Media campaigning traditionally provides a unique space for different political options to confront the views of their opponents. In all contexts, including well-established and transitional democracies, political debates facilitated by the media are essential in informing voters of policy options and winning their support.

Although it is envisaged as a platform for issues-based presentation and confrontation of political arguments, media campaigning often turns into derogation and inflammatory speeches. In many societies, insults towards women in politics tend to focus on undermining their capacity as leaders in comparison to men, who are assumed to be born leaders. In order to mobilize support, political parties sometimes abuse campaign opportunities and access to the media to disseminate false statements, create imaginary threats and feelings of insecurity. As outlined in the International Foundation for Electoral Systems’ (IFES) Countering Hate Speech in Elections: Strategies for Electoral Management Bodies,[1] while hate speech during campaigning does not automatically result in electoral violence, it does increase the risk of it. Use of hate speech during elections, such as through ‘hate-spin’ – ‘a double-sided technique that combines hate speech (incitement through vilification) with manufactured offense-taking (the performance of righteous indignation)’[2] – can be a tool used to manufacture offense and result in voter intimidation, for example through the use of violence.

Empirical cases:

• Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) presidential and legislative elections 2006. During the electoral campaign period a number of incidents of hate speeches were reported.[3] Two rival political parties engaged in hate speech campaigns with ethnic dimensions. One party’s campaign had the slogan ‘100 percent Congolese’ – an allusion to the leader of the other party, the incumbent president, who is of foreign descent. In addition, the same party had its own television channel which broadcast images of atrocities allegedly committed by the incumbent president during the 1963–2008 civil war. Some media announcements also encouraged people to attack the head of the election commission. This rhetoric had severe consequences and triggered violence during a Kinshasa political party rally where six people were killed, several of them police officers. The political party of the incumbent president used this to its advantage by broadcasting images of the deceased police officers , with the apparent aim of bringing the other party into contempt.[4]
  
  Interrelated factors: presence of non-state armed actors (external); human rights violations (external);[5] problematic voter registration (internal); problematic ballot counting and result tallying (internal).[6]