One of Charlie Hebdo’s many controversial covers.

A new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists suggests that advances in technology and the growing influence of social media have increased (or at least highlighted) risks to cartoonists, who are routinely targeted with “censorship, punitive lawsuits, physical assault, imprisonment, disappearance, and murder for their art-form journalism.” While these developments offer artists greater access to larger audiences, they also allow “enemies of the press everywhere to more easily monitor and respond to cartoons they view as objectionable.”

The report was commissioned in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, when 12 people were murdered as Muslim radicals stormed the publisher’s Paris offices in January. Earlier this month, we followed PEN’s controversial decision to honor the magazine with their prestigious Freedom of Expression Courage Award.

“Cartoonists everywhere are gripped by fear of copycat events,” South African cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro told The New York Times.

Of course, many threats come not from civilian extremists, but from governments themselves. The report includes cases in Malaysia, Ecuador, South Africa, Syria, Venezuela, India, Iran, and Sri Lanka where cartoonists were imprisoned or otherwise persecuted by their own state officials: In Malaysia, police raided the office of cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque and confiscated his publications; he now faces a possible 43 years in prison on nine charges of sedition. In Sri Lanka, Prageeth Eknelygoda—whose cartoons depicted human rights abuses—has been missing since 2010, when the government imposed a military campaign to subdue an insurgency.

Robert Russell, executive director of Cartoonists Rights Network International, noted, “The world is unfortunately waking up to the power and influence of cartoonists, [and responding] through the exercise of violence and murder.”