"The public’s increased access to journalists via social networks is arguably the defining shift in audience-media relations over the past two decades. While some laud this potential for dialogue, the reality is that many journalists face targeted hostility, with women often subjected to particula
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rly challenging content. Underpinning this project is the question of how contemporary social media dynamics, and particularly negative or hostile interactions, affect journalists in Ireland. Drawing on interviews with 36 national-level female journalists, this project documents their experiences in their own words, analyses how they handle negativity, and explores how they think those with power should respond. The project also includes focus groups with 40 student journalists who are grappling with the expectations around social media use moving forward in their careers." (Abstract)
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"Female journalists often face a dual challenge when reporting on elections, grappling with routine attacks both as women and as professionals. This study aims to explore the safety concerns of female journalists covering elections in Lagos state, Nigeria, and investigate their attitudes towards the
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se concerns, their awareness, and utilization of available safety measures. Using an explanatory sequential method, we conducted a questionnaire survey with 40 female journalists and followed up with in-depth interviews of two senior female journalists. Findings revealed that sexual harassment emerged as a common offline threat (87.5%), while libelous comments (75%) and stalking (75%) posed significant online concerns. Despite these alarming safety statistics, female journalists agreed that safety is a concern (x*= 3.72); while expressing that safety concerns would not significantly affect their election coverage (mean = 2.70). Furthermore, there is a disparity between high awareness (mean = 4.00) and low adoption (mean = 3.12) of available safety measures among female journalists. In addition, the interviews underscored the absence of substantial support from media organizations during election coverage, exacerbating the vulnerabilities faced by female journalists. This lack of institutional backing warrants immediate attention to foster a safer reporting environment." (Abstract)
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"This article contributes to our understanding of the notion of mob censorship from the Ugandan context by examining the nature and consequences of harassment targeting women journalists on social media. Drawing on research about online harassment and censorship, we link mob violence in physical spa
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ces to harassment encountered on social media from the perspectives of women journalists. We illustrate that the different forms of harassment enabled by online platforms present serious challenges for individual journalists, and the journalism profession. Our findings suggest that online attacks on reporters include comments that denigrate women’s bodies, and discredit journalists’ reportage. The harassment compels women journalists to engage in online hibernation and censorship." (Abstract)
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"What might feminist approaches to the protection of journalists look like, and what benefits might they bring? From national organisations to grassroots networks, our findings document women’s monumental efforts to make structural changes, tackle entrenched patterns of gender-based discrimination
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and violence, and enhance the safety of women journalists. The initiatives showcased in these case studies are a testament to the creativity and resilience of those working on the feminist frontlines. The case studies: In 2021, ARTICLE 19 set out to make these sometimes invisible practices more visible, building on our existing programmes on the safety of women journalists worldwide. We undertook original research globally and specifically in six countries – three in Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and three in Latin America (Brazil, Chile, and Paraguay)." (Abstract)
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"What are the challenges that Mexican women journalists face in a hostile environment for the press? Mexico is one of the deadliest countries in which to practice journalism. More than 160 reporters have been assassinated since 2000. Within this context, female journalists face a four-layered challe
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nge: firstly, to work in a country with a high level of anti-press violence; secondly, the state and situation of their gender in a country riddled with femicide; thirdly, their sources, colleagues, and bosses immersed in a patriarchal structure of naturalized misogyny; and fourthly, the state. This chapter examines and reveals, through in-depth, semi-structured interviews of women journalists from several parts of Mexico who cover the beat of hard news, the challenges they face when doing their work with various actors. This research aims to shed light into the world of local female journalists in Mexico that could mirror the situation of female journalists in the Global South." (Abstract)
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"Adjusting the focus to the time and research of the present, this chapter analyzes two case studies that occurred before and after the revitalization of the global #MeToo movement in 2017. The selected cases investigate how women have used social media platforms to combat VAW. The first case is Daf
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tar Hekayat El Mudawana, a blog that was created to expose sexual harassment and rape crimes—such as the #Fairmont_crime, which involved the gang rape of a young woman in 2014. The blog acted as a safe space for female survivors to tell their stories without exposing their identities. The second case focuses on Bassam Ahmed Zaki, who was exposed through social media in 2020 and later charged and incarcerated for serial rape." (Abstract)
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"This article utilizes theoretical concepts of sensemaking and affective events theory to analyze and interpret what type of harassment events journalists experience from readers, viewers, and strangers, and their subsequent emotional responses. Findings indicated journalists experience three forms
