunity to share just a little bit about what we have done in Switzerland on this topic. Last year on the third of May, which is International Press Freedom Day, Swiss published the action plan. To say a bit about the plan, we have nine specific measures aimed to raise awareness and focus on prevention, protection and support in cases of violence and threats for journalists. It also examines the existing legal framework for this protection.
So the general aim of this action plan was to put the topic of journalist's safety in the public agenda. To truly draw attention to the problem that journalists are facing and to make the society, the politicians at every level aware that there is a central role for the media for a proper functioning of a democracy such as Switzerland.
So this was really the aim of it. And every single measure we identified and are trying to put forward goes into this part of putting the safety of journalists on the agenda. The four main wishes we have with this national action plan is to, one, have better recognition of role and profession of journalists or media actors.
We have used the term media actors in the plan to focus more on just journalists, because there are more involved in this work.
The second point is, better protection against online threats and hate speech. The third point is, better physical protection. The fourth is, a better understanding of the abusive lawsuits against journalists that are often known as SLAPPs, and this is something where Giulia is absolutely an expert.
These are the four points we have tried to center our National Action Plan on. These are not specific for online safety, but each measure in its certain way has an online component. We can obviously not talk about harassment without talking about online comments. We can't talk about lawsuits without the online part of it.
So we are trying to bridge what is happening off‑line as well as what is happening online. So I won't go into more detail about this now but I'm happy to answer questions there might be on the different points we have put in place. And I want to give the microphone to Bruna. Maybe she can share what her thoughts on what we can do collectively to promote and improve safety of journalists online. How can we ensure all the relevant stakeholders are involved in this discussion?
>> BRUNA MARTIN DOS SANTOS: Thanks, as we were chatting, I was really thinking what is the role of social media companies in this conversation, right? A lot of the smears/harassment, gender violence related companies, they rely a lot on social media companies, and the lack of proper mechanisms either for quick response, either the channels for communicating with the journalists for the cases should be escalated or any other means that users have, in general, to, you know, to complain about this.
So I see the platform accountability issue was one of the core aspects of this conversation, because we do still need stronger mechanisms to not just detect but also help prevent gender abuse and hate speech that is targeting journalist's rights.
Nothing of these are no solution we can implement, whether in strategic litigation or stronger formers, if social media goes as uncontrolled as they have in the last years, or content moderation mechanisms continue to echo hate speech and a lot of those problematic types of speech, or tech harms.
Other than that, I would say the role of the judiciary or policymakers in coming up with newer legal protections or newer legal regulatory frameworks to establish laws that can address specifically online harassment and ensuring these perpetrators can face legal action and can face legal consequences in that sense.
The sad part about it all, is my country right now is reviewing the civil right rights framework for the Internet. We might arrive in a different stage in the beginning of next year, as some of the protections around the online speech might go elsewhere, but that is one of the points I think is important to think.
The last points would be support systems, right. Above all, it is really important to have proper mechanisms for the victims, the journalists; to have some psychological or legal support to deal with these cases. None of these names mentioned, Julia, Bala or Patrica, wouldn't be able to continue their work without the proper legal protections, right?
This is an aspect, like online harassment, goes beyond the online world and affects their ability to speak or be present in these spaces, so having support systems coming from different stakeholders is relevant.
Lastly, internal cooperation, bodies like UNESCO, CPJ, protection of journalists and OHCR are important and also platforms in finding ways to address online violence and ways to come up with new mechanisms, either from self‑regulatory spaces or statutory regulation aspects.
But the goal is that we pressure them in order to come up with new or improved mechanisms to protect journalists effectively. I will stop here.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you, Bruna, for the points. I have taken notes on these. These are all important things to include at the national or international level and think about when we are discussing how to protect journalists more effectively.
Gulalai, can you share more on what should be done and can be done on this?
>> GULALAI KHAN: I would like to say the fact platforms also need to do work on this. Because we have seen leading platforms and their owner have called out journalists. That does not help with journalism being respected in online spaces.
