12 minute read
Social media and elected officials: Cyberviolence and its effect on political engagement
A view from Québec.
Hon. Nathalie Roy, MNA is a journalist, lawyer and politician and has been President of the Assemblée nationale du Québec since 2022. A lawyer by training, she worked in radio and television journalism from 1990 to 2012.
Social media has become an essential communication tool for Parliamentarians, who use the various platforms for many different purposes, such as reaching out to the public and sharing information, while fostering the transparency of political and parliamentary activities. During election periods, social media platforms are used in particular to disseminate information on the electoral process and on candidates’ political platforms.
Despite their democratic benefits, social media platforms bring their own set of challenges. In some cases, they are a vehicle for disinformation and social polarization. Individuals with bad intentions sometimes use them to harass, bully and make threats. Public figures, like Parliamentarians, are often the targets of cyberviolence, as I have seen, having met with parliamentary delegations from all over the world since I became President of the Assemblée nationale du Québec. Cyberviolence is a problem that knows no borders and has been spreading for many years.
Social media in parliamentary work
Smartphones have blurred the lines between parliamentary work, work done in electoral districts and our personal lives. With the news broadcast cycle around the clock, Members of Parliament must be ready to act at all times, instantaneously. In a survey conducted by the Bureau de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec in 2019, Québec Parliamentarians reported that being connected with work, e.g., answering emails and texts, during personal and family time is a regular occurrence.
This has an impact on elected officials. In particular, it increases their workload, makes it more difficult to balance work and family life, and exposes them to violence in the digital environment.
An increased presence on social media requires Parliamentarians and their teams to develop new skills, in particular in the areas of communication and image management. How to deal with hate messages is certainly a challenge. Should you reply, ignore the messages, delete them, report them in accordance with the platform’s procedure or file a complaint with the police? In some cases, such as when a criminal offence has been committed, the course of action is obvious. However, there are situations where the line between freedom of speech and harassment is very thin. In a context where the public’s trust in democratic institutions is tenuous, this remains a sensitive issue.
As a forum for communication, social media has changed considerably in recent years, in particular with the rise of disinformation, which polarizes debates. As pointed out in a recent report led by the Public Policy Forum of Canada, the consequences of disinformation are manifold.
At the societal level, disinformation can lead to radicalization of certain groups, the polarization of debates and social division. Disinformation also significantly weakens the quality and integrity of information. It discredits expertise, arouses cynicism, discourages informed decision-making and undermines public trust in institutions. Ultimately, it can dampen participation in democracy and lead to civic disengagement. At the level of individuals, disinformation can result in harm, such as financial losses and damage to reputation, not to mention psychological damage.
Many consequences of disinformation affect elected officials directly and indirectly. Our institutions’ legitimacy crisis impacts our work, for Parliamentarians are the ‘public’ faces of our political, democratic and institutional structures. As public figures, Parliamentarians are more prone to being victims of personal attacks, especially when debates are polarized.
Violence against elected officials
In Québec, the increase in violence against elected officials affects Parliamentarians from all parties represented in the Assemblée nationale, as well as many members of municipal councils. In this regard, there were some dark moments during the 2022 provincial election campaign. No fewer than 31 arrests were made following threats against candidates across the party spectrum. In the face of this wave of violence, multiple initiatives were put in place.
Security around party leaders was significantly heightened and an emergency telephone number, available 24/7, was given to candidates of five of the parties who felt their safety was at risk. The Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions led an awareness campaign on social media to make it clear that comments made on those platforms could constitute criminal offences.
Of course, in Québec as elsewhere, the upsurge in cyberviolence against Parliamentarians is nothing new. In 2021, the Le Devoir newspaper surveyed the 125 Members of the Assemblée nationale to measure their experience with intimidation. Of the 95 respondents, 32% said they had filed a complaint with the police after receiving a threatening message on social media and close to 35% said they received unpleasant, intimidating, hateful or threatening messages multiple times per week.
Women are more likely than men to be the targets of incivility and intimidation. In a report on violence against elected municipal officials, researcher Mireille Lalancette found that women politicians seem to experience more violence, intimidation and threats. They also seem to bear psychological scars from what they experience during their term of office. The violence can also take place on social media platforms. Elected officials and women in the public sphere are more likely to be sexualized or threatened with rape, and such violence is more likely to target certain groups of women, including younger women, women from minority groups and those in male-dominated environments. A report by the Fédération québécoise des municipalités on the concerns of elected municipal officials showed that the types of harassment most frequently reported by respondents were defamation, verbal abuse and, to a lesser extent, physical and sexual harassment.6
Women and cyberviolence
Anyone who has a digital presence is at risk of cyberviolence. The risk is strongly correlated with Internet and social media use - the more time a person spends in cyberspace, the more likely they are to be the target of online hostility. This explains why public figures such as politicians are subject to threatening or aggressive behaviour online.
Cyberviolence can take different forms, depending on the perpetrator’s degree of intentionality, the frequency of the acts and the number of people or groups involved. Examples of such violence include cyberstalking, doxing (posting someone’s personal information online without their consent), stalking and sextortion. Some forms of online hostility, such as gender-based hate speech or sexual stigmatization (slut-shaming), are more often aimed at women.
Online violence against women replicates patterns of violence outside the digital environment. For example, cyberviolence often occurs on a routine basis and in various forms and may include elements of a sexual nature and sexist or derogatory remarks about women. Cyberviolence often seeks to make the women who are victimized feel as though they are to blame. Most of the time, the perpetrators of this type of violence are men.
The statistics on this phenomenon are alarming. Nearly two-thirds of people in Canada know a woman who has experienced emotional, physical or sexual violence. According to Statistics Canada’s 2018 Safety in Public and Private Spaces Survey, 18% of women reported having experienced online harassment, compared with 14% of men. Women are also more likely than men to take steps to protect themselves from cyberbullying.
