With Hannah Sung (@hannsung, @hannah_tok), veteran of Canadian media and co-founder of Media Girlfriends. Communication in the western world has changed a lot: in 1800s, it was printing presses and telegraphs, then telephone, radio, movies, and television. Next came satellites, email and the internet, mobile phones, and smartphones, all the way to today’s social media, digital content, and remote learning and work.

Gender inequalities have a way of persisting through these tidal shifts. Right from the start of the internet’s mass popularity, digital spaces presented gendered safety problems. From the 1990s to 2018, 76% of the complainants in cases of technology-facilitated violence reported to Canadian courts of appeal or the Supreme Court were female and 91% of the accused were male.

Over coming months, we’re delving into gendered digital hate and harassment with leading experts and content creators, releasing in-depth episodes every single week. We talk about the problem and what we can do to change it. We offer practical tips to help you in your digital life, and we talk about what it means to “take back the tech” for all of us.

We’re joined by ⁠Hannah Sung,⁠ co-founder of the award-winning ⁠Media Girlfriends⁠, a production company led by journalists of colour who prioritize inclusion, diversity, and perspectives in media. Media Girlfriends partnered with the Canadian Women’s Foundation to release the ⁠Signal for Help podcast⁠. Hannah is a 20+ year veteran of Canadian media and founder of⁠ At The End Of the Day⁠ newsletter and podcast, an Apple Podcasts Best of 2022. In the past, she worked at the Globe and Mail and CBC. In 2020, she was the Asper Fellow at the University of Western Ontario. Hannah began her career at MuchMusic, where she hosted MuchNews and The NewMusic.

Transcript

00:00:01 Hannah

It’s almost become just de facto that if you’re going to be a woman out there on social media sharing your opinion, backed up by evidence, that you will be beat down by the online abuse. You’re going to experience it. It’s a given.

00:00:20 Andrea

Digital hate, harassment, and violence hurts so many women, girls, and Two Spirit, trans, and non-binary people. Content creators who address gender justice like Hannah Sung have a lot to teach us about it.

I’m Andrea Gunraj from the Canadian Women’s Foundation.

Welcome to Alright, Now What? a podcast from the Canadian Women’s Foundation. We put an intersectional feminist lens on stories that make you wonder: “why is this still happening?” We explore systemic roots and strategies for change that will move us closer to the goal of gender justice.

The work of the Canadian Women’s Foundation and our partners takes place on traditional First Nations, Métis, and Inuit territories. We are grateful for the opportunity to meet and work on this land. However, we recognize that land acknowledgements are not enough. We need to pursue truth, reconciliation, decolonization, and allyship, in an ongoing effort to make right with all our relations.

00:01:21 Andrea

Whether you’re on social media, streaming platforms, dating, messaging and meeting apps, or on game sites, if you’re a woman, girl, or Two Spirit, trans, or non-binary person, you’re at greater risk of hate, harassment, and violence.

Communication in the western world has changed a lot over the past 200 years. In the 1800s, it was printing presses and telegraphs, then the telephone, radio, movies and television. Next came satellites, email and the internet, texting, mobile phones and smartphones, all the way to today’s social media and digital content, and remote learning and work.

Gender inequalities have a way of persisting right through these tidal shifts – mixed and remixed again and again. Right from the start of the internet’s mass popularity, digital spaces presented gendered safety problems. From the 1990s to 2018, 76% of the complainants in cases of technology-facilitated violence reported to Canadian courts of appeal or the Supreme Court were female, and 91% of the accused were male.

Over coming months, we’re delving into gendered digital hate and harassment with leading experts and content creators, releasing in-depth episodes every single week. We offer practical tips to help you in your digital life, and we talk about what it means to “take back the tech” for all of us.

