The Centre for Freedom of the Media (CFOM) at the University of Sheffield (UK) is an interdisciplinary research centre with global outreach on issues of media freedom, journalism safety, editorial standards and impunity. During the 2022 Academic Consultation on the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, CFOM conducted a literature stocktake to scope out academic literature published in the area of media freedom, journalism safety and impunity. CFOM collated this information and produced a literature database organised by themes or countries for accessibility.  The collection is especially strong on country- and region-specific safety issues and on surveys of emotional wellbeing of journalists. This special collection is curated by gemma.horton@sheffield.ac.uk.

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Internal Threats and Safety of Journalists: A Study from India

In: The Assault on Journalism. Building Knowledge to Protect Freedom of Expression
Göteborg: Nordicom (2017), pp. 227-230
"Journalists face numerous threats from different stakeholders. In developing countries, internal threats coming from inside media organizations – threats that have a serious impact on the professional, economic and psychological lives of journalists – are less researched. This research is an at ... more
"The overall approach to advocacy in this toolkit is generic, but the toolkit focuses on increasing safety for journalists in Somalia/Somaliland. The order of the different steps follows a logical sequence. However, do keep in mind that advocacy is not necessarily a linear process. Advocacy rarely f ... more
"José Luis Benítez provides an overview of the safety situation in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador." (Abstract)
"Introduction: journalists in Latin America continue to face numerous threats in the exercise of their journalistic profession, which has increased the concern of the international community over its protection in recent years. Methodology: The objective of this research is to analyse nearly 500 cas ... more
"This paper studies how the training of journalists has been approached in Spain. Since 2003, the Army War College has held annual Training Courses for War Correspondents. Over three hundred journalists have been trained on these courses. This study analyses and reflects on how the Spanish Army carr ... more
"Research on journalists working in contexts of risk has examined either war correspondents on temporary assignments or the psychological effects of covering traumatic events, usually after the events have ended. Although these studies are important, they fail to account for the growing importance o ... more
"The safety of journalists is not only about physical wellbeing. Safety extends to protection against impending psychological injury resulting from exposure to violence, conflict, disaster and tragedy. Both psychological safety and physical safety are inextricably linked. Research shows that people ... more
"It has become a pattern to find academics, professionals and students of journalism bragging with the scope, techniques and dilemmas of investigative journalism. But there is one gaping hole: nowhere was information collated about the heroic contributions, and often the sacrifices, that were made f ... more

Collaboration is the future: Doing research in the network era

In: The Assault on Journalism. Building Knowledge to Protect Freedom of Expression
Göteborg: Nordicom (2017), pp. 71-80
"The study of journalists’ safety around the world is one of the areas that clearly require international collaboration. This chapter highlights three distinct models of scientific collaboration: the centralized, the correspondent, and the coordinated cooperation model. The Worlds of Journalism St ... more
"With Kosovo as its case, this article explores the context and challenges of journalism education in transition societies. Journalists in Kosovo have lived through constant changes from authoritarian to democracy. In this struggle, journalism education has never been stable and steady. The past con ... more
"Journalists in many countries work in contexts of continuous risk, but few empirical studies identify how these conditions influence practice or measure the relative influence of different kinds of risk. This study asks a national sample of Mexican journalists to report use of several measures to a ... more
"Este informe presenta una selección de las formas innovadoras y exitosas por las cuales los medios de comunicación, sus profesionales y las organizaciones sociales se están agrupando para mejorar la seguridad de los periodistas. Estos son casos de personas que han tomado la iniciativa, en nombre ... more
"This article has addressed the level of journalists’ safety in Pakistan, revealing the diverse threats to journalists’ safety and their right to freedom of expression in the country. Freedom of expression is an individual right, for which no one should be attacked or killed. However, in this st ... more
"This Handbook is primarily for use by media professionals who report from conflict zones. It is a practical and accessible guide to the rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) that protect media professionals and their work in armed conflict. It also considers the IHL responsibilities that me ... more

Setting a New Research Agenda: The establishment of a journalism safety research network

In: The Assault on Journalism. Building Knowledge to Protect Freedom of Expression
Göteborg: Nordicom (2017), pp. 109-112
"At a UNESCO research conference on the safety of journalists during the celebrations of World Press Freedom Day in Helsinki, Finland on 3 and 4 May 2016, UNESCO declared “that the Safety of Journalists paved the way for academic research cooperation”. To advance such cooperation the Centre for ... more

Freedom under Pressure: Threats to journalists’ safety in Pakistan

In: The Assault on Journalism. Building Knowledge to Protect Freedom of Expression
Göteborg: Nordicom (2017), pp. 323-328
"This study aims to explore the level of journalists’ safety and investigates different types of threats that affect their work (actions) within the context (environment) of Pakistan. Drawing on the new institutionalism theory, this study posits that Pakistani journalists work in an unsafe institu ... more
"The article recaps the main findings of the investigations presented in this special issue and seeks to answer the question “What can Northern journalism educators do to improve safety during fieldwork in the Global South?” The article builds mainly on qualitative interviews with former journal ... more
"Contrary to popular belief, being at or near the top of media freedom rankings doesn’t mean a country is free from interference and threats to journalists’ safety, Ilmari Hiltunen observes. When talking about censorship and journalism the attention has usually been focused on explicit violence ... more
"[...] This is a guide to provide support and advice based on shared experience of others worldwide and includes handy links to other research and IFJ resources. With courage, wit and sheer determination, we’ve seen many journalists demonstrate how to take on trolls, call them out, respond to pate ... more
"The structural conditions of journalism are shaped by legacies of the past (marked by non-democratic regimes and sometimes colonial rule) and persisting power structures. The state and powerful political actors are perceived to play an important role in the media sector, mirrored in different forms ... more