Worlds of Journalism Study Global Index on Journalists’ Safety

Methodology

The purpose of the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS) Global Index on Journalists’ Safety is to compare and rank the safety of journalists around the world. The ultimate aim is to advance the study of journalists’ safety and improve safety practices, journalism education, advocacy, and policy making. These are vital aspects of journalism across the globe today where human rights, including media freedom, are under threat. These challenges and threats compromise journalists’ ability to perform their work and serve their societies. 

WJS is a cross-national academic project, comprising a network of researchers from 75 countries who regularly assess the state of journalism around the world through representative surveys with journalists. The index is compiled on the basis of a worldwide survey with 30,890 journalists in 73 countries conducted in the period 2021-2024 as part of the third wave of the Worlds of Journalism Study and using data from UNESCO’s Observatory of Killings. Although the Worlds of Journalism Study has run since 2010, the safety questions were introduced for the first time in the third research wave in 2021. They were designed in co-operation with UNESCO.

The definition of the journalist safety index is based upon the Worlds of Journalism Study’s award-winning peer reviewed journal article on conceptualising journalists’ safety. We define journalists’ safety as “the extent to which journalists can perform their work-related tasks without facing threats to their physical, psychological, digital, and financial integrity and well-being” (Slavtcheva-Petkova et al., 2023, Conceptualising journalists’ safety around the globe published in Digital Journalism). The methodology for the index was designed by a Steering Committee comprising researchers from the Worlds of Journalism Study and the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool. It was peer reviewed by a Peer Review Board of top academic experts from the Worlds of Journalism Study and its Scientific Advisory Board who were not involved in the design of the index itself. The project is led by Dr Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova, Reader in Global Journalism and Media at the University of Liverpool, UK and Vice-Chair of the Worlds of Journalism Study with funding from Research England. The Worlds of Journalism Study is chaired by Professor Thomas Hanitzsch, Professor of Communication at LMU Munich, Germany and President-Elect of the International Communication Association. The index calculation, coding and calibration were conducted by Dr Mark Pogson, Lecturer in Data Science and Communication at the University of Liverpool, UK, and peer reviewed by the whole team. The other core members of the team are Professor Jyotika Ramaprasad, University of Miami, U.S.A. and Regional Co-Ordinator Asia in the Worlds of Journalism Study, and Professor Nina Springer, University of Münster, Germany and PI for Sweden.

In line with our definition, the index consists of four dimensions – physical, psychological, digital and financial safety. The physical dimension contributes 50% to the overall score, the psychological - 25%, the digital - 12.5% and the financial - 12.5%. The academic and policy evidence to date suggests that physical threats, especially killings, have the strongest chilling effect on journalists, but they are not the only type of threats that journalists face. Psychological safety is of increasing importance. Further, the functioning of journalism is highly dependent on two types of infrastructure: financial and technological/digital. If these are torpedoed or the digital space rendered as threatening, journalistic performance is jeopardized. Thus, journalists must have what we term digital safety: the digitization of their work must not put the workforce at risk. They also need financial safety in terms of continuation of their employment and occupation, currently threatened by precarity in the form of low or reduced wages and job loss, resulting in a shrinking workforce and de-professionalization tendencies observed globally. Therefore, we conceptualize journalists’ safety as the extent to which journalists can perform their work-related tasks without facing threats to their physical, psychological, digital, and financial integrity and well-being. Given that these threats are experienced in the course or as a result of performing their professional duties, all four dimensions – physical and psychological, digital, and financial – are part of journalists’ occupational safety.

The index is based on a score ranging from 0 to 100 that is assigned to each country, with 100 being the best possible score, indicating the safest environment for journalists, and 0 the worst possible score, indicating the least safe environment for journalists. The data are also broken down by gender. The country reports show the data for each country.

The score is calculated on the basis of two sets of data:

• Primary surveys conducted with more than 30,890 journalists in 73 countries by the WJS team of researchers in the period 2020-2025

• Secondary data from UNESCO Observatory of Killed Journalists for the period 2016 – 2024. The reason we chose this time period is because in the survey with journalists, they were asked to report on their experiences of safety threats during the last five years. While there are other sources of data on journalists’ killings, we chose UNESCO Observatory because of:

  1. UNESCO’s credibility as a global international organisation with a responsibility to monitor and report on journalists’ killings in fulfillment of the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity.

  2. Quality of data and method used to record the killings - the cases of journalist killings recorded in the UNESCO Observatory are identified and verified through a two-stage process, including the flagging of a case to the Secretariat and then monitoring and verification of the case via multiple sources, including international and regional press freedom, media and human rights organizations in relationship with UNESCO’s Governing Bodies who confirm that a particular killing may have been connected to the journalist’s work, for example, when a journalist is targeted for reprisals as a result of their work, or killed while on assignment. The Observatory includes “all cases for which the Director-General has called for a thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances surrounding their deaths, including cases of deaths that have been deplored” (UNESCO Observatory of Killed Journalists).