We’re joined by Hannah Sung, co-founder of the award-winning Media Girlfriends, a production company led by journalists of colour who prioritize inclusion and diversity perspectives in media. Media Girlfriends partnered with the Canadian Women’s Foundation to release the Signal for Help podcast. Hannah is a 20 year veteran of Canadian media and founder of At The End Of the Day newsletter and podcast, an Apple Podcasts Best of 2022. In the past, she worked at the Globe and Mail and CBC. In 2020, she was the Asper Fellow at the University of Western Ontario. Hannah began her career at MuchMusic, where she hosted MuchNews and The NewMusic.

00:03:27 Hannah

I was born and raised in Toronto. I’m Korean Canadian and I have always wanted to be a journalist from the time I was little and I’m so pleased to say that that’s what I do for a living—journalism, sometimes journalism adjacent. What isn’t journalism adjacent in the media industry now, though? Journalism is in such flux.

I’m a co-founder of Media Girlfriends, which is a production company that prioritizes inclusive perspectives, especially of historically marginalized communities, which is just a fancy way of saying we’re trying to center the right voices in the work that we do.

My previous work experience was, you know, I started as a VJ at MuchMusic, which is like, wow, ancient relic. Like look how far media has come and what’s changed.

Then I started to work in digital, when we even separated that at the CBC, worked at the Globe and Mail, which was a time—I loved it, TVO. Then that brings us to 2020, which is when we founded Media Girlfriends as a company.

Yeah, that’s my quick work CV. I’m also the parent of two great kids, love them, keeping me on my toes. It’s a PA day today, so if you hear yelling in the background, that’s actually happy yelling. They’re playing ping pong in the basement. That’s kind of me in a nutshell, I guess.

00:04:49 Andrea

You’re a media icon, I’ve looked up to you for years. You’ve lived through some huge shifts in Canadian media and communication and journalism. I’m curious about your thoughts on what has changed and maybe what’s stayed the same?

00:05:01 Hannah

Alright, well, if I’m going to try and tackle what is different, I hardly know how to organize my thoughts, because what isn’t different and how much time do you have?

So, I started off in the world of television, and I remember when I was auditioning for this on-air role. It was a long process and at the very end I, kind of, got into the corner office of the woman who ran the place and she asked me, “why do you want to be in television?” Which was a good question because all of my work experience, or even my student experience, up till that time did not include TV. I was not trained for it, and I wasn’t even expecting this question and I just, kind of, blurted out, “because it’s such a powerful medium. It’s so powerful.”

I think that I’ve thought about that statement a lot over the years because it wasn’t a planned thing that I said. I think at the time, TV was extremely powerful and the kind of center of power has become decentralized when we think about voices and platform and people. Like, you know, I care about journalism so much. I care about news and information and properly vetted information.

And, you know, journalists are not generally people who go out like a lone wolf. It’s a collaborative effort because you want to have a diversity of perspectives and professional roles to get information to the people, right? But all of that has changed, now. So many things are changing because the business model has changed.

So, when I think about who has the power now, some things are very different. Some things are still the same. There are still the corner offices of media, but they’re in different places. They’re located in different areas of our quote-unquote industry.

There’s no one industry anymore. You know, there’s so much power in what we call big tech. And then I think about the power of one person’s voice or of a community of voices when we come together.

So, a million things have changed and what kind of hasn’t changed, I guess, is that it is difficult to make a living as a journalist. Like, from the moment I graduated school, which was the year 2000, I have been told ‘good luck’ or ‘we have no jobs’ or ‘we’re on a hiring freeze’, etcetera.

It’s only gotten worse if you want to work in mainstream legacy news in a newsroom. But on the plus side, there are ways to figure things out. I mean, Media Girlfriends is an example of something I never could have predicted. I never would have thought, oh, I’m going to enter into a small business situation with my close friends because professionally we’re aligned and on a personal level and values level we’re aligned. I never would have predicted that.

