Journalistic Visibility as Celebrity and its Consequences for Harassment

Abstract

This mixed-methods study introduces the concept of journalistic visibility and examines its implications. Drawing on diverse approaches for understanding the challenges of visibility labor and personal branding, and applying them to assessing the impact of routinized practices that can make journalists “local celebrities” in their communities, we explore how visibility may be connected to growing levels of abuse from hostile publics. Using data from 32 in-depth interviews and a survey of US journalists (N = 509), we find that the more time a journalist spends on social media platforms, regardless of the number of followers they have, the more likely they are to experience harassment. Furthermore, the more visible that journalists are—online and offline—the more harassment they experience. This is particularly challenging for women, who not only share more personal information on social media but also experience more harassment. Additionally, we find initial evidence that the frequency of abuse appears to be higher for journalists of color, those who wear religious garb, or those who may be transgender or gender non-binary—altogether pointing to a research agenda for the future study of journalists and safety, particularly in light of the intersectional nature of harassment.