Regulating Online Harms and Effects on Women's Political Participation

This paper investigates the regulatory responses to online harms and “chilling effects” on women politicians in East and Southeast Asia. Women, especially ethnically marginalized minorities, are most at-risk for technology-facilitated gender-based violence Online harms include doxing, flaming, insults, cyberbullying, sexual harassment, hate speech, disinformation, artificial intelligence (AI)-generated sexualized images, are aimed at undermining women’s participation in politics. The resurgence of right-wing authoritarian politics alongside the “manosphere”—a network of online communities promoting anti-feminism, misogyny, and hateful ideas also mean that minority women politicians are especially attacked. While this is a problem globally, it is particularly acute in Asia-Pacific countries, where 60% of women parliamentarians have been targeted by online harms. Given this trend, this paper asks: Are the existing regulations and laws adequate for protecting women politicians from online abuses? Do toxic online experiences dampen women’s electoral participation, leading women politicians to self-censor or disengage in politics? This study will employ a mixed research method to evaluate the efficacy of online protection regulatory frameworks and their effects on women’s digital campaigning. It advocates for a multi-stakeholder strategy that considers the intersecting legal, technical, and institutional factors. I argue that the efficacy of online protection laws depends on sanctions, early detection capacity and compliance of stakeholders to swiftly and permanently remove the harmful content. This strategy calls for collaboration between policymakers and platform designers to develop transparent, gender-sensitive regulations and effective content moderation, balancing free expression with civil discourse. To illustrate the utility of the multistakeholder approach, I will identify the stakeholders and compare the regulatory frameworks in nine East (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) and Southeast Asia countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Timor Leste, and Thailand). To assess the “chilling” effects, I will compare two “most similar” cases with different regulatory approach: Taiwan and Singapore, to study the calculations of risks, and chilling effects. Based on elite interviews with politicians who competed in the last elections, this project will produce new insights to expose the limits of legislative, state-led solutions to online harms against women politicians.