LEBANESE FEMALE JOURNALISTS UNDER ATTACK

We have witnessed many cyber-attacks against Lebanese journalists on Twitter orchestrated by political parties over the years but the past few weeks have been particularly vicious. This time, three Lebanese women journalists: Dima Sadek, Luna Safwan and Mahassen Moursel, have found themselves subject to targeted harassment and threats on Twitter by accounts by Hezbollah affiliated accounts. While Sadek has always been a target for the party’s electronic army over her antigovernment political views, the intimidation took a violent turn when she received direct personal threats form an unknown foreign number with a video of a dog being blown up. She exposed the cyber-harasser online by sharing screenshots of the messages. Something else was meanwhile being cooked for Safwan over one of her recent tweets criticizing Hezbollah that was picked up by an Israeli TV channel. Hezbollah supporters used the trivial instance as an alibi to accuse her of justifying the Israeli narrative, rallying a systematic attack against her as of October 1, which even resulted in a family member publicly disowning her. Fellow journalists jumped to Safwan’s defense as she stood her ground against attackers and exposed their schemes. A couple days later, a storm of accusations was howled against yet another journalist, Mahassen Moursel, after a propaganda account falsely claimed she was arrested over collaboration with Israel. In the wake of the incident, which led her to filing a complaint on October 5 against the fake news source. Media outlets and international organizations including Reporters Without Borders condemned these recurrent social media practices, which constitute a stark violation to freedom of speech and continue to pause a serious threat to citizens through the recurrent coercive swaying of public opinion.