Campaigning while female: How online hate holds women back

Lucina Di Meco is a women’s rights advocate, author and the cofounder of the #ShePersisted Global Initiative.

When the German Green party’s Annalena Baerbock launched her candidacy to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel, the media were quick to call her “a marvel” and a “shooting star,” as her party shot up in the country’s opinion polls. Five months later, and just days before the election, she now teeters at 15 percent favorability.

In the age of disinformation, this precipitous fall says less about Baerbock and the Greens than it does about the particular challenges facing women in politics.

Since the beginning of her candidacy, Baerbock has faced an array of online attacks on digital platforms, from both foreign and domestic actors. According to a recent study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, compared to Social Democrat candidate Olaf Scholz and Christian Democrat candidate Armin Laschet, many more of the most-shared Facebook posts about Baerbock contained false information or allusions to conspiracy theories. This same trend was also confirmed on encrypted messenger Telegram.

Not only was Baerbock attacked more often than her male competitors, but the nature of those attacks was different too. They were more personal, hyperbolic and, most often, sexist, containing clear references to her gender. And in the social media ecosystem, high engagement on such attacks is nearly guaranteed, as metrics are designed to amplify certain narratives and monetize extreme content, creating a distorted public sphere that presents major obstacles for women in politics.

Experts have expressed shock at how quickly, and intensely, gender-specific hate content and disinformation spread in this German election cycle. According to Josephine Ballon, head of legal at the nonprofit HateAid, “What’s unfolding is gender-specific hate. This kind of hate seeks to discredit and silence the target.” Lest we forget, Baerbock’s campaign began with a fake nude photo of her alongside a quote insinuating she had engaged in sex work.

Currently, pro-Russian accounts make up one of the two main groups behind these attacks on Baerbock, and there is a reason why Russian state-backed media has put an outsized focus on her. Online gendered disinformation attacks are a well-known tactic developed by illiberal actors in many countries — including Russia, Hungary and Brazil — in order to undermine political opponents.

Much of this content is illegal according to German hate speech laws, which require social media companies to take such posts down. Yet they stayed up.

Such tactics are being imported to the West, where the spread of deceptive or inaccurate information and images against women politicians follows storylines drawing on misogyny and stereotypical gender roles. Similar playbooks of coordinated harassment campaigns targeting female politicians has unfolded in France, Italy, Spain and the United States.

To be sure, Baerbock and the Greens might have faded in the polls even in the absence of a coordinated disinformation campaign against her. The problem is that we’ll never know. It’s incredibly hard for women candidates to recover from the kind of campaigns that Baerbock has been targeted with.

Indeed, the same trend can be seen in how Merkel was treated throughout her years in office. She was routinely the target of sexist attacks both on- and offline. And as one of the most powerful leaders in Europe, the media has repeatedly dwelled on her appearance and competence rather her policy positions, commenting on her choice of pantsuits or the corners of her mouth.

And it’s not only Merkel and Baerbock. Women — in particular women of color — are disproportionately targeted by abuse on both Twitter and Facebook. A recent study showed that almost nine out of 10 female MPs in Germany have been targeted by online hate speech and threats. Similarly, in February, a study by der Spiegel found that 69 percent of female members of parliament in Germany had experienced “misogynistic hatred as members of the Bundestag.”

It’s little wonder that Germany has been struggling with female representation in politics. Despite Merkel breaking through as the first woman Chancellor in 2005, the proportion of women in German politics is about the global average, with the percentage of women in the Bundestag has been declining since its peak in 2013.

Policymakers need to act, and quickly. This deluge of gender-based attacks isn’t happening by chance but by design, and it will continue to unfold in election after election.

European regulators have a unique leadership role to play when it comes to digital policy reform with Big Tech, just as they did with data privacy through the GDPR. But it will require them to refine their analyses, moving beyond the question of what is legal or illegal content, and instead demand greater transparency and real accountability from digital media companies.

Social media platforms are not neutral disseminators of information. They curate content to serve their commercial interests, and therefore they must assume greater responsibility. The future of democratic discourse, and the ability of women candidates to compete fairly, hinges on accepting this fundamental reality.

Baerbock’s experience should serve as a cautionary tale. As Germans head to the polls on September 26, many will have been exposed to untruths about her because of the many fake stories circulating on the internet. Only if gendered disinformation is placed at the center of the effort to reduce online harms can we ensure that future female candidates can fairly compete. Otherwise, Europe better get ready for what’s to come.