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of harassment at work from those external to the newsroom, and that women not only receive more sexual harassment than men, but they experience more overall harassment, from viewers, readers, and strangers. When examining affective reactions, men say they experience emotions of anger when harassed. Women, however, noted emotions of anger when experiencing sexual harassment, and emotions of fear when experiencing incivility and disruptive harassment and personally attacking harassment." (Abstract)
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"This study aims to identify the challenges of women journalists in Afghanistan and their impact on the intention to leave the job. To achieve the objectives of this study, a mixed-method (qualitative and quantitative) has been used. In the qualitative section, 15 in-depth interviews were conducted
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with female journalists in Afghanistan using purposive sampling. The interview data were analyzed using “NVivo 12.” In the quantitative section, Maslach’s burnout theory was integrated with job demands, family job conflict, organizational support, and society job conflict scales as influential factors on the intention to leave the job. Quota sampling was used to send an online questionnaire to 350 female journalists in Afghanistan. As a result, 183 questionnaires were obtained, of which 157 were completed. Pearson correlation coefficients and multilinear regression tests with 95% confidence level (P*<*0.05) were used to analyze the data using “SPSS 25.” Emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, family job conflict, society job conflict, and intention to leave the job are all found to have a positive and significant relationship in this study. In contrast, this study found a significant negative relationship between the perception of organizational support and the intention to leave the job." (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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"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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"This study examines the obstacles and challenges faced by female journalists in Kuwait. It explores a set of interrelated factors that discourage women from working in the media, such as gender inequality, sexual harassment, threats, social resistance, and cultural barriers. The study uses a mixed
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methods approach, comprising a survey of 24 Kuwaiti female journalists and qualitative in-depth interviews with 8 female journalists. Findings suggest that the cultural resistance that women have faced for years around the world does not affect female journalists in Kuwait so much; however, they still face sexism, exclusion, and stereotyping in the newsroom. Moreover, more than one-third of female journalists have faced sexual harassment at work, while 75% faced abuse of power and 54.2% reported being publicly humiliated or receiving threats of humiliation. Although all female journalists denied being physically abused, 45.8% reported facing verbal threats and 37.5% faced verbal violence." (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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"Through interviews with women journalists in the Philippines, this study documents and examines their experiences with online harassment. Three main themes stand out. First, we find that online harassment against journalists follows a systematic process that starts from the top, is followed through
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by a network of social media personalities and an army of trolls, and then completed by ordinary social media users. Second, cases of harassment impact journalists across multiple levels: individually, interpersonally and professionally. Finally, the participants referred to different ways of coping with what they experienced and identified three sources of support: their peers, their organizations and the public. Harassment against journalists has always been gendered, with women journalists finding themselves at the receiving end more often than do their male counterparts, and this has spilled over into digital platforms." (Abstract)
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"A large number of Bangladeshi women journalists are facing gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace. This is one of the contributing factors in excluding women journalists’ voices from the public sphere. Drawing on the feminist approach of structure and agency theory, the stud
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y investigated the causes and consequences of workplace gender discrimination and sexual harassment. A mixed method of survey and in-depth interviewing were conducted, and the data were thematically analyzed. The findings outlined gender discrimination and harassment are evident in the media industries of Bangladesh, commonly maneuvered by both internal and external perpetrators. The situation causes frustration among women journalists. As a coping-up endeavor, they often remain silent due to their lack of trust in protection mechanisms e.g., sexual harassment prevention committee in workplace, and sometimes they withdraw from their responsibilities." (Abstract)
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"While online harassment directed towards women journalists are under wide discussion, the mechanism of audience intervention in stopping online harassment is less explored. Integrating bystander invention, ambivalent sexism, and social identity theories, we propose and test an integrative framework
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of audience intervention in online harassment of women journalists. Results from an online experiment in Hong Kong showed that type of harassment, ideological similarity between the audience member and the harassed journalist, and the presence of other responsive bystanders could shape the appraisal of harassment incidents and willingness to intervene. The study advances the literature by clarifying the contextual nuances and challenges of audience intervention in online harassment of women journalists. It bears practical implications on how to defend women journalists so as to protect press freedom, cultivate journalist-audience relationship, and enhance an inclusive and egalitarian online space." (Abstract)
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"Journalism is a demanding profession in Afghanistan, where females are less encouraged to become journalists. Even recently, the people of Afghanistan still do not encourage females to work outside. But still, a significant number of females are engaged in journalism. It contributes to society for
