Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova

Dr Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova is the author of Global Journalism: An Introduction (with Michael Bromley, Palgrave, 2018), Russia’s Liberal Media: Handcuffed but Free (Routledge, 2018), Discussing Trump’s America Online: Digital Commenting in China, Mexico and Russia (Palgrave, 2023) and Young People, Media and Politics in the Digital Age (Routledge, 2023). She is Principal Investigator for Bulgaria and Co-Investigator for Ukraine in the Worlds of Journalism Study, Central and Eastern Europe Regional Coordinator (with Alice Němcová Tejkalová) and chair of the Journalists’ Safety Working Group. She is also the Journalism Safety Research Network Co-Lead for Central and Eastern Europe. Vera is the Project Lead of safetyofjournalists.org. She started working on safety issues in 2014 by conducting ethnographic work at Russia’s deadliest newspaper - Novaya Gazeta - whose editor won the Nobel Peace Prize. She then initiated the inclusion of journalists' safety questions in the biggest cross-national representative survey of journalists - the Worlds of Journalism, covering 120 countries. Under her leadership, the team developed a holistic theoretical framework with four dimensions: physical, psychological, digital and financial safety. She now leads the design of a global index on journalists' safety based on the representative survey results and external data.

Definition of journalists' safety

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, Conceptualizing Journalists’ Safety around the Globe, Digital Journalism, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21670811.2022.2162429).

Future plans for research on journalists' safety

1. Developing a global index on journalists' safety in collaboration with colleagues from the Worlds of Journalism Study on the basis of the representative surveys with journalists from 120 countries in wave 3 of the study (2021-2023) 2. Continue running this one-stop platform on the safety of journalists - safetyofjournalists.org 3. Continue working with UNESCO and other partners on the organisation of the academic conferences linked to World Press Freedom Day. 4. Launching a project on journalists in exile with NGO partners (TBC).