Women are being pushed out of public life, not by chance, but through coordinated gendered disinformation and harassment. These campaigns increasingly combine traditional abuse with multimedia and synthetic content, amplifying harm and accelerating political exit.
Have you ever heard of the “triangle of violence”?
In this webinar, Marília Gehrke (University of Groningen) explains the concept by examining the relationship between content, victims, and audiences. This framework shows how gendered disinformation functions as a sustained system rather than isolated incidents, with cumulative effects that normalise abuse and push women out of public life. Drawing on Forced to Quit, a crowdsourcing-oriented initiative documenting cases in which women in politics, journalism, and activism were compelled to leave the public sphere due to sustained disinformation and harassment, the webinar highlights quitting as a meaningful and measurable outcome of gendered political violence.
Speaker: Marília Gehrke, University of Groningen
Marília Gehrke (Ph.D.) is an Assistant Professor of Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, and she is also the creator of the crowdsourced initiative Forced to Quit, which aims to map women in politics, journalism, and activism who had to leave the public sphere due to violence. This project is an outcome of the Jantina Tammes School Early Career Prize 2024. Gehrke’s research interests are gendered disinformation, fact-checking, AI/data journalism, and transparency. Previous fellowships include the Digital Democracy Centre (DDC) at the University of Southern Denmark, where she worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Trust and News Authenticity Project, and the Weizenbaum Institute in Germany, in the Platform Algorithms and Digital Propaganda research group.
Moderator: Maria Giovanna Sessa, EU DisinfoLab
Maria Giovanna Sessa is the Research Manager at EU DisinfoLab. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and has previously worked for research foundations, think tanks, and as a university teaching assistant. She authored blog posts, book chapters, articles, and an e-book, as her research interests focus on the use of disinformation in political communication, gender-based attacks, and international crises, including FIMI. Lately, she has been working around DSA enforcement, linking research and policy implementation.
The opinions expressed are those of the speakers/authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of EU DisinfoLab. This webinar does not represent an endorsement by EU DisinfoLab of any organisation.