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economic prosperity and changes the attitude toward the concept and process of development. A noticeable change is occurring in the social attitude symbolized by the advancement of females in the journalism sector. These contributions also pave the way for women's and human freedom. Afghan female journalists have made significant gains since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. 1741 working Afghan female journalists are a symbol for other Afghan females, who are living in their homes and are not permitted to work outside. These female journalists report on violence against women every day and publish and transmit them through their media and acquaint them with their Islamic and cultural rights. Even their (people) views towards females, who are working in the media are not very positive, but still, the Afghan female journalists continue to do their jobs. Besides the security issues that female journalists are facing daily, they are facing discrimination in and outside of the office and are also concerned about the future. So in this context, the main reason for this study is to reveal the working conditions and main challenges of Afghan female journalists." (Abstract)
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"Uzbekistan faces socio-political changes in the last years and the impact of these turnouts are reflected in the media landscape of the country. Several cases show that the issues of gender equality and the safety of journalists are becomingmore threatening. Some journalists suffer from political p
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ressure, harassment, and physical or psychological threats. The analysis of the most discussed real cases can be the authentic example reducing of the freedom of the press in the country." (Abstract)
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"Reports of the online harassment of journalists have continued to increase as more newsrooms place higher emphasis on social media engagement with audiences. However, this harassment is subject to gendered dynamics, as women journalists are most often the target of online abuse, and the attacks the
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mselves are often gender-centric. This study employs a mixed-method approach to explore how gender influences broadcast journalists’ social media interactions with audiences. Qualitative interviews with US broadcast journalists, along with a social media discourse analysis of the journalists’ Twitter pages, reveal the sexist nature of these interactions. Specifically, findings show that women journalists are treated not only as sexual objects, but also as non-serious journalists. In response to this treatment, women journalists adjust their social media strategies by limiting what they post and blocking certain users. This puts women journalists in a difficult position: increase coveted audience engagement and deal with online harassment or block abusive social media users and suffer the career impacts of low audience engagement. Implications are discussed." (Abstract)
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"Digital platforms quickly became prevalent over physical public space, allowing debates, interactions, and activism to flourish. With women journalists contributing significantly to the formation of a vibrant digital public space, offline violence has adapted and evolved with digital platforms. Sin
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ce 2015, the safety of journalists has profiled as an object of research in the field of communication sciences. Researchers identify, explore, and analyze the nature, prevalence, mediums of support and impacts, both personal and journalistic, of new aggressions specific to the digital environment, which aim to discredit, condition, and silence female participation. However, the wide diversity of terms and definitions used by academics has made it difficult to identify the phenomenon of digital violence against journalists and what would be the appropriate way to legislate it, to guarantee a protection of rights adapted to the digital environment. Based on scientific papers that have carried out a systematic review of terms used in previous research to characterize digital violence against women journalists, we intend to identify the best way to conceptually characterize the phenomenon and which issues need to be considered for a legislation of journalists' safety in digital arena." (Abstract)
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"This research was conducted through a survey (involving 1,256 respondents) and interviews (six informants) of female journalists in 191 cities, representing western, central, and eastern parts of Indonesia. This survey included 25 questions about the respondents’ violence experiences related to t
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heir work in the digital and physical world. The forms of violence asked in the questionnaire cover all forms of violence that we could find in literature and case records in Indonesia and abroad, including various policies and practices of discrimination for female journalists in the workplace related to salaries, reporting assignments, and so on, which we included in the categories of violence in the physical domain. [...] According to the statements from the female journalists, as many as 1,077 respondents (85.7%) had experienced violence during their journalistic career. Of these, as many as 70.1% of the respondents had experienced violence in the digital domain as well as in the physical domain, 7.9% of respondents had experienced only violence in the digital domain (online), and 7.8% of respondents had experienced only violence in the physical domain (offline). Meanwhile, only 179 respondents (14.3%) never experienced any form of violence at all [...] Although the survey data do not show a strong relationship between the acts of violence and the topic of the journalists’ reporting, interviews show that female journalists are more vulnerable to violence when covering issues considered risky, such as gender and sexuality (LGBTIQ) and the environment. The latter finding is in line with the statement by the Committee to Protect Journalists, which classifies environmental investigations in developing countries as dangerous, second only to reporting of armed conflicts." (Executive summary, page 9)
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