Below some texts on journalism and exile
Some research articles will be behind pay walls // contact your library or unversity
Academic publications
Promoting Newsafety from the Exile: The Emergence of New Journalistic Roles in Diaspora Journalists’ Networks
Colin Porlezza & Rana Arafat
Diaspora journalists and digital media play an important role as stakeholders for war-ridden homeland media landscapes such as Syria. This study analyzes, from a safety in practice perspective, the physical and digital threats that challenge the work of Syrian citizen journalists examining the role of three online advocacy networks created by Syrian diaspora journalists to promote newsafety. Through a metajournalistic discourse analysis of the networks’ published visions and missions, and 12 in-depth interviews with the founders and other selected members of the networks, the paper investigates how journalists working for these networks perceive threats, what counterstrategies they adopt, and how they understand the changing nature of their roles. Findings demonstrate that diaspora journalists perceived physical and digital threats as inescapable, following them across borders. Counterstrategies are implemented through collaborations with civil society actors and human rights organizations, aiming to offer professional safety training programs and emergency rescue for journalists under attack, but also through the release of safety guides or codes of conduct. Grounded on the findings, we propose four novel journalistic roles for promoting newsafety from exile: sousveillance, defender, trainer, and regulator/policy developer. While the networks follow some traditional journalistic ideologies, they also show a hybrid conceptualization of journalism.
Examining Diaspora Journalists’ Digital Networks and Role Perceptions: A Case Study of Syrian Post-Conflict Advocacy Journalism
Rana Arafat
Using digital ethnography and in-depth interviews, this study offers a comprehensive understanding of how diaspora journalists maintain connections with their conflict-torn homeland and advocate for transnational human rights and political reforms after fleeing its repressive political sphere. To this end, the paper examines how Syrian diaspora journalists engage in transnational advocacy practices through building digital networks that blur boundaries between journalism, activism, human rights advocacy, social movements, and civil society work. The paper further investigates how these advocacy practices shape the diaspora journalists’ perceptions of their roles as well as their understanding of the different political, economic, procedural, organizational, and professional factors that influence how they perform them. Findings demonstrate that diaspora advocacy journalism poses various challenges to traditional journalism paradigms as journalists’ roles go beyond news gathering and publishing to include petitioning, creating transnational solidarity, collaborating with civil society organizations, and carrying out various institutional work. In so doing, the paper rethinks hybridity in journalistic role perceptions proposing two unique approaches for serving democracy from exile. A novel definition of diaspora advocacy journalism and comprehensive discussion of the various sources of influence on news reporting and advocacy networking in the unique transnational conflict context are further proposed.
Field and Ecology Approaches to Journalism Innovation: The Role of Ancillary Organizations
Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2022
This study assesses the roles played by journalism support organizations or “ancillary” organizations – professional associations, training centers, foundations, labs – in the dynamics of journalism innovation, from the perspectives of field theory and ecology theory. Innovation in data and computational journalism serves as the study’s case example. The roles played by ancillary organizations within a changing, complex journalism space are increasingly important, and understudied. Both field and ecology approaches describe ancillary organizations as agents of innovation, but they explain the dynamics differently. Field approaches assume ancillary organizations “consecrate” innovations, and that innovations result from oppositional stances to established practices. Ecology approaches assume ancillary organizations foster interaction, which leads to shared ideas about innovation. The study is based on interviews with various agents in the data journalism space, including working data journalists and ancillary organization leaders. Findings suggest both field and ecology theories are helpful in explaining the innovation process. Field theory is especially helpful for explaining the structural contexts and strategy of innovation, while ecology approaches take a more organic approach, shedding light on the role of human interaction in the adaptation, change and growth of innovation.
The Media Work of Syrian Diaspora Activists: Brokering Between the Protest and Mainstream Media
International Journal of Communication 7, 2013
The role of Syrian diaspora activists has been identified as key to both supporting and shaping the world’s image of the Syrian uprising. This article examines the multifaceted media work of Syrian diaspora activists, conceptualized as “cultural brokerage” in a global and national setting. Based on personal interviews with activists in exile in five countries, this study identifies and analyzes three main aspects of brokerage: (a) linking the voices of protesters inside the country to the outside world, (b) managing messages to bridge the gap between social media and mainstream media, and (c) collaborating with professional journalists and translating messages to fit the contexts and understandings of foreign publics.
