Beyond “Online Notice-Me”: Analysing Online Harassment Experiences of Journalists in Nigeria

ABSTRACT Journalists are increasingly reporting that online harassment has become a normative part of their lives, and that online harassment experience induces fatigue, anxiety, and self-censorship on them. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with journalists in Nigeria, this study reports that journalists experienced acute, chronic or perennial, and escalatory harassments of intense nature. The study indicates that acute forms of online harassments were dismissed, amongst others as “online show-off”, “online banter” and “online notice-me”. Thereby misrecognising online harassments as forms of efficiency-focused media criticism. Our data further show that gender is not a triggering factor to online harassment of journalists. However, political, and investigative reporting is seen as a factor. Journalists reported improved systematic intervention from media organisations and their individual coping strategies, including engaging in self-censorship among others, as coping strategies for online harassment. Suggestions for future research areas were delineated.


Introduction
There is bourgeoning evidence around the world that journalists come under harassment in cyberspace.The harassment of journalists in cyberspace includes diverse disparaging comments that accuse journalists of one form of transgression or the other.As increased distaste and distrust of journalism professionals and their products among many people drive a wedge between the press and the society they serve.Studies (Orgeret and Tayeebwa 2020;Waisbord 2020a) have started uncovering the patterns and effects of such cynicism and the results are concerning.The escalation of hate towards journalists is progressively becoming dark and dire.The escalation has been growing from meanness online to online harassment and sometimes to physical assaults.The impact of online harassment of journalists and the chilling effects it has on their journalistic products is troubling.For example, online harassment of press people is a growing phenomenon.These attacks can take the forms of harassing emails, blogging, web postings, doxing, and so forth (Waisbord 2020a).Many studies and non-governmental organisations' reports have detailed some of these remarkable online anti-press attacks in many parts of the world (Hiltunen 2019;Jamil 2020;Mong 2019;Orgeret and Tayeebwa 2020).
A set of factors that indicates the likelihood of violence against the press include cultural norms or the prevalence of violence in the society, politics, professional norms or the level of professionalisation in the media and how violent acts shape public opinion (Le Cam, Pereira, and Ruellan 2021;Nerone 1994Nerone , 2008)).Similarly, Holton et al. (2021) have discussed online harassment of journalists through three typologies: acute, chronic, and escalatory.These typologies point out the severity of the harassment.
In Nigeria, like many parts of the world, harassment of journalists is not new.It has been around in some forms for decades.Generally, harassment of journalists manifests in different forms such as killing, imprisonment, beating, disparagement, censoring, badgering, and harsh criticism of the profession (Le Cam, Pereira, and Ruellan 2021;Ogbondah 1991Ogbondah , 1997Ogbondah , 2000)).These manifestations are compelling, leading journalists and other stakeholders in Nigeria to express discordant evaluative comments about journalists and journalism in Nigeria.In Nigeria, voices that praise journalists and their trade as "revolutionising the system of human communication for good governance" remain strident (Ajayi and Adesote 2015, 50).
Journalists get criticised often for how they conduct themselves and the quality of their reporting.Some of these efficiency-focused criticisms were from journalists themselves.For example, an award-winning Nigerian journalist had once dismissed Nigerian journalists as "emissaries of distrust, rancour and pitiful pawns in the designs of godfathers" (Ololade 2011, 23).Other prominent Nigerian journalists are on record as slamming journalists not only as "lazy" but as being responsible for what they see as the "fall of Nigeria" (Olumhense 2015, 53;Utomi 2015, 19).However, online harassment of journalists in Nigeria has turned ardent critiques of journalists into their defenders.These voices defending journalists criticise social media platforms that enable these online harassment practices against journalists.A more scathing voice in this regard is that of Fredrick Nwabufo.After describing social media in Nigeria as "rogue jury where jungle injustice reigns", Nwabufo (2021) further insists that: Twitter in Nigeria in particular is a toxic locale-defiant to order and devoid of joy … I must say, very angry creatures take residence there.When you stray from the single narrative promoted by some compromised persons, you become an enemy penciled down for demolition … The social media which ordinarily should be a crucible for ideas, conviviality and seminal exchanges has become a belvedere where some people exhibit their hate and bigotry … (p.15) Nwabufo's outcry might have drawn impetus from some Nigerian lawmakers who, in the belief that social media will destroy Nigeria if left unchecked, have sponsored Social Media Regulation Bill and the Hate Speech Bill, (Elebeke and Odizuru 2019;Umoru 2019).Lai Mohammed, Nigeria's Minister of Information has even claimed that social media drives Nigerians into committing suicide and breaking their marriages (Vanguard 2021).The uninhabitable state of the online media space for journalist, propelled by online harassment of journalists in the space informed Nwabufo's outcry.The toxicity of the online space to journalists has forced researchers to commence studying coping strategies of journalists particularly female journalists (Holton et al. 2021;Zviyita and Mare 2023).
