Who is the censor? Self-censorship of Russian journalists in professional routines and social networking

Abstract

Today’s communicative environment, including the rise of social media, makes journalists perform publicly as both professionals and private citizens. In these circumstances, practices of self-limitation and self-censorship may extend to online behaviour. In this article, we analyse what makes journalists in public affairs media limit themselves in expression, both in editorial production and in online posting. We ask whether their self-censoring is related to personal, editorial, or external factors; whether political threats triumph over personal self-branding and professional/commercial reasons and whether these factors work differently in editorial and online behaviour; and whether journalists behave differently on different social networks. To formulate the answers, we use the results of a survey of 95 journalists from 51 Russian regions and seven in-depth interviews. Our results show that, in an organisationally weak journalistic community that operates in a restrictive environment, understanding of self-censorship differs significantly from that in Western democracies. It includes both self-limiting under pressures and personal-level ethical decisions that substitute professional codes of conduct. Moreover, for online posting and editorial work, there are different dominant ‘perceived censors’. Political threats remain the most significant of all external pressures both online and offline, but personal motives lead the decision-making in posting on social networks. Russia is characterised by platform-wide echo-chambering and high differentiation between users of Facebook and the Russia-based VK.com (formerly Vkontakte). We observe this difference in journalists’ descriptions of self-limitation on these networks.

Russia’s law ‘On news aggregators’: Control the news feed, control the news?

“…In addition to the conditions placed upon media businesses by media regulation, economic pressures and (forced) changes in editorial policies following ownership changes have been central tools for influencing or controlling individual media outlets (Vendil Pallin, 2017; on the examples of Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru, see Fredheim, 2017). The widespread occurrence of self-censorship among journalists (Bodrunova et al, 2020;Schimpfössl and Yablokov, 2017), as well as various ways through which self-censoring is reinforced (including intimidation and violence), is a further factor that places constraint on journalistic freedom.…”

Social Media and Political Dissent in Russia and Belarus: An Introduction to the Special Issue

“…However, the response to this range of laws was not only self-censorship (Bodrunova, Litvinenko, & Nigmatullina, 2021) but new regulations introduced by the platforms and their cooperation with the authorities, and extreme weakening of financial positions of oppositional and alternative online media. There have also been acts of solidarity, like in case of arrest of a Moscow journalist Ivan Golunov on a proved-to-be-fictitious accusation or a petition by 100 + media and NGOs against the law on foreign agents.…”

Journalists under attack: self-censorship as an unperceived method for avoiding hostility

“…Quantitative methods lead to challenges with the sample (who gets the survey, who provides answers, how to keep the sample balanced); the researchers do not know who is answering the survey and how understandable the survey questions/statements are to a respondent (e.g. Bodrunova et al, 2021;Löfgren Nilsson & Örnebring, 2016). Other researchers have used qualitative questionnaires or e-mail interviews, where respondents are expected to be motivated to report on the issues (e.g., Jungblut & Hoxha, 2017); there are issues with follow-up questions that the journalists might not answer.…”