INTRO: The Arab uprisings have sparked polarized debates about the role of the Internet and social media tools in political mobilization. These technologies have arguably made a difference in the conduct of political struggles, as today’s political activists can use them to build extensive networks and create extended visibility for their actions and grievances (e.g., Cammaerts, 2007; Cottle, 2011a; Howard & Hussain, 2011; Shirky, 2011). In the case of the Arab uprisings, as Cottle (2011a) writes, overlapping media systems and new communication networks have been integral to “building and mobilizing support, coordinating and defining the protests within different Arab societies and transnationalizing them across the Middle East, North Africa and to the wider world” (p. 658). Today’s new global media ecology thus offers unparallelled transnational opportunities for activist groups, and herein lies a key issue for contemporary protest: its political success relies on translating the meanings of its actions to local and distant audiences alike and on bridging “old” and “new” media platforms (Lester & Cottle, 2011, pp. 290–291).
How reliable are journbalists in exile?
Terje S Skjerdal
Beware journalists in exile, warns Terje S. Skjerdal, a lecturer in journalism in both Norway and Ethiopia. He argues that journalists in the West are too willing to believe accounts from fellow journalists who have fled from oppressive regimes. Uncritical coverage of their stories risk being counterproductive, he argues. Drawing on his knowledge of Ethiopian media fugitives, he points to the fact that many could not be trusted and some were not, strictly speaking, journalists at all. He writes: “Perhaps the problem arises when journalists leave their professional objectivity behind and become activists.” His central message: do the basics by checking your sources.
News on the move:
Towards a typology of Journalists in Exile
Conor O’Loughlin, Pytrik Schafraad
Over the last eleven years, 706 journalists around the world have been forced to flee their homelands as a direct consequence of their work. The aim of this study is to provide insight into how the experience of going into exile has affected the motivations and professional standards of these journalists. The study consisted of in-depth interviews with journalists from five countries who have previously fled their homelands. The study shows that adherence to the truth, a basic tenet of journalism in a liberal democracy, is a cornerstone of professional practice for these journalists. Journalists can be seen to have a bi-dimensional relationship with the truth, considering it an end in itself but also recognising its utility value to help further their democratising goals. Journalists’ motivations were also found to be strong towards helping create a better country for their compatriots. Motivations were found to be symbolic or functional. A typology of journalists in exile is proposed. The results are discussed in the context of relevant literature on the roles of journalists in and out of democracies.
How Exile Shapes Online Opposition:
Evidence from Venezuela
Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2022
How does exile affect online dissent? By internationalizing activists’ networks and removing them from day-to-day life under the regime, we argue that exile fundamentally alters activists’ political opportunities and strategic behavior. We test the effect of exile on activists’ public discourse in the case of Venezuela, through an analysis of over 5 million tweets by 357 activists spanning seven years. Our results suggest that after going into exile activists increasingly emphasize foreign-led interventions to shape their home country politics, focus less on local grievances, and become more harshly critical of the regime. This is partly due to the changes in exiles’ networks: after leaving, activists increase their interactions with foreign actors and tweet more in English. This work contributes to our understanding of the relationship between exile—one of the most ubiquitous yet understudied forms of repression—and dissent in the digital age.
Lessons from the Afghanistan Media Crisis: Strengthening Protections for Journalists in Exile
International Justice Clinic, Afghanistan Human Rights Project University of California, Irvine School of Law, 2023
This paper summarizes the dire state of journalism under the current Taliban regime and the effects of the Taliban takeover on the journalism industry and those who work within it. This paper discusses the ramifications of the takeover and the countless journalists exiled from Afghanistan, and emphasizes the importance of these journalists to the free flow of information and freedom of expression within the state they used to work within. From the lens of the current journalism and media crisis in Afghanistan, this paper identifies the challenges of being a journalist in exile and the shortcomings that international organizations and states have for addressing those challenges, while also listing a series of recommendations to recognize the importance of and support journalists in exile. The International Justice Clinic (IJC) conducted interviews with Afghan journalists in exile to explore and discuss their experiences. This report incorporates these interviews into the discussion of the challenges and recommendations pertaining to journalists in exile
Reports, various organizations
Forced to flee: A timeline of journalists’ flight into exile
Committee to Protect Journalists
Report, 2014
Every year, dozens of journalists are forced to leave their homes under threat of imprisonment, torture, violence, or even death, because their work has angered the powerful. Over the past 12 months, the Committee to Protect Journalists has supported 42 journalists around the world who were forced to flee, with Syria, Ethiopia, and Eritrea responsible for the most cases of exile. These are some of their stories.
