Gov. Gen. Mary Simon related grim personal experience of hate speech cloaked in the anonymity of social media that led to shutting down online commenting on posts.
Crude online commentary and digital incivility were top of mind for Canada’s Governor General on Monday.
Speaking at MacEwan University, Gov. Gen. Mary Simon related grim personal experience of hate speech cloaked in the anonymity of social media that led to shutting down online commenting on posts.
“When I first got installed as Governor General, there was a lot of abusive language being used online, on the platform that we have for the Governor General on different sites. And it just got worse and worse. Some of it started to be directly related to me as a woman and as an Indigenous woman,” she said.
Appointed Canada’s first ever Indigenous Governor General in 2021, the former broadcaster and diplomat found some of the anonymized commentary got abusive, misogynistic, racist, and even violent on social media and online platforms, her office said in a news release in early 2023.
Her team was affected, having to read unsavoury comments and sift through them, and then their families were affected in turn, she said.
“We all have our emotions. We’re human beings. It doesn’t matter what position we hold in our careers or life. We do get impacted by stuff like that,” she said.
Interviewed by moderator and former journalist, professor Sheena Rossiter, Simon said the decision to go public about online incivility was an office call.
“I didn’t want to just walk away from it, which a lot of people have to do to safeguard their own mental wellbeing,” she said.
“I felt it was necessary for Canada to be talking about such an important issue as there were so many Canadians that were being attacked on a daily basis, but there was no real public conversation about it.
“I think it’s really important that you either have your own experience to talk about, or you may have thought about, what are some of the solutions that we need to visit and talk about,” she said.
Targets of digital incivility
Different groups are impacted by ugly social media posting in different ways, she said, citing young people and gender diverse individuals, and particularly women from marginalized cultures and backgrounds.
When it comes to politics, women are disproportionately targeted, said a 2022 post from the government’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, citing Tracey Raney, a professor of public administration at Toronto Metropolitan University.
“One of the issues that is facing us now is how women are starting to pull away from public office, from being in public service or public servants or leaders in Canada, and you see that happening across the country,” Simon said.
“That, to me, is of concern, because in our country we need the role of men and women equally as strong as they can be together,” she said.
“If women are going to back out of these important roles, either in business or politics or any other field, then I think we have a problem.”
The Governor General’s website notes that United Nations research shows over one-third of women — 38 per cent — have personal experiences with online violence, and most girls report their first experience with social media harassment takes place between the ages of 14 to 16.
An Inuk and a native of Quebec, she is fluent in both English and Inuktitut, but has faced criticism for her level of French language fluency despite taking more than 180 hours of French lessons.
Some discussions have become heated over spending on things like travel, while others have called for her role to be dismantled as a vestige of Canada’s troubled colonial past.
But Simon’s decision to turn off comments on her social media platforms was about commentary getting personal, she said.
“I’m always open to constructive criticism, but when it starts to hit below the belt?” Simon said.
“The platforms are still open, and we put all our work onto our platforms now, but there are other ways of communicating with us.”
In addition to telephone and email, there are public forums such as Monday’s, she said.
How to deal with it
If the opposite of digital incivility is allyship, networks of resilience are a place to start to support those struggling, Simon said.
“We must work together to minimize the impacts of online attacks and to acknowledge each other’s experiences and to identify or develop solutions,” she said.
“We also have to work with other agencies to make sure that we’re addressing this issue together,” she said, touting ‘toolkits,’ for those under attack by social media sites or individuals on social media.
“It’s important to reach out to somebody you know, somebody you trust, somebody that’s close to you. It could be a friend, it could be a family member, but if you have to reach out in order to deal with the trauma that you’re experiencing because of that,” she said.
In the end, teaching civility — even in a digital form — starts at home.
“As parents and grandparents, I think we also have to teach our children what this platform is all about, because it has its good points. It’s not all bad. That’s how I communicate with my family up in the Arctic, and it’s very helpful in many ways. It’s important to talk about the good and the bad of these sites and how to know to look for signs that ‘this’ is not the right thing to do, even as a young adult,” she said.,
Social media is essentially only about two decades old, she noted.
“We don’t really know what the long-term impacts of social media will be,” Simon said.