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Project Torogoz: Extensive Hacking of Media & Civil Society in El Salvador with Pegasus Spyware

John Scott-Railton, Bill Marczak, Paolo Nigro Herrero, Bahr Abdul Razzak, Noura Al-Jizawi, Salvatore Solimano, Ron Deibert

Toronto: Citizen Lab; Access Now (2022)

"The Citizen Lab and Access Now have conducted a joint investigation into Pegasus hacking in El Salvador in collaboration with Frontline Defenders, SocialTIC, and Fundación Acceso. We confirmed 35 cases of journalists and members of civil society whose phones were successfully infected with NSO’s ... more

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Understanding Nascent Newsroom Security and Safety Cultures: The Emergence of the “Security Champion”

Jennifer R. Henrichsen

Journalism Practice, volume 16, issue 9 (2022), pp. 1829-1848

"This paper utilizes concepts from new institutionalism to help explain journalists’ and news organizations’ resistance to implementing security-related practices despite a deteriorating safety and security environment for journalists in the United States. Through 30 interviews with journalists, ... 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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“I Really Wanted Them to Have My Back, but They Didn’t”—Structural Barriers to Addressing Gendered Online Violence against Journalists

Annina Claesson

Digital Journalism, volume 11, issue 10 (2022), pp. 1809-1828

"Despite rising scholarly interest in online violence as an “occupational hazard” for journalists, we know little about the dynamics that shape the often-limited support given by media organizations to media workers affected by online violence. In this study, I explore how the working environmen ... more

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Keeping Journalists Safe Online: A Guide for Newsrooms in West Africa & Beyond

Gideon Sarpong

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2022), 27 pp.

"The guidelines contained here specify steps and measures that newsrooms and journalists in West Africa can take to mitigate the problem of online abuse. The purpose is not to shield journalists from criticism or promote the criminalization of online speech, but to deal with a real threat facing jou ... more

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“It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you”: Navigating risk to journalists when connected devices are everywhere

Anjuli R. K. Shere, Jason R. C. Nurse, Andrew Martin

IAMCR 2022 Conference “Communication Research in the Era of Neo-Globalisation: Reorientations, Challenges and Changing Contexts” (2022), 18 pp.

"The consumer Internet of Things (IoT) is a fast-growing area of technology, increasingly embedded in the public and private spheres, including both in and on bodies. There are various security concerns and academic investigations into potential risks of this expansion, but none yet specifically add ... ressing the implications to journalists and the democratic pillar of press freedom. Not only are risks to this community not yet assessed, but IoT threats generally are not communicated without technical jargon, making them inaccessible to non-experts. Given the importance of a free press, mapping IoT devices and, crucially, communicating associated risk in ways understandable and actionable to journalists themselves, is key. Journalists and the press are particularly at-risk from IoT devices that may feature in the environments with which they must regularly interact because of the fundamental imperative of source confidentiality. Previous research demonstrated that members of the press are largely unaware of the ways in which the IoT can threaten their work and wellbeing. The networked capabilities of IoT devices increases the ease with which well-resourced threat actors can target journalists who routinely handle confidential information and are already at risk around the world from a variety of non-IoT threats. This paper therefore presents a novel categorisation of both ambient and wearable consumer IoT devices according to the environments in which journalists are most likely to interact with them. It draws on related academic work classifying devices for technical audiences to create a system that is accessible to journalists and their sources. Its goal is to make members of the media aware of the prevalence of these technologies and which of the devices’ capabilities may increase their individual risk. Useful risk assessments cannot be undertaken without an accurate understanding of where threats may be encountered. By systematically outlining risks in numerous environments, this taxonomy can be easily incorporated into existing security training materials and risk assessments for journalists. This paper presents a novel taxonomy to codify and organise IoT present in different environments, with examples of how journalists and their work could be impacted, both passively (i.e. via surveillance) or actively (i.e. via information theft). It also discusses how different environments that may contain IoT devices are often under the control of actors whom journalists cannot easily influence, nor protect themselves against. Especially as these devices continue to proliferate, journalistic risk from IoT devices in surrounding environments are growing. It is therefore important to address the contemporary and emerging risks to journalism that are associated with connected devices. This paper enables journalists and readers to not only visualise and conceptualise how IoT devices in different environments may create risks, its user-focused language and organisation also empower journalists to begin to use this taxonomy for awareness, mitigation, and protective purposes." (Abstract) more

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Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) of Digital Safety in Nigeria: A Study of Online Journalists in Kano State

Abdulhameed Olaitan Ridwanullah, Bilkisu Musbahu Abbas, Lauratu Umar Abdulsalam

SSRN (2022), 19 pp.

"This study examined the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) of digital safety among journalists in Kano State. It aimed at examining the awareness of digital safety and threats and also the mechanisms used by Kano state online journalists to respond to such threats. The study adopted the Protect ... more

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Cyber security, surveillance and journalism in Scotland

Angela Daly, Elaine Robinson, David McMenemy

Dundee: Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Sciences (2022), 21 pp.

