"The perception of disinformation as societal risk has reached a troubling peak amid the COVID-19 pandemic, strategically targeting vulnerable audiences through digital media by mirroring characteristics of vox populi disinformation. This study investigates the conditions under which COVID-19-relate
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d disinformation referring to a polarized (refugees) and neutral (runners) out-group appears most credible. In the early stages of the pandemic, we conducted a pre-registered online survey experiment with a representative German sample (N = 1,117 ). Results indicated that those with low trust in the media judged subtle and completely fabricated types of disinformation as more credible than accurate information. Presenting the article as a social media post from an ordinary user, rather than an official source, had no discernible impact on credibility evaluations; participants accurately assessed the credibility of a random source. We conclude that people are generally able to recognize disinformation—unless they already mistrust the media. This paper addresses why disinformation triggers strong reactions in targeted groups and how it thrives in the participatory digital landscape." (Abstract)
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"The surveillance of journalists, including using spyware technology, poses a fundamental threat to media freedom, the digital safety of journalists, and source protection within the European Union. The agreement on the European Media Freedom Act in December 2023 offers some further protections agai
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nst the fast evolving threat to journalists and their sources. Those involved in pushing the deal over the line and ensuring the removal of explicit references to national security in exemptions deserve credit. Yet the full impact of the Article 4 provisions – as all other new rules in the EMFA – remains to be seen and effective implementation will be vital. Greece and Hungary offer the strongest examples of why strong enforcement will be needed. However, both countries have already demonstrated how overly broad and vague exemptions for national security have already been used to justify the otherwise unjustifiable surveillance of journalists." (Conclusion)
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"This policy paper provides an overview of Russian information warfare in the Middle East. It includes a brief overview of Russian information warfare methods and Russian foreign policy in the Middle East. It then delves into Russian information warfare in the Middle East, evaluates its effectivenes
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s and differentiates Russia’s strategy towards Israel and the Arab states. The report ends with a list of recommendations that any state and organization can adopt to fight disinformation and Russian information warfare in particular. The paper focuses on a very recent time frame, especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. To ensure a comprehensive report, a wide variety of sources was used: academic research, think tank reports, military intelligence reports, news articles and interviews with topic experts. It includes many real examples (screenshots) of Russian content." (Executive summary)
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"Our everyday lives are increasingly digital: We meet with friends, search for information, watch films, and buy goods online. This generates data that is automatically collected and analyzed. The ability to deal with the resulting algorithmically selected and personalized content is essential to be
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nefit from digital technologies, and for this, digital skills are crucial. Studies focusing on digital skills, their antecedents, and consequences have mostly relied on self-reported, one-time measurements. A deeper understanding of the measures of digital skills and the role such digital skills play in everyday life and over time is needed. To address these gaps, this article compares self-reported measures of digital skills and knowledge of datafication and algorithmization in everyday internet use and maps the evolution of their relevance for digital everyday life. To do so, this articles analyzes data from multiple cross-sectional surveys conducted from 2011 to 2023 with representative samples of Swiss internet users. First, the findings indicate that self-reported skills reflect internet users' knowledge of algorithmization and datafication in everyday internet use. This renders the measure a decent tool for empirical studies. Second, the findings show that digital skills are associated with socioeconomic background, cyber-optimistic attitudes, usage time, use of social media, health trackers, voice assistants, ChatGPT, and feeling included in the information society. These relationships varied over time. This article provides longitudinal empirical evidence on the relevance of digital skills in a highly digitized country. The findings highlight that promoting digital skills can contributeto fostering more inclusive digital societies." (Abstract)
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"Dialogue with the Dictator illuminates the ways in which authoritarian regimes structure interaction between citizens and leaders to simultaneously manage information dilemmas and build regime legitimacy. In doing so, it demonstrates the conditions under which managed participation can reinforce or
