UNESCO is the lead UN Agency for promoting freedom of expression and safety of journalists as part of its mandate to “promote the free flow of ideas by word and image”.
Annina Claesson
PhD Candidate at CREST (Institut Polytechnique de Paris) and Sciences Po Médialab
Social media use Online violence Online harassment Visibility work Newsroom policies Digital public space
My work centers on how public figures and professions engaging in visibility work navigate digital public space, including politicians and media workers. In my research on journalistic social media practices, I have focused on experiences of gendered online violence and the dynamics that problematize newsroom efforts to increase journalist safety online. This includes highlighting structural inequalities and precarity within newsroom environments. I am broadly interested in how journalists balance professional pressures to maintain an active social media presence, journalistic norms, and their own personal safety. Before starting my PhD, I worked on journalist safety, freedom of expression and digital technologies with UNESCO.
Definition of journalists' safety
Journalist safety is the condition where journalists are able to pursue their work without fear of violence, harm, or precarious conditions. This means paying attention to risks that journalist may face in terms of their physical safety, psychological and emotional safety, and their financial reality. It requires looking at such risks in both physical and digital working environments. It is a constant, ongoing project for which governments, platform companies, newsrooms and individual journalists must take active measures to ensure.Future plans for research on journalists' safety
I am currently working on how journalists adapt their working routines to changing platforms (i.e. Twitter under Musk's ownership), including through disconnecting or taking precautionary measures in response to less hospitable digital terrain for journalists. I am also working on politician-journalist relations in the French context, part of which involved investigating sources of conflict in such interactions.- Research focuses:
- Psychological, Digital
- Methods used in research:
- Interviews, Qualitative content analysis, Ethnography
- Countries of research focus:
- France
