Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Journalism Practice, 2025 (SSCI, Scopus)
Online harassment, is a real problem in daily life with offline effects. While harassment is not a new phenomenon in journalism, it continues to increase in intensity every day and is predominantly digital. Today, online harassment, especially against female journalists, has become a global threat to press freedom. This study, which adopts a qualitative research method, aims to analyze the online harassment experiences of 25 female journalists through in-depth interviews. According to the findings of the research, online harassment negatively affects Turkish female journalists. Female journalists face difficulties in both their professional and social lives. Due to online harassment, female journalists feel anxious when choosing news topics and sometimes practice self-censorship. Furthermore, female journalists receive threats of assault, rape, and death, and sometimes these threats extend to family members. This causes female journalists to feel fear and anxiety in their daily routines. Moreover, the normalization of online harassment by some female journalists may bring with it a risk factor that reduces awareness of online harassment.