Digital Threats

“Suddenly We Were the Story”: Women Journalists, the #MeToo Movement, & Online Misogyny in India

Paromita Pain

In: Gender Violence, Social Media, and Online Environments

Lisa M. Cuklanz (ed.)

London; New York: Routledge (2022), 17 pp.

"This study looks at how online misogyny is impacting the work of women journalists in India. Journalists here are encouraged to have a social media presence and publicize stories online, but organizations do little to protect them from the relentless trolling and misogyny that characterizes the onl ... more

The Chilling: A Global Study of Online Violence Against Women Journalists
Top Insights

Julie Posetti, Nabeelah Shabbir (eds.)

International Center for Journalists (ICFJ);UNESCO (2022), 325 pp.

"This ground-breaking three-year global study on gender-based online violence against women journalists represents collaborative research covering 15 countries. It is the most geographically, linguistically, and ethnically diverse scoping of the crisis conducted up until late 2022. The research draw ... more

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A Matter of Organisational Silence: Media Managers Struggling to Make Sense of the Online Harassment of Journalists as a Collective Issue in Journalism

Sylvain Malcorps, Manon Libert, Florence Le Cam

Digital Journalism, volume 11, issue 10 (2022), pp. 1868-1885

"The online harassment of journalists is a phenomenon which has been on the rise in Europe over the last decade and it affects journalists' working lives. As an expression of mob censorship, online harassment raises questions about how media organisations react to online aggressions targeting their ... more

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‘Lockdown’ on Digital Journalism? Mapping Threats to Press Freedom During the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis

Lambrini Papadopoulou, Theodora A. Maniou

Digital Journalism, volume 9, issue 9 (2021), pp. 1344-1366

"Across the globe, governments have issued emergency and drastic measures aimed at tracking the spread of COVID-19 and safeguarding public health. Notwithstanding the necessity and importance of some of these measures, this work argues that numerous governments around the world used the pandemic cri ... more

Press Freedom and Cybercrimes: Combating Online Harassment on Digital Media in Nigeria

Samson Ojodomo Onuche

African Journal of Criminal Law And Jurisprudence, volume 6 (2021), pp. 137-151

"The role of the Media to the growth and development of a democratic society cannot be overemphasized. Over the years, the media have served as a watch dog in every society, prompting the need for International and National legislation protecting the Right to Press Freedom. While attacks and threat ... more

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Burning out and turning off: Journalists’ disconnection strategies on social media

Diana Bossio, Avery E. Holton

Journalism, volume 22, issue 10 (2021), pp. 2475-2492

"This study explores forms of social media fatigue described by professional journalists, including frustration with the perception of their increased affective labor, dissatisfaction with communication environments on particular social media platforms, and increased anxiety about the possible impac ... more

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“We Have to act Like our Devices are Already Infected”: Investigative Journalists and Internet Surveillance

Philip Di Salvo

Journalism Practice, volume 16, issue 9 (2021), pp. 1849-1866

"Internet surveillance has become a crucial issue for journalism. The “Snowden moment” has shed light on the risks that journalists and their sources face while communicating online and has shown how journalists themselves can be targets of surveillance operations or other forms of malicious dig ... more

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Confronting Freedom to Inform With Freedom of Expression: The Case of Online Attacks of Journalists in Ghana

Gifty Appiah-Adjei

In: Handbook of Research on Discrimination, Gender Disparity, and Safety Risks in Journalism

Sadia Jamil; Baris Çoban; Bora Ataman; Gifty Appiah-Adjei (eds.)

Hershey, PA: IGI Global (2021), pp. 269-296

"Globally, there is an increase in online attacks on journalists with gender dimensions to these attacks. Also, it is established that digital innovations have augmented free expression and the augmentation allows means for online attacks. Though evidence submits that studies on the problem of onlin ... more

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Between Attack and Resilience: The Ongoing Institutionalization of Independent Digital Journalism in Brazil

Sarah Anne Ganter, Fernando Oliveira Paulino

Digital Journalism, volume 9, issue 2 (2021), pp. 235-254

"Digital journalism in Brazil is dominated by a few big players and has recently been threatened by the country’s challenging political and economic environment. Still, organizational structures promoting independent digital journalism (IDJ) persist. Originally understood as “the blogosphere,” ... more

Online harassment of journalists as a consequence of populism, mis/disinformation, and impunity

Jeannine E. Relly

In: The Routledge Companion to Media Disinformation and Populism

Howard Tumber; Silvio Waisbord (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2021), pp. 178-187

"This chapter aims to examine additional factors associated with populism, disinformation and online harassment of journalists in an environment of impunity, though the relationship between digital communication and populism has been analysed since the late 1990s. It considers strategies that have b ... more

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The new frontline: Women journalists at the intersection of converging digital age threats

Julie Posetti

In: Insights on Peace and Conflict Reporting

Kristin Skare Orgeret (ed.)