So probably that is something ‑‑ since you have presented the Swiss Plan for journalism, that is one aspect. I think that form of accountability. Also the role. Because at the end of the day, all the online threats, harassment happens on these platforms and sometimes support them and make them more violent for their own selves, probably number one.
You also talked about the fact most of the online problems but you need to have stronger (?) conversation for this. Very good to have those points, especially with the world and media actors you talked about. We cannot actually, in digital space, ignore these new content creators. You can call citizen journalists or people ‑‑ but they are not trained enough. Probably you need to train them on fact‑checking.
The difference between and debate around citizen journalism versus mainstream journalism is that probably the fact‑checking and training that goes for you to become a journalist is sometimes weaker in those online spaces. If government can support this and Civil Society can support this, that can be helpful. You get more fact check and authentic content. Of course, academia and Civil Society can support media in the work they do but ‑‑ (audio disturbance) so some journalists come from traditional backgrounds.
When they have the online platform exposure,is little. They need to be trained for the platforms. New ways to create content, new ways to disseminate it and be trained on that. I think capacity‑building is a very important part. Yes, and it also saves them from the harassment and threats because then they also know, because digital security is also critical part of that training we are talking about.
Last but not least, I think it is about time that we have a very, very feminist and agenda‑sensitive approach to all the work we do. The kind of harassment. The kind of vile women face on these platforms, especially like ours, I can't describe it. Whether you like her or not but the real threats are beginning. Women journalists need to be protected more and trained how to protect themselves.
We have seen people censor themselves to protect themselves. Strong laws is the best laws on paper. Let's implement them.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you for these very important points. I believe all three of you have raised important aspects when we are thinking about protection of journalists. I want to quickly break here and see if maybe there are any questions in the room or online. I see a question in the room. Can we maybe get to ‑‑ many questions in the room. Can we maybe get a mic?
>> Thank you. I have listened to a lot of ‑‑ I have listened to a lot of conversation. By the way, wonderful insight. My name is Asha from Tanzania. As much as we have talked about multistakeholderism and all, I think we need to identify, when we look for solutions, there are solutions that can be done immediately and those long‑term. For me I feel it is always important to identify the kind of solutions that are required.
Because from all this conversation that you have been talking about, we were doing an advocacy on technology facilitated gender‑based violence in Tanzania. We have several learnings. But one is media houses, first, they don't identify technology‑facilitated gender‑based violence as a challenge. Then, what does it mean. When news is covered in their media houses, professional media houses that has been there forever, they put headlines online that amplify abuse to a woman, especially maybe a political leader, someone in public. That is one of challenges.
The second one, which is saddening, when you are a journalist in a media house and incur this violence online, they don't care. You know, we isolate violence as an incident. It is not. Because the action ‑‑ the effect is not only online. You go home, you are frustrated, people know you, they have seen the violence. And it depends. Some is digitally resilient. In a week, two weeks, it will be fine. Others, it will take months. And the job comes very hard.
I would really like from all your work, what is the role of media? Are they intentionally putting in policies in your countries I would like to know is similar to ours. Sorry, I (?)
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you for your question. Maybe get more and go to some answers.
>> Thank you for you all. Allow me, this is just a comment and not a question. Dr. Nermin Saline, Secretary‑General of Creator's Union in Europe, a member of the European Social Council. I think we have a solution, kind of. We have launched in this IGF a platform called Intellectual Integrity Verification in the digital area. This is targeted if creator creates on social media and so on.
This platform is like ‑‑ give creator a priority base of his content. When he go to this platform and make a submission for his content, such as article or videos or audios or photos and so on like this, before sharing his content via social media, he will get a QR code with IPV and accepted. It depends on its technology, on AI‑checking, that this article or photos not has similarity content in the digital area, okay.
And when it is approved, that this is the owner of this content, he has contract on the blockchain to register the owner of this article before initiating via social media.
