The Ombudsman’s Institute of Kyrgyzstan, in partnership with Women’s Assistance Center NGO with the support of UNDP, held a forum in Bishkek on the topic «Hate speech and gender-based violence in the online space KG: Time for decisive action!»
The purpose of the forum is to present recommendations on the prevention and fight against hate speech in the Internet space.
The event organizers presented the results of a study on reducing online violence against users, especially against women and girls.
Project sociologist Chinara Biyalieva told that during the study, 30 in-depth interviews were conducted (60 percent of women took part in it) and 605 respondents were interviewed (more than 70 percent of women).
According to the results of the study, it became known that 53 percent of respondents spend up to five hours on social media. 24 percent of them rarely access social media and 16 percent of respondents spend up to eight hours a day on the Internet. Of these, 70 percent use this time to search for information, and 18.5 percent — to write comments.
About 38.7 percent of respondents encounter hate speech on Instagram, 35.5 percent — on Facebook.
The most common form of online violence is trolling and negative comments. Women often face trolling (43 percent) and blackmailing (39.7 percent) on the Internet. 48 percent of women have experienced a sexualized form of online violence.
Hate speech often causes anger and leads to decreased trust in people. At the same time, 60 percent of Internet users delete and block negative comments and accounts.
More than 70 percent of respondents have at least once encountered various manifestations of hate speech on social media, and almost every second woman is constantly exposed to online violence.
«The main factors leading to the use of hate speech are the presence of cultural stereotypes and gender inequality, anonymity and lack of punishment, or simply dissatisfaction with one’s life. Any person can be the author of hate speech,» Chinara Biyalieva concluded.
