"This study appraises the mainstreaming and teaching of safety in journalism training institutions in Nigeria and interrogates the effectiveness of the safety measures available to safeguard the lives of journalists reporting from conflict areas in the North East geopolitical zone. In-depth intervie
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ws were conducted with 16 journalists representing a range of media organisations who had been reporting from the areas with the most volatile and prolonged conflicts. Mass communication curricula in universities and polytechnics across the region were also reviewed. The findings revealed that journalists in North East Nigeria are at high risk due to the absence of protective mechanisms and professional skills relating to safety. Journalists rely on their instincts and experience to manage risk, rendering them highly vulnerable in dangerous situations. These journalists endure multiple physical and psychological attacks from the security forces, insurgents and even community members that they cover. Recommendations reflective of best practice are offered regarding the mainstreaming of safety education in journalism training and the provision of safety mechanisms in order to reduce journalists’ physical harm and psychological trauma, increase their actual and perceived safety and security, boost their morale and improve the quality of their reporting." (Abstract)
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"Drawing on interviews with 10 U.S. student journalists, we introduce an ethics-of-care approach for trauma-informed journalism pedagogy. We express grave concern for mental health in journalism programs, offering an empirical snapshot of students’ traumas and coping strategies. We confirm that st
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udent journalists, like working reporters, are traumatized by professional norms, high demands, poor boundaries, safety concerns, and ethical-professional responsibilities. Participants coped through emotional distancing, saving face, and relying on peers. We offer interventions based on student support needs and changing news values, including faculty affirmation, financial support, counselor support, diversity training, newsroom debriefings, emotional leadership, and reporting protocols." (Abstract)
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"Conflict is a dangerous situation but when it is properly managed and reported, it becomes a blessing to the parties experiencing it. This study examined the responsibilities of journalists and the pressure they encounter while reporting conflicts in Benue State of Nigeria. The study adopted a qual
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itative research method with 20 journalists purposefully selected from Radio Benue, Makurdi; NTA Makurdi; Sun Rays FM, Korinya and The Pavilion Newspaper, Makurdi including male and female journalists. Research questions focusing on the purpose of the investigation guided the study. A standardized open-ended interview format was used to collect data. The data collected were analyzed using an explanation building model. The result of the research questions showed that there are factors that influence journalists, pressure that influence framing of news by journalists, strategies journalists employ in reporting conflicts are many. The study revealed that journalists are contributors of peace building before, during, and after crises. The study recommended among others that journalists should be peace-oriented when reporting conflict, especially those of cross-border nature. And journalists can do this by providing a forum for a critical analysis of issues in a conflict through incisive, informed and critical comments from editorialists, columnists, opinion and feature writers among others so as to open up the space for discussion from all fronts which would enlighten the reading public and possibly, the official negotiators in a conflict." (Abstract)
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"This study examined the effects of online harassment on journalists’ psychological trauma and their intention to leave work. It also investigated whether journalists’ psychological trauma mediates the effects of online harassment on their intention to leave the profession and whether gender mak
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es a difference in that relationship. An online survey of 404 South Korean journalists provided three categories of online harassment that journalists experience: (1) aggressive and abusive expression, (2) disclosure of private information, and (3) cyberstalking and hacking. The findings of this study show that aggressive and abusive expression was the most frequent type of online harassment whereas cyberstalking and hacking was the least frequent. As expected, online harassment was found to be positively associated with journalists’ psychological trauma (PTSD symptoms) and intention to leave work. The results further indicate that journalists’ psychological trauma originating from online harassment frequently resulted in an intention to leave work. Interestingly, journalists’ psychological trauma was a significant mediator in the relationship between psychological trauma levels and intention to leave work for female journalists, but not for male journalists." (Abstract)
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"This study was conducted to assess the risks journalists face while reporting in Somalia. It was guided by three specific objectives that included: evaluating the cases of physical attacks on journalists reporting in Somalia, analyzing the cases of arbitrary arrests and imprisonments of journalists
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recorded in Somalia and investigating the cases of journalists being killed in Somalia in three years between 2019 and 2021. The study was qualitative and used secondary data to explore the objectives. It analyzed data from five reports which had information collected between 2019- 2021 that included: The Somali Mechanism for Safety of Journalists (SMSJ) report 2021, The UNESCO observatory report on journalists killed 2021, The National Union of Somalia Journalists (NUSOJ) report of 2021, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report of 2020/2021, and The Amnesty International Research report of 2020. Data was classified into three thematic areas according to the study objectives. The data was then uploaded into the coding sheet and analyzed. The study found out that, Media freedoms in Somalia is being suppressed by the Federal state and non-state actors. Evidence from the reports showed that, between 2019 and 2021, eight journalists have been killed, 66 journalists have been arbitrary arrested and 81 journalists have been physically attacked and assaulted. Additionally, The Somali federal and state governments targeted and raided media outlets considered disloyal to the regime and approximately 14 media outlets were struck by government officials and armed soldiers. The study recommends that, according to UN plan of Action on the safety of Journalists and the issue of impunity (2012), the Somali government needs to demonstrate its assurance to the protection and safety of journalists and media freedom by taking significant action to tackle the extensive impunity for crimes against the media, otherwise, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights ACHPR having signed a memorandum of understanding with UNESCO to safeguard journalists should step in and manage the risks that journalists working in Somalia face daily." (Abstract)
