Female journalists under attack? Explaining gender differences in reactions to audiences’ attacks

The literature on public figures attacked by their audiences is unclear why female and male figures react differently to attacks. This study examines why female journalists are more likely than male journalists to use avoidance strategies as a reaction to online attacks. Avoidance includes limiting audience engagement, adapting reporting behavior, and thinking about quitting journalism. Drawing on social role theory and gender stereotypes, the study contrasts two explanatory hypotheses. The first is that women are more likely than men to use avoidance strategies because women are more stressed by attacks. The second is that women are more likely than men to use avoidance strategies because they are more severly attacked.

Sample

This study uses data from an online survey of journalists in Switzerland conducted between July and October 2017. The population of this study includes freelancing and employed journalists of print and online media (including newspapers, magazines, and news agencies), television, and radio in the German-, French-, and Italian-speaking parts of Switzerland. The study excludes journalists who are retired and those working predominantly in advertising and public relations. Eventually, 637 completed the questionnaire and were considered for the analyses.

Main Findings

Analysis of online survey data of 637 journalists representative of Switzerland by a multivariate mediation approach showed that, as a reaction to attacks against themselves or their colleagues, women are more likely than men to avoid attacks by limiting their engagement with audiences, adapting their reporting behavior, and considering quitting journalism. The mediation results explain this gendered avoidance by a gender difference in feeling stressed from attacks. However, the alternative, the severity of attacks, has no mediating effect.

Policy recommendations/implications

Overall, gendered avoidance in journalism may promote a gender-stratified public sphere and influence the media landscape, for example by less mutual shaping of news content, reduced diversity of contents, and a narrowed range of stories. The unequal gender reactions to attacks can systematically disadvantage women. For example, female journalists may refrain from exposing themselves on social media and thus benefit less from audience contact, activities that are often considered pivotal to the journalistic profession. Further, female journalists are at a higher risk of leaving the public sphere to avoid stress. Therefore, the original idea of involving the audience in news production, aimed at strengthening democratic structures and weakening exclusive gate-keeping ones, might boomerang; it may promote inequality within the journalistic profession. However, and counterintuitively, attacks could lead to positive effects as well. Journalists have reported that attacks motivated them to consider more diverse perspectives and thus report in a more ‘balanced’. These implications suggest that gendered experiences and behaviors following attacks may influence the public sphere, although in currently still unpredictable ways.