Vol. 18 / No. 1 of conflict & communication online has appeared and can be downloaded from the internet: http://www.cco.regener-online.de/
The articles presented in this issue of Conflict & Communication Online, were selected from papers written for the annual Safety of Journalists conference organized by the Media, War and Conflict research group (MEKK) at OsloMetropolitan University. The guest editors are professor Kristin Skare Orgeret & professor Roy Krøvel, current coordinators of the MEKK-research group at OsloMet.
The annual conference on the Safety of Journalists was set up to support research on the safety of journalists, in line with recommendations of UNESCO’s Research Agenda on the Safety of Journalists. Besides furthering new knowledge on safety issues, it also seeks ways to construct a network of researchers able to produce knowledge vital to improving safety of journalists internationally.
In our call for contributions to the 2017 conference, we wrote: An attack on a journalist is an attack on the freedom of expression. Silencing journalists happens through a variety of actions ranging from threats such as bullying and online harassment, restrictive policies and random detention, to the decisive act of censorship– death. Knowledge about journalists’ working conditions is important to improve the training of new journalists. We wanted to discuss both the processes leading to unsafe conditions and possible strategies and solutions andasked for papers with practical, theoretical, national or international perspectives that critically examine challenges related to the issue of safety of journalists.
The chapters of the special issue are written by the following authors:
1. Introduction: Introduction: Where are we now? – (Almost) a decade with the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity by Ingrid Fadnes, Roy Krøvel & Kristin Skare Orgeret
2. Getting from the global to the local: Norms and systems for protecting journalists in the times of the sustainable development goals by Guy Berger
3. Afghan journalists in a balancing act: Coping with deteriorating safety by Elisabeth Eide, Abdul Mujeeb Khalvatgar & Hasina Shirzad
4. Safety culture changing visual representations of wars? The case of Afghanistan by Saumava Mitra
5. Fixers in corporate media: Pashtun journalists under threat in North Western Pakistan by Altaf Khan
6. Digital security awareness and practices of journalists in Turkey: A descriptive study by Behlül Çalışkan
7. When online commentary turns into violence: The role of Twitter in slander against journalists in Colombia by Marta Milena Barrios, Lina María Vega-Estarita & Luis M. Gil