"The report is the output of a RSE-funded project on how journalists in Scotland undertake their work in the digital age from the point of view of cyber security and surveillance impacts. This research interviewed ten journalists from Scotland, from various beats, locations, and employment backgroun ... more

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Counter digital revolution, disinformation, and journalistic constraints in Arab media

Sahar Khamis, Khalid Al-Jaber

Journalism Research/Journalistik, volume 3, issue 5 (2022), pp. 234-252

"The spread of social media platforms ushered the beginning of an unprecedented communication era, which is borderless, immediate, widespread, and defies restrictions and censorship. Digital technology aided the spread of democracy and freedom of expression and helped to overthrow some Arab regimes ... more

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Expanding the Analytical Boundaries of Mob Censorship: How Technology and Infrastructure Enable Novel Threats to Journalists and Strategies for Mitigation

Jennifer R. Henrichsen, Martin Shelton

Digital Journalism, volume 11, issue 10 (2022), pp. 1848-1867

"Mob censorship, which “expresses the will of ordinary citizens to exert power over journalists through discursive violence” is traditionally considered a grassroots phenomenon. However, within technically mediated systems, who is behind the mob is sometimes unclear. We therefore ask how the tec ... more

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Securing Australian Journalism from Surveillance

Diarmaid Harkin, Monique Mann

Deakin University; Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI) (2022), 31 pp.

"In Australia, the Data Retention Act (2015), the Assistance and Access Act (2018), the Identify and Disrupt Act (2021), and the International Production Orders Act (2020) have significantly increased the surveillance powers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies with implications for journali ... sts and the free press. This report draws on interviews with 19 journalists and 2 media-lawyers in Australia. The interviews were conducted between May and November 2021. The aim of the interviews was to gauge (a) the level of preparedness amongst journalists in Australia concerning surveillance, and (b) the impacts of increased surveillance powers on journalistic practices. There was wide variation in information security understanding and applied skill among media organisations and journalists. Some expressed “very low confidence” (Journalist F) that journalists were adequately prepared for the threats of electronic surveillance and a number conceded that they were not thinking about it “enough” (Journalist Q) or were just “learning on the job but could know more” (Journalist I). Some media organisations do not offer support in terms of education and training, policies and procedures, or formal guidance, and even among the most active and equipped organisations, support for cyber security concerns was described as “probably too far down the list of considerations” (Journalist D). In most instances, journalists were self-educating as “it is up to the individual journalist to make sure they are secure” (Journalist A). The 2019 AFP raids on the ABC and Annika Smethurst were described as a “holy shit” moment (Journalist P) that raised awareness of government surveillance of journalists. These raids resulted in many journalists and media organisations raising their efforts to protect their digital communications. Subsequently, over the past 2 to 3 years many journalists have migrated to encrypted communication applications such as Signal and Protonmail, while several media organisations have implemented SecureDrop for whistle-blowers to provide anonymity and security. Journalists suggested media organisations could do more to provide “formalised training” and “organisational support” (Journalist P) and invest more in their employees to provide confidence to potential sources that “journalists are good at this” (Journalist J)." (Executive summary) more

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Device Location Security

Internews (2022), 4 pp.

"This guide looks at how our mobile devices could leak data about our locations and what we could do to protect ourselves against it. It’s designed for most Central European journalists’ threat models and only looks at how our mobile devices could give up precise location data on us. It doesn’ ... more

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“Who’s Going to be a Creep Today?” Understanding the Social Media Experiences of Women Broadcast Journalists

Stefanie Davis Kempton, Colleen Connolly-Ahern

Social Media + Society, volume 8, issue 2 (2022), 10 pp.

"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 ... more

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The Chilling: A Global Study of Online Violence Against Women Journalists
Deep 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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Protecting journalists from harassment: Comparing existing protection mechanisms and the effects on democracy

Alice Baroni, Leen d’Haenens, Wai Han Lo

In: Success and failure in news media performance: Comparative analysis in the Media for Democracy Monitor 2021

Josef Trappel, Tales Tomaz (eds.)

Gothenburg: Nordicom (2022), pp. 59-77

"There is a quickly increasing body of studies and reports on harassment and intimidation of journalists around the world. These series of acts have a chilling effect on media freedom and journalists’ freedom of expression. The research literature on the topic has mostly focused on intimidation an ... more

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Report on Open Source Digital Safety Tool Ecosystem

Internews (2022), 18 pp.

"This is a report on the health of the open-source digital safety tool ecosystem that draws from the BASICS experience. Internews' BASICS project (Building Analytical and Support Infrastructure for Critical Security tools) was a 30-month initiative to strengthen the capacity of open source digital s ... 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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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

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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

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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

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

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