Online Harassment and Hate Among Media Professionals: Reactions to One’s Own and Others’ Victimization
Open accessAbstract
This study investigated the experiences of Finnish media professionals with online harassment. Participants ( N = 695) answered a survey including questions concerning their experiences with online harassment and a survey experiment involving a death threat received by someone else. Results showed that closeness to the victim was associated with increased anxiety levels, but it did not affect countermeasures recommendations for the victim. Victims’ reactions depended on their visibility in the public sphere and on the frequency and severity of the harassment. The results demonstrate that online harassment is prevalent among media professionals and that prevention and intervention are crucial.
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There is a consensus within an increasingly large literature that the effects of harassment are distressing.
“There is a consensus within an increasingly large literature that the effects of harassment are distressing (Björkenfeldt, 2023; Celuch et al., 2023; Kim & Shin, 2025; Lee & Park, 2024; Posetti & Shabbir, 2022), but what this distress entails in journalists has not been systematically investigated.”
From An examination of psychological distress and moral injury in journalists exposed to online harassment (2025) · cites this paper as Celuch et al., 2023
Elevated anxiety in the sample replicates a study of Finnish journalists.
“Our finding of elevated anxiety replicates a study of Finnish journalists (Celuch et al., 2023) albeit more robustly for we utilized a valid psychometric scale to quantify this emotion.”
From An examination of psychological distress and moral injury in journalists exposed to online harassment (2025) · cites this paper as Celuch et al., 2023
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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
“Level of stress in work-life and level of stress in life as a whole were rated on a scale from 0 (none) to 10 (a lot). et al., 2024), Sweden (Björkenfeldt, 2023; Löfgren Nils-son & Örnebring, 2016), India (Abhishek, 2022) and Finland (Celuch et al., 2023).”
- Authors
- Celuch, M., Latikka, R., Oksa, R., & Oksanen, A.
- Affiliations
- Tampere University (FI)
- Corresponding author
- Celuch, Magdalena
- Venue
- Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2023-01-07
- Volume
- 100
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 619-645
- ISSN
- 1077-6990 (ISSN-L)
- 2161-430X
- OpenAlex
- W4313678698
- Cited by
- 25
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 5
- FWCI
- 10.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Tampere University Institutional Repository (Tampere University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Helsingin Sanomain Säätiö (Hate and Public Sphere Project 2020-2021)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Stalking, Cyberstalking, and Harassment
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Workplace Violence and Bullying
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection
- Keywords
- online harassment, hate speech, media professionals, journalists, death threats, victim reactions, public sphere, countermeasures, anxiety, harassment prevention
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