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"The Center for Journalism Studies (Ghent University, Belgium) has a long tradition in profiling studies of journalists based on survey research in collaboration with the Belgian associations of professional journalists (VVJ and AJP). Every five years (since 2003, last wave in 2018), a representativ
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e sample of Belgian journalists answer a series of questions about their background, work conditions and role conceptions. Following the start of the corona pandemic, we have launched an intermediary survey in April 2020 to collect data on how the crisis impacts important aspects of the journalistic profession, including news gathering, autonomy and income. 628 completed questionnaires were returned, i.e. a response rate of 20% of the total population of professional journalists. The findings of this representative survey reveal, first, that the consequences of the crisis are felt most strongly by freelance journalists, who reported a substantial decrease of assignments and income. It is remarkable that this was also the case for freelance journalists who work for the public broadcaster, which has a rather stable source of income not directly impacted by the corona pandemic. In contrast, commercial news media are more susceptible to sudden market changes and are therefore more associated with fluctuating employment of freelancers. Seen that the last profiling study in 2018 revealed a substantial increase of freelance employment in Belgian newsrooms from 18 to 25%, our findings point to increasing precarity in the journalistic workforce. A second important finding is that more journalists (both freelance and staff reporters) report problems with access to news sources and news gathering locations, indicating that safety measures are also used strategically by unwilling news sources. This raises concerns about the quality and independence of Belgian journalism during the corona pandemic. We end with a critical reflection about our collaboration with the professional associations to gather data on journalistic profiles and work conditions, and we show how our research can be useful in negotiations with news media groups and policy makers." (Abstract)
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"This study examines the online harassment faced by political journalists in Pakistan on Twitter, specifically focusing on the actions of users affiliated with various political parties. By selecting the 12 most active journalists on Twitter, we combined both content and textual analyses to examine
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comments posted on their tweets. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of the practice-based theoretical approach, the findings reveal that these journalists predominantly encountered negative comments encompassing personal abuses, culturally sensitive expressions, and attacks on their professional lives. Commenters associated with the populist political party, Pakistan Tehreek Insaaf, were more likely to engage in uncivil comments compared to those affiliated with traditional political parties. Interestingly, both male and female journalists received a comparable number of comments on their tweets; however, the nature of the comments differed significantly. Male journalists were primarily criticized for their perceived lack of professionalism, whereas female journalists were subjected to gender-targeted offensive comments. The study highlighted how socio-cultural conditions were exploited by political parties and netizens to suppress critical journalists. Overall, this research sheds light on the multifaceted dynamics of harassment faced by journalists in the digital age, emphasizing the need for effective measures to safeguard freedom of expression and counteract online abuse within the Pakistani media landscape." (Abstract)
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"Limited studies exist on the safety challenges that journalists face in reporting conflict related issues within their localities. This study extends literature in this direction by providing a model that explains the safety challenges that journalists faced in reporting the 2020 END SARS protests
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in Nigeria. The study is a survey of 470 journalists with questionnaire as the instrument for data collection. Results were analysed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). It was found that legal limitations, lack of training on safety and absence of safety motivational measures constitute the safety challenges that journalists faced in reporting the ENDS SARS protests. This information could be beneficial for policy formulation and advocacy within the context of safety of journalists." (Abstract)
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"The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the role news organizations play in disseminating information and shaping public response to the crisis. This study adopts an ecological approach in examining Russian regional journalists’ adaptations to the pandemic. Based on in-depth interviews, the study f
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ound that a worsened economic situation has increased dependence on state subsidies. Journalists avoided questioning authorities’ response to COVID, with some publishing government information and others focusing on practical tips for readers." (Abstract)
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"At the heart of decolonial theory is the love for woman, particularly black woman, as the most oppressed of political categories in the old colonial structures of race, class and gender hierarchy. This chapter uses decolonial theory, specifically Chela Sandoval’s concept of ‘decolonial love’
