Social Media

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Fans watch the Rio Olympic Games soccer match between Brazil and Germany in August 2016. Brazil's female sports journalists are campaigning for an end to the harassment they face covering matches. (AFP/Tasso Marcelo)

Brazil’s ‘Let her do her job’ campaign demands respect for female sports reporters

On March 25, not long before two of the biggest soccer matches of the season were about to kick off in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, a previously unknown group posted a video online that was of relevance to everyone involved in the game. The group had no name but they had a hashtag…

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A cell phone takes photos of an August 2016 meeting in Baku between the presidents of Russia, Iran, and Azerbaijan. President Ilham Aliyev claims internet is 'free of censorship' in Azerbaijan, but authorities have blocked access to critical news websites. (Alexander Nemenov/Pool/AP)

Freedom of speech is guaranteed Aliyev says as Azerbaijan blocks news websites

President Ilham Aliyev claims that in Azerbaijan the internet is free and press freedom is guaranteed. But ahead of the April 11 snap elections, authorities have systematically silenced critical voices online through amending laws and blocking news websites, and hackers have attacked independent news outlets.

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Maria Ressa, the founder of Rappler, arrives at the National Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Manila on January 22, 2018. Ressa says she believes the news website is being harassed because of its critical coverage of the President of the Philippines. (AFP/Noel Celis)

Rappler fights to survive amid rising threats to journalists in the Philippines

On January 15, the Philippines’ Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that online news group Rappler had violated laws barring foreign ownership and control of local media, and moved to revoke its registration.

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Police sit in a vehicle in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Kinshasa, on February 25, 2018. Amid protests called by the Catholic Church, the DRC Telecommunications Ministry repeatedly orders internet and SMS shutdowns. (Reuters/Goran Tomasevic)

DRC authorities cut access to internet and SMS ahead of protests

On December 30, 2017, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Telecommunications Minister, Emery Okundji, ordered the country’s telecommunications providers to shut internet and SMS services across the country, according to a media report and the local press freedom group L’Observatoire de la liberté de la Presse en Afrique, (the Observatory of Press Freedom in Africa or…

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A TV screen shows Chinese President Xi Jinping delivering a speech at the closing session of the annual National People's Congress in Beijing on March 20. China's censors last month removed from social media any words suggesting Xi is seeking a life term. (AP/Andy Wong)

Censorship, surveillance, and harassment: China cracks down on critics

Hours after the Chinese Communist Party proposed a constitutional change last month to lift presidential term limits, any words or phrases that remotely suggested President Xi Jingping was seeking a life term were blocked from social media. Censors targeted everything from “Emperor Xi,” “The Emperor’s Dream,” and “Dream of Returning to the Great Qing,” to…

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A screen shot of the new label on RT's YouTube channel. (CPJ)

YouTube labels on public broadcasters draw ire in US, Russia

With claims to more than one billion users consuming content in 76 languages, Google’s YouTube has become a core part of most media outlets’ dissemination strategy. And although there are 88 localized versions of the service, YouTube.com remains the largest and most influential platform for reaching a global audience. Which is why, when the site…

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Protesters demonstrate against a KKK rally in Charlottesville, VA, in July 2017. Journalists reporting on white supremacists say they face threats and harassment. (AP/Steve Helber)

Journalists covering US white supremacists must weigh risks to selves and families

Michael Edison Hayden was one of the first foreign journalists on the ground after the Nepalese earthquake in 2015– the “ground was still shaking” when he arrived, he said. He’s reported from the disputed territory between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, and gone door-to-door in Phoenix, searching for a mass killer. But, Hayden said, reporting…

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Facebook's head of global policy management, Monika Bickert, testifies at a Senate hearing in January on monitoring extremist content online. Companies like Facebook and Google are at the forefront of how much of the world receives its news. (AFP/Getty Images/Tasos Katopodis)

Tweaking a global source of news

The only way Abdalaziz Alhamza and his fellow citizen journalists could get out news from the Islamic State’s self-declared capital in Syria to a global audience was by posting materials on Facebook and YouTube. “They were the only way to spread news since many militias and governments prevented most, if not all, the independent media…

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Relatives of Nahed Hattar carry signs condemning his murder during a protest in Amman in September 2016. The Jordanian commentator and writer was shot dead outside a court while on trial for blasphemy over a Facebook cartoon. (AP/Raad Adayleh)

Changes to Jordan’s hate speech law could further stifle press freedom

Recently proposed amendments to Jordan’s 2015 cybercrime law, including a vague and broad definition of hate speech, will further stifle press freedom on the pretext of protecting the country’s citizens, and could result in further self-censorship, several Jordanian journalists told CPJ.

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President Nicolás Maduro greets supporters at a February 2018 rally in Caracas. Venezuela's journalists say they fear a new anti-hate law will be a new tool for the government to suppress critical reporting. (AFP/Frederico Parr)

Venezuela’s anti-hate law provides Maduro with another tool to intimidate the press

In what journalists fear could be a taste of things to come, Venezuela’s new anti-hate law was enforced for the first time against a news organization on January 30, when Yndira Lugo, the editor of Diario Región, was called before government agents for questioning.

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