Online Safety Bill

Written evidence submitted by Professor Corinne Fowler, School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester (OSB57)

I am writing to share my experience of being the subject of unregulated reader comments below newspaper articles. I am a public historian who co-edited an audit of peer-reviewed academic research for the National Trust on its properties’ historical connection to colonialism, which recently won the Museums and Heritage Judges’ Special Recognition Award 2022.

I was commissioned to write the report as part of my academic job, but the report attracted intense media interest, as it spoke to current public discussions about the representation of British colonial history, a sensitive topic with trauma on one side and perceived threat on the other. It was published at a fraught national moment during the pandemic and after Black Lives Matter protests. I found myself in the middle of a major news story and was the subject of hostile newspaper articles. This is another story for another day, but the experience felt like a juggernaut driving towards me on the pavement. Each time there was a new article I received threats and hate mail by people who were triggered by the journalistic tone and approach. This went on for a full year. I had no equivalent platform on which to defend the work I had undertaken, or to explain the rationale for producing it. When I was later given a chance to comment, my tone was consistently respectful and measured. Nonetheless, having been presented as an enemy of the people, misplaced outrage flooded towards me on an angry tide. I had to call on assistance from the police several times, and it was unsafe for me to walk alone.

My point, though, is about unregulated comments beneath articles, including the Telegraph and The Times as well as the Daily Mail and the Express. These comments contained scores of suggestions about how to kill or injure me. Some were general ideas, such as hanging, but many were gender-specific, saying that I should be burnt at the stake like a witch. Comments focused on physical violence, one man advising I should be slapped hard enough to make my teeth chatter. Other comments were derisory and potentially harmful to my reputation, bearing no resemblance to my actual credentials, standing and expertise but focusing on my perceived incompetence or lack of intelligence.

I have no wish to present myself as a victim. I met this year-long challenge with courage, dignity and compassion. International experts offered advice and security guidance at this time, explaining to me that women and people of colour are especially vulnerable to attack across Australia, America and Europe because of culture wars. As a female professor I am grateful that Britain allowed me to fulfil my potential as a human being, regardless of gender. It is a privilege to offer my research expertise to resource and serve others. But it is clear to me that providing a platform for hate speech is a surefire way of dissuading women from entering into high-profile work or staying long in the public domain. Allowing unregulated comments brings out the worst in readers, enabling a self-sustaining cycle of mutually reinforcing disrespect and, often, hatred. It unnecessarily generates a threatening and unsafe environment for people like me.

I want to end by saying that I am not just an academic, I am a mother: without me knowing, my son (then 12 years old) read these reader comments. He became afraid for my safety. The comments were easily accessible: he googled "Corinne Fowler National Trust" and scrolled below the articles. No child should have to deal with hate speech directed at a parent.

I did not pore over the newspaper reader-comments myself, but concerned volunteers gathered them on my behalf for future reference. Reading them convinced me that regulating reader comments is the right thing to do, not least because there is an unequal power relationship. People who become the subject of newspaper articles generally have tiny platforms from which to defend themselves. I hope that my case will provide valuable evidence to persuade the committee that no newspaper should knowingly give a platform to hate speech which incites murder and violence against anyone, no matter what the news story. I know that reader hate speech would deeply hurt and concern any member of the committee should it be directed at their own loved ones, and I would never wish any fellow creature to endure it.

2 June 2022