Preparing to publish: How journalists negotiate content restrictions in semi-authoritarian states

Abstract

Journalists act strategically in response to their political environments, using practices like self-censorship to avoid negative repercussions from powerful actors. But what does self-censorship look like in practice? Grounded in theories of policy response and media sociology, this study uses journalistic narratives to examine three strategies journalists employ to publish news while safeguarding themselves in semi-authoritarian contexts with restricted media freedom. Journalists choose among these based on several factors, including the relative power available to them in a particular organizational context, story idea, or angle. The analysis shows that self-censorship is more negotiated and less one-directional than the current literature suggests. The negotiation lens also shows how power dynamics can change on a situational basis, even in contexts where one actor clearly has significantly more power than the other.