From Precariously Managing Risks to Building Social Resilience: The Safety of Women Journalists in Brazil

This article focuses upon journalists’ abilities to access different types of capital to anticipate, cope with, and create options to overcome perceived threats and generate positive outcomes. By employing a mixed-methods approach, we combine the results of a survey and in-depth interviews with high-profile figures of leading newspapers and professional bodies in the country to address the following questions: RQ1: How do professional journalists perceive what characterises attacks experienced by women journalists over time in Brazil? RQ2: What strategies/support mechanisms do newsrooms have in place? RQ3: How might different types of “capital” that women journalists possess affect their capacity to move from vulnerability to social resilience?

Main Findings

The findings open up possibilities on how news media’s “mediated social capital” might enhance women journalists’ capacity to move from vulnerability to social resilience, improving their safety.