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as a political technology, to discuss the cyberbullying of women journalists in South Africa. It blends Sandoval’s decolonial love theory with Frantz Fanon’s concept of ‘damnes’ or ‘wretched of the earth,’ to analyse stories of cyber-bullying, sexism and threats of sexual violence against women journalists using the research published in Glass Ceilings: Women in South African Media Houses 2018. This chapter argues that it is a revolutionary oppositional consciousness that operates when women, particularly black women, continue in the performativity of their craft to write and to speak out in the media, despite the subjection and misogyny they face." (Abstract)
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"Reporting on the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict poses a significant risk to the physical safety of journalists and other media professionals. At times of heightened conflict between the two sides, the magnitude of the risks journalists face increases exponentially. Journalists reporting from
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Gaza are particularly at risk from military attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces. In this article, I examine the practices of international news reporters during the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza. The data for the study comprise interviews with journalists and photographers who reported the war from Gaza. Particular attention is paid to the risks journalists faced during the war, as well as the measures employed to mitigate them. Such practices can be conceived as a form of resistance and resilience in an era of asymmetric war, which has seen risks to journalists increasing significantly." (Abstract)
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"This research is based on 28 in-depth interviews with Kenya-based journalists who report terrorism. The objective of the research was to recount their lived experiences. The theme of safety of journalists comprised psychological and physical safety of the newspeople, and there were various ways in
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which the psychological and individual safety of the journalists covering terrorism and related events was at risk. The psychological safety included traumatic events leading to sleeplessness and nightmares, loss of memory, and some journalists resorting to alcohol abuse in a bid to cope with the traumatic experiences. These physical safety concerns for some journalists included threats of death by fanatical religious groups, while other participants said that they were threatened with death because of their coverage of terrorism and related activities in Kenya." (Abstract)
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"These are challenging times for practicing journalism safely in Cameroon. Death in pretrial detention is one extreme form of silencing journalists, although arbitrary arrests, intimidation, harassment, and trumped-up charges are also used, not only during turbulence and armed conflicts, but also in
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times of peace. Journalists are victims not only of physical violence but also of psychological and digital attacks and confiscation of travel documents. Furthermore, the danger extends to their sources and family members. Reporting on issues such as politics, leadership decadence, corruption, elections, terrorism, the head of state, and human rights can be a life-threatening and perilous endeavor. Drawing on newsroom observation and interviews with journalists, this chapter argues that Cameroon has failed to provide a protective and enabling environment for journalists to operate. This failure partly accounts for the growing number of attacks and the culture of impunity targeted against the media. Furthermore, the frailties of self-regulation and the prevalence of unethical journalism have accentuated the risks faced by journalists. At a time when hate speech, fake news, and mistrust of the media are growing tremendously, free media is not only essential for national peace, but democracy is also seriously undermined when access to reliable information is restricted." (Abstract)
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"This article examines the historical roots of the role of successive Turkish governments’ fear of media and Turkish media’s fear of government authority with respect to the development of press freedom over the long run and closely analyzes the historical pressures imposed on journalists throug
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h legal and informal means. We focus particularly on the economic and political pressure on the media in Turkey and offer three arguments regarding the fear in Turkish media: (1) Media fear is historical rather than a rupture that happened during the Justice and Development Party era; (2) out of fear of losing power, the governments use structural, legislative and extra-legal factors to the advantage of the ruling party to support a friendly media-ecology; and (3) the repressed media attempt to come out of this ecology of fear by utilizing new tactics of reporting, such as alternative media and citizen journalism." (Abstract)
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"The chapter examines how news coverage of feminist protests in Mexico, one of the most violent countries in the world for women and for journalists, has changed in mainstream Mexican media since the #MeToo movement’s revitalization after 2017. With few exceptions, news coverage in Mexico, a count
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ry in the Global South, has historically emphasized disruptive behavior and the use of violence rather than the grievances of protesters. This trend follows the protest paradigm, which contends that media coverage tends to disparage protesters and hinder their role as political actors. However, the trend in coverage has begun to shift over the past several years, yet minimal scholarly discussions have occurred about temporal and geographical variations in news coverage of feminist mobilizations in Mexico. Given the recent increase in feminist demonstrations and upsurge in violence against women, this chapter provides findings from qualitative content analyses of 1007 news articles from 25 Mexican news media and agencies and assesses how they reported on the annual International Women’s Day marches on March 8 for the 2018–2020 time frame. These analyses concentrate on four dimensions of news coverage that focus on women’s protests: the evolution of topics in the news narrative; the tone of the coverage focusing on demonstrations; source selection; and news frames. The chapter demonstrates that journalists in Mexico have begun to shift away from the typical protest paradigm when covering demonstrations, and that they have moved toward a more assertive framing of women’s demands." (Abstract)
