Google Doodle for International Women’s Day.
GoogleGoogle said it’s developed a tool for journalists and public figures to deal with harassment, using Tuesday’s recognition of International Women’s Day to highlight the issue of “toxicity online.”
The tool, called Harassment Manager, was developed by the search giant’s Jigsaw unit and Twitter, one of the most popular platforms for journalists to share stories. The web application was specifically designed with the challenges faced by female journalists in mind, the company said in a Medium post.
“Our hope is that this technology provides a resource for people who are facing harassment online, especially female journalists, activists, politicians and other public figures, who deal with disproportionately high toxicity online,” Jigsaw said.
The Jigsaw tool comes as harassment and intimidation of female journalists online continues to plague reporters around the world. Nearly three out of four female reporters experienced online violence, according to a UNESCO study from last year.
The Harassment Manager isn’t a downloadable app. It requires publications to integrate its code into other software that reporters can use to evaluate tweets.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation will the first organization to make the Harassment Manager available for its reporters. It is expected to role out in June.
