Gendered harassment in journalism: A qualitative study
Introduction and problem analysis
On 6 September 2025, a German journalist named Kili Weber was reporting in Freiberg, Saxony, on a far-right counter-protest against the local Pride. When the protesters recognised her, they began insulting and threatening her. She was called a “fat pig” and a “cock sucker,” and someone told her they had masturbated while thinking about her (Mapping Media Freedom, 2025).
This is not a single case. A survey of 383 journalists in Germany, carried out by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom and the University of Bielefeld between November 2025 and February 2026, found that 65.4% had experienced personal hostility at least once in the past twelve months, and 53.4% repeatedly. This hostility was most often digital: spread through social media and email. But many respondents also experienced it face to face. The threats often read as ideological and largely right-wing motivated. 15.4% said they now avoid certain sensitive topics such as abortion or LHBTIQ+ out of fear of hostility (Peltz & Rees, 2026).
Press freedom means being able to do the work safely on every topic and to report on what matters. These topics go unnoticed if a journalist does not raise them. Yet as hostility toward journalists rises, it does not fall evenly: women are targeted in a distinct, gendered way (Posetti et al., 2021).
These numbers may be shocking, but they are not new. Already in 2021, The Chilling – a report by UNESCO and the International Centre for Journalist flagged this problem. Based on a survey of 901 journalists in 125 countries they found that almost three quarters of the women journalists had experienced online violence linked to their work. That violence often reached into the physical world too (Posetti et al., 2021).
Misogyny is a defining feature of violence against women. This is also seen in the harassment against female journalists online and offline. The abuse is built to silence, humiliate and discredit them. It is often organised or coordinated rather than random, and it is more often sexualised and aimed at a woman’s identity and body than the criticism directed at male colleagues. Increasingly it also includes manipulated images and AI-generated deepfakes designed to discredit women journalists (Posetti et al., 2021; Posetti et al., 2025).
And it does not stay online: in The Chilling, one in five women said they had been abused offline in connection with online violence. To protect themselves, many women journalists start to self-censor. They set their social media to private, avoid certain topics, or stop appearing on camera (Posetti et al., 2021).
This happens while protection is getting weaker. In the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, Germany dropped three places, from 11th to 14th out of 180. RSF says the legal environment is still favourable to journalism. But disinformation, polarisation and attacks on journalists have made it harder for journalists to do their work. (Reporters Without Borders, 2026).
Since the pandemic, journalists have increasingly become targets of threats, harassment and physical attacks. In 2024, Reporters Without Borders documented 89 attacks on media professionals in Germany: roughly double the previous year. While a separate count by the ECPMF recorded 98 verified physical attacks. This is the highest since monitoring began in 2015, with the far right identified as the largest structural threat (Reporters Without Borders, 2026; European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, z.d.).
Yet newsrooms and journalism training have been slow to address gendered (online) violence, and the institutional response remains inadequate. (Posetti et al., 2021); How early-career women are prepared for it has received little attention. That is the gap this research addresses: how do early-career women journalists in Germany perceive and experience gendered harassment, and how equipped do they feel to handle it?
Main research question
How do early-career women journalists in Germany perceive and experience gendered harassment, and how equipped do they feel to handle it?
For this study, early-career, means within five years of starting their first professional journalism work.
Sub-quistions
1. What is online harassment, and why are female journalists targeted? (Literature)
2. How do early-career female journalists in Germany experience online harassment? (qualitative research)
3. How equipped do they feel to handle it? (qualitative research)
The first sub-question builds the background, what online harassment is. The last two are about the journalists themselves: their experiences and how prepared they feel.
Method
By examining the literature and defining what online harassment is, this research can narrow its focus to the experiences and coping strategies of female journalists in Germany.
The literature review built a broader understanding of (online) harassment and of why female journalists are targeted. It also showed what this harassment can do: how it affects a journalist’s work, and what its consequences are. Building on that, the qualitative part of the study turns to the experiences themselves. The events that took place, the effect they had, and the tools the journalists had to handle them.
