The development of technology has transformed the journalism profession, enhancing how information is accessed, processed, and disseminated. This enables journalists to practice their profession more efficiently. Technology has improved fact-checking, data visualization, local and multiplatform adaptation of news content, and its translation, streamlining the journalistic process and making information more engaging and accessible.
However, technology also presents risks. It can be used to reproduce misinformation, spread disinformation, amplify online hate speech, and enable new forms of censorship. Some actors use technology for mass surveillance of journalists, creating a chilling effect on freedom of expression.
The digital security of journalists in the region remains under threat. Journalists are increasingly targeted by malware, spyware, digital surveillance, cybercrimes, and data privacy issues. Digital security and cybersecurity have gained the attention of policymakers globally, leading to the enactment of cybercrime legislation. About 12 countries in the region have enacted such legislation. Unfortunately, this legislation is being used by state actors to target journalists, charging them with serious cybercrime offenses like terrorism, cyberstalking, and other related crimes. Journalists continue to be caught between the cybercrime legislation and their constitutional rights to freedom of expression and the press.
In Nigeria, the CJID Press Attack Tracker (PAT), a civic technology and data-driven advocacy tool, founded in 2017, to track, verify, and document the continued repression of the media through physical attacks, arrests and detentions, unconstitutional legal proceedings, repressive laws, and cyber-attacks, amongst others. Data from the tracker indicates a substantial increase in attacks on journalists, from May 2023 to December 2024, it recorded 135 attacks on journalists and media houses in Nigeria, aided by vaguely defined laws like the Nigeria Cybercrimes Act 2015, although the Act was amended in 2024, it is still used to criminalise the activities of journalists in Nigeria.
From 1986 -2024, the tool recorded 1209 attacks on journalists and media houses in Nigeria. These attacks, as documented, occur in various forms, each representing a distinct challenge encountered by journalists at different levels, including Unlawful arrest, murder, equipment seizure/damage, office closure, harassment (including sexual harassment and other forms of physical harassment), denial of Access (to information or location), imprisonment, threats, physical attack, cyberbullying, surveillance, website/email hacking, social media account hacking, strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP) some of which were aided by the Act.
This session aims to identify the digital threats that journalists in the region face and provide solutions to enhance their safety and protection.
