Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Fixers and Stringers (Fixers, Stringers, and Foreign Crews: The distribution of risks and emotions in crisis reporting)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-02-01 bis 2023-01-31
Reporters covering wars, conflicts, and crises often collaborate with local media professionals: local fixers, producers, journalists, and locally based freelancers. These local media professionals remain invisible while facing the most severe work-related risks and dangers. Some of these risks are well-known from previous research. The Fixers & Stringers project investigates forms of precarity that have been overlooked. It focuses on mental well-being and emotional labour of fixers and stringers working for foreign media in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine and on related - less obvious - forms of power circulating among media professionals working within the specific areas. The research is based on in-depth interviews with fixers, local producers, stringers, and foreign reporters and on online ethnography. Its goal is not only to refine our knowledge of media professionals who cover wars and conflicts but also to raise awareness of precarity, emotional labour, and mental well-being issues of those who are at home in war zones. Eventually, the project seeks to contribute to more ethical global journalism.
The research started with a thorough literature review and ethical reflections, followed by fieldwork. This fieldwork included a field trip to Ukraine, forty semi-structured interviews with local and foreign media professionals covering Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine, online ethnography, and a short field trip to Israel and Palestine. Although the fieldwork was delayed and limited by travel restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic and re-designed based on the security situation in the studied contexts, the researcher managed to achieve the intended results or their equivalents while focusing primarily on the case of the Russo-Ukrainian War. The research also resulted in several collaborations with different authors.
The main results achieved so far include:
1. Six published or accepted academic papers and book chapters:
• Kotišová J and Deuze M (2022) Decolonizing Conflict Journalism Studies: A Critical Review of Research on Fixers. Journalism Studies. Epub ahead of print 16 May 2022. DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2022.2074871.
• Kotišová J and Van der Velden L (2023) The Affective Epistemology of Digital Journalism: Emotions as knowledge among on-the-ground and OSINT media practitioners covering the Russian-Ukrainian War. Digital Journalism. Epub ahead of print 16 November 2023. DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2023.2273531.
• Kotišová J (2023) The Epistemic Injustice in Conflict Reporting: Reporters and ‘fixers’ covering Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine. Journalism. Epub ahead of print 15 May 2023. DOI: 10.1177/14648849231171019.
• Kotišová J (2023) The Emotional Gap? Foreign reporters, local fixers and the outsourcing of empathy. In: Pantti M and Mortensen M (eds), Media and the War in Ukraine. New York: Peter Lang. In press.
• Kotišová J (2023) Don‘t Be a Jerk: Guidelines for ethical and sustainable collaboration among reporters, fixers, and local producers covering warzones. In: Bradley L and Heywood E (eds), Journalism as the fourth emergency service: Building trauma and resilience training into journalism education. New York: Peter Lang. In press.
• Kotišová J (2024) Emotions in Digital Journalism. In: Eldridge S, Banjac S, Swart J, and Cheruiyot D (eds), Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies (2nd Ed.). London: Routledge. Forthcoming.
2. Two organized international workshops, 'Fieldwork that breaks your heart' (Amsterdam, 1 July 2022) and 'Covering Russia’s War on Ukraine: Local Media Professionals and Open-Source Investigators' (Amsterdam, 12-13 October 2023).
3. Eight invited speeches, one keynote speech, and six paper presentations delivered at diverse European universities and academic conferences throughout 2021, 2022, and 2023.
The project also resulted in a collaborative website with multi-media content created by the researcher, her academic collaborators, and Ukrainian journalists. Moreover, the author carried out a number of dissemination activities for the general public, students, and media practitioners.
The main results achieved so far include:
1. Six published or accepted academic papers and book chapters:
• Kotišová J and Deuze M (2022) Decolonizing Conflict Journalism Studies: A Critical Review of Research on Fixers. Journalism Studies. Epub ahead of print 16 May 2022. DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2022.2074871.
• Kotišová J and Van der Velden L (2023) The Affective Epistemology of Digital Journalism: Emotions as knowledge among on-the-ground and OSINT media practitioners covering the Russian-Ukrainian War. Digital Journalism. Epub ahead of print 16 November 2023. DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2023.2273531.
• Kotišová J (2023) The Epistemic Injustice in Conflict Reporting: Reporters and ‘fixers’ covering Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine. Journalism. Epub ahead of print 15 May 2023. DOI: 10.1177/14648849231171019.
• Kotišová J (2023) The Emotional Gap? Foreign reporters, local fixers and the outsourcing of empathy. In: Pantti M and Mortensen M (eds), Media and the War in Ukraine. New York: Peter Lang. In press.
• Kotišová J (2023) Don‘t Be a Jerk: Guidelines for ethical and sustainable collaboration among reporters, fixers, and local producers covering warzones. In: Bradley L and Heywood E (eds), Journalism as the fourth emergency service: Building trauma and resilience training into journalism education. New York: Peter Lang. In press.
• Kotišová J (2024) Emotions in Digital Journalism. In: Eldridge S, Banjac S, Swart J, and Cheruiyot D (eds), Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies (2nd Ed.). London: Routledge. Forthcoming.
