„Du stehst unter genauer Beobachtung, unangenehmer Beobachtung“

The study engages with different forms of problematic audience feedback—such as online harassment, hate speech, and trolling—as verbalized aggression and thereby expressions of communicative violence directed toward journalists. Based on prior research on the perception of (digital) security and informed by (empirical applications of) the transactional theory of stress and coping, we illustrate how female journalists are particularly affected by communicative violence. Through nine qualitative interviews conducted in 2017 with affected women journalists in German-speaking areas—Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and South Tyrol—we investigate: (1) how the journalists perceived and assessed the situation in which they experienced communicative violence, and (2) which coping strategies they applied to deal with these situations.

Sample

Guided interviews with 9 female journalists working in German-speaking countries (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, South Tyrol).

Main Findings

Communicative violence aims to manipulate journalists’ emotions, perceptions, and behaviors—both personally and professionally—and has substantial potential to negatively impact their well-being. To deal with such situations, the women journalists we interviewed used both emotional- and problem-focused coping strategies: they decoupled and demarcated themselves from the situation and the aggressors by devaluing the aggressors and using active self-affirmation. They also sharpened their anticipation regarding audience reactions and sought social-emotional support. While these emotion-focused strategies help take control over one’s own feelings to cope from within, problem-focused coping strategies aim to change the person-environment relationship. Strategies the journalists applied to tackle the situation in a problem-solving mode included comment moderation, reactions to and confrontations of aggressors, the collection of (evidence) material, searches for practical (e.g., legal) support, engagement in public discussions to increase public awareness, and, unfortunately, self-censorship. Emotion-focused coping strategies, such as decoupling and self-affirmation, can be understood as “immune reactions” to arouse resistance spirits that can be strong enough to counteract unwanted self-censorship tendencies. The women journalists were also able to re-frame their experiences and perceive that outside pressure can ultimately have positive effects, too: the inclusion of diverse perspectives and adherence to the objectivity ideal offer a certain degree of security against audience hostility. In addition, the respondents mentioned more self-reflection, a sharpened perception of their responsibility for individual and social effects of their work and their interviewees, as well as greater empathy and a desire for cooperation. The importance of social (emotional as well as practical) support through colleagues, mentors, and peer-to-peer networks was underlined by all participants in our sample. Such collectives are a particularly valuable resource for freelancers without a traditional editorial structure behind them (a particularly vulnerable group in this regard).

Policy recommendations/implications

In sum, the interviews showed that communicative violence is a problem that needs to be addressed on various levels. First, we recommend educational institutions include the topic in their curricula and support the next generation of journalists in their networking. Second, professional associations and commissioning media organizations can provide important infrastructures and resources, e.g., for practical and legal support. However, communicative violence does not only affect media workers. Aggression is also unleashed on other persons with discursive power, e.g., from politics and science. Available research suggests that triggering mechanisms and coping strategies, but also the particular threat to female representatives, appear to be similar in the different fields. An orientation towards and interaction with the audience is not only relevant for journalists but also unavoidable for politicians or increasingly desired for scientists. The ambivalence of visibility, which can lead to both success and a higher probability of attacks, is obvious, and social media renders the border between the private and public sphere increasingly permeable. In hypermasculine environments such as online gaming or in technology journalism, it has therefore been observed that female representatives “neutralize” their gender. This study must therefore be placed into a broader context—on how communicative violence poses a threat to societies’ advances in diversity and representation.