All interviews will be conducted online, in a time range of about 30 minutes. The interviews will be in English. After the interviews have been conducted, they will be coded and selected into themes. A central idea running through this is gendered silencing: harassment used as a tool to push women out of public discourse, with a chilling effect that leads to self-censorship.
By coding the themes, and the reaction. This makes it possible to identify patterns and recurring themes across the accounts, and to address the part of the research question that asks how equipped female journalists feel.
The interviews are semi-structured, and the questions are kept open so as not to steer participants in any direction. This matters because online harassment is experienced in many ways: even when it is organised and structured. How each journalist reads and responds to it can differ. Keeping the questions open lets those differences come through in the journalists’ own words.
SQ1: What is online harassment, and why are female journalists targeted? (Literature)
Online harassment is the use of digital communication to deliberately cause harm, distress, or discomfort to a person (Posetti et al., 2021). The abuse is meant to silence, discredit and humiliate. It mostly reaches the journalists on platforms their work depends on social media, Facebook, Instagram, X (before Twitter) and YouTube. These platforms are the same places most of this harassment takes place and where journalists are expected to build an audience and engage with their public.
What sets this abuse apart is that it is gendered. Misogyny is its dominant feature: women journalists are attacked not only for what they report but for being women in a public role (Posetti et al., 2021). Comments criticise, marginalise, stereotype, or threaten them based on their gender or sexuality, and ordinary disagreement with their work is frequently recast as a misogynistic attack that can extend to sexual violence. Over time this came to feel normalised. Sexist remarks and inappropriate demands were treated by audiences, and sometimes by the journalists themselves, as simply part of the job (Chen et al., 2018).
The abuse is also rarely spontaneous or individual. Slurs like “witch” and “bitch” and hashtags such as #presstitute belong to networked misogyny: “a virulent strain of orchestrated gender-based hostility and violence in online environments” (Banet-Weiser & Miltner, 2015).
The people behind it often act as self-appointed vigilantes, loosely coordinating and bundling their attacks under shared hashtags to drown women out. The goal is consistent across these accounts: to silence women, discredit their reporting, and drive them out of the profession. This is sharpest where misogyny is folded into populist and far-right mobilisation, which makes women reporting on extremist networks particular targets (Posetti et al., 2021).
These patterns are widespread. In The Chilling, drawn from a global survey of 901 journalists, almost three quarters of the women surveyed reported experiencing online violence linked to their work. Enough for the report to call it “the most serious contemporary threat to press freedom internationally” (Posetti et al., 2021). The hostility itself is not new, women journalists have faced versions of it offline for decades (Posetti et al., 2025; Harris et al., 2016). What the digital environment has changed is its scale and immediacy, which make it more constant and harder to escape.
Crucially, online harassment does not stay online. Digital abuse can spill into physical attacks, and offline incidents can reignite online campaigns, each feeding the other and raising the overall risk. The attacks are also increasingly networked and, in some cases, connected to state actors, which places them beyond the reach of any single platform’s controls (Posetti et al., 2021).
Germany shows the same dynamic in a national setting. Rediske et al. (2026) describes a press-freedom landscape under strain from physical attacks, online harassment, and political pressure, with policy responses lagging. In 2025, reporters covering right-wing extremist circles were repeatedly obstructed, shoved, spat on, and physically attacked, often in coordinated actions that grew out of group dynamics. The intrusion into private life is clearest locally. In the ECPMF/BDZV study of local journalism, two-thirds of those surveyed reported physical attacks, including violence and death threats sent to their home addresses.
SQ2: How do early-career female journalists in Germany experience online harassment?
Sexual fantasies, questioning of their integrity, drinks thrown at their car: the women in this study experience harassment in very different amounts. Yet they all receive it in almost the same way: as gendered, as normal, and as part of a wider social problem that reaches beyond journalism.
Of the seven women interviewed, five had experienced some form of harassment. Two had not experienced it first-hand but had seen it online or happening to colleagues. Their experiences span a wide scale. One journalist presented her first on-camera report, filmed with a hidden camera, about nightlife in Germany. After she uploaded the video, the YouTube comments filled with threats about what people would do to her in the street, and with sexual fantasies, including rape. Another participant was targeted over her appearance: her direct messages included “Is this supposed to be a woman?”, commenting about her short hair and her earrings.