The questions used to calculate the index align with our conceptual framework. Journalists’ occupational safety comprises personal (physical, psychological) and infrastructural (digital, financial) dimensions. Safety can be objective and subjective by operating on material and perceptional levels. Our questions measure both journalists’ perceptions of the different aspects of safety and their experience of safety threats as self-reported in the survey.

Two main categories of question were asked in the survey, scored as follows for the safety index:

Physical dimension (50% weight in safety index)

In line with our conceptual definition of journalists’ safety, the physical dimension of safety covers the types of threats and actions that impact journalists’ bodily self and may lead to bodily harm. These include violent attacks threatening physical integrity, such as killings, torture, beatings and sexual assaults as well as acts that threaten physical mobility, such as abductions, arrests, detentions, and imprisonment. Killings contributed 35% of the score as the loss of life is a more substantial safety threat than any other form of threat. The data on killings were the only external data we used, obtained from UNESCO Observatory of Killed Journalists. All other data were from the WJS primary survey with journalists. Our questionnaire contained a range of questions asking journalists about their experience of different types of safety threats.  Some of these were not asked in all countries, so these are omitted from the safety index calculation. However, they are presented at country level where applicable.

The physical dimension is calculated from the following:

The physical dimension score was calculated in the following way: With regards to the killings score, using the UNESCO data, the number of killings per thousand journalists per year (K) was calculated for each country in the full WJS survey. While per year may seem unnecessary, it provides a more tangible unit of time that can be used consistently in potential future work, which may cover different time periods or have missing data. The estimated number of journalists in each country was obtained from WJS reports, and was included in calculations to enable fairer comparison between different countries. Percentiles were calculated from the K values to give the percentage of countries with less than or equal to any given K value; for example, if 10 out of a total of 50 countries had K less than or equal to the K value for country Y, the percentile of Y would be P20. The calculated percentiles were then rescaled to span from 0-100; for example, if 5 out of a total of 50 countries had 0 killings, the lowest possible percentile would be P10 without rescaling, but after rescaling it would be 0. This rescaled value is: 100 * (P - Pmin)/(Pmax – Pmin), where P is the percentile of a given country and Pmin and Pmax are respectively the minimum and maximum percentiles across all countries. Finally, the rescaled values were subtracted from 100 to give results with 0 as the least safe score and 100 as the safest, consistent with other scoring in the safety index.

The killings score has the highest weight of any single component in the safety index due to its unique graveness. Unlike other components of the safety index, which are calculated from individual participants within each country, the killings score uses only country-level data. Thus, although other components use a discrete scale for each individual respondent, the component score tends towards a continuum when these are averaged in each country, which enables small differences between countries to be distinguished. For this reason, individual percentiles were used in the killings score, rather than discrete Likert-scale-like quintiles, to allow small differences between countries to be distinguished better. The killings score was based on percentiles rather than ratios to reflect the score distribution for different countries and so enable clearer comparison between them. For example, if a large outlier K value is present, most scores based on ratios relative to the largest value would be very similar, and so make comparisons between countries less informative.

With regards to the survey questions, the concern for physical wellbeing question contributed 20% to the physical dimension score, in line with all other concern questions across the different dimensions. The remainder of the score included an equal split between the three questions asking journalists about their experience of the three types of threats with each question contributing 15% towards the physical score. The same approach was adopted in the calculation of the other dimensions with the concern question always carrying 20% weight and the experience questions carrying equal weight within the respective dimension and split up accordingly. In the lack of academic evidence suggesting that any one type of experience of safety threat should carry more weight than another type, we treated all categories equally within a dimension. The Likert scale responses were converted to scores between 0 and 100, where 0 is the least safe and 100 is the most safe, as described above. To calculate the physical dimension score for an individual journalist, each question score was included in a weighted average along with the killings score for the country the journalist works in. The country-level physical dimension score was obtained from the mean of the physical dimension score for each journalist within the country. For example, if a journalist in country Y, with a 10/100 killings score, gave survey responses with scores of 25/100 for concern about physical wellbeing, 75/100 for arrests, 25/100 for sexual assaults and 50/100 for other physical attacks, then their individual physical dimension score would be 3.5 + 5 + 11.25 + 3.75 + 7.5 = 31/100. If there were only two other journalists in country Y, with physical dimension scores of 29 and 48, then the overall physical dimension score for country Y would be (31 + 29 + 48) / 3 = 36/100. Missing data for a question would be dealt with by excluding it from the average and adjusting weights accordingly. For example, if the physical concern question (which has a weight of 20% = 0.2 in the dimension) was unanswered by a respondent, the weights for the other questions would each be rescaled by a factor of 1 / (1 - 0.2) = 1.25. Note that an unrealistically small sample size and made-up scores are used here for illustrative purposes.