This platform help the creator to protect his content before sharing in the social media. We have negotiations and conversations with the intellectual organisation around the world. This programme is targeted around the world, not just region.
I think if you want to know about this platform, it is our pleasure to visit our booth to explain the technology of this one and the criteria to adjust your work, thank you.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you very much. That is a very interesting project. I hope ‑‑ I think we will probably all go to the booth and hear some more about it.
>> JORGE CANCIO: There's more questions.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Let's go there.
>> Okay. I have a question, but also I thank you. (?) Comment from Mr. Niro. Why we do select journalists ‑‑
>> ISABELLE LOIS: State your name, please. Could you please just state your name.
>> Okay, Alexander Savian, Opposition Politician from Russia. Why do we state we need to protect journalists , maybe in some country, but if regime is not very well democratic, the only pre‑regime journalists state clearlier journalist. If you are a bit opposing, you become instantly politician journalist, Civil Society activities, wherever else. But we are talking about protection of journalists.
Let me give a few examples. Because a lot of ‑‑ I'm not talking about Russia today. So they are journalists, in your definition, so not talk about them, but talking about Russian Opposition Journalism. People were protecting journalists and their works. In return, journalists, in case of Ivan Golunov, falsely accused of drug distribution by government. And whole society politicians raised up and say, yes, he needs to be freed. Case is cancelled. Same exactly, looking false are drug distribution accusations appear toward political activities, journalists say no, no, we have to investigate, including (?) And investigate drug dealers. So my question, why we should select journalists? In world, everyone is blogger in Civil Society ‑‑ maybe except the western world.
I think in Brazil, situation is moving toward that. I understand you have of Switzerland, Russia, exactly doing the same thing. My question to panelists, why journalists in so privileged position?
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you for that question. I think we have a few more. We will get to your question.
>> Thank you. I think my comment would kind of be similar to the comment from the Madam here. I think journalists should also be protected from their work being stolen online, especially through social media platforms. And I think it happens ‑‑ this happens everywhere, especially in country where there's a lack of proper legal framework. So I would be very happy to see ‑‑ to hear any solution, aside from technical solution that you mentioned, but any solution in terms of policy‑making anywhere in the world.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you so much. I apologise. I know you have been raising your hands on the side of the room for quite a while.
>> Thank you so much, everyone. I will try to make it very quick. I wanted to talk about ethical reporting actually. Because a lot of time when ‑‑ okay, sorry. My name is Adnan, Senior Legal Advisor with C Foundation from Iraq. I wanted to talk about ethical reporting. When we talk about journalist protections, some risk comes from how they interact, what they will be reporting online.
So my organization, as well, we have devote some guidelines and also tell some journalists in my country how they are reporting, woman survivors, for example. They are putting their own life at risk when they disclose information, and also other's life as well. That was just an example.
The other question is, I know that nowdays that the online platform made it very easy for everyone to be a journalist and to write. But in the meantime, there is poor-authority journalists, actually, because they are like an army. Part of the risk comes from them because they are directed to attack other journalists. This, in my ‑‑ do you think we really need to work on solidarity, to bring all the journalists and people who write online, on those platforms, that we have these ethics we need to follow instead of working this way, thank you.
>> The briefest comment, then pass on to a friend. More like someone is making a bucket list. One of the problems that journalists being persecuted often face, and the rest of the case digital devices seized, which leads to lot of work, employment sources. There's tech‑savvy journalists now try to create their personal online repositories maintained on a server that is not their home country, things like that. But if there can be some investment into this. Especially having some online repositories hosted in Europe that individual journalist can access, upload their work to ensure journalists who are persecuted don't lose all their work immediately. Just a brief ‑‑ there are no for‑profit solutions, but if there could be something more public for this, thank you.
>> Thank you very much for the opportunity. It's been some beautiful insights. I am called Jolenta Rose Fanti, from Cameroon and work with the Cameroon television. I have a worry. Let me just go back into my country. We have laws protecting journalists, but they are not effective. We've come to a place in Cameroon where you have it that if a journalist has been bullied online or any of this is happening online, we just give it that, okay. After two weeks the information will die down. Maybe the person's image would redeem by itself .