Most of the journalists CPJ has assisted in exile had little or no warning that they would be forced to flee, to undertake a journey of trauma and uncertainty. While their experiences have much in common with ordinary refugees, CPJ research shows that journalists’ high profiles leave them particularly vulnerable to certain dangers and that the persecution they faced at home often follows them across borders. Furthermore, the media community left behind is often intimidated into self-censorship and the public deprived of information. CPJ is releasing its annual survey of journalists in exile to mark World Refugee Day, June 20.
100´s of journalists go into exile every year. These are the problems they face and how to tackle them
Laura Dulce Romero
Oxford Reuters Institute, March 27th, 2024
Afghan journalist Shukrullah Esmat was forced to pack his things in a couple of suitcases and leave his own country in August 2021. Before then, he had some experience as a scriptwriter and filmmaker, and worked at Radio Killid, a local media outlet. Esmat lived with his wife and his two small children. Three years later, amid the freezing German winter, he believes his life was perfect back then.
When the Taliban returned to power, dozens of journalists had to flee Afghanistan for fear of reprisals. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) helped a 29-year-old Esmat leave his country for Pakistan, where they arranged accommodation for him and his family until they got humanitarian visas to reach Germany.
Once in Germany, they first lived in a refugee camp. But the government soon gave them a monthly allowance and now they live in their rented flat. “It is not a lot of money, but it’s enough for me and my family to rebuild a life here,” he says. Sadly, films and journalism, his great passions, have had to be put aside.
C. F. Chamorro’s Golden Pen of Freedom acceptance speech: Media in exile under dictatorship, the last reserve of freedom
World Association of News Publishers
Andrew Heslop andrew.heslop@wan-ifra.org, May 27, 2024
“Journalism done from exile remains the last reserve of all our freedoms.” Carlos Fernando Chamorro received the Golden Pen of Freedom during the 75th WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress – read his acceptance speech.
A year ago, on February 15 2023, my wife and I, along with other 92 Nicaraguan citizens were stripped of our nationality, rendered stateless by the dictatorial regime of Daniel Ortega.
We were declared traitors to the homeland, deprived of our political rights, our names and identities were erased from the civil registry, and our property was confiscated by the state, including our social security pensions.
The list of 94 includes civic leaders, human rights defenders, several catholic priests, and 11 journalists and directors of exiled media outlets, including myself from Confidencial.
Our only crime has been to do journalism, to investigate and denounce corruption, state crimes, and serious human rights violations in Nicaragua. And above all, not to remain silent, despite censorship.
Tech platforms are suffocating opposition media
Russell Brandom
Rest of World, February 15th, 2024
Publications like The Insider are caught between state censorship and hostile platform dynamics.
Since the start of the Ukraine war, tech platforms have made life very difficult for Roman Dobrokhotov. Founder of Russia-focused outlet The Insider, Dobrokhotov has led investigations of Russia-linked assassinations around the world, developing a reputation as one of the leading journalists covering Russia’s intelligence services. But a few months after the war began, The Insider’s Facebook traffic abruptly dropped to zero, an indication that the site had been severely downranked.
Dobrokhotov was able to make contact with someone at Facebook, but it didn’t do much good. “They explained it with the fact that they decided not to promote political content,” he told me, “which is silly because we just wanted to show our content to the 100,000 people who decided to subscribe to our content in Facebook.”
Exile journalism in German
Current challenges and initiatives at a glance.
Körber Stiftung
Exile Media Forum, Website download 2023
When people are persecuted because of their political views, religion or ethnicity, their life may be under threat, and they often have no choice but to go into exile. However, when they do so, they leave behind their home country, their social environment, the language they grew up with, and their opportunities for professional development. These consequences are particularly significant for journalists who are targeted by threats and violence. When they finally arrive in exile, they usually have no access to their most important tools: the language of their home country and their network of contacts.
During his ‘Speech on Exile’, which was held in Hamburg last October, Can Dündar, an exiled journalist who now lives in Germany, underscored the extraordinary situation faced by many exiled journalists when he stated: ‘Where I write, is Turkey’. Exiled journalists live and work between two countries and cultures. In many cases, they address their compatriots in their home country, but still need to continue working and building a life in their host country – and to do so from scratch.
