Eariler this week I came across a fantastic example of using company accounts in journalism: Guardian media editor Jim Waterson‘s article on how the family that founded the sex-worker social media platform OnlyFans “extracted tens of millions of pounds from its parent company in the last year”.
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Journalism students now need training for 'vile' online abuse they will face, study finds + tips for dealing with ugly social media https://t.co/lXn3bQKJOE
Online abuse of journalists has become so routine that a study this week recommends that journalism students need training to prepare them for it.
But how do you incorporate online abuse into journalism curricula? Over the past year I’ve been trying to do just that — here are some ideas.
1. Ask about online abuse on news days
Most journalism courses already have news days, so considering online abuse in news meetings is a simple way to incorporate the topic into teaching without having to create new classes or materials.
“The objective is to normalize discussions about online harassment in the newsroom,” they say. “An important step toward a creating a culture of safety. Journalists should feel comfortable coming forward with their experiences and concerns.”
This is especially important in election weeks: the IPI suggest that discussions about online abuse should be more frequent during politically tense periods or ahead of elections.
If the outlet you use for student journalism has its own style guide or guidelines, you can also add a section about online abuse that outlines what they should do when it happens, and resources they can draw on, such as this Trollbusters infographic on actions to take regarding a range of threats, and those listed below.
2. Include online abuse in risk assessments
The section on psychological safety from the CPJ risk assessment template
Journalists and journalism students are often required to complete risk assessments ahead of certain newsgathering activity, such as filming on location.
Teaching on risk assessment can include these dimensions and point to those resources. It might be explained that risk factors include the nature of the story being covered: those relating to gender, ethnicity, immigration, extremism, disinformation, and other topics where there are strong feelings are likely to be higher risk than others.
This is also a good opportunity to talk about the risk factors related to the journalist’s own gender, ethnicity and sexuality, and how those aren’t limited to the online world: 73% of UNESCO research (PDF) respondents identifying as women said they had experienced online violence, and one in five said that abuse had moved offline.
3. Cover both sides of harassment in media law…
Harassment laws (or dimensions of industry codes) have become increasingly used against journalists — but journalists are also increasingly having to report harassment under the same laws. Media law classes on privacy, harassment, and malicious communications can address the law both as something to consider when reporting, and something that the reporter and their employer can draw on themselves.
In addition to the law, social media companies themselves are increasingly policing content, a form of regulation which both journalists and their audiences are now subject to. Understanding how that works — and how and when online abuse can be reported on different platforms — is an important new dimension to media law and regulation.
4. …and information security, too
Many strategies of online abuse mean the target needs to consider information security
In the media law module on my MA journalism courses I teach information security. Why? Journalists, as I concluded in research in 2015, can no longer protect sources through legal channels alone, and therefore need to understand both technological and legal defences.
This year I extended that teaching to talk about personal information security in the context of online abuse as well.
PEN America‘s Online Harassment Field Manual compiles “strategies to protect and arm yourself before you become the target of abuse, with an emphasis on tightening your cybersecurity and establishing supportive online communities who will have your back”, addressing a number of tactics used by online abusers, from doxxing and impersonation to hacking. Feminist Frequency also provides a guide to online safety.
The Data Detox Kit also outlines “steps you can take to control your digital privacy, security, and wellbeing in ways that feel right to you.”
5. Include guidelines in classes on writing for social media
Social media is the main space where online abuse takes place, so classes on writing for those platforms, and related skills such as community management (the IPI has a whole section on audience moderation), are an obvious place to address some of the techniques for dealing with online abuse.
One of those techniques, for example, is to “flood social media with positive posts about the work of colleagues to drown out any abuse they may be facing”.
“Keep work and personal social media accounts separate
“Use strict settings to filter out trolls — block, ignore and mute personal attacks
“Switch off outside office hours
“If the accuracy of a story is being called into question and you choose to respond, remain factual — but don’t expect to have the last word, as you can never win a ‘Twitter spat’
“Differentiate between attacks (personal) and criticism (on journalistic grounds)
“Document and threats or abuse
“Report abuse to management and use internal processes that are in place
“Speak about it with family, friends or colleagues to “take a bit of the heat out”
“Do things you enjoy outside work
“Remember abuse is never about your ability
“Take time away from social media if necessary and ask for an editor’s support to do so
“Know it is okay to be upset and that abuse is not acceptable and should not be part of the job.”
The International Women’s Media Federation (IWMF) has a Know your trolls course which can also be incorporated into social media training.
6. Organise a screening of A Dark Place
Earlier this month I organised a screening and Q&A around the one-hour documentary A Dark Place, which highlights “the experiences of female journalists who have been targeted by online harassment”.
It’s a must-see documentary, not least in understanding the gendered dimension of online violence, as outlined in a recent UNESCO report:
“Women journalists are both the primary targets of online violence and the first responders to it.
“Misogyny is one of the key features of online violence targeting women journalists, and it has been routinised … In detail and delivery, the threats are personal [and] they are often highly sexualised.”
7. Ask guest speakers about how they handle online abuse
There is a good chance that a planned guest speaker will have had to deal with some form of online abuse themselves. If you feel that this might be relevant or valuable to students it may be worth asking the speaker in advance if this is the case and if they are willing to talk about that as part of the session.