Studies have started evaluating coping strategies of female journalists' experience of online harassment (Bombi, Ncube, and Malacarne 2023;Burch, Fielding-Lloyd, and Hayday 2023;Walulya and Selnes 2023).However, these studies failed to highlight the difference between criticism of journalists and online harassment.What is lacking in journalism studies' literature thus far, is a critical examination of whether what journalists disclose as online harassment is really harassment and not criticism of journalists and media organisations.This distinction is critical as the former undermines the quality of journalism while the latter aims to better journalistic product and the journalism profession.With the increased online harassment of journalists, it is crucial that the motivating factor(s) is known or at least studied.Our search of the journalism literature did not yield many results in this area.What we found were studies that looked at motivation for state actors and not for ordinary people.
Thus, there is a need to conduct a study that extends first our understanding of online harassment of journalists.Second, further study needs to be conducted to know the coping strategies of journalists experiencing online harassment beyond those of female journalists.Third, to study journalists' perceived motivations for online harassment.Consequently, there is a need to compare the coping strategies of journalists (all genders), to those of female journalists as well as the perceived motivations for online harassment.These provide a compass to understand what journalists in Nigeria think breeds online harassment.This also extends our understanding of coping strategies of journalists' harassment experiences by bolstering and contrasting the findings from studies focusing on female journalists.
It is with this backdrop that we sought to better understand:(i) the current climate of online harassments of journalists in Nigeria, (ii) the perceived motivations of online harassment of journalists in Nigeria, and (iii) the coping strategies adopted by journalists in Nigeria.To achieve the above-stated aims, we conceptualise this study by adopting analytical techniques and typologies from Holton et al. (2021) and Nerone's (1994).

Conceptual Framework
The following survey of literature evaluates arguments on motivations for online harassment of journalists.The review also looks at types of online harassments and the coping strategies adopted by journalists who experienced harassment.The section concludes a synthesis of the key findings and arguments from the survey studied.
Motivations for the online harassment of journalists are ambiguous.Due to its complexity, it is daunting to assign motives to harassments targeted at journalists as it is challenging to identify when the audience are doing so on their own volition.This is because genuine grassroots activities can sometimes be replaced by orchestrated content by political actors to usurp the activity and bend it to their benefit (Vergani 2014).Scholars that examine online harassment of journalists have utilised a variety of definitions to discuss the phenomenon.While a consensus is lacking on how to define online harassment of journalists, two terms have consistently remained strong-harassment and attacks (Miller and Lewis 2022;Stahel and Schoen 2020;Zviyita and Mare 2023).There is relative agreement in the literature that harassment relates to unwanted behaviours against the press.Miller (2021) defines harassment as unwanted abusive behaviours toward the press.This definition classifies both violent and non-violent unwanted behaviour as harassment.This is crucial for this study as it attempts to see online engagements that were unwanted and abusive towards the journalists but perpetrated by individual audience members.Waisbord (2020a) describes cyberspace harassment of journalists as "bottom up, citizen vigilantism aimed at disciplining and silencing journalists" (Waisbord 2020a(Waisbord , 1031)).His study illustrates that online harassment threatens the safety and speech rights of the press and journalists globally.Most of the acts of violence discussed in Nerone (1994) were quite strategic.Harassment can be considered political although it may emanate from individuals who are not organised.It has been argued in most cases that, "violence against the press expresses some kind of judgement about the properties of public discourses" (Nerone 1994, 214).While Nerone highlights specifically antipress violence, his points are relevant for other types of harassment.Violence and harassment of journalists are not only intertwined but also usually have similar objectiveswhich is to silence the media or specific journalists (Löfgren Nilsson and Örnebring 2016).Holton et al. (2021) categorised online harassment of journalists into three distinct forms.Acute harassment -general verbal abuse.It is spontaneous and stops almost at the post.Chronic harassment are harassments toward a journalist sustained from one social media user or group of users over a period (Holton et al. 2021).Escalatory harassment is more personalised and directly threatening.This form of harassment moves from acute or chronic forms of harassment to direct threats against a journalist, professionally or personally or news organisations (Holton et al. 2021).Marwick (2023) has furthered our understanding with taxonomies of online harassment.For example, Marwick (2023) used different typologies to distinguish between dyadic harassment, that is when one person harasses another such as stalking or sexual violence; normalised harassment, in which name-calling or insults are common in online spaces like networked gaming; networked harassment, in which an individual is harassed by a group of people connected by social media.It has been argued that morally motivated networked harassment happens when a member of an online community accuses an individual of violating the network's moral norms and the accusation is "amplified by a highly networked node, triggering moral outrage throughout the network and leading to the sending of harassing messages to the individual" (Marwick 2021, 2).Nerone's (1994Nerone's ( , 2008) ) typologies of anti-press violence, though US-specific, can be applied to harassment of journalists globally with very little alteration.Nerone distinguishes between violence against groups, violence among individuals, violence against ideas, and violence against institutions (Griffith 1995;List 1995;Löfgren Nilsson and Örnebring 2016;Nerone 1994, 10-12).The last two typologies are relevant to the Nigerian case and thus will be discussed here.According to him, violence against a group refers to harassment and violence against groups whose bases are ethical/racial and gendered rather than ideological.One of the appendices lists 55 incidents during the 1840s and 1850s.Although Nerone (1994) did not view anti-abolitionists violence as racial, it could be viewed as violence against a group, African Americans and media houses espousing abolitionist views were targets of the violence.There was a chilling example of the editor of a South Carolina weekly, whose muckraking got his home bombed in 1987 (Nerone 1994;Nerone and Stevens 1995).
Violence against ideas refers to attacks and harassment against the press by some ideological movements such as anti-federalism, Catholicism, abolitionism, and labour union movement (Nerone 1994(Nerone , 2008)).This type of violence and harassment against the press was common in the 1830s and 1840s (Löfgren Nilsson and Örnebring 2016).However, journalists are still being targeted by ideology-based groups.For example, anti-COVID-19 vaccination movements, and far-right groups and anti-science, conspiracy theory groups (e.g., QAnon) and corruption enablers harass and perpetrate violence against the press and press people (Alade and Sanusi 2022;González de Bustamante and Relly 2016;Papadopoulou and Maniou 2021;Pedersen and Burnett 2021;Robie 2022).During COVID-19 lockdowns and protests around the world, journalists were harassed so much that some called it "the militarisation of the streets" while some explicitly noted that "there was the harassment of journalists by security forces" (Ndlovu andSibanda 2021, 1073).
With increased findings of online harassment suffered by journalists, one would expect to find many studies on how journalists in general cope with such experiences.However, the coping strategies of journalists experiencing harassment have been understudied.The few studies that were conducted in this area were on the coping mechanism of female journalists experiencing harassment-online, physical, and sexual (Koirala 2020;Martin 2018;Miller and Lewis 2022;Tandoc, Sagun, and Alvarez 2021).Some of the recorded coping strategies for female journalists include "limiting their online activities" (Koirala 2020, 54), and talking to their peers, organisation and the public (Tandoc, Sagun, and Alvarez 2021).Other mechanisms include "running, stress eating, and using alcohol" (Holton et al. 2021, 9), and suppressed emotions amongst others (Miller and Lewis 2022).However, there is a need to conduct an inclusive study of journalists' cyber harassment coping strategies and not the ones that focus on only one gender.Such studies will extend the literature by highlighting the differences in female coping strategies and similarities with the coping strategies of all journalists.