Journalists in exile - Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression
JX Fund, Berlin 2024
Irene Khan, UN, Report April 26, 2024
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur (Irene Khan) on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression focuses on journalists in exile who face a variety of physical, digital and legal threats. She analyses the responses of States and companies to these threats and challenges. She finds that international human rights and refugee law provide a strong framework to protect journalists in exile; however, the security and safety of journalists in exile remain precarious, because of the failure of States to uphold their international obligations. She makes recommendations to States, digital and media companies, international organizations and civil society to strengthen the safety of journalists and enhance the viability of independent media in exileI.
To Protect Democracy, Protect Exiled Journalists
Project Syndicate
May 29th 2024,
From Russia to South Sudan, rising authoritarianism and threats to press freedom are driving a growing number of journalists to flee their home countries and try to resume their work from abroad. Media organizations in democratic countries have a collective duty to support them.
LONDON – “Foreign agent,” “undesirable,” “extremist.” For thousands of
independent journalists trying to live and work in Russia, these words
can be life-changing.
n April, Ilya Barabanov, the BBC’s Russian correspondent, was labeled a “foreign agent” by Russia’s justice ministry, effectively barring him from covering many aspects of civic life. Such designations obviously stifle press freedom, and they are often just the beginning. The arrests in April of Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin, both accused of producing content for the YouTube channel of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, show that even being affiliated with a media outlet deemed “extremist” is enough to face imprisonment.
How Russian media makers in exile are redefining the traditional radio format
Russia’s censorship laws, adopted by the state after the all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, shattered the Russian media landscape and forced most media outlets condemning the war and the regime to close down. For safety reasons, many journalists fled their homeland. Abroad, they started experimenting with new ways to keep reaching their audiences. One of them was to redefine the traditional radio format, turning it into a curated audio aggregator of first- and third-party podcasts – accessible as a streaming service on a downloadable phone app.
The Fix talked with Maksim Kurnikov, the head of Ekho Online, which was the first in the Russian media landscape to launch such a service, and Polina Filippova, the producer of podcasts of Radio Sakharov, which has been operating for a year.
MA and PhD theses
Waves of democracy: Contemporary exile journalism – a case study of The Democratic Voice of Burma
Jade Josefine Nordahl
Masters thesis, University of Oslo, 2009
While the media in Burma is characterized by strict control, censorship and a general lack of freedom, the Burmese exile media is developing rapidly. The news reports from these media organizations reach millions of people inside Burma as well as Burmese living in exile. This thesis presents the operations of a modern exile media organisation, the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). Through qualitative interviews it explores the development and current state of this media organization, and the measures and initiatives DVB employs in order to establish and maintain professional integrity. The theoretical foundation of the concept «professional» is explored and discussed in relation to studying the challenges that arise as external and internal forces pressure DVB to adhere to this concept, which is frequently invoked in, and for, a context quite unlike the one in which DVB is operating.
Kidanu, Gezahgn Berhie
MA Thesis, NLA University College, 2023
While the media in Burma is characterized by strict control, censorship and a general lack of freedom, the Burmese exile media is developing rapidly. The news reports from these media organizations reach millions of people inside Burma as well as Burmese living in exile. This thesis presents the operations of a modern exile media organisation, the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). Through qualitative interviews it explores the development and current state of this media organization, and the measures and initiatives DVB employs in order to establish and maintain professional integrity. The theoretical foundation of the concept «professional» is explored and discussed in relation to studying the challenges that arise as external and internal forces pressure DVB to adhere to this concept, which is frequently invoked in, and for, a context quite unlike the one in which DVB is operating.
Gebremeskel, Solomon Kebede
MA Thesis, NLA University College, 20219
Benefitting from the theories of alternative media and journalistic professionalism, this study tries to portray the lived professional experiences of Ethiopian journalists establishing and running an online radio named Wazema from their new destinations. The station is registered and operated from Sweden, but its contributors hail from the Ethiopian diaspora environment in various countries, and also from the homeland. Qualitative in-depth interviews with ten journalists and available document analysis are the methods of data collection.
The study asks how journalists consider their professional integrity as journalists in exile and how they use the digital medium to reach their audiences back in the homeland. It also tries to reflect on production and organizational opportunities and challenges met by the journalists.
