Occupational Hazards: Individual and Professional Factors of Why Journalists Become Victims of Online Hate Speech

ABSTRACT

Journalists are regularly exposed to online hate speech their profession. Because discrimination often harms targets and can prompt self-censorship in journalistic content, undermining journalism’s public duty, it is essential to understand factors explaining why journalists become victims of online hate speech. Using Routine Activity Theory, an online survey of journalists in Germany (N = 497) revealed that conceptions of their roles as interpreters or adversaries were associated with more frequently being targets of online hate speech. Moreover, women journalists and journalists with migration background were additionally targeted by respectively sexist and racist online hate speech. Participation in active content moderation, a presumed destructive motivation, and audiences’ weak trust in media also raised journalists’ likelihood of being targets of hate speech online. Newsroom support, however, was positively related to such victimization, possibly as a result of sharing past experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Online victimization
• routine activity theory
• online hate speech
• journalists
• professional victimization
• uncivil online communication

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Michaela Hofbauer for her valuable input in conceptualizing and implementing the study. Further thanks go to the group of students, who have dealt with the topic of online hate speech against journalists in the course of a graduate seminar, for their valued support in conducting the study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The study is part of a larger project on online hate speech against journalists. Further findings can be found in Obermaier, Hofbauer, and Reinemann (2018).

2 To assure a common understanding, online hate speech was defined at beginning of the survey as “any verbal expression of hatred against journalists, editors, and the news media in general, who in the context of their journalistic work are slandered, degraded, intimidated and/or threatened.”