CDT Research Explores 2024 Rates of Online Violence Against Women of Color Political Candidates
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When running for political office in the U.S., women, and women of color in particular, face numerous challenges including online attacks that aim to undermine and prevent their participation in politics.
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 | Graphic for a CDT and University of Pittsburgh report, entitled "Hated More: Online Violence Targeting Women of Color Candidates in the 2024 US Election." Black text on a light grey background.
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- More than one in five tweets targeted at Asian American and African American women candidates contained offensive language about the candidate.
- African American women candidates are targeted with significantly more hate speech than other groups: five times more than Latinx women; four times more than Asian American women; three times more than white women; and 18 times more than white men.
- The proportion of race- and gender-based hate speech targeted at women candidates differs by party affiliation.
The research is a follow-up to a study we conducted in 2022, which found that women of color Congressional candidates in the 2020 U.S. election were more likely to be subjected to violent and sexist abuse, and mis- and disinformation, compared to other candidates.
In addition to our findings, we made recommendations for how to combat abuse and mis- and disinformation targeted at women of color political candidates: social media companies can more directly focus on these issues, for instance by clearly articulating policies that prohibit content that harasses or abuses someone on the basis of gender or race; political parties can increase their resources around online abuse; and researchers can expand work on the issue.
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— CDT is delighted to welcome Dr. Lorrie Cranor, an expert in privacy, security, and public policy currently on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, to our Board of Directors.
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 | Graphic for CDT report entitled “Moderating Maghrebi Arabic Content on Social Media.” Illustration of a hand, wearing rings as well as bracelets with hand of Fatima around its wrist, holding a red and purple phone that shows messages with Arabic letters in them being moderated or acted upon.
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— CDT joined an amicus brief in support of an en banc rehearing of Anderson v. TikTok, in which the Court held that Section 230 does not protect online platforms’ editorial decisions. We argued that the ruling would ultimately harm users’ free expression rights by incentivizing platforms to censor third-party speech.
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CDT in the Press — CDT’s Isabel Linzer and Tim Harper wrote for Just Security about how a rule change by Georgia’s State Election Board, which would require local election officials to hand count ballots, will provide a narrative to spread disinformation and undermine trust in U.S. elections.
— CDT’s Dhanaraj Thakur discussed misinformation in the 2024 hurricane season with The Hill: “When you have tremendous, huge natural disasters, like these hurricanes, you already have a lot of chaos, uncertainty, fear on the ground, and this mis-information just amplifies that,” he said. “That undermines any coordination, and communication around disaster recovery.”
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 | Graphic for CDT's Tech Prom on November 14, 2024 at The Anthem in Washington, D.C. Big block letters (blue and purple) being showered in confetti.
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 | Graphic for CDT’s podcast, entitled “CDT’s Tech Talks.” Hosted by Jamal Magby, and available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn. Dark grey text and app logos, as well as light blue text, on a white background.
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— Planning on being at FWD50? Join Elizabeth Laird, Director of CDT’s Equity in Civic Technology Project, on November 4 as she breaks down the U.S.’s recent legislative and regulatory developments on government AI procurement, gives recommendations for best practices, and shares our new research on how governments decide whether AI is even necessary to solve a problem in the first place.
— Attending Web Summit 2024? CDT’s CEO Alexandra Givens will be there talking about shaping human-centered tech policy for the future, the impact of the U.S. elections for tech, and more.
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Partner Spotlight
CDT is proud to partner with the Ford Institute for Human Security at the University of Pittsburgh on our research project examining hate speech and offensive speech that targeted women of color political candidates running for Congress in this November's elections. The Ford Institute places lives, freedoms and capabilities at the center of sustainable development and security; you can learn more about the Institute's current research on their website.
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 | Photo of Chinmay Deshpande, smiling wearing a dark suit jacket and red, white and blue striped tie.
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How long have you been working in digital rights? I've been doing work at the intersection of tech and civil rights for a few years — my previous research has focused on several of the many risks AI poses, ranging from its impacts on digital artists to its effects on the information ecosystem. I'm incredibly excited to be continuing this work at CDT's AI Governance Lab — I'm really grateful for the opportunity to learn from colleagues with such deep expertise in the area, and from whom I've already learned so much since joining CDT a few months ago.
What is your proudest moment while here at CDT? Helping draft CDT's response to a request for information from NIST! That process was a great opportunity to translate takeaways for an audience I haven't had the chance to engage as much with previously.
What is the best book you've read recently? I recently read Benjamín Labatut's The Maniac, a part-fiction, part-nonfiction retelling of the life of the early computer scientist John von Neumann, and I found it to be a really stark reminder of how important — and difficult — it is for the inventors of new technologies to grapple seriously with how their creations will impact society. I also read Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway for the first time a few months ago, and that book had some of the most simply beautiful pages of writing I've ever encountered.
Cats or dogs? Cats, for sure.
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