Referring to their background in the homeland and their victimization as journalists, as well as their work at Wazema, the journalists regard their role as exile journalists with no reference to elements of activism. Most regard credibility as the most important journalistic element of their practice at Wazema followed by verification and independence, though at the same time they admit the challenge to prioritize one from the other.
Wazema journalists view the political reform in their homeland as facilitating their transition from exile media practitioners to founders and runners of independent mainstream media, provided the political change sustains in institutionalization and legal backing.
This investigation shows the role of exile media in aiding journalists on the run from authoritarian regimes, the use of local working journalists’ identity to extract information in a media repressive regime as well as the role ordinary citizens play in smuggling information to journalists in exile.
Tamsin Mitchell
PhD Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2021
This dissertation offers a qualitative, comparative, bottom-up exploration of journalists’ responses to impunity for violence against journalists in two Latin American countries where this problem is particularly egregious, Mexico and Honduras. It provides a critique of IR/politics debates on the value of international human rights (IHR) law/norms to local civil society groups and actors. Drawing on scholarship on civil society and coping strategies in violent/repressive contexts, it asks what people do when state and international protection and the domestic civil society “enforcement mechanism” for IHR standards fail. Via thematic analysis of 67 interviews with journalists and protection actors, I show that journalists used several interlinked strategies to seek justice and protection: domestic and international (engaging with the state via intermediaries – “protection approaches”), and activist and professional (“self-protection approaches”). Journalists rarely mobilised around IHR standards or legal rights, instead depending on (I)NGOs. While protection approaches were necessary and valued, they were usually insufficient to achieve security and justice: context-dependent and limited – particularly in terms of addressing impunity – and frequently risky for journalists. Hence, journalists often supplemented/replaced protection with self-protection approaches. But certain self-protection practices could actually undermine journalists’ security, as well as journalism itself and public perceptions of the profession, including some grassroots forms of activism, self-censorship and co-optation. Consequently, some journalists were developing broader self-protection strategies to transform the profession and practice of journalism. These strategies went beyond immediate physical security, combining protection and professionalisation to improve journalists’ work as well as continue it more safely, and building their credibility and public support. This indicates the significance of the norms of professional journalism over IHR norms in this case. Although no substitute for effective state protection, such professional strategies were a crucial complement, with potential to make important contributions to societal pressure for justice and state protection.
Louisa Esther Mugabo
Talk given at the Oxford Reuters Institute, 2023.
Kahn is a PhD candidate at the University College Cork.
2. The most practical skill that exiled journalists can build is their network. Mugabo points out that exile journalism will only keep growing unless there are better press freedoms and protections for journalists around the world. However, her number one practical recommendation for journalists that are faced with a situation of exile is to keep their existing network in their home country which will not only help with future stories but also ensure the protection of the journalist. “Prioritise networks inside the country, contacts that you have verified for years, contacts that you trust, and have contacts that are independent of each other because that’s eventually going to be crucial for your and your sources’ safety, and the verification of your information that you obtained through your networks,” said Mugabo.
3. Financial sustainability tips for exile media do not work the same as for Western media. As Western media is expanding its business models towards digital with options like Patreon or subscriber-based newsletters for journalists to delve into, journalists in exile do not have the same options. They cannot rely on those methods to both reach audiences in their home countries and financially sustain their journalism. Mugabo took the example of exiled journalists in Eritrea and Burundi where Internet penetration is low and radio is the main source of news consumption. “There is no journalistic business model even before they had to flee,” said Mugabo. “There’s no sustainable advertising, there’s not enough money from audiences to subscribe to stuff and there’s also not having any practical possibility to do so because they don’t even have the internet.”
4. There is a need for a global community of exiled journalists. According to Mugabo, there is little structural understanding when it comes to exile journalism as data is lacking, a problem she is hoping to tackle with her research. However, she also points to a need for more communities, media outlets, and resources for exiled journalists, in the vein of JX Fund. That’s why she and other collaborators are launching Ex-press, an organisation and online magazine to support exiled journalists. “We want to launch a magazine for exile journalism to provide a platform where exiled journalists can continue working as professional journalists,” said Mugabo. The vision for Ex-press is to publish original content but also translate investigative work done by the journalists to a broader audience, and, in the future, be a fundraising platform for the journalists.