As part of the broader series on identity-based disinformation, the session examined how women, especially public figures, are systematically targeted by disinformation tactics. Speakers combined conceptual, policy, empirical, and socio-cultural perspectives to highlight the scale and implications of this phenomenon.
Lucina Di Meco, co-founder of #ShePersisted, introduced the central conceptual framework of the training, positioning attacks on women leaders not merely as gender-based violence but as a democratic, human rights, and national security issue.
#ShePersisted defines gendered information warfare as a combination of three interrelated dynamics: pushback against progress on women’s rights, persistence of online violence against women, and information manipulation.
Di Meco emphasised how common framings such as “technology-facilitated gender-based violence” are reductive and even counterproductive. Narrow interpretations focus on the perspective of perpetrators rather than on the platforms, algorithms, and infrastructures that enable amplification. Di Meco explained that insufficient framing often reduces the issue to gender norms or interpersonal misconduct, obscuring its political and democratic implications. In reality, many of these campaigns are linked to illiberal political actors, organised networks, and misogynistic online spaces, with platform business models playing a central role in incentivising harmful content through algorithms.
Di Meco identified two main forms of gendered online warfare. The first is orchestrated individualized attacks on women leaders, which exploit gender stereotypes through insults, false claims, and especially sexualised imagery that has strong emotional impact. The second is the distortion of gender itself as a political narrative, used to create moral panic and attack policies such as gender equality frameworks and regulations.
These dynamics often include recurring disinformation narratives, such as claims that powerful women are secretly men, which serve to delegitimise their authority. Such narratives are frequently coordinated and may intersect with foreign interference efforts.
Finally, she noted that AI and digital forgeries are intensifying the phenomenon, with tools such as deepfakes and manipulated content making disinformation more persuasive and harder to detect. She also pointed to emerging trends like “deep lores,” where past authoritarian figures are repackaged through humor, often incorporating gendered and masculine imagery.
Naja Bentzen expanded this analysis by situating gendered disinformation within an “AI-enhanced information sphere.” The current digital environment is increasingly artificial and driven by rapid technological development that outpaces regulation.
Generative AI is accelerating and amplifying existing disinformation dynamics. In her view, this acceleration reflects both strategic choices and shifting power dynamics, where tech actors push boundaries faster than regulatory systems can respond. This creates a setting in which disinformation about women and girls can spread more efficiently, reach broader audiences, and evolve more quickly.
Bentzen emphasized that gendered narratives are particularly valuable tools for malign authoritarian state and non-state actors, who can exploit them to polarize democratic societies, suppress women’s participation, and undermine democratic systems and fundamental rights. These narratives can resonate widely and magnify because they draw on existing societal divisions. Bentzen also stressed that emotional engagement, rather than factual accuracy, drives online visibility, and AI enables the rapid scaling of emotionally manipulative content.
AI tools can reinforce bias and facilitate manipulation. Gender bias or ‘anti-woke’ bias can also be engineered for (geo)political reasons. Russia, China and Iran, for example, are learning to fill large language model (LLM) training data gaps strategically and game the output of the LLMs, so-called LLM grooming, or data poisoning.
Deepfake tools disproportionately harm women and girls, particularly through sexualized or non-consensual content. Platform business models prioritise engagement, thereby often tapping into psychological vulnerabilities including among young male users. This creates addictive environments that increase exposure to misogynistic and radicalizing content, benefiting both political and commercial actors.
Bentzen also pointed to systemic issues, including the underrepresentation of women in the tech sector and ideological influences shaping AI development.
Finally, while regulatory frameworks such as the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) and AI Act represent important steps toward addressing systemic risks and improving transparency, she noted growing external pressure on the EU’s regulation to counter disinformation in general, including gendered disinformation, as part of the bloc’s rights-based approach to promoting information integrity and defending democratic values.
Domenico Cangemi presented an empirical case study on gendered hate speech and disinformation targeting women politicians in Italy, based on approximately 775,000 social media comments across major platforms. The analysis focused on three areas of analysis: the distribution of gendered abuse, its relationship with disinformation, and recurring linguistic patterns. The dataset included posts from 38 women politicians in 2025, with the top 100 comments analysed per post.
Findings showed that humiliating and belittling language was more common than sexist content, highlighting how attacks on competence and credibility are a dominant and normalised form of harassment. Importantly, hate speech is directed at women across the political spectrum, indicating that gender itself is the primary factor of vulnerability rather than political affiliation.
Recurring patterns included attempts to silence women, insults (including animal comparisons), sexualized language, body shaming, and attacks on legitimacy. Gender roles are frequently weaponized, with references to motherhood or personal behavior used to discredit women.
