»It determined my everyday life, it makes you just afraid.«: A socio-spatial investigation into the effects of freelance and local journalism on the far right in East Germany
Publikation: Beitrag in Fachzeitschrift › Forschungsartikel › Beigetragen › Begutachtung
Beitragende
Abstract
The emergence of the far right in Germany has resulted in an elevated risk for the safety of journalists covering this beat. Attacks on the press have escalated considerably since the rise of large-scale anti-asylum protests, such as PEGIDA, particularly in East Germany (cf. ECPMF 2017). Despite the fact that the media has repeatedly expressed dismay at the severity of violence against the press by far-right groups, there has been little academic discussion of this phenomenon to date. This article addresses this research gap by examining the impact of the far right on journalistic work and the professional and everyday lives of journalists. The main finding of this study is that freelance and local journalists, who are typically positioned at the ›front line‹ of reporting , are exposed to a diverse array of threats from the far right. Utilizing the spatial concept of performative and affective territorialization, hostility towards the press is analyzed in terms of its function as a spatialized form of far-right power seeking. The findings reveal the existential threat posed by hostility towards the press at the individual level to journalists and thus to press freedom as a whole. Keywords: Far right, freedom of the press, hostility towards the press, threats, territorialization »But most of the time it's just threats or a bit of chasing after me. Or people pointing at me and then starting to make phone calls, so that I realize that reinforcements are probably being called and I have to leave the place« (I1_Z25, translated by the authors).
Details
| Originalsprache | Englisch |
|---|---|
| Seiten (von - bis) | 297-316 |
| Fachzeitschrift | Journalism Research |
| Jahrgang | 8 |
| Ausgabenummer | 3/4 |
| Publikationsstatus | Veröffentlicht - 2025 |
| Peer-Review-Status | Ja |
Externe IDs
| ORCID | /0009-0008-8751-2274/work/198594964 |
|---|