I would have loved—this is the secret now—I would have loved for things to, in some ways, stay the same, and I could just go to work, get a paycheck, and focus on the story that I’m making. I would have loved that. I would have loved that, I think. I mean I’ve been there and sometimes that is hard too, but I guess I’m just saying that, right now, everybody is also trying to figure out the business. That’s a really rough place to be and there’s a bit of a scarcity mindset happening for real reasons.

Obviously, I’m a racialized individual. You know, my parents were immigrants. I’m seen as Asian Canadian, although I always like to be specific. My identity is that I’m a Korean immigrant kid, basically. And when I first started in the industry, just trying to get a sense of any representation whatsoever was something that I was hungry for, and I think a lot of people were hungry for.

Now, I think that’s still there, but I think we’ve moved past that conversation to think about what is true, why are we looking for a truer representation?

Because it’s about voice. It’s about moving away from tokenism. It’s about supporting individual human beings who do the work. And, unfortunately, women of colour and women journalists in general are often targeted for online abuse.

And it’s something—I’m a long-time user of Twitter. I’ve basically moved off the platform now, but I started in 2009 and it was integral to my learning on so many conversations. There was a real heyday for what social media could do for us, for our learning and for our interaction with communities. And, just, I like to listen more than I like to talk on Twitter, and it was an amazing tool for that. It’s not that tool anymore.

It’s complete chaos now, and I mourn, I never thought I would, you know, RIP Twitter. It’s sad. It’s a different time now, so, but the reason why I bring up Twitter is because, like, slowly over years we watched that as women journalists, you know, grew their platforms as all journalists were basically asked to do, whether implicitly or explicitly, we all needed to promote our work. We wanted to connect with audiences, right?

It left people prone to being targeted. And this is something that all of us experienced, saw, and reacted to in different ways. And I remember being in board rooms at work trying to figure out, how can our workplace protect the individuals going out there on Twitter, to talk about these sensitive issues and the work that we’re producing? How can we stand up for each other when, you know, I don’t even want to call them trolls, but when it’s just like straight up online abuse?

I don’t know that that question has been figured out. Sadly, it’s only gotten worse. You know, last year, so we’re talking in late 2023, you and I right now, but last year, there was a report from the Coalition for Women in Journalism, saying that Canada is the country in the world where the greatest number of women journalists were exposed to organized troll campaigns. Canada.

Maybe that was surprising on some level, but on another level, it really wasn’t for people who were online for so many years. We were seeing it happen every day and it’s awful. It’s not just meanies on social media. It is silencing. It is anti-democratic.

These are some of the things that I’m seeing. I really hope, like, I’m looking for solutions. I’m looking for small ways in which we can fix the situation, support, and help people who are being very publicly harmed.

00:12:01 Andrea

I’m excited because you’re going to be a judge of the Canadian Women’s Foundation’s new Feminist Creator Prize, winners of which will be announced on March 8th next year.

Can you share a bit about why you jumped into this? What do you hope the prize will do?

00:12:16 Hannah

I think you probably remember when you first told me about this prize that you were creating. I was so excited. This is exactly the kind of thing I want to see out there in the world, right?

It’s almost become, like, just de facto that if you’re going to be a woman out there on social media sharing your opinion, backed up by evidence, that you will be beat down by, like, the online abuse. You’re going to experience it. It’s a given, and I hate that.

Where is the positive reinforcement of, wow, what you’re doing is brave, cool, new? You’re connecting with audiences on platforms that for humankind are new, like, where are the accolades? For example, the journalism industry has lots of awards, you know, entrenched kind of legacy awards. And those are great.

But where are the awards for the individuals, the young women, the women who are starting to, you know, who are developing their voices on Instagram or TikTok or in a podcast? And they’re grinding every day. And where are the awards for them to, just, kind of say, hey, we see you. This work you’re doing is important to inform others.

There’s a whole other conversation of journalism and then the creator economy, you know? That’s a whole other conversation. But I just love to see people who are out there doing good work, and often it seems like some of these folks are doing things, kind of, solo, on their own. And then when they get attacked, I don’t want them to experience that alone.

