Beyond “Online Notice-Me”: Analysing Online Harassment Experiences of Journalists in Nigeria
Open accessAbstract
Journalists are increasingly reporting that online harassment has become a normative part of their lives, and that online harassment experience induces fatigue, anxiety, and selfcensorship on them.Drawing on semi-structured interviews with journalists in Nigeria, this study reports that journalists experienced acute, chronic or perennial, and escalatory harassments of intense nature.The study indicates that acute forms of online harassments were dismissed, amongst others as "online show-off", "online banter" and "online notice-me".Thereby misrecognising online harassments as forms of efficiency-focused media criticism.Our data further show that gender is not a triggering factor to online harassment of journalists.However, political, and investigative reporting is seen as a factor.Journalists reported improved systematic intervention from media organisations and their individual coping strategies, including engaging in self-censorship among others, as coping strategies for online harassment.Suggestions for future research areas were delineated.
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Our data did not confirm that women are more vulnerable to harassment.
“Our data did not confirm this in keeping with a study from Nigeria (Uwalaka & Amadi, 2023)”
From An examination of psychological distress and moral injury in journalists exposed to online harassment (2025) · cites this paper as Uwalaka & Amadi, 2023
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Morally Motivated Networked Harassment as Normative Reinforcement
Marwick, A. E. (2021) · Social Media + Society · doi:10.1177/20563051211021378 · Cited by 185 · see citing works
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Feinstein, A., Storm, H., Mead, J., & Sharkey, A. (2025) · European Journal of Psychotraumatology · doi:10.1080/20008066.2025.2522501 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
“The evidence shows this is global as attested to by studies from North (Holton et al., 2023) and South (Dodds et al., 2024) America, Europe (Sampaio-Dias et al., 2023), Africa (Uwalaka & Amadi, 2023), Australia (Jane, 2018) and Asia (Tandoc et al., 2023).”
Influential
- Authors
- Uwalaka, T., & Amadi, F.
- Affiliations
- University of Canberra (AU)
- Rivers State University (NG)
- Corresponding author
- Uwalaka, Temple
- ORCID
- Uwalaka, Temple
- Venue
- Journalism Studies
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2023-09-25
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 15
- Pages
- 1937-1956
- ISSN
- 1461-670X (ISSN-L)
- 1469-9699
- OpenAlex
- W4387018273
- Cited by
- 21
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 2
- FWCI
- 9.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journalism Studies (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Stalking, Cyberstalking, and Harassment
- Social Sciences › Communication › Journalism and Media Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Workplace Violence and Bullying
- Keywords
- online harassment, journalists, Nigeria, self-censorship, coping strategies, media criticism, investigative journalism, political journalism, media companies
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