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Former reporter surveys online abuse of journalists

A former Yorkshire Post reporter now lecturing in journalism is carrying out a survey into online abuse of journalists.

Amy Binns is part of a team of researchers at the University of Central Lancashire seeking to measure the extent of the problem and how journalists are dealing with it.

Initial findings suggest more than 60pc of journalists have experienced online insults about their work, while 11pc had been subjected to sexual insults.

HTFP readers are also being invited to take part in the survey, which can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/abusemedia

Said Amy: “We already have plenty of anecdotal evidence about the abuse journalists experience.

“Frankly, some of the things I’ve been reading make me feel a bit ill. But we want to go beyond particular cases to gather some data about the level of this problem and how journalists respond to it, both practically and emotionally.

“Of course journalists often have to deal with people who are very emotional. The culture is usually to laugh off distressing experiences back at the office, and that can be a good way of dealing with it.

“However, my initial results show relentless online abuse, whether on Twitter or in the comments stream, is taking its toll.”

So far, around 100 media professionals have taken the survey, most of whom were news or sports journalists.

The most common insults are about journalists’ work or their brand, with around 60pc of respondents having experienced this.

According to the survey results, the most common responses of journalists are to reply publicly or to blocked the user.

2 comments

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  • March 5, 2014 at 9:54 am
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    Thanks for the shout-out HTFP. It’s really helpful to get a clearer picture of what’s happening at grass-roots level so we can train our students better for the industry.

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  • March 5, 2014 at 2:21 pm
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    Erm…. why?

    Simple answer is ignore the abusers or report them to the police, like the old days before social media existed.

    You don’t need a survey to find out which reporters have been abused – I’d imagine they all have.

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