Importantly, the study found an overlap between hate speech and disinformation. False narratives such as conspiracy theories about vaccines or global elites often appear alongside misogynistic language and are sometimes spread in coordinated ways. This demonstrates how online misogyny operates as part of structured and politically relevant communication strategies rather than as isolated or spontaneous behavior.
Karel Lott explored the cultural and social dimensions of online misogyny, focusing on the “manosphere”, a network of online communities centered on men’s issues, often characterized by hostility toward women and feminism.
Lott highlighted how these ideas have moved from fringe platforms into mainstream social media, where “manfluencers” disseminate them through lifestyle, fitness, and self-help content. By embedding extremist or regressive views within relatable formats, these influencers normalize and expand their reach.
Research in Estonia identified various categories of manfluencers (e.g., fitness, finance, spirituality, humor), with shared narratives emphasizing, on a macro level, societal moral decline and a society that is chaotic, emasculated, and feminised. Coaching is frequently offered by “manfluencers” to teach young men how to reclaim masculinity and progressive contemporary topics are opposed. A common narrative is that of “victimhood”, categorizing society as brainwashed masses. At a micro level, they promote discipline, self-restraint, and hierarchies among men, often stigmatizing those who do not conform to dominant ideals.
Lott also described the normalization of dominance and violence, including objectification of women and framing gender relations in territorial terms. This results in a process defined as “ontological racketeering,” whereby influencers create or exaggerate threats, offer solutions, and monetize the resulting insecurity. Lott argued that the process is reinforced by emotional manipulation, and thus becomes “affective racketeering”, using visuals, sound, and symbolic elements to drive engagement.
The success of these narratives is closely tied to platform dynamics, including algorithmic amplification, rage-baiting content, and societal anxieties such as economic precarity and identity insecurity.
In the final part of the session, Lucina Di Meco shifted the focus to solutions, emphasizing several key priorities:
- Regulation and accountability: Policies should target systemic drivers—particularly algorithms and business models—rather than focusing solely on individual content. Frameworks like the DSA and AI Act mark progress but still fall short of fully addressing gendered disinformation as a strategic and geopolitical issue;
- Narratives and engagement: fact-checking alone is insufficient. Effective responses must engage emotions and resonate with audiences. Counter-narratives should avoid alienating young men and instead emphasise structural causes, such as algorithmic incentives;
- Democratic implications: the normalization of misogyny undermines democratic values. Exposure to misogynistic content correlates with support for anti-democratic ideas, indicating that gendered disinformation has broader societal consequences. Di Meco challenged the idea that regulation threatens free speech, instead suggesting that current platform systems already limit genuine freedom of expression;
- Cross-border cooperation: particularly within the EU, women need support directly through resilience tools rather than expecting them to withdraw from online spaces.
Watch the Recording
Meet your Trainers
Lucina Di Meco is the co-founder of #ShePersisted, a global initiative dedicated to tackling gendered disinformation against women in politics. A women’s rights advocate and author, Lucina has been recognized by Apolitical as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Gender Policy and her work has been featured on The Guardian, The New York Times, BBC, Time Magazine, The Washington Post, Politico, Brookings, and The Council of Foreign Relations, among others.
Naja Bentzen is a policy analyst in the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), working on information manipulation, information integrity and the European Democracy Shield. Between 2020 and 2024, Naja worked in the European Parliament Liaison Office in Washington DC, focusing on democracy and disinformation. While in Washington, she also held a fellowship at the German Marshall Fund US and George Mason University. Previously, Naja has worked as an open source analyst and as a journalist.
Domenico Cangemi collaborates with IDMO and the Luiss Data Lab in the fields of machine learning and data science applied to the analysis of disinformation and algorithms. He holds a PhD in Pure Mathematics from the University of Palermo and a Master’s degree in Mathematics from the University of Padua, with an experimental thesis in category theory.
Kaarel Lott is a junior research fellow in digital media studies at the University of Tartu. His PhD project focuses specifically on the rise of misogyny, gendered disinformation, and misogynist influencers in online spaces. In addition to conducting research, Kaarel has several years experience in teaching future media professionals at the University of Tartu and conducting workshops on topics of digital culture, social media, gender and misogyny.
Target group: Stakeholders in the counter disinformation community, journalists and fact-checkers; digital policy and civic tech practitioners; researchers; civil society organisations; media literacy educators and trainers.
What you will learn in this training session:
- Deepen understanding of the current disinformation narratives, techniques, tactics, actors and networks targeting women and girls across Europe
- Gain practical insights on effective responses to online campaigns weaponizing sexist bias, including practical tips to consider when trying to counter (online) misogyny
Deadline
26 May 2026, at 11:00 CEST
Applications are now closed