London; New York: Routledge (2021), 18 pp.

"The chapter identifies the new threats posed by digital developments and how they affect women journalists in particular. There are three main converging safety threats confronting women journalists in the digital age: online harassment and abuse against women journalists; orchestrated disinformati ... more

The Chilling: Assessing Big Tech's Response to Online Violence Against Women Journalists

Julie Posetti, Kalina Bontcheva, Nabeelah Shabbir

UNESCO (2021), 35 pp.

"This is an extracted chapter of a wider UNESCO-commissioned global study on online violence against women journalists produced by the Inter-national Center for Journalists (ICFJ). The full-length study will published in 2022. The chapter identifies the role of big tech companies and especially soci ... more

No Excuse for Abuse: What Social Media Companies Can Do Now to Combat Online Harassment and Empower Users

PEN America (2021), 7 pp.

"To ensure that social media becomes safer, more open, and more equitable for all users, platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram must prioritize curbing online harassment. In this report, PEN America proposes concrete, actionable changes that social media companies should make immediately to ... more

Online Harassment of Female Journalists in Bangladesh: Forms, Reactions, and Consequences

Priyanka Kundu, Md. Mahbubul Haque Bhuiyan

In: Handbook of Research on Discrimination, Gender Disparity, and Safety Risks in Journalism

Sadia Jamil; Baris Çoban; Bora Ataman; Gifty Appiah-Adjei (eds.)

Hershey, PA: IGI Global (2021), pp. 143-166

"The online harassment of female journalists is a rising concern around the world and also in South Asia. Bangladesh, a South Asian country, recently, has experienced an increasing number of harassments against female journalists online. Various studies explored the online harassment, mostly from th ... more

New Digital Media: Freedom of Expression and Safeguarding Journalists in the Context of East Africa

Tonny Raymond Kirabira

Cross Cultural Human Rights Review, volume 2, issue 1 (2020), pp. 49-71

"Many East African states have developed restrictive legal and policy measures regarding the use of the internet. This has resulted in the declining state of media freedom and safety of journalists. This article addresses freedom of expression as a pre-condition for safeguarding journalists in selec ... more

Red lines of journalism. Digital surveillance, safety risks and journalists’ self-censorship in Pakistan

Sadia Jamil

In: Journalist Safety and Self-Censorship

Ingrid Fadnes; Anna Grøndahl Larsen; Roy Krøvel (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2020), pp. 29-46

"Drawing on Reese’s hierarchy of influences model, this study investigates the extent to which safety risks and digital surveillance result in journalists’ self-censorship in Pakistan. This study also explores the key areas of journalists’ self-censorship in the country and how it affects thei ... more

Double-edged knife: Practices and perceptions of technology and digital security among Mexican journalists in violent contexts

Rubén Arnoldo González, Frida V. Rodelo

Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, volume 3, issue 1 (2020), pp. 22-42

"Violence against Mexican journalists has received significant attention from scholars at home and abroad during the last decade. However, though a diversity of issues have been consistently studied, there is one topic that is still largely neglected: the implications of technology for news workers� ... more

The “triple effect” silencing female journalists online. A theoretical exploration

Marte Høiby

In: Journalist Safety and Self-Censorship

Ingrid Fadnes; Anna Grøndahl Larsen; Roy Krøvel (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2020), pp. 100-113

"Online harassment of women journalists imposes self-censorship and threatens women’s participation in online journalism. This is of grave concern for the development of freedom of speech and plurality in the media (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe [OSCE], 2019). Part of this i ... more

‘A modern-day equivalent of the Wild West’: Preparing journalism students to be safe online

Jenny Kean, Abbey Maclure

Journalism Education, volume 10, issue 1 (2020), pp. 69-82

"Journalists are increasingly becoming the target of online abuse; the backlash over the death of TV presenter Caroline Flack and coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests are just two recent examples. Yorkshire Evening Post editor Laura Collins has highlighted how female journalists face the brun ... more