Democracy for Development (D4D) continues to monitor gender-based disinformation and hate speech on social media!

Today, we are launching a new series of infographics comparing monitoring periods from December 2024 to July 2026 to highlight, through data, the trend of hate speech against women in the online space in Kosovo.

Period I (December 2024 – May 2025): The 6-month monitoring focusing on women in politics revealed a high level of direct insults and overt sexism, where up to 19% of comments directed at public figures such as Fitore Pacolli, Albulena Haxhiu, and Hykmete Bajrami contained hate speech. This period was characterized by media headlines objectifying women’s appearance or morality, as well as the widespread use of derogatory labels such as “thief,” “illiterate,” or “tramp” aimed at delegitimizing them professionally.

Period II (December 2024 – November 2025): Data for the year 2025 shows a massive scale, where 14% of the more than 660,000 comments analyzed (over 91,000 comments) contained hate speech, proving that abuse has shifted from verbal attacks to more structural tactics. Hate speech is now utilizing Artificial Intelligence (Deepfake), orchestrated gender-based disinformation, intersectional abuse targeting women from minority communities, as well as humor and memes as a cover to normalize misogyny in the digital space.

The monitoring during this period was carried out with the support of the “Support to civil society in Kosovo” project, funded by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and implemented by LuxDev, Luxembourg Development Cooperation Agency.