Latin American journalists not only have to deal with intimidation and violence in their daily work on the streets, they are increasingly also victims of online attacks and harassment.
And while this situation is on the rise, there is still much to be known about how journalists react to and internalize online harassment, as well as what the consequences are for their routines. Researchers Summer Harlow, associate professor of journalism at the University of Houston; Ryan Wallace, PhD candidate in journalism at the University of Texas at Austin; and Lourdes Cueva Chacón, assistant professor at San Diego State University, took on the task of analyzing this problem and provided an answer in the publication of “Digital (In)Security in Latin America: The Dimensions of Social Media Violence against the Press and Journalists’ Coping Strategies.”
This research was conducted with the support of the Knight Center and the University of Houston and it was published this past Oct. 7 in Digital Journalism.
“Taking into consideration that journalists already have had to develop various coping mechanisms and strategies for responding to offline harassment, we thought it would be important to understand whether or how those strategies were different or unique when dealing with online harassment. We focused on social media in particular, since that is where journalism increasingly is practiced. We know social media are rife with trolls, disinformation, and anonymity, which allow for harassment to occur”, Summer Harlow told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR).
“Also, we wanted to talk to journalists, and not just count the number of incidents of harassment/violence, so we conducted focus groups with journalists from across the region.”
This research had a sample of 20 journalists from Latin America, handpicked for being active users of social media. Specifically, it had the participation of nine men and 11 women from newspapers, broadcasters and digital media from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Peru. Each focus group included six to eight participants.
“A graduate student native to Mexico moderated the three groups using the same script. Participants were asked about their social media use for journalism, any company social media policies or guidelines to direct their use, as well as questions about types of and reactions to online threats and harassment,” according to the study.
The research only considers the point of view of journalists and does not take into account the views from other actors, whether political or technological.
The research attempted to answer two questions. First, what are the dimensions of social media violence against journalists? And second, how do the actors and coping strategies to respond to social media violence against the press differ at the individual, organizational, or industry level?
Researcher Summer Harlow is one of the authors of: Digital (in)security in Latin America: The dimensions of social media violence against the press and journalists' coping strategies (Photo: Courtesy).
For the first question, the researchers examined the dimensions of social media violence, identifying it as 1) personal, 2) orchestrated, and 3) with real-world consequences. They found that social media violence often originated from governments or ordinary citizens, and that women and LGBT+ journalists were especially targeted for harassment on social media. The attacks were often personal attacks targeting the private lives of journalists.
The second research question revealed that participating journalists relied only on themselves to protect themselves from mental health issues, stress, or to strategize to keep work-related social media threats separate from their personal lives. Many of them were freelance journalists or work in news outlets without formal digital safety policies.
“Our findings from this study suggest that we need a multi-pronged approach to social media violence, as journalists alone cannot bear the burden of protecting themselves and the journalism industry more broadly. We suggest that social media violence needs to be taken as seriously as offline/physical violence since social media violence has real-world consequences. Social media violence is changing journalists’ personal and professional practices, disrupting and enhancing their newsmaking and security,” Harlow told LJR.
Harlow also said that they found that mob censorship is not just coming from disgruntled individuals, but is actually part of orchestrated campaigns led by governments, political parties, and partisans. In the research, they refer to these individuals as social media agent provocateurs, as they are working on behalf of governments and parties to stir up mob censorship as part of orchestrated online harassment and attack campaigns against journalists. According to Harlow, these social media agent provocateurs are new or emerging actors in the newsmaking process, influencing journalistic practices and represent a threat to press freedom.
The researchers told LJR that they are working on other studies based on focus groups. In one of them they are specifically examining journalists' perceptions of the news outlets’ social media policies.
A social media policy is a document that describes how an organization and its employees should behave online. These policies, according to Harlow, can be important to help protect journalists from social media violence. Very few media outlets have them on a formal basis.
Latin America is already plagued by physical violence and offline harassment against the press. But, violence on social media can potentially be just as dangerous as offline harassment.
“We need to take social media violence more seriously, and news companies should not just dismiss it because it originates on social media. Consequences of social media violence are similar to those of offline violence so that even as social media represent potentially positive possibilities for democratic expression/participation, and increased abilities for journalists to connect with each other and their audiences, they also represent new forms of harassment and violence so journalists must come up with unique coping strategies to deal with it,” Harlow said. “We hope that by identifying the various dimensions of social media violence, we can better understand how social media violence is changing journalistic practices. And perhaps be able to come up with strategies for successfully coping with social media violence that can be applicable region-wide.”