The typology of online harassment of press institutions refers to attacks by people who feel excluded from the news stream or those who criticise the press to contribute to the media performance or efficiency of the press (Löfgren Nilsson and Örnebring 2016;Nerone 1994;Von Krogh 2012).Conspiratorial outbursts against the press are examples of a non-violent manifestation of this typology.For example, in Nigeria conspiratorial allegations about the quality of reportage and lack of independence of the press particularly, media ownership structures have led to "increase in distrust of the press" (Uwalaka 2020; Uwalaka and Nwala 2023, 13;Uwalaka and Watkins 2018).Qualities of reporting and adhering to normative journalistic principles have been reported by the audience as solutions to trust issues in the media (Fisher et al. 2020).
Using interviews with 30 Nigerian journalists, this study interrogates the forms of cyberspace harassment that Nigerian journalists are experiencing and what resources journalists in Nigeria rely on to process and cope with such harassment.
To achieve this aim, the study sought to answer the following research questions: 1. What are the forms of online harassment (if any) of journalists in Nigeria? 2. What types and categories of reports lead to online harassment of journalists in Nigeria? 3. How do journalists cope with online harassment in Nigeria?

Method
A qualitative research design was adopted for this study.The inquiry reports on a mix of face-to-face and online semi-structured qualitative interviews of 30 Journalists in Nigeria.The first 12 interviews were conducted via Zoom and WhatsApp video calls while the remaining 18 interviews were conducted in person.Eighteen of the face-to-face interviews were conducted in Port Harcourt, Lagos, Owerri, and Abuja while the 12 online interview participants were from Lagos, Port Harcourt, Kano, Kaduna, Calabar, and Uyo.The semi-structured interviews were conducted in English and the interviews were audio recorded with the consent of the participants.See Table 1 below for information related to participants' locations and media outlets.
Although Johnson, Scheitle, and Ecklund (2021) highlighted that in-person interviews have clear advantages when it comes to producing conversation turns and word-densed transcripts, however, it has been noted that the ordinariness and informality of mediatedcommunication help counter the "pressure of presence" with remoteness and physical separation fostering a greater sense of ease (Weller 2017).In this study, we adopted both in-person and online interviews as highlighted above.All interviewees were asked demographic questions such as age, identifying gender, educational levels, and professional experience.Journalists were asked to describe instances of harassment, if any, that they have experienced online as part of their professional work.They were subsequently asked about their individual responses to such harassments as well as their work products that the harassers are trying to silence.They were further encouraged to share how they cope with and their organisation's responses to these harassments (Holton et al. 2021).
The researchers adopted a snowball sampling approach in which journalists were recruited through referrals.In this study, journalists were encouraged to recruit their friends and colleagues for the study.Utilising snowball sampling was important in this study as many journalists in Nigeria may not want to openly speak about their work and issues around how they are treated for fear of not offending their employers or be seen as "weak".It is personal to the journalists, and it may exacerbate the online harassment that they are already facing.This method allowed for their friends, that is, those that they trust to pitch the research to them having themselves participated in the interviews.These referrals helped the researchers to have increased interview participants.This is why the researchers de-identified the journalists and used, instead their interview number, location, and media platforms to attribute comments to the interviewees.The interviews were transcribed verbatim.After proofreading the transcripts, the data were moved into qualitative software called NVivo.The software then helped the researchers to retrieve code and build a conceptual network that was handy at the theme development and meaning condensation stages.The codes drawn from the data were large in number.Consequently, the researchers submitted the codes to some form of analysis that would consolidate meaning.The researchers adopted thematic and meaning condensation approaches to make sense of the data.This approach "entails an abridgement of the meanings expressed by the interviewees into shorter formulations" (Kvale 1996, 192).At its essence, the approach rephrases what is said by participants into just few words of a more succinct nature, but in which the meaning is not lost.Meaning condensation starts with meaning categorisation, narrative structure, and meaning interpretation.Its purpose is to allow the researcher to go "beyond what is directly said to work out structures and relations of meaning not immediately apparent in a text" (Kvale 1996, 201).In a nutshell, it allowed the researcher to add subjective interpretations based on what the meaning is perceived to be from the experience undergone during the interview.
