A four-country study of technology-facilitated violence against environmental defenders

APC (the Association for Progressive Communications, an international network of civil society organisations) published a preview on 22 September of research from Brazil, Kenya, Mexico and the Philippines. It covers environmental defenders resisting mining, energy and other extractive projects, many of them from Indigenous and traditional communities, and the online attacks they face. The full reports launch at an online event at 13:00 UTC on 8 October (21:00 Taipei time), which requires registration and offers interpretation in English, Spanish and Portuguese. The research is limited to those four countries; what readers elsewhere can take from it is how communities respond to harassment and disinformation together.

The studies use the term technology-facilitated violence for harm committed, assisted or intensified through digital platforms. The Kenyan study documents hate speech, cyberbullying, surveillance, disinformation, impersonation, doxing and direct cyberattacks. The summary reports, released in June, note that attacks reach defenders' families, friends and colleagues too, creating a chilling effect. APC's article argues that perpetrators benefit from the design and algorithms of major platforms, and that Big Tech's dominance of internet services has contributed to the impact of disinformation where local media have been decimated.

All four studies found a digital divide, with limited internet access, devices and skills leaving communities more exposed to disinformation, fraud, surveillance and attacks. The research began in 2024 with more than 20 Indigenous communities across the four countries, using feminist participatory methods with community researchers at every stage. Responses documented include communities running their own radio station, social media accounts and intranet, and setting their own digital protection practices. One conclusion is that the true cost of outside digital technologies and infrastructure for such communities needs better evaluation, taking into account their relationship with their environment and culture.

Perspective

The research team behind one of the reports found that in many cases a single phone is shared among family members, neighbours and co-workers, so they treat digital security as a matter for the household, neighbourhood and community, not only the individual. Participants named only a few protective practices, such as setting social media profiles to private and avoiding topics that could provoke attacks, which the report notes is itself a form of silencing.

On a shared phone, logged-in apps, notifications and SMS verification codes are visible to whoever picks it up. Whether an account is safe then depends on more than the owner's own settings, and the people sharing the phone need to agree on how they protect it.

Running a community radio station or social media accounts lets a community answer disinformation in its own voice. The same research records a case where a community radio station's content was taken down by a platform, and anything hosted on someone else's platform is subject to that platform's rules. A self-hosted intranet is outside those rules, but it only works inside the community, and the community carries the cost of equipment, power and maintenance. Answering disinformation that circulates beyond the community still takes a radio station or accounts that reach people outside it.

In the Philippines, the one Asian country in the study, the summary report describes red-tagging, labelling people as communist insurgents or terrorists without substantial evidence, as a central mechanism of repression that social media amplifies. According to Human Rights Watch, the Philippine Supreme Court declared on 8 May 2024 that red-tagging threatens the rights to life, liberty and security. The ruling overturned a lower court's dismissal of a petition for a writ of amparo, a court remedy that can include protection orders.

In the Kenyan survey, 60% of defenders who experienced online attacks reported them to technology companies and 29% blocked the perpetrators. In focus group discussions, a significant number said they took no action, citing attackers hidden behind anonymous or fake accounts, the absence of clear reporting channels, fear of retaliation and distrust of local authorities and police. Even when they suspected who was responsible, they lacked the tools, support or legal mechanisms to pursue it. Reporting and blocking can only deal with accounts and content already on a platform, so when an attacker returns under a new account, the target has to start reporting again.

The same report recommends a security risk assessment that identifies threats and vulnerabilities, followed by a security plan suited to the defenders' circumstances, alongside community and peer support networks. For anyone planning with family and co-workers, we suggest starting with EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense guide Your Security Plan. It walks through six questions: what you want to protect, from whom, how bad the consequences of failure would be, how likely they are, how much trouble you are willing to take, and who your allies are.

As of 1 October, the guide is free and needs no account, and the site is available in 14 languages, including Simplified Chinese, updated on the same date as the English version, 27 October 2023. EFF's translations page also links to a community translation in Traditional Chinese last updated in 2019. GreatFire, which tests website blocking in mainland China, recorded a single conclusive test of ssd.eff.org between July and September, and it connected normally.

The guide also notes that there is no perfect option for security, since people differ in their priorities, concerns and access to resources. A plan can change as your situation changes, so it is worth revisiting often.