But now we don't have the check‑off mechanisms to follow up to ensure that, but how is this person's psychology plain as far as bullying and effects goes with you as an individual an even with your family. Is there a check‑up mechanism to ensure countries actually stay within this line? Because of some of the governments also bring up this bullying on journalists, thank you.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you so much, all of you, for all of the great questions. I will turn quickly --is there any questions online that we should look at? It doesn't seem to be the case. Now we can try for comments and questions, which are very interesting. We just start on one point on the definition of journalists or media profession, because it is something we in Switzerland have thought a lot about when we decided to have the National Action Plan, if it should be focused exclusively on journalists or a bit broader. We decided to include in our plan a vision that not ‑‑ the people working in the media are more than just the journalists writing or reporting. It is also maybe the camera man and people who are editing and our media chain.
So this was the vision that we had, to enlarge not just journalists but have all of the media professionals. We did not include in that the content creators on social media, as the Swiss legal system is quite clearly making a distinction of traditional media and non‑traditional media. So to make it fit within our legal system, we had to make the distinction. But we are working on tracking safety in Switzerland for media professionals.
And in this study that we are currently doing, the users, or let's say the citizen journalists, are also included in that study. We will hopefully have numbers soon on that situation is. This is the number for our country that fits but of course it is a bigger question on how do you define journalists until who would be included, where do you put the limit, where do you put the line.
I would love to hear from our panelists. Is there someone who wants to answer one of the questions? I don't want to put you on the spot.
>> BRUNA MARTINS DOS SANTOS: Just two things. On the influencer, who is part of the -- actually media, I think for the Brazilian landscape, the role of influencers was pivotal, right? They were also part of the folks that were responsible for the attacks and responsible for fostering violence against journalists, against politicians, and they were part of these campaigns.
Brazil, until a few years ago, was dominated by these type of companies. A bigger scheme. The President himself, his sons, their supporters, they were part of a bigger kind of way, maybe metalanguage, to suppress and cut off people from existing online. So it is really important to see what could be the role of influencers in that. Though they might not be seen as traditional media, they can also play this very concerning role in fostering the attacks and so on.
My last point was about reporting mechanisms. And I do believe that is one of the aspects, right. Normally this is a role for Human Rights defenders and organisations to raise and document and putting forward on protection of journalists online. I see the work of organisations that, say, report without reporters, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International as core work in brother protection of not just journalists but activism online, especially in the attacks, thank you.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you. Giulia, maybe you want to bring a few points.
>> GIULIA LUCCHESE: Yes, thank you. I really enjoyed to both questions and observations. It does provide an idea that this subject is actually so much more articulated than we would actually like to think and it is really important to look at every single perspective and layer also of the issue.
Too much has been said about two points that I wanted to address. I heard the concerns related to the challenges arising from the technology developments when comes to the safety of journalists, but also to the entire media ecosystem. And I think there is an absolute necessity to somehow trend legal frameworks that not only looking into standards that are already available but continue looking, studying, analyzing and understanding the effects of what technology is bringing to the discussion.
This can be risks, this can be potentials. There can be a lot of their also to ensure a better safety ‑‑ (audio disturbances)
>> ISABELLE LOIS: I think we have a slight connection issue. Okay. Waiting until Giulia gets back online. Maybe if ‑‑
>> I think it was important point about role of media organisations to support and protect their own journalists when being harassed. They need to have capacity‑building programmes. Because traditional media houses are using digital to earn a lot of money and, you know, get relevance back from how irrelevant they became because of the fact that people have different platforms.
But this is, again ‑‑ (audio disturbances) and number two, most of these journalists who are part of traditional media houses as journalists, as anchors, you know, proper journalists, they also have their own social media channels.