Our interview participants comprised of 16 female and 14 male journalists.They work in mainly mainstream media with two participants working in online media platforms in Nigeria.The breakdown is as follows: TV, radio, newspaper/magazine, and online media channels.Twelve participants were with TV stations across Nigeria, 10 newspaper and magazine journalists, six radio journalists, and two online media.We adopted typologies from Nerone (1994) and Holton et al. (2021) in our analysis.We interrogated responses from our interview participants to ascertain the forms of cyber harassment that journalists are experiencing in Nigeria.We wanted to see if their experience was acute, chronic, or escalatory.We also wanted to see the motivations for the harassment or the topics that provoke harassment of journalists in Nigeria, and finally, we checked on the coping strategies adopted by journalists in Nigeria who are experiencing harassment.Three broad themes emerged in our data: (i) online harassment experience, (ii) motivations, and (iii) coping strategies.

Results
Those interviewed reported that they use digital media platforms both for professional work and daily personal use.The popular digital media platforms that interviewees professionally engage with include Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Nairaland.Interviewees reported experiencing online harassment of differing levels from their audiences.Our participants have either experienced online harassment or know someone who have been harassed online.These online harassments were prominent with television journalists.
We asked our participants to furnish us with insights about their online harassment experiences, our interviewees reported to have at least been harassed or know someone who has been harassed online daily.Our interviewees reported to have experienced online harassment frequently.The journalists reported that some of the online harassment that they experienced included derogatory jokes, adverse comments that accused the journalists of bias in their reporting or those that call them names.Our Interviewees said that they ignored their harassers online as one of the journalists puts it, "engaging with them fuels the harassment and elongate the experience".Another journalist noted that the upside of ignoring or not engaging with online harassment is that it "takes away their oxygen and would be supporters".
There was no noticeable difference between male and female journalists' online harassment experiences in Nigeria.Both male and female journalists reported online harassment that are sometimes minor such as name-calling, bad jokes, and critical view of journalistic reportage.An unexpected result of this study that emerged from the interviews is that beyond online harassment, male journalists reported physical assault, threat with a weapon, and damage of personal effects such as mobile phones, cars, and houses than female journalists.
Interviewees reported greater incidents of chronic and escalatory online harassment than acute harassment (Holton et al. 2021).This means that they reported online harassments that were serious and personal.These include posting or tweeting the colour, make, and registration of a journalist's car online, following, and insulting journalists in multiple social media platforms, threatening family members including the names and locations of their children's schools online.

Online Harassment Experience
Using Holton et al. (2021) categories, the types of harassment experienced by journalists in this study fell into three key typologies: acute, chronic, and escalatory.As delineated earlier, the last two types were more prominent than the first.Many of our interviewees see acute harassment as "online banters" and hardly report such to their news organisation.During the interviews, journalists kept referring to mild harassment or acute harassment as "online wrestling", "online banter", "Facebook show-off", or "online notice-me".They appear to believe that it is normal and not a big deal.When the participants were urged to illuminate the above assertion, participants noted, "these guys just want to be noticed.They will call me a 'goat' on Twitter and then will be the first to ask for my autograph when we meet in person" (Participant 17, Newspaper, 37, Lagos).Another participant referred to such online harassment as a "Facebook show-off".This participant asserted that each time I post a news headline on my Facebook and Twitter pages, they come harassing me about our boss, the owner of the station.They call me a "sell-out" and complain that I am bias.To me, that is just a Facebook show-off and banter.(Participant 29, TV Broadcaster, Lagos) Similarly, Participant 13 referred to those that harass her as engaging in "online noticeme".She explained, "this people are unsatisfied with my report.They call it 'fake news' and 'brown envelope reports'.It is just online notice-me.They should find something meaningful to do with their life".