Other relevant questions did not contribute to the calculation of the physical dimension score or safety index as they were not asked in all countries. However, they have been added to the country reports where applicable. They are as follows:

Psychological dimension (25% weight in safety index)

In line with our conceptual definition of journalists’ safety, the psychological dimension encompasses forms of non-physical harm. Rather than causing physical injury, these attacks aim to impair the psychological and emotional well-being of journalists. Such attacks can also serve as precursors to physical violence, acting as a threat before it is carried out. Often, these forms of psychological violence are used to silence journalists, whether through self-censorship so that topics are no longer addressed, or to destroy journalists' professional motivation, with the aim of driving them out of journalism. We consider both verbal aggression and intimidation of individual journalists and the creation and shaping of an environment in which journalism as a public service is questioned. Specific threats directed against journalists personally can include demeaning and hateful speech or other threats and intimidation targeting them, and can even extend to stalking. In addition, there are attacks that, while directed against individuals, actually aim to delegitimize the profession as a whole—such as public discrediting of or even legal action against a journalist's work. In addition, we incorporated journalists' general assessments of the atmosphere into the measurement of psychological safety—namely, the level of concern they express regarding their individual emotional and mental well-being. See physical dimension above for descriptions of concern and experience questions.

Psychological questions used to calculate the safety index are as follows.

The scores were calculated in the following way: The concern for psychological wellbeing question contributed 20% to the psychological dimension score in line with concern questions in other dimensions. The five questions asking journalists about their experience of specific forms of harms each contributed 16% towards the psychological score.

Other relevant questions did not contribute to the calculation of the index as they were not asked in all countries, but they have been added to the country reports. They are as follows:

Digital dimension (12.5% weight in safety index)

In line with our conceptual definition of journalists’ safety, the digital dimension covers the threats that impact journalists’ digital self-determination and freedoms. These include threats to journalists’ digital privacy, including phishing attacks as well as digital surveillance, limiting access to information, hacking or blocking digital contents, and criminalization of digital whistle-blowing.

Our questionnaire contained a range of questions asking journalists about their experience of these threats but since some were not asked in all countries, the ones that have been included in the calculations of the index are as follows:

The scores were calculated in the following way: The two questions asking journalists about their experience of the two types of threats each contributed 50% towards the digital score.

Other relevant questions did not contribute to the calculation of the index as they were not asked in all countries, but they have been added to the country reports. They are as follows:

Financial dimension (12.5% weight in safety index)

In line with our conceptual definition of journalists’ safety, the financial dimension covers the threats that impact journalists’ professional survival and ideologies. These include threats to job stability, threat to execution of basic journalistic practices/routines (sourcing, verification, producing) and ethics; normative role conception (fourth estate) threatened to be replaced by market-based, neo-liberal ideology, and threat to topic and workforce diversity. Our questionnaire did not allow us to explore all of these threats in their entirety as it was designed prior to the full development of the conceptualisation of journalists’ occupational safety. 

The questions we have included in the calculation of the index are as follows:

The scores were calculated in the following way: The concern about losing one’s job in journalism contributed 20% to the financial dimension score in line with concern questions in other dimensions. The four questions asking journalists about material aspects of their work each contributed 20% towards the financial score.

Other relevant questions did not contribute to the calculation of the index as they were not asked in all countries, but they have been added to the country reports. They are as follows, with converted scores shown in brackets:

Survey Methodology

A detailed explanation of the survey methodology, the field manual and the questionnaire are available on the WJS website. Information about the actual country samples is available in the country reports. A brief overview of key methodological data is available via this link: https://worldsofjournalism.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/WJS3-Methodological-Key-Data.pdf

Additional Questions in Country Reports

In addition to the questions contributing to the calculation of the index, we have added comparisons across a range of demographic questions and questions asking journalists about their perceptions of media freedom and impunity for crimes against journalists in their country as these are useful indicators of any potential variations in the scores. Data on gender differences are also provided.