2. Two organized international workshops, 'Fieldwork that breaks your heart' (Amsterdam, 1 July 2022) and 'Covering Russia’s War on Ukraine: Local Media Professionals and Open-Source Investigators' (Amsterdam, 12-13 October 2023).
3. Eight invited speeches, one keynote speech, and six paper presentations delivered at diverse European universities and academic conferences throughout 2021, 2022, and 2023.
The project also resulted in a collaborative website with multi-media content created by the researcher, her academic collaborators, and Ukrainian journalists. Moreover, the author carried out a number of dissemination activities for the general public, students, and media practitioners.
The research goes beyond current conflict reporting research and enriches research on emotions in journalism. It shows that to understand current conflict reporting ecosystems, we need to unlearn the dichotomies present in (war) journalism research: reporters and fixers, foreign and local, objectivity and subjectivity, emotionality and rationality, precarity and power, and even journalism and activism. The outcomes are organized around the following argumentation line:
1. Research on conflict reporting needs more postcolonial thinking: more complexity and nuance. We also need to take seriously media professionals' emotional labour and the many risks to mental well-being faced by all media professionals covering war zones.
2. The collaboration among media professionals covering wars and conflicts is characterized by a perceived 'emotional gap' between 'locals' and 'foreign' reporters. This project shows that the different levels of closeness within the transnational teams are valued because they can lead to complex, higher-quality, ethical journalism. Local producers and fixers provide their contextual expertise, in-depth knowledge of the war and its history, and empathy with sources; foreign reporters provide perspective and transnational experience.
3. The affective proximity, usually associated with media professionals of local origin, is often a source of mistrust. Many local media professionals in war and conflict areas do not feel trusted by their foreign colleagues just because they are local, and, therefore, supposedly too emotional and biased. The research argues that this fear of bias is a case of epistemic injustice: a situation when someone suffers a credibility deficit based on skin color, gender, or origin. The research challenges the epistemic injustice by investigating how local media professionals living in Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine perform emotional labour. These media professionals manage their affective proximity and have thought-through strategies on how to compartmentalize their affects, opinions, and behaviour. As a result, their emotional engagement does not necessarily lead to bias and rather works as a form of embodied knowledge.
4. The project further explores how emotions become a part of journalists’ knowledge production by conceptualizing affective epistemology in journalism. The project identifies four epistemic affordances of emotions in (war) journalism. We also show that current conflict reporting forms alliances with discourses on human rights and justice and with legal fact-finding institutions, thus challenging the boundary between journalism and activism. The professional norms of neutrality, balance, and distance are being replaced by new standards in fact-finding, verification, and open endorsement of democratic values.
5. Mainstream war journalism can also learn from freelance reporters from relatively small, non-Anglophone media markets. These reporters, who find themselves in the middle of the conflict-reporting hierarchy of precarity, remain neglected by academic research.
Based on these nuances, challenging the typical hierarchies in war reporting, the project also provides guidelines for ethical and sustainable collaboration among reporters, fixers, and local producers covering war zones.
1. Research on conflict reporting needs more postcolonial thinking: more complexity and nuance. We also need to take seriously media professionals' emotional labour and the many risks to mental well-being faced by all media professionals covering war zones.
2. The collaboration among media professionals covering wars and conflicts is characterized by a perceived 'emotional gap' between 'locals' and 'foreign' reporters. This project shows that the different levels of closeness within the transnational teams are valued because they can lead to complex, higher-quality, ethical journalism. Local producers and fixers provide their contextual expertise, in-depth knowledge of the war and its history, and empathy with sources; foreign reporters provide perspective and transnational experience.
3. The affective proximity, usually associated with media professionals of local origin, is often a source of mistrust. Many local media professionals in war and conflict areas do not feel trusted by their foreign colleagues just because they are local, and, therefore, supposedly too emotional and biased. The research argues that this fear of bias is a case of epistemic injustice: a situation when someone suffers a credibility deficit based on skin color, gender, or origin. The research challenges the epistemic injustice by investigating how local media professionals living in Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine perform emotional labour. These media professionals manage their affective proximity and have thought-through strategies on how to compartmentalize their affects, opinions, and behaviour. As a result, their emotional engagement does not necessarily lead to bias and rather works as a form of embodied knowledge.
4. The project further explores how emotions become a part of journalists’ knowledge production by conceptualizing affective epistemology in journalism. The project identifies four epistemic affordances of emotions in (war) journalism. We also show that current conflict reporting forms alliances with discourses on human rights and justice and with legal fact-finding institutions, thus challenging the boundary between journalism and activism. The professional norms of neutrality, balance, and distance are being replaced by new standards in fact-finding, verification, and open endorsement of democratic values.
5. Mainstream war journalism can also learn from freelance reporters from relatively small, non-Anglophone media markets. These reporters, who find themselves in the middle of the conflict-reporting hierarchy of precarity, remain neglected by academic research.
Based on these nuances, challenging the typical hierarchies in war reporting, the project also provides guidelines for ethical and sustainable collaboration among reporters, fixers, and local producers covering war zones.