However, other interviewees experience chronic and escalatory online harassment and appeared to be genuinely worried about the spread of online harassment and its impact on journalistic autonomy.Our participants reported these forms of online harassment as the perpetrators target journalists' characters or the perceived politics of the owner of such media organisation than they did with their reportage.One of the participants narrated how he and his colleagues were harassed online due to the owner of their media organisation.During the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria, his colleagues were harassed online (see Table 2 for sample themes).According to this participant, all the online harassments (chronic and escalatory) spilled over to offline and culminated in the physical burning of the TV station by protesters.He said: Two of my colleagues at TVC news, experienced online harassment during the 2020 #EndSars protests; while the station itself (name withheld) was burnt in October 2020.Also, my colleague and I experienced online harassment when we posted our headline about the Akwa Ibom State general election results news during the 2019 general election.(Participant 19,TV Broadcaster,35,Lagos,Nigeria) Another interviewee narrated how she and her colleagues experienced online harassment.Like Participant 19, she narrated how such online harassment spilled over to offline assault and the burning of the media office during the 2020 #EndSARS protests.She said: My office was under threat during the #EndSars protests that engulfed several Nigerian cities in October last year.We were threatened and harassed online and physically, and our office eventually got burnt at the height of everything.The protesters wanted us to report the events with sympathy for them as opposed to an objective, fact-based reportage of the protests.(Participant 29, TV Broadcaster, 30, Lagos, Nigeria) The forgoing raises concern of escalatory harassment.These comments show online harassments that have moved from acute or even chronic forms to escalatory forms of online harassment such as a direct threat.In some instances, these online harassments spilled over to offline threats such as the burning and battering of journalists and their media organisations.Some of the online harassment threats to journalists as reported by interviewees in this study included threats to report a journalist to a politician ("I will tell my This was like the online harassment experience of another TV Presenter in Lagos.She recounted how she was harassed online: Oftentimes, people don't like it when their party or favorite politician doesn't get good reviews on the show.So, they sometimes respond to the online post or video with attacking remarks or they send SMS or private messages warning and threatening me.(Participant 6, TV Presenter, 40, Lagos) These comments show that online harassment of journalists is pervasive and cuts across all journalistic spheres.The number of journalists in our sample that reported online harassment, is concerning and exposes deep anti-press sentiments and vilification of journalists and their products (Cheruiyot 2022;Waisbord 2020a;2020b).Journalists that we interviewed reportedly experienced chronic and escalatory online harassment.
The online harassment exepriences that they reported were serious and sustained.The journalists reported that not only were they followed from Twitter to Facebook and then to Instagram, but also that offline threats became a reality.They shared how their online harassment spilled over to offline threats.Some of our participants did however laughed-off criticism of their journalistic work as "online notice-me".From the comments proffered by our interviewees, it appeared that acute online harassment was laughed off as efficiency-focused criticism (Von Krogh and Svensson 2017) or what is termed "criticism of standards of public or social responsibility" (Carey 1974, 244).Our data show that such online harassment crossed the threshold of efficiency-focused critical views.Dismissing such online harassments as "online noticeme" diminish and belittle the threats of such behaviour and misrecognises online harassment as mere efficacy-focused criticism.

Perceived Motives: Political Reporting and Journalism as an Institution
This theme relates to topics that motivate and provoke online harassment.Our interviewees indicated that Nigerians harass journalists online due to certain motivations.Some of the topics or groups that trigger harassment include political reporting, and journalism as an institution.Our interviewees reported that those who harass them online respond to political reporting whether in sports or mainstream journalism.According to many of our participants, political reporting triggers online harassment the most.Thus, for these journalists, reporting on politics is becoming difficult as any report that is critical of the ruling party or the main opposition party enrages their supporters who then engage in online harassment of the journalists.
This was the case for one of our participants.A TV Investigative Reporter in Lagos discussed how political intolerance fuels online harassments of journalists in Nigeria.He noted: Political intolerance is the major issue.Most people do not want to see issues from another perspective.Once you portray an issue that is different from their opinion, they pounce on you.For instance, on my Current Affairs program, the main guest is harassed on social media because he said something that they do not like or believe -he was critical of the ruling party.(Participant 8, TV Reporter, 37, Lagos) The participant elaborated with an example.He explained how partisans attacked journalists online just for critical coverage of their party or leaders.Participant 10, a 30-year-old TV reporter, contends that inability of partisans in Nigeria to understand the role of journalists as the fourth estate is one of the things that triggers online harassment of journalists.He further noted that "partisan thinking that we are for them or against them is the problem.They become angry when one reports the facts about their political parties and leaders".The interviewee continued, when my reporting is critical of one party, I am seen as a bad person, a biased journalists that should be taken out.It is like they are saying, "when your reporting helps my political enemy, you are my enemy".