So, I love the Feminist Creator Prize, because it is an example of what we want to encourage and foster.

00:14:06 Andrea

Any practical tips or tools or words of advice and encouragement you would share to our diverse listeners dealing with digital hate, harassment, and abuse?

00:14:14 Hannah

I think that, maybe, the term self-care is used too much or ad nauseam, and it’s not going to just be a bubble bath that helps solve things for you.

So, I do believe in community care. Community care is self-care. Having relationships and support is self-care. Looking out for yourself, if you’re someone who puts yourself out there with your voice, you are so valuable.

Protecting yourself in terms of understanding who your community is and making sure that you’re connected, that’s number one. And then number two, like, taking breaks from social media. You know, so I’m talking about social media, here. There are many different types of digital creation.

But if you are somebody who’s on social media, take those breaks. It is OK. Right now, I’m seeing that we’re in this statement culture. Everyone needs to make a statement.

I just wonder, well, OK, again that’s a whole other episode as well, but it’s OK to have questions, and if those questions are going to be explored offline, that is OK too. It’s OK to be upping your interpersonal conversations, like, in-person, in rooms with people who see your humanity and that you trust to work things out, to work out your ideas.

Like, that is OK, if you need to take some time off from being online and to do that offline, I think it’s really great. I think it’s very healing. I think it’s really illuminating too, because I think you can actually have very difficult conversations in-person, face to face, in my opinion, to a more satisfying degree than you can online.

Those are my personal tips, I’d say.

00:16:05 Andrea

What do you think needs to change to end digital hate, harassment, and abuse? How do we go about challenging it?

00:16:11 Hannah

I think many things need to change. It comes from attacking the problem, which is very complex in many different ways and from many different angles. So, wherever you may be right now, whatever type of organization or job, you know, you may be occupying right now, thinking about ways that you can be a part of the solution.

So, some of the fix will be systemic. Big tech knows that inflamed culture wars, basically, like provoking people’s emotions, is where the clicks are, and therefore where the money is.

It’s a way to keep things compelling for users, but to a very unhealthy degree. They know that. They have all the research, actually, we’ve seen that they know and now we know.

And if you don’t hold the levers of power in those organizations and those companies, maybe it feels like there isn’t anything you can do, but I always believe in talking about this kind of thing and exposing it. So, if you work in big tech, like, push from within, and if you are not working in big tech but you’re a user of it, talk about it with your friends, you know?

Owning your own power as a person that people look to, to understand how, you know, how to be, how to act—that is really important. You have friends, you have family, and the way that you fire off your Facebook comments or the way that you respect people’s boundaries in the usage of texting or, you know, all the all the things, all the behaviours. I think people are looking to you in the way that, like, we’re all looking to each other.

So, be the way you want others to be. Be that way first, because, yeah, I think that we all see some huge and fast changes in our culture based on how we are, like, digitizing all of our communications and communities. And that’s exactly why we’re all teaching each other. We are literally all teaching each other all the time how to be. So, there’s a systemic responsibility, and then there’s also an individual responsibility.

00:18:25 Andrea

Alright, now what?

Check out Hannah Sung on Instagram @Hannsung and on TikTok @Hannah_Tok. You can listen to the Media Girlfriend’s produced Signal for Help podcast wherever you get your podcast content.

Get the facts on gendered digital hate, harassment, and abuse by visiting our fact page on canadianwomen.org.

While you’re there, read about our new Feminist Creator Prize to uplift feminist digital creators advocating for gender justice, safety, and freedom from harm.

Did this episode help you? Did you learn anything new? We want to know! Please visit this episode’s show notes to fill out our brief listener survey. You’ll be entered to win a special prize pack.

This series of podcast episodes has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada.

Please listen, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. If you appreciate this content, please consider becoming a monthly donor to the Canadian Women’s Foundation. People like you will make the goal of gender justice a reality. Visit canadianwomen.org to give today and thank you for your tireless support.