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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"Journalistic work has become increasingly precarious. Labor conditions in the profession meet several criteria of precarity, as established in the sociology of work. Journalists, especially freelancers, often have low and unstable incomes and only limited access to social insurance. Thus far, preca ... more
"Criticism towards journalists has increased significantly since the internet created easy and anonymous communication and has turned more abusive and threatening in recent years, becoming a regular feature of journalists’ work environment, particularly for women. This article presents survey data ... more
"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 ... more
"The chapter examines the cost of dissent in a governance system that is structured by ‘political marketplace.’ Informed by Alex de Waal ‘political marketplace’ conceptual framework and employing a phenomenological approach, the chapter chronicles the lived experiences of nine independent jo ... more

Switzerland: Mounting Pressure on Journalism in a Small Media System

In: Media Compass: A Companion to International Media Landscapes
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley (2024), pp. 150-160
"The press in Switzerland is mainly characterized by external pluralism, with more or less clearly aligned political positions in the case of some news outlets. In line with Hallin and Mancini's model, the public service media plays a significant role in Switzerland. Besides the public service media ... more
"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 ... more
"Ensuring a safe environment for journalists continues to be a major challenge for Latin America’s democracies. At least 338 journalists have been killed in the region since 2000. These deaths have been compounded by waves of harassment, arbitrary arrests and judicial persecution, which have force ... more
"The goal of this study was to examine the efficacy of art therapy in the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the propensity to quit journalism among Nigerian journalists covering banditry attacks. The researchers utilized a quasi-experiment as the design for the study and sampled ... more
"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 ... more
"This study examines digital media criticism—publicly shared evaluations and judgements of journalistic text and actors on various digital platforms—as a risk to journalism. It specifically interrogates how journalists negotiate the diverse nature of criticism in digital spaces and in a comparat ... more
"This report draws on insights from the workshop, along with recent academic and journalistic publishing. It highlights three major issues: How generative AI can make disinformation campaigns faster, more targeted, and more persuasive. How newsrooms’ adoption of AI tools can lead to inaccuracies a ... more
"Communication the world over is a vital cog in communities. The sender and the receiver play different and complementary roles in information dissemination. Be that as it may, many contemporary information senders are faced with different forms of harassment. The advent of social media has seen a r ... more
"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 ... more
"This study examines the perceptions of Egyptian journalists of the effectiveness of professional training in digital journalism and determines the training-needs of journalists to adapt to innovative journalism practices. The study applies mixed descriptive methods based on The Motivation–Hygiene ... more
"The increased scale of cross-border journalistic investigations brings about severe challenges: online harassment, physical violence, legal threats, but also emotional challenges and mental stress that can lead to burnout. The latter has never been the focus of studies on cross-border investigative ... more

Safety Resources

Acos Alliance (2024)
"Our resources include a curated selection of the most practical safety guides from ACOS signatories and partners, alongside specially-designed tools and templates for journalists, editors and newsrooms." (https://www.acosalliance.org/resources)
"Attacks on journalists have become a growing concern in democracies around the world. Past scholarship suggests that such attacks could lead to a chilling effect of journalists self-censoring their reporting. However, there is limited empirical work that substantiates the effects of attacks on jour ... more
"Technology-facilitated abuse and violence disproportionately affect marginalized people. While researchers have explored this issue in the context of public-facing social media platforms, less is known about how it plays out on more private messaging apps. This study draws on in-depth interviews wi ... more
"This chapter looks at the status of the freedom of the press, and the legal possibilities and obstacles that affect media’s ability to hold power to account and safeguard the principles of democracy. The legal environment in countries as diverse as the United States, Egypt, and Sweden differs gre ... more