A few days ago, the world celebrated the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. This celebration comes at a time when journalists are facing complex and multi-layered challenges in their daily work. 

One such challenge relates to the pronounced cases of online gender-based violence (OGBV) against female journalists, which not only threatens freedom of expression and access to information for all citizens, but also contributes to the silencing of women in the digital public sphere. Digital technologies are, without doubt, double-edged swords. On one hand, they empower journalists to report the news with the efficiency and speed demanded by modern media. On the other, these same technologies expose female journalists to what can only be described as ‘dark forms of participation.’ 

These include disinformation campaigns and attacks, often initiated by audiences, public figures, news sources, anonymous trolls, and even colleagues who turn digital platforms into weapons for use against women in journalism. 

The net effect of such violence threatens not only diversity within media spaces but also the equal participation of all voices in democratic discourse. Instead of liberating journalists from the limitations of analogue work, digital technologies have introduced new risks to the profession, particularly for women and other sexual orientations. Sadly, female journalists are at the receiving end of these threats to safety and well-being. Gendered disinformation campaigns often lead to a kind of forced silence, pushing female journalists into a defensive retreat from public engagement. They face a range of OGBV, from gendered trolling and sexist remarks to cyberbullying, hate speech, and body shaming. Gender trolling, in particular, is vicious, marked by coordinated attacks that include gender-based slurs and malicious language. Social media platforms, while facilitating important public conversations, have also become channels for relentless abuse aimed at women journalists. Words like “fat,” “whore,” “sellout,” and “ugly” are thrown in with a cruelty that is both personal and political.

While gender-based violence against female journalists is not new, the digital age has amplified this challenge to unprecedented levels. The intersectional identities of African female journalists, encompassing their gender, professional role, and ethnic backgrounds, make them especially vulnerable, compared to their male counterparts. 

They are often targeted not only for the stories they write but also for who they are. Even though many African constitutions including that of Namibia, safeguard journalists’ rights to gather and share news, female journalists still face the brunt of online attacks, especially if they report on certain ‘controversial’ beats. Because of the anonymity, mass self-communication, and instant feedback enabled by the digital age, journalists are increasingly in contact with heterogeneous sources and audiences in different time zones. While these digital connections can enrich their work, they also expose them to new and troubling forms of harassment – what we call ‘dark forms of participation.’ Platforms such as Facebook, X, Instagram, and YouTube provide powerful tools for timely news production and dissemination, yet they come with a significant cost, especially for female journalists. These platforms open the door to an array of online attacks that disproportionately affect women than their male counterparts. In many African contexts, including Namibia, patriarchal cultures and entrenched gender roles continue to shape the division of labour and societal expectations. In their quest to navigate both online and offline spheres, female journalists are subject to intersecting vulnerabilities unique to the digital age. Like the rest of the continent, Namibia’s deep-seated patriarchal culture, often compounded by toxic masculinity, places additional pressures on women in media. 

Female journalists in Namibia face what has been termed ‘triple jeopardy’: discrimination, inequality, and gender-based violence – rooted in long-standing societal structures. The roots of this challenge are deep, drawing from a complex web of traditional culture, colonial history, and religious influence. In Namibia, the entrenchment of ‘triple jeopardy’ against women can be traced back to the arrival of Christianity from Europe in the 1800s. Colonial powers from Britain, Germany, and Finland brought Christian doctrines that not only mirrored but also reinforced patriarchal norms. Many African men, particularly among the Ovambo, converted to Christianity, finding in its teachings a validation of their cultural authority over women. This alignment between religion and patriarchy allowed men to maintain control over women’s roles not only in the socio-economic sphere, but also in professional life too. In this cultural context, GBV against women, including female journalists is often justified by invoking cultural and religious scripts. Traditional beliefs, reinforced by colonial and religious systems, continue to rationalise power imbalances. In essence, the convergence of culture, colonialism and religion, has widened the gap between those viewed as being powerful (men) and those often deemed voiceless (women). This legacy leaves Namibian female journalists to navigate a uniquely challenging landscape, where systemic forces meet the ever-evolving dynamics of digital spaces.

In many African societies, entrenched gender roles have long cast women as ‘inferior’ or even ‘second-class citizens.’ This deeply rooted division of labour, driven by toxic masculinities and male-dominated value systems, has fuelled the normalisation of GBV across the continent, including in post-apartheid Namibia. In our national context, patriarchal structures intersect with oppressive practices, often manifesting explicitly as violence against women and contributing to the silencing of women’s voices in the public sphere. Although historical records on GBV are scarce, the rise in reported cases since independence tells us this issue has become a pressing crisis, one the Namibian government has aptly termed a ‘shadow pandemic.’ Despite efforts to address GBV through legal and policy frameworks, deep-seated cultural practices and biases continue to resist progress. The government has implemented gender equality policies to counteract what we know as ‘triple jeopardy’, yet these efforts are often undermined by long-standing societal norms. Even our legal systems, meant to protect women against sexual and GBV, fall short. In response, the country witnessed a powerful call to action in October 2020 when the #ShutItAllDown movement took centre stage. The organisers demanded an end to the pervasive physical and sexual violence that African women, particularly in Namibia, endure. Researchers increasingly argue that this problem must be tackled at multiple levels of online and offline governance, not merely as an issue of personal safety. And yet, in Africa, research on digital and offline GBV remains surprisingly scarce. This gap means the safety and welfare of African female journalists, especially in the digital age, are still critically under-explored and under-protected.

With regards to implications for policy or improvement, we have noted that a combination of interventions such as legislative interventions, strengthening of security measures at all national and international levels and building a healthy digital ecosystem is needed. There is an urgent need to strengthen institutional, legislative, and newsroom-specific mechanisms to ensure the safety and security of female journalists in Namibia in this digital age. In a patriarchal society such as Namibia, newsrooms ought to be proactive as far as the safety of female journalists is concerned. With the advent of digital journalism in Namibian newsrooms, the need for holistic organisational support structures focusing on the safety of journalists has become imperative. This goes a long way in ensuring a balanced scale of participation between male and female journalists in telling our collective stories without fear of being trolled, sexualised, and subjected to hate speech. Despite the current legal measures to combat digital attacks against journalists, there is a need for the passage of laws for data protection, cyber-crimes, and protection of personal information in Namibia. As already pointed out, there is a need to address the prejudices of traditional culture and the toxic masculinity ideology that permeates the Namibian social fabric. The Namibian parliament must also move with speed to draft laws that promote the protection, monitoring and response mechanisms for the online and offline safety of female journalists.