Oleksandra Hrybenko

My research aims to identify threats women journalists face reporting on the war in Ukraine. Through semi-structured interviews with journalists in Ukraine, the study explores both general safety conditions for journalists in Ukraine, as well as, specific challenges women journalists face reporting on the war amid patriarchal social norms. The research reveals complex conditions in the field that women journalists have to navigate on a daily basis and overlapping threats that range from physical to psychological, financial, and digital; but also various other obstacles to their professional practices including censorship, self-censorship, and legal and political pressure.

Definition of journalists' safety

Journalists' safety is the conditions in which journalists can perform their journalistic practices without their physical, psychological, digital, and financial well-being, as well as, their professional practices and content they produce, being threatened. The threat to professional practices can manifest itself in full or partial censorship, self-censorship, and various means of control of journalists' professional practices by state or non-state. Safety conditions can be affected by various societal and institutional risks rooted in both local and global contexts, and often overlap.

Future plans for research on journalists' safety

In my future research, I will focus on Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, as journalists' safety in this region has been deteriorating and is chronically under-researched. At the same time, the journalists are playing a crucial role in building liberal democracies in this contested region driven by instability and conflict. I will continue to apply a holistic approach to safety and focus on gender as a cross-cutting factor that helps to identify gender specific threats and obstacles journalists are facing in the region characterized by the low political representation of women, negative social stereotypes, patriarchy and gender-based violence.