The demographic questions we have included in the country reports are as follows:

The contextual questions we have included in the country reports are as follows: 

Limitations

While the index ranks countries, it also contains detailed country reports showing journalists’ perceptions of their own safety within each country as well as the extent to which they have experienced various safety threats and actions. As such, the index is only a tool to draw attention to the richest and most comprehensive dataset on journalists’ safety available to date. Some of the dimensions are better developed than others because, in the calculation of the index, we have included only the mandatory questions that all country teams were required to ask. All other questions are available in the country reports, answers to which might be more useful for policy-makers and activists as they show in a more comprehensive way the situation within each country. Unfortunately, due to safety concerns and methodological issues, there are some key countries previously involved in the Worlds of Journalism Study, which were unable to conduct the survey in this wave. Similarly, there are two countries - China and UAE - that participated in the current wave, which, despite the explicit instruction to do so, did not ask the safety questions, because of safety concerns and contextual and cultural sensitivities. We, therefore, had no choice but to exclude them from the index. Further, the focus of the Worlds of Journalism Study is very broad and safety is only one aspect of the study; so we were limited in the number of questions we could ask. Our list of questions and measures is thus not exhaustive. Finally, our conceptual framework was developed after the questionnaire for the survey was already fully developed, so the questions do not reflect fully that we now understand as integral to the study of journalists’ safety. They will inform our future work. Still, this is the most comprehensive study on journalists’ safety covering more than 70 countries globally.

Disclaimer

The index is entirely designed by the Steering Committee, not the WJS country teams. The country data were retrieved from the Worlds of Journalism Study country datasets and UNESCO’s Observatory of Killed Journalists. The Worlds of Journalism Study country teams wrote their explanations about journalists’ safety in their countries for the country sections where relevant but due to time pressures and security considerations not all country teams provided a narrative summary for the country reports. Although the index is hosted on the https://safetyofjournalists.org website, which is a joint initiative between the University of Liverpool and the Worlds of Journalism Study in co-operation with UNESCO, the index is a Worlds of Journalism Study index, led by the University of Liverpool and UNESCO has had no involvement in it.

Steering Committee

Dr Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova, Reader in Global Journalism and Media, Department of Communication and Media, University of Liverpool, UK, Worlds of Journalism Study Vice-Chair, Regional Co-Ordinator Central and Eastern Europe and Principal Investigator Bulgaria and Ukraine, vpetkova@liverpool.ac.uk

Dr Jyotika Ramaprasad, Professor, Department of Journalism and Media Management, University of Miami, USA, Worlds of Journalism Study Regional Co-Ordinator Asia, and Principal Investigator India, jyotika@miami.edu

Dr Thomas Hanitzsch, Professor of Communication, Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft und Medienforschung, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany, and Worlds of Journalism Study Chair, Regional Co-Ordinator Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand and Principal Investigator Germany, thomas.hanitzsch@ifkw.lmu.de

Dr Nina Springer, Professor, Department of Communication, University of Münster, Germany, and Worlds of Journalism Study Principal Investigator Sweden, nina.springer@uni-muenster.de

Dr Mark Pogson, Lecturer in Data Science and Communication, Department of Communication and Media, University of Liverpool, UK, Mark.Pogson@liverpool.ac.uk

Dr Sallie Hughes, Professor and Department Chair of Journalism and Media Management, University of Miami, USA, and Worlds of Journalism Study Principal Investigator Mexico, shughes@miami.edu

Dr Basyouni Hamada, Professor, Department of Mass Communication, Qatar University, Qatar and Worlds of Journalism Study Egypt Principal Investigator, bhamada@qu.edu.qa

Abit Hoxha, Assistant Professor, Department of Nordic and Media Studies, University of Agder, Norway and Worlds of Journalism Study Kosovo Principal Investigator, abit.hoxha@uia.no

Dr Rosalynd Southern, Senior Lecturer in Political Communication, Department of Communication and Media, University of Liverpool, UK, R.Southern@liverpool.ac.uk

Kenneth Andresen, Professor in Media Studies, Department of Nordic and Media Studies, University of Agder, Norway and Worlds of Journalism Study Kosovo Principal Investigator, kenneth.andresen@uia.no

Dr Emily Harmer, Senior Lecturer in Media, Department of Communication and Media, University of Liverpool, UK, E.Harmer@liverpool.ac.uk

Peer Review Board 

Dr. Nico Drok, Professor Emeritus Media and Civil Society, Chair World Journalism Education Council

Dr. Terje Skjerdal, Professor of Journalism, NLA University College, Norway

Dr. Jan Fredrik Hovden, Professor, University of Bergen, Norway

Dr. Folker Hanusch, Professor of Journalism, University of Vienna, Austria and Vice-Chair, Worlds of Journalism Study

Dr Zvi Reich, Professor, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Dr Hanan Badr, Professor of Public Spheres & Inequalities, Paris Lodron University Salzburg, Austria

Dr David Weaver, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Journalism, The Media School of Indiana University, U.S.A. 

Dr Henrik Örnebring, Professor of Media and Communication, Karlstad University, Sweden

Dr Paschal Preston, Professor Emeritus, Dublin City University, Ireland