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“Journalists are Prepared for Critical Situations … but We are Not Prepared for This”: Empirical and Structural Dimensions of Gendered Online Harassment
Open accessAbstract
This article discusses online harassment against women journalists exploring self-reported incidents, effects, and trust in safety mechanisms.Drawing on twenty-five semi-structured interviews of women journalists in Portugal, we use a feminist and critical realist framework to explore the causal structures and generative mechanisms that explain their vulnerability to online abuse.We identify three overarching themes: increasing visibility in a context of higher hostility towards journalism and insufficient safety mechanisms; intersectional gender inequality and cultural mores that foster it; and (individual) responses to harassment.These themes show that women journalists' actions are both constrained and enabled by existing structures and cultural attitudes.While they tend to deny harassment is caused by their gender, seeing it mainly because of their job, they admit the sexualised and gendered nature of the insults, seeing this as an added offence not experienced by their male counterparts.They also see harassment as a continuation of inequality and prevailing sexism and find the protection mechanisms insufficient and ineffective.As a result, they assume an extra burden of emotional labour to deal with online bullying, admitting self-censoring and the need to develop resilience strategies.
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“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).”
From An examination of psychological distress and moral injury in journalists exposed to online harassment (2025) · cites this paper as Sampaio-Dias et al., 2023
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Cited by
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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 11
“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).”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Sampaio-Dias, S., Silveirinha, M. J., Garcez, B., Subtil, F., Miranda, J., & Cerqueira, C.
- Affiliations
- School of Film Media and Communication, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK
- ICNOVA, Lisbon, Portugal
- University of Coimbra (PT)
- Universidade Politécnica de Lisboa (PT)
- Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
- Universidade Lusófona (PT)
- Venue
- Journalism Practice
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2023-08-23
- Volume
- 18
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 301-318
- ISSN
- 1751-2786 (ISSN-L)
- 1751-2794
- OpenAlex
- W4386140523
- Cited by
- 27
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 1
- FWCI
- 9.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journalism Practice (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Stalking, Cyberstalking, and Harassment
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender, Feminism, and Media
- Social Sciences › Communication › Journalism and Media Studies
- Keywords
- online harassment, women journalists, gender-based harassment, intersectionality, sexism, safety mechanisms, self-censorship, emotional labor, resilience strategies
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