Hearing respected industry figures talk about online abuse makes the topic more concrete and manageable, while helping students to put it into the context of industry practice, support systems, and ongoing developments.
8. Include online abuse as a critical issue in academic classes
Most journalism courses require students to study the critical issues surrounding the profession. Online abuse — either on its own or alongside related issues such as misinformation, privacy, social media, diversity and/or propaganda — is a strong candidate to be included as one of those. Resources you can draw on and point students to include:
The latest frequently asked questions post focuses on questions from a Masters student interested in the effect of the rise of online news on journalism ethics.
Do you think that the ethical codes of journalism have changed in the transition from traditional journalism to digital?
I think the ethics of journalism have changed, yes, for a range of reasons, and in both negative and positive ways. For example, transparency has become much more highly valued as a journalistic value: journalists are expected to earn the trust of readers much more than was previously the case, and I would argue that is a positive development. Linking to sources, sharing methodologies, etc. forces journalists to hold themselves to higher standards.
Continue reading →
Al Jazeera’s interactive team AJ Labs have a mantra: “human driven data journalism”. In a guest post for OJB Hanna Duggal speaks to the team’s lead Mohammed Haddad on what this means and how he tackles big data, including a recent story commemorating the Arab Spring.
And, while many of the issues Al Jazeera covers are deeply complex, AJ Labs often help to explain such narratives using data journalism. Continue reading →
In a guest post for OJB,George Willoughby spoke to data journalist Rodrigo Menegat about reporting on Covid-19 in Brazil, managing uncertainty and how data journalism could help debunk misinformation.
At the height of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in March, data on the disease was in high demand. It required collaboration — something made more difficult with data lacking in quality.
Having spent most of his career covering politics, last year Rodrigo Menegat realised that science data — particularly Covid-19 data — was fast becoming a staple in the newsroom.
“The first challenge was learning how to cover data which is very different to sport or politics,” he says.
The difficulty was understanding something that, as a country, Brazil was not ready to face. Continue reading →
Reuters’ Graphics Team is renowned for creating a myriad of innovative news stories under tight deadlines, from Covid-19 coverage to mapping the movement of shifting smoke from California wildfires. In a guest post for OJB, Hanna Duggal speaks to the team’s Simon Scarr and Marco Hernandez about pushing the boundaries of visual storytelling in the newsroom and the relationship between data and design.
In a world that has become increasingly data-prolific and hardwired towards visual content, visualisation provides the newsroom with both a way to communicate complex data effectively and to engage audiences.
Data graphics have become more immersive, compelling and revealing, — and for Reuters, an integral part of how stories are told.
“I’m incredibly proud of our breaking news work,” says Simon Scarr, Reuters’ Deputy Head of Graphics. Continue reading →
Are journalists only ever born with a passion for their craft — or is it something that can be taught?
Of all the seven habits that have been explored in this series, passion is perhaps the one that seems most innate — a quality that you “either have or don’t have”.
Can we teach passion? Well, we can provide the reasons why someone might be passionate about their craft — we can inspire passion and we can create opportunities to experience the things that have stimulated passion in others. Continue reading →
While many are attracted to journalism because of its opportunities for creative expression, few are attracted by its various constraints. But it is those particular contraints which make journalism distinctive, and separate from other creative work such as art or fiction.
In fact you might argue that it is constraints that make journalism more similar to creative fields such as design, where the functionality and user of the work must be considered, leading to increasing cross-pollenation between them (e.g. the rise of design thinking in journalism).
These constraints can be broadly classed as aspects of the work that require self-control, or discipline. For example:
We must consider the audience in the selection and treatment of stories
We must hit regular deadlines
We must write within a particular word count or to particular timings
We must remain impartial and objective in our reporting (in most genres)
These aspects of discipline are reflected in some of the most common feedback given to trainee journalists: Continue reading →
In a special guest post for OJB, Vanessa Fillis speaks to AlgorithmWatch’s Nicolas Kayser-Bril about his work on how online platforms optimise ad delivery, including his recent story on how Facebook draws on gender stereotypes.
Kayser-Bril first became aware of automated discrimination when he read about an experiment done by researchers at North Eastern University in the US. Seeing that the analysis could be replicated in Europe, he decided to take a closer look at Facebook and Google’s distribution systems.
“Automated systems are supposed to bring relevant content to the users,” says Nicolas. “And I use ‘relevant’ because it’s the adjective that Facebook uses — and there is a sense that relevant content is determined based on the actions of the users themselves.”
But in reality, everything Kayser-Bril knows about large scale automated systems like Facebook’s news feed hints that their decisions about what to show to an user is based on many different factors instead. Continue reading →
Economist and podcaster Tim Harford, author of How To Make The World Add Up, spoke to MA Data Journalism students this month. In a guest post for OJB Niels de Hoog rounds up Tim’s tips on creating compelling number-driven stories for radio and podcasts
Orson Welles famously said that there’s nothing an audience won’t understand, as long as you can get them to be interested.
Listening to Tim Harford’s podcasts it is clear that he has taken this message to heart.
“If you’ve got a hook, a personality, or a question people want answered, that will carry people through a certain degree of complexity that they wouldn’t tolerate if it was reported straight.”
Take More or Less, his podcast about statistics for BBC Radio 4. At first glance it doesn’t offer the easiest subject for an engaging audio story — yet somehow the programme is very entertaining to listen to. Continue reading →
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