Beside the forgoing, journalism as an institution triggers harassment.The institution is accused by political and social activists of elitism.They accuse journalists and journalism institutions of lacking editorial independence due to the ownership structure of some of the media organisations in Nigeria.This perceived lack of editorial independence and the suspicion that journalists are wealthy or acquire their wealth from working for politicians or political parties trigger online harassment.This suspicion that journalists have abandoned, as one of interviewees puts it, "the common man and now work and conceal politicians' failings from the public" is why online harassment of journalists has become relentless.
After discussing the perceived motive for online harassment of journalists, interviewees such as Participants 2, 3, and 7 reflected on some of the issues in the professional practice of their profession.They contend that journalists would need to reduce errors in reporting and eschew any bias that they may hold.They called on their colleagues to do better by "being as objective as possible" (Participant 2), "to present objective, truthful news and reportage" (Participant 3), and "to ensure fairness, and balance in media reports" (Participant 7).These introspective assertions demonstrate that journalists do not need to be harassed or threatened online before they can perform their duties or call out bad eggs in their ranks.

Resources and Coping Strategies
Our respondents reported specific strategies that they adopt in dealing with online harassment.Through this discussion, four sub-themes emerged from the responses.These sub-themes include resign to fate or develop thick skin, management encouragement, therapy, and self-censorship.Comments from Participant 8 relate mainly to self-censorship.During the interviews, Participant 8 noted that he avoids interactions online, particularly, when it comes to personal opinions.This sentiment was reaffirmed by Participant 10, who noted, "I stay calm and report the threat and I also refrain from publishing anything on social media".These comments show that journalists in Nigeria self-censor themselves to prevent online harassment.
Other participants noted that their organisations encouraged them to seek help as well as providing a culture of mutual encouragement among the journalists themselves.Participant 1 buttressed this point when he said, "I handle these threats through encouragement from management and colleagues".A participant explained, "my management is very supportive and proactive.They support me greatly" and that "my management provides me with health insurance and recently life insurance" (Participant 13, Newspaper Reporter, 30, Kaduna).Participant 6 explained that her colleagues and organisation "support me greatly".She went further to narrate how she was signed up for medical health insurance and "team clinicals".She discussed how they all "pour out our minds and anxieties during the clinicals".This contrasts with Holton et al. (2021) where news organisations saw online harassment as the problem of their female reporters.This finding reveals that news organisations in Nigeria are increasingly intervening and helping their staff members who are experiencing online harassment.
Our interviewees discussed therapy as one of their coping strategies.This is surprising as counsellor visits are usually low in Nigeria (Labinjo et al. 2020).However, participants reported to visit doctors, counsellors, and therapists.Participant 30 explained, "I cope by seeing life-coaches and counselors".Similarly, Participant 12 stated that he goes for "psychological evaluations quarterly".Participant 7 noted, "I talk to trusted persons about my experiences, and I visit the doctor if required".What is clear is that attempts are being made to look after journalists by news organisations in Nigeria and the journalists themselves are making efforts to be strong and well.This is a surprising but positive result.
Other participants regrettably discussed how they resign to fate or develop thick skin as a coping strategy to online harassment.For example, Participant 29 said, "we endure it until eventually, we grow a thick skin".Similar point of view was highlighted by Participant 2, "it is something that we already know could happen before taking the job, so we always prepare for the worse while hoping for a safer environment" (Participant 2, Newspaper Reporter, 31, Port Harcourt).
These comments uncover that some journalists in Nigeria try to develop a thick skin rather than seek help.Although this is problematic, other studies (Chen et al. 2020;Holton et al. 2021) have discovered that journalists think more about developing thick skin to online harassment than seeking professional help.

Discussion
This paper drew from semi-structured interviews with 30 professional journalists who currently work at news platforms in Nigeria to ascertain the forms of online harassment that Nigerian journalists are experiencing and what resources that journalists in Nigeria rely on to process and cope with online harassment.