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"Attacks on journalists and the media in Brazil have a long history but have become even more problematic through the use of social media, particularly following the election of Jair Bolsonaro as president in 2019. In times of industry restructuring and coronavirus pandemic, the systematic attacks o
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n individual journalists and on the media by Bolsonaro and his associates are posing unprecedented challenges, and are part of a pattern of abuse to suppress media freedom and discredit journalists’ work. This article focuses upon journalists’ abilities to access different types of capital to anticipate, cope with, and create options to overcome perceived threats and generate positive outcomes. This study builds upon the works of Voss (Behemoth-A Journal on Civilisation 1 (3): 39–56, 2008), Obrist, Pfeiffer and Henley (Progress in Development Studies 10 (4): 283–293, 2010) and Hess’ (Communication Theory 23 (2): 112–130, 2013) “mediated social capital” to advance understanding of the nexus amongst risk, vulnerability and social resilience, and examines structural inequalities in and through the media. By employing a mixed-methods approach, we combine the results of a survey and in-depth interviews with high-profile figures of leading newspapers and professional bodies in the country. The findings open up possibilities on how news media’s “mediated social capital” might enhance women journalists’ capacity to move from vulnerability to social resilience, improving their safety." (Abstract)
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"Scholarly calls surrounding the need to prepare journalism students for hostile encounters and harassment are emerging. Using in-depth interviews with 28 early-career journalists from across the United States, this project underscores a need for content related to hostility within journalism course
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s. Findings also highlighted a tension between early-career journalists’ beliefs about how journalists are supposed to act and how they coped with hostility in practice. This created hesitancy to speak up and have discussions about hostility with editors, especially among women journalists. Therefore, I argue for a shift in how we talk about hostility toward journalists in our classrooms." (Abstract)
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"This article seeks to contribute to the existing research on journalist harassment by examining the experiences of Korean journalists who have faced online harassment. While extensive research has been conducted on this issue, there is a need for comparative studies to understand the unique pattern
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s and underlying causes in different nations. The objectives of this article are to explore the experiences of Korean journalists subjected to online harassment, identify the factors they perceive as triggers for such harassment, understand the impacts it has on them, and examine their coping strategies with such incidents. One of the key findings of this research is the significant stress caused by specific shaming websites that aim to insult and discredit targeted journalists. Additionally, this study delves into the impact of online harassment on journalists’ self-censorship practice, where they may avoid covering controversial issues or skew their coverage towards less sensitive perspectives." (Abstract)
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"Over a decade ago, the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings erupted in six Arab countries. They were accompanied, initially, by high hopes for democratic transformation and reform (Lynch, 2012). These hopes and aspirations also included widening the margin of freedom of expression in general and press freedo
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m in particular (El Tantawy & Wiest, 2011). However, these Arab Spring countries ultimately suffered from serious challenges which negatively impacted their transition to democratization and political reform, leading to an escalating wave of authoritarianism, which worsened significantly amid the Covid-19 pandemic (Khamis, 2020a, 2020b). This chapter investigates the myriad factors impacting journalistic practices in the Arab world in the post–Arab Spring and post-Covid-19 era, with a special focus on the multiple effects and far-reaching implications on both legacy media and citizen journalism. It pays special attention to the phenomenon of journalistic resistance from the diaspora (Khamis & Fowler, 2020) and the gender-based challenges impacting Arab women journalists, in particular, as a result of these intertwined and complex set of factors (Khamis & El-Ibiary, 2022), Finally, it highlights some of the resistance mechanisms which are deployed by Arab journalists to push back against the multilayered and multifaceted constraints which are imposed on them by their autocratic regimes, politically, economically, legally, and professionally." (Abstract)
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"The incorporation of new media technology into journalistic practices led to online harassment, particularly of female journalists. The researchers investigated the tweets of four prominent Pakistani female journalists through the lens of post-colonial feminism and symbolic violence. The qualitativ
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e analysis of 239 tweets revealed themes that corroborated the dominance of sociocultural and political grounds in undermining the status of women and making them susceptible to online harassment. In culturally traditional communities, the position of women is “gender specific,” and socioeconomic status cannot guarantee women’s safety from cultural behaviors. The harassment themes included “you called for it,” adhering to the limits of a male-dominated society, women’s card, threats, “lifafa,” shamelessness, religious policing, moral policing, and pseudo-intellectual labeling. The study recommends expanding research in sociopolitical, religious, and cultural contexts to comprehend symbolic violence, particularly in relation to women." (Abstract)
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