So sometimes they are working ‑‑ (audio disturbances) not speaking for the entire world but independent of the media houses sometimes. The argument is that is their own channel, so that harassment comes from their own work rather than being associated with the media house. However, there are incidents, especially with women journalists, who are being associated and even sometimes injured, due to the harassment, you know, on site, the media houses have not reported it ‑‑ have not dealt with it the way they should have been.
So yes, that can be a part of it. I don't know if there is a legal solution to it, but there has to be more pressure groups and more advocacy around it for media houses, because they are commercial bodies and need to be more supportive of their workers.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you so much. I think you are very right, that the advocacy part is essential. There's lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that everyone understands the role that media journalists or even social media ‑‑ let's say users play in our world.
There was a study recently in Switzerland that talked about the perspective of the people on media. I think about half of the Swiss population believe it is essential to have a free and independent press for democracy, but that means the other half is either not sure or does not believe that. I think these numbers are a bit scary to hear, because we are in a country that is usually seen in, I believe, very democratic, where there is a lot of work on ensureing that democracy is played out in the best way possible.
So if we in such a country are struggling to see importance of a strong press or press that can talk and deal with the different issue, how does that reflect in maybe other spaces. So I think it is an important part on advocacy, which goes beyond the laws and the rules.
One more point. I think when we talk about online harassment, of course it begins with a powerful figure just harassing somebody or talking about it. But generally, then everybody else joins in. So the general population and citizens, there should be information literacy or digital literacy on do's and don't's of the online platform is also important part of work. That could be included in curriculum.
I know the multistakeholder approach doesn't work all the time, but bringing in academia at a certain point is important because it has to go into curriculum on the fact that what abuse online looks like, what abuse does to people online, you know, when you do that, what are the psychological ‑‑ it doesn't just make stronger citizens but also citizens who are responsible online. So Internet for people who want to be there and not just comment recklessly.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Absolutely. I see Giulia is back online. Maybe you can finish the point you were trying to make. Can we unmute her mic and put her on the screen. We can hear you, Giulia.
>> GIULIA LUCCHESE: Sorry I got disconnected but I will be short. I heard about the technology issues. I think it is important to look into those. I think it is issues developing daily, we may say, so it is really important to understand them before making focused proposals. But I'm glad to say, at the Council of Europe level, much is happening. We have a framework on AI, adopted and open this year and looking for freedom of presentation into the generative applications for freedom of expression and the point of hateful comments online, but also how the media somehow can amplify these messages. And therefore I wanted to go back to the recommendation of the Council of Europe on combatting hate speech which, in fact, addresses media as specific actors, which should take effective measures in order to not only prevent but also encouraging to combatting hate speech and to put forward the message that is not a (?) one while avoiding any kind of stereotypes and hateful narrative.
With this I close, because I see we are really towards the end of this very interesting session. I thank the organizers for inviting the Council of Europe.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you, Giulia. It's been a pleasure to have you and always a pleasure to work with you. I will take the opportunity to say that. Yes, indeed we have, indeed, two minutes left. So very little time. I want to thank you all for participating. Maybe we can have a one‑line per speaker to sum up this session and I would love to continue the conversation at some other point. Bruna, please.
>> BRUNA MARTIN DOS SANTOS: The same line as before. I would liking to see big tech companies owning the responsibility they play in online attacks in (?) and attacks against the queer community and journalists.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Thank you.
>> GIULIA LUCCHESE: See laws implemented effectively, that will sort out most of our problems, especially in online spaces as well.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: Do you have a last one‑liner?
>> GULALAI KHAN: Because we are expressing trust, I would like to see more respective actors can play to reach an effective safeguard of journalist safety.
>> ISABELLE LOIS: I really like these last lines, being a message of hope, and add that I hope we can continue having these important conversations and making these spaces available. So thank you all so much for participating. Thank you so much for everyone who asked questions and made comments. This is something that is very important for us, that the IGF sessions are collaborative. The knowledge is not just with the panel but with everyone in the room. so I'm very happy to have been able to share that with everyone, thank you.