Social Media have become the main scene of violence against women who participate in politics, according to a report by the Communication Research Center of the University of Costa Rica.
The study details that 17 of the 18 interviewees have experienced manifestations of violence as users of Facebook; 11 as users of Instagram and seven through the Twitter platform, with private messages being where the greatest number of offenses occur.
A culture of discrimination against women
These aggressions in digital spaces are part of a culture of discrimination against women in the public space, where expressions of gender violence, and attacks on their political exercise, ideology, opinions, and their bodies are combined.
“Women live in contexts of violence and symbolic violence, which can go through harassment, but in social networks, it goes through other forms of harassment. When you are a woman in politics, you are entering a territory that has traditionally been masculinized, which is a space where violence against women is naturalized,” said YanetMartínez, Director of the Center for Communication Research at the university center.
In order to identify comments with hate content and generate dialogues and publications that appeal to the population’s awareness of this type of content, the study also contemplated a series of measures to mitigate these expressions of violence, through various efforts of its communication teams.
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