Harassment does not stay online. Another interviewee was repeatedly confronted with sexist comments while covering sports, such as “You forgot to ask for my number?” or “Was there no man available?”. At work, an older male colleague kept texting her and asking her out, even after she said no repeatedly. During a press conference he harassed her physically, touching her near her private parts while pretending to look at the press card attached to her trousers.
The same gendered targeting also appears second-hand. One interviewee, who managed the social media of a children’s programme, saw a female presenter judged for wearing a red summer dress. People complained repeatedly about the presenter’s make-up and even produced a deepfake that smeared her as too left-wing.
Different as these accounts are, they compare. For some participants the abuse was strongly gendered, from the humiliation of short hair to the fantasies of rape and assault, whether experienced first-hand or witnessed in others. A second kind of hostility was not personal or gendered at all. The interviews also made clear that hostility is generated not only by being a woman in journalism, but by being a journalist in general. One participant drove a branded car during her internship; alone in it, she had drinks thrown at the vehicle and noted that people were triggered because of the brand name.
The topics a journalist covers also shape the hostility they draw. One participant and her team would drop themes likely to attract heavy hate, such as LGBTQ+ stories, or would post them early in the week rather than close to the weekend. That way they had time to moderate comments that would arise. The same appeared in a fact-check on migration: the comments did not attack the journalist personally but accused the outlet of spreading false information.
Nearly all participants noted that men do not face the same harassment as women. The tone is different: men are criticised for their performance, such as talking too fast, while women are picked on for their looks or clothes. Women are targeted for being women. The journalist who received threats on YouTube checked the comment sections under her male colleagues’ videos. Under those videos, she found people calling a man “stupid,” but “not a single comment about their body or anything sexual”. Another participant observed that when a woman presenter makes a mistake, she is “hated so much more.”
Still, one participant read the hostility she received as media hostility rather than gendered – a reminder that the two are not the same.
In response to these experiences, the participants set coping mechanisms and defensive strategies in motion. Such as deleting a public Instagram account, stepping back from on-camera work, or dressing more neutrally. Some avoided topics likely to generate hate. As one put it, “I want to present myself, but I also don’t want to, because I’m scared. I think a lot about what I post”. These self-protective changes are the chilling effect defined earlier in this research. By withdrawing from an online presence or by not writing on certain topics, the journalists refrain from doing part of their work. More broadly, most participants had become careful about what they post and keeping accounts private. Separating their professional and private selves or thinking twice before posting.
SQ3: How equipped do they feel to handle it?
The interviewees were not prepared for harassment. What little preparation existed, covering online and physical risks in general, stopped short of the gendered and personal side. This left none of the interviewees equipped for harassment aimed at them as women, rather than at their work.
Most interviewees answered “no” when asked whether they had been prepared for the possibility of harassment: not by their education, their employer, or their peers. As one put it: “They told me that when I go out into the streets people could be rude, but that was it”. What stood out was a gender-shaped hole in their training. Two interviewees said they had felt partially prepared, through a course on social-media abuse in general, but, as one noted, “we never talked about how that experience might be different for a woman than for a man”. Her employer never warned her. A participant still in her studies described starting out feeling that journalism was a free environment in which she could say and write anything. A view she later revised.
Most employers offered no guidelines for handling or preparing for online harassment. One interviewee was trained to handle hate comments under videos, “but we didn’t have a workshop on how to handle it if the hate comments were about us”. More often, these women picked up coping strategies informally. The kind of thing, as one said: “you learn along the way”.
Support, especially from superiors, mostly came after the incidents and was often dismissive. The help that made a difference came from individual women and peers rather than from managers or formal systems. A common reaction was, “I’m sorry to hear that, but this is normal”. The interviewee who received sexual comments under her video was told by a colleague not to read them, and that this happens often to female presenters. When she raised it with her boss, he said he was sorry and gave her the number of the social-media director to have the comments deleted, leaving her to handle it.