This study uncovered that online harassments experienced by journalists in Nigeria fell into three key categories as highlighted by Holton et al. (2021), acute, chronic, and escalatory.In this study, our interview data reveals that journalists in Nigeria did not view acute type of harassment as an issue.Journalists expected such online harassments and labelled them as "online banters", "online wrestling" and "online notice-me".This result indicates that online harassment of journalists in Nigeria is pervasive as certain online harassments were excused by the journalists as non-issue.This study further revealed that many of the acute harassments were waived off by journalists as criticism of journalistic products and practices (Carey 1974;Von Krogh and Svensson 2017).The implication of excusing and forgetting to take note of acute forms of online harassment, is that online harassment is underreported and unevenly examined.Journalists in Nigeria should be encouraged to report and take seriously these acute forms of harassment and begin to outline strategies to combat such online harassments.
Data from this study support the ongoing concern around chronic and escalatory harassment experiences of the journalists.These forms of online harassment were reported by journalists during the interviews.These forms of online harassments are usually sustained and move from one social media platform to another.In some cases, it spills over to offline.In this study, research participants alluded to several instances where online harassment spilled over and mutated into offline harassment.These types of online harassment are usually personal, with threats to the life and safety of the journalists.Our findings demonstrate that online harassment of journalists is commonplace in Nigeria.This finding reinforces finding from other studies where they uncovered that online harassment was far more widespread and rampant than is typically acknowledged (Chen et al. 2020;Holton et al. 2021).The idea that journalists in Nigeria downplayed acute online harassment as "banters" points to this underreporting of online harassment.Unlike some studies (Blumell and Mulupi 2021;Kundu and Bhuiyan 2021;Lewis, Zamith, and Coddington 2020;Mesmer and Jahng 2021;Tandoc, Sagun, and Alvarez 2021) that illustrated how online harassment of journalists are gendered, this study found that male and female journalists were targeted.In fact, male journalists received slightly more chronic and escalatory online harassment than their female counterparts in Nigeria.This contrasts with findings that discussed how female journalists experienced greater incidents of chronic and escalatory harassment than their male counterparts (Holton et al. 2021).The implication is enormous.The evenhandedness with which the perpetrators of online harassment engage with journalists in Nigeria could be more cultural than anything else.In many cultures in Nigeria, it is seen as a sign of weakness for a man to engage in a physical outburst with a woman.This could be why among the unexpected cases where online harassment morphed into offline threats, it was mainly male journalists that were the victims.This cultural dimension could explain the differences in our results with that of others (e.g., Blumell and Mulupi 2021;Gardiner 2018;Holton et al. 2021).
In this study, we also looked at what types and categories of reports led to online harassment of journalists in Nigeria.In looking at this, we were trying to examine the perceived motive of online harassment.We uncovered that political reporting as well as journalism as an institution are some of the triggers of online harassment.This starts off as media criticism but progressively becomes online harassment.It starts from acute and could get to escalatory forms of online harassment.This study shows that critically reporting on politicians makes the journalist an enemy of the politician.The above finding is also comparable to the findings of Kim and Shin (2022), who found that journalists who cover politics, experience greater online harassment.This is true of the findings of this study.It is evident that journalists are increasingly becoming targets of the public whom they serve and that those who cover politics are in greater danger of online harassment than other reporting beats.Besides, the opening of online comment sections in newspapers and other media platforms in Nigeria has increased online hate towards journalists as the lack of clear gatekeeping strategies in online news comments section has opened the floodgates of abuses and extremists' views that pose serious threats to core values of the news (Mabweazara 2014;Mabweazara and Mare 2021).
We further found that violence against the media as an institution and against journalists as a group is increasing.While previous harassment and censorship of the press historically was perpetrated by the government (Ogbondah 2000), there is no credible evidence connecting recent online harassments of journalists in Nigeria to the Nigerian government.Rather, evidence points to participants in Nigeria and activists' groups who appear unhappy with how the media is carrying out their duties (Hari 2014;Uwalaka 2022;Uwalaka et al. 2023;Uwalaka and Watkins 2018).
It has been argued that online harassment is a function of gender, race, and sexuality (Chen et al. 2020;Jones 