The latest data from the Institut de la statistique du Québec confirms this trend. Approximately 12% of people aged 12 years or older have experienced bullying or cyberbullying, whether at school, at work or in the community. This violence affects certain groups more than others, such as young people, women and people from minority groups.
The consequences of cyberviolence: a deterrent to political engagement
Cyberviolence has numerous consequences for both individuals and society. On an individual level, it can damage a person’s psychological health and sense of safety. Cyberviolence can also lead to disengagement from political and public life, the closure of social media accounts and self-censorship.
A survey of Quebec Parliamentarians showed that close to 40% of respondents avoid discussing certain topics, such as immigration and health measures, on social media, for fear of being insulted or receiving unpleasant comments. Some prefer to communicate through other channels, such as interviews with traditional media or active participation in the Assemblée nationale.
This withdrawal from public and political life is currently underway in Quebec’s municipal sector. According to a survey of elected municipal officials, 43% of respondents who have experienced problematic situations such as bullying or harassment have considered leaving their political functions. Since the last municipal elections in 2021, nearly 9.5% of elected officials have resigned.17 The hostile political climate, intimidation and harassment are among the reasons given for their departure.18 As a result, many elected officials have chosen to limit their online presence, with a view to reducing their exposure to cyberviolence.
This disengagement from the public arena has repercussions for the very essence of our democracy. Self-censorship and the resignation of elected officials undermine the quality of public debate and the proper functioning of our political institutions.
Possible courses of action
To combat this scourge, our institutions can carry out certain awareness-raising, prevention and victim support initiatives to make the digital space safer. In recent years, a number of Québec public bodies have introduced measures to address the issue. The Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l'Habitation addresses intimidation against elected officials in its Plan d’action pour favoriser le respect et la civilité, an action plan to promote respect and civility, published on 6 October 2021. It includes 11 measures to encourage candidates and ensure a climate conducive to the exercise of democracy in the municipalities of Québec. The Ministère also produced a guide to good practices (in French) for contending with cyberbullying in municipal politics.
In January 2021, the Sûreté du Québec (Québec’s provincial police) launched the Plan de lutte contre l’intimidation des élus (PLI_Élus), a plan to counter intimidation of elected officials. PLI-Élus is aimed at elected officials and municipal managers in the territory served by the Sûreté du Québec. Its purpose is to raise awareness among the target group, offer support, protect and make public administrators feel safe, and record acts of intimidation and violence to provide an up-to-date portrait of the phenomenon.
Since December 2022, the Union des municipalités du Québec has been offering elected officials and senior public servants insurance that provides protection against defamation, invasion of privacy, harassment and hate speech. It gives victims access to legal assistance from a lawyer. In October 2023, the Fonds d’assurances des municipalités du Québec began offering a new insurance policy to cover legal costs related to anti-bullying recourse for elected officials, municipal staff and their immediate families. However, the insurance does not cover actions for damages. A psychological support programme is also available, providing victims of bullying with up to five hours of free counselling.
In addition to these initiatives at the municipal level, various campaigns have been launched to raise awareness of the effects of intimidation and cyberviolence. In fall 2023, as part of the Visitor’s Program, the Assemblée nationale du Québec hosted a screening of the feature film ‘Je vous salue salope: la misogynie au temps du numérique’, a documentary also produced in English under the title ‘Backlash, Misogyny in the Digital Age’. The film highlights the stories of several women who have experienced cyberviolence. The screening was followed by a roundtable discussion with Léa Clermont-Dion, co-director of the documentary, Marwah Rizqy, Member for Saint-Laurent, Mireille Lalancette, Professor of Political Communication, and Louise Langevin, Professor of Law.
Parliaments also have a role to play. As institutions with legislative powers, they can make laws on these matters. For example, states such as France, Italy and New Zealand have passed cyberbullying legislation. These laws are designed to bring the legislative framework into line with the transformations taking place in the digital environment. The Parliament of Canada is currently seeking to address this issue with Bill C-63 on online harm 22 The legislation would create a new regulatory body, the Digital Safety Commission, which could order the removal of online content within 24 hours of receiving a complaint. It also aims to hold platforms accountable for the content they host, in addition to imposing harsher penalties on those convicted of hate crimes. The UK Parliament also recently passed the Online Safety Act 2023 which puts the onus on social media companies to protect children from some legal but harmful material with extra enforcement powers and age verification for adult sites, as well as protections against cyberbullying.
In Québec, the Members of the Assemblée Nationale examine acts of incivility toward elected officials. Under Bill 57, An Act to enact the Act to protect elected officers and to facilitate the unhindered exercise of their functions and to amend various legislative provisions concerning municipal affairs, “an elected municipal officer or a Member of the National Assembly who, due to being an elected officer, is the subject of comments or actions that unduly hinder the exercise of their functions or invade their privacy, may apply to the Superior Court for an injunction to put an end to the situation.” Such actions are also punishable by fines ranging from $500 to $1,500. The Court can order a person to not be in the Member’s electoral division office, to not attend the meetings of any municipal council of which the elected officer is a member, to cease communicating with the elected officer and to cease disseminating comments about the elected officer.
Faced with this societal problem, it is up to all of us to take action to stem the scourge of incivility and cyberviolence. The well-being of our society and the relationship between our elected officials and our fellow citizens are at stake. We all have a role to play in creating a healthy digital environment conducive to democratic debate.
This article is based on a presentation given by the author at the 59th CPA Canada Regional Conference in Saskatchewan in July 2023.
The author would like to thank Véronique Boucher-Lafleur, Catherine Lanouette and Simon Mayer for their contributions to the drafting of this article.