Being made responsible, told to speak up for herself, is also what one journalist heard after she was sexually harassed by an older colleague. “As a woman, you should learn to speak up”, her supervisor said, even though that supervisor had herself noticed something was wrong. At a smaller paper, by contrast, her female colleagues took her seriously when she met sexism during interviews. They went with her to confront the men, and that, she said, made her feel empowered.
The same pattern recurred. Women turned to more experienced colleagues who had already faced harassment. Most were confident of support from colleagues if something happened, but none had been warned beforehand.
Taken together, the two questions meet at a single point. The strategies these women use to equip themselves are: going private, withholding their names, and avoiding certain people or topics. These are the same behaviours that make up the chilling effect. In the absence of preparation or reliable support, they make themselves safer by making themselves smaller.
Findings and data analyses
The findings come from a thematic analysis of seven semi-structured interviews with early-career German women journalists. The interviews were coded inductively, and the themes were then read through two lenses: gendered silencing and the chilling effect. These raw interviews and coded interviews can be found in the appendices.
Conclusion
This research asked how early-career women journalists in Germany perceive and experience gendered harassment, and how equipped they feel to handle it. They experience it in different forms but perceive it in almost the same way. None of them were prepared for it.
Gendered harassment is common. While each case is different, it always centres on the fact that the target is a woman. This issue starts in society and shows up in journalism, aiming to humiliate, silence, and discredit women. The journalists in this study were not ready for this kind of harassment, and support only came after the fact. As a result, they had to find their own way to cope, like deleting their social media accounts or avoiding certain topics and events.
Gendered harassment is labelled as normal, which places the responsibility on the victims, since there is no preparation. As a result, early-career journalists anticipate the possibility of harassment. This gives them less space to create, work on subjects they feel are important, or present themselves online.
Recommendations
Several recommendations follow from this. First, preparation for harassment should be built into journalism education and into newsrooms. It should address the gendered side directly, not only harassment in general. Second, support should be offered before incidents occur, not only after them. Third, the support that already exists should be made visible and easy to reach for those just starting out, as some did not know it was there. This would shift the responsibility away from the women themselves and focus on their surroundings. Still, if society is not willing to change its behaviour, gendered or harassment itself will keep being normalised.
Discussion
The harassment these journalists experience is gendered and linked to misogyny that already exists in society. The literature analysis showed that women journalists often experience online harassment: in UNESCO’s global study, almost three-quarters of the women surveyed said they had experienced it at least once. Germany has fallen on the press freedom index for a reason: there is intimidation, press freedom is under pressure, and there is a hate of journalists that translates into harassment, both online and offline. That it is linked to extreme politics is an extra point to flag. Still, the reason these journalists are not prepared is that the problem is ignored within society. It is treated as normal, and not mentioned, because it does not affect men. With no institutional safety net and with companies not taking responsibility for the individual, this problem will only rise.
The findings of this study align closely with earlier research, such as Posetti et al. (2021), and with the anti-media sentiment documented in reports from Rediske et al. (2026). This research adds the early-career angle and the lack of preparedness these women face when starting out in their careers. Yet there can always be more research done on this specific topic.
Performing this qualitative research with seven journalists, it is difficult to give a complete picture of harassment in Germany. Although we spoke to people from different regions: Baden-Württemberg and Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen). The research did not cover all regions and media companies. This is important because it could heavily change our data. For example, different media companies or universities might produce different examples or have different tools and workshops in place. The research also leans on one large study, Posetti et al. (2021). Although that study is highly regarded and covers a great deal, a future study should broaden this base. Even so, what the findings show largely corresponds with the literature analysis.
For a future study, it would be interesting to tighten the scope or to run a comparative study, for example, between writing journalists and TV journalists, whose exposure and experiences may differ.
Source list
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Chen, G. M., Pain, P., Chen, V. Y., Mekelburg, M., Springer, N., & Troger, F. (2018). ‘You really have to have a thick skin’: A cross-cultural perspective on how online harassment influences female journalists. Journalism, 21(7), 877–895. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918768500
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Posetti, J., Shabbir, N., Maynard, D., Bontcheva, K., & Aboulez, N. (2021). The Chilling: global trends in online violence against women journalists; research discussion paper (CI-2021/FEJ/PI/1). UNESCO. Consulted on 16 April 2026, from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000377223
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