Political Context, the Press, and Violence Against the Media

This project will examine the conditions under which violence is perpetrated against members of the press. The media is generally seen as an institution playing a crucial role in good governance by holding powerful actors to account. Yet it is precisely this position that can sometimes make journalists and other media workers vulnerable to pressure by both state and non-state actors, from threats to detention to outright killings. This project will produce a new data set of media deaths worldwide, alongside a series of data sets on other forms of media violence within specific countries. The project will provide systematic evidence of the causes and consequences of both lethal and non-lethal violence committed by different sorts of perpetrators against the media. Results from this project will improve the understanding of scholars and practitioners of when, where, and how the media are targeted, which has substantial security, legal, and human rights implications. This project will develop a theoretical framework examining the contexts under which various forms of violence against the media by state and non-state perpetrators takes place. To test these theoretical propositions, a new and comprehensive data set covering all killings and non-natural deaths of members of the media worldwide will be collected for the period 1992-2020. These cross-national data will be complemented by a series of sub-national databases within several countries measuring other forms violence against the media, including threats, arrests, and attacks. Results from this project will contribute to existing scholarly research on media freedoms, political violence, and the rule of law. The data sets generated will be made publicly available to the wider scholarly community so that experts can employ these data for their own research purposes. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.