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jeopardize authoritarian control. Chapters uncover how these tools are viewed from the perspective of the public and the mechanisms through which they influence attitudes toward authorities. By cultivating limited opportunities for participation in otherwise closed political systems, autocrats bolster regime legitimacy while still maintaining control of the means and content of communication. These tools ultimately reinforce and entrench autocratic leaders rather than contributing to increased prospects for democracy – but not without consequences. Combining interviews, original surveys, and text analysis, the book provides a novel theoretical framework for understanding managed participation under authoritarianism and explains both its benefits and potential consequences for authoritarian regimes." (Publisher description)
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"The coronavirus pandemic brought immense challenges to journalists worldwide, including new threats to media freedom, journalism safety and practice. The impact of the pandemic on journalism is yet to be fully understood and examined but this paper contributes to the field by focusing on the impact
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of the COVID-19 health crisis on the media in countries with democratic deficits, such as Bulgaria. Studies on former Eastern bloc countries have become few and far between recently so this research aims to fill this gap by examining how the coronavirus pandemic and associated restrictions have impacted journalism practice in Bulgaria and how journalists, and independent media organisations responded and adapted to the pressures in 2020. Our findings from semi structured interviews with media practitioners show that it is the independent media that has borne the brunt of the crisis. In addition to existing challenges to press freedom, many Bulgarian journalists encountered new limits to their daily practice in reporting on a topic of significant public importance." (Abstract)
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"The implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for newsrooms across the world range from severe economic hardship to increased threats to press freedom. The “perfect storm” that engulfed the media and journalists globally has threatened and continues to challenge their existence, and the core of the
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ir mission to serve the public interest. This study maps the impact of external political, economic, legal and societal factors on journalistic freedom and the way(s) news organizations and journalists operate in times of global crisis in four Southern European countries. It provides a fuller cross-national perspective on the complex relationship between media, journalism and politics in countries with existing democratic deficits. Findings are based on 32 semi-structured interviews with journalists working in four Southern European countries, namely Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus and Malta, conducted in 2022. We find increased economic challenges to their fragile media markets, high level of state intervention, political parallelism in coverage of the pandemic and beyond, and numerous threats to the autonomy of journalists that hamper journalism and question its development in the future. The study’s implications are relevant to different contexts, particularly in countries where journalism and media face similar challenges." (Abstract)
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"After the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, the peninsula experienced a progressive transition of telecommunication and broadcasting infrastructure under Russian influence, followed by a wave of repression of Ukrainian media. Between 2014 and 2015, dozens of Ukrainian media organization
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s and independent journalists left the peninsula to continue working in exile. This paper explores the phenomenon of informational annexation using a mixed methods approach consisting of in-depth interviews with media and IT professionals as well as digital ethnography and network measurements. It argues that, besides pressure from pro-Russian authorities, journalistic work in the area is challenged by legal and infrastructural factors such as the absence of legal and financial protections for Ukrainian journalists traveling to Crimea, lack of holistic digital security within media organizations, and increased Internet censorship in Crimea. By analyzing the risk perceptions and digital security practices of exiled and Crimean civic journalists, this paper explores how informational annexation challenges journalistic work on the infrastructural and organizational level, enabling the rise of civic journalism, and how it affects journalists' individual digital security practices. In the context of the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, this research provides insights into some of the informational annexation tactics used by Russians in the occupied Ukrainian territories." (Abstract)
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"Amid growing concern over harassment and intimidation targeting journalists, scholarly attention to their occurrence and implications has mushroomed. One aspect of these phenomena that often gets overlooked is that not all journalists seem equally targeted or affected. Applying ordinal regression a
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nalysis of 505 sets of questionnaire responses from Finnish professional journalists, the authors found that only a small proportion of respondents experienced harassment and intimidation regularly, while the vast majority reported being targeted very rarely, if at all. The findings illustrate how certain positions and aspects of journalistic work bring increased risk of facing harassment and intimidation, with investigative journalism, published opinion pieces, work in public broadcasting, and social-media visibility as a journalist identified as strong risk factors. At least in the Finnish context, these facets of the work seem to outweigh personal factors (age, gender, etc.) in predicting overall risk. The evidence supports the call for more comprehensive and carefully designed research arrangements that also acknowledge the role of multiple facets of journalistic work in future studies of harassment and intimidation." (Abstract)
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"This study explores the extent to which the Corona pandemic has changed the working conditions of journalists in Germany and how they perceive these changes. The goal is to provide both the scale and qualitative nature of Corona-induced changes in the working environment of journalists by means of
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an online survey of German journalists (n*=*983) in different employment situations. The results indicate that objective changes such as short-time work, income losses and the sudden shift to home office have notably shaped the world of journalistic work. On a subjective level, journalists’ responses mainly point to the personal financial fallout and resulting existential fears. Our findings suggest an intensified precarity in the working environment of journalists and highlight a growing gap between freelance and employed journalists." (Abstract)
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"This article discusses online harassment against women journalists exploring self-reported incidents, effects, and trust in safety mechanisms. Drawing on twenty-five semi-structured interviews of women journalists in Portugal, we use a feminist and critical realist framework to explore the causal s
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tructures and generative mechanisms that explain their vulnerability to online abuse. We identify three overarching themes: increasing visibility in a context of higher hostility towards journalism and insufficient safety mechanisms; intersectional gender inequality and cultural mores that foster it; and (individual) responses to harassment. These themes show that women journalists’ actions are both constrained and enabled by existing structures and cultural attitudes. While they tend to deny harassment is caused by their gender, seeing it mainly because of their job, they admit the sexualised and gendered nature of the insults, seeing this as an added offence not experienced by their male counterparts. They also see harassment as a continuation of inequality and prevailing sexism and find the protection mechanisms insufficient and ineffective. As a result, they assume an extra burden of emotional labour to deal with online bullying, admitting self-censoring and the need to develop resilience strategies." (Abstract)
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"In the digital era, journalists are targeted with online abuse including serious threats of violence. These censorship tactics are a direct threat to media freedom. Although the UK Government intended to tackle online abuse of journalists in the Online Safety Act 2023, provisions fit for that purpo
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se never materialised. This paper reveals why that was the case and what can be done about it. It finds that there is ongoing tension in the press industry about press regulation, with implications for journalist safety; that the Government carved out special privileges for the press’ online content but did not similarly protect journalist digital safety; that journalist safety was largely ignored in Parliament; and that repeated Government disintegration and shifting policies stripped away provisions that could have been improved to better protect journalists. This paper concludes with suggestions for how journalist safety can be better protected in the OSA regime." (Abstract)
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"Revelations from the 2021 “Pegasus Project” investigation into the use of spyware have confirmed long-held concerns about the proliferation of the technology as a surveillance solution to monitor the activities of journalists around the world. Spyware is a particularly malicious form of malware
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that can potentially expose a target’s entire digital life, sometimes even leaving victims powerless to prevent an attack. As such, spyware appears to be the ultimate tool of oppression that can be used against journalists, and its proliferation is currently taking place with extremely limited transparency and according to "black box" dynamics. The aim of this paper is to shed light on how spyware technology can affect the work and security of journalists by analyzing what threats spyware poses to the practice of journalism. Qualitative and exploratory in nature, and theoretically grounded in surveillance studies and the growing body of literature on information security in journalism, the article is based on a series of qualitative interviews with technologists and reporters conducted to deepen the understanding of the threats posed by spyware and to provide an overview of potential resistance and neutralization practices that journalists can put in place, as well as their effectiveness. Overall, the article aims to contribute to the study of the impact of surveillance on journalism and its implications for press freedom." (Abstract)
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"Reporting on cases of genocide presents distinct complexities and challenges for journalists, who must negotiate practical, professional, and emotional experiences that challenge traditional expectations of their role. Previous research has provided strident critiques of this reporting, arguing Wes
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tern reporting of genocide in Rwanda and Srebrenica was reductionist and biased and contributed to the lack of Western intervention. Drawing on 22 interviews with print journalists who reported on genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica, this article challenges this dominant critique by foregrounding the voices of journalists and their experience of reporting. Themes of inaccessibility, the moral imperative to report on these events, and the intersection with emotional labour on emotional effects of this reporting crucially demonstrates and acknowledges the challenges of conflict reporting. This adds to contemporary debates around how emotion, attachment and morality intertwine in journalism practice and the importance of this consideration when assessing the impact of reporting." (Abstract)
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"This paper presents an exploratory study aimed at systematically mapping the public actions taken by OSCE participating States to combat online violence against female journalists. Adopting a qualitative large N research design, the study examines national policies and initiatives across all 57 OSC
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E participating States. Through extensive desk research of official government documents and gray literature qualitative data is collected. The analysis thereof is guided by three research aims: (a) identifying actions implemented by participating states, (b) examining the roles of public sphere actors, and (c) assessing the approaches adopted to combat online violence. The paper discusses best practices identified in eleven OSCE participating States, shedding light on strategies for addressing online violence against female journalists. However, the findings highlight significant disparities in policy implementation and acknowledgment of the issue, with only a minority of states demonstrating proactive measures on the safety of journalists (11 states; 19.3%). Of these 11 States, only 7 participating States (12.28%) were found to have a gendered approach. 47 (80.7%) participating States lack information and/or targeted action on violence against journalists. Challenges including the legal gray area surrounding online violence, limited response from tech platforms, and the complexities of transnational collaboration are discussed. Finally, based on these insights, policy recommendations are proposed to enhance to address the multifaceted challenges more effectively. These include working towards multinational definitions and approaches on online gender-based violence against journalists, and developing international multi stakeholder cooperation and peer education." (Abstract)
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"Es bleibt festzuhalten: Durch die mediale Vernachlässigung des Globalen Südens kommen die Lebensumstände von etwa 85 % der Weltbevölkerung kaum in unseren Medien vor. Auch dann nicht, wenn dort Kriege, Hungersnöte oder Epidemien erhebliche Opferzahlen erzeugen. Dabei sind die betroffenen Länd
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er politisch und wirtschaftlich längst nicht mehr die einst buchstäblich (von den Kolonialländern) abgehängte »Dritte Welt«, sondern im Gegenteil heute vielfach potente Wirtschafts- und Militärmächte, die zunehmend in Opposition zum Westen (oder Norden) gehen. In der Berichterstattung taucht der Globale Süden jedoch erst auf, wenn Menschen oder Interessen des Globalen Nordens in irgendeiner Form direkt betroffen sind. Das ist zu spät. Vor 30 dem Hintergrund der menschlichen Dimensionen der vergessenen Krisen und Konflikte ist das erschreckend. Vor dem Hintergrund der globalen sicherheitspolitischen Dimensionen ist es zudem unklug und kurzsichtig. Aktuelle UN-Abstimmungen zeigen divergierende geopolitische Vorstellungen des Globalen Nordens und Südens und irritieren den Westen, der sich teilweise uninformiert über die sicherheitspolitischen Interessen des Globalen Südens zeigt. Eine quantitativ umfangreichere und vor allem konsequente Berichterstattung über die Länder des Globalen Südens wäre wichtig, um dortige politische Prozesse verstehen und ihnen adäquat begegnen zu können. Eine Vernachlässigung des Globalen Südens und ein Vakuum an politischem Interesse und Engagement kann dazu führen, dass andere, nicht- oder sogar antidemokratische Kräfte und Akteure diese Lücken nach ihren politischen Interessen und Vorstellungen füllen. Erst zu handeln, wenn Probleme den Westen, Europa oder Deutschland unmittelbar erreicht haben, ist zu spät. In einer sich zunehmend globalisierenden Welt kann es sich der Globale Norden nicht leisten, eine Mauer des medialen Desinteresses aufrecht zu erhalten und über die politischen Zustände und Entwicklungen im Globalen Süden uninformiert zu bleiben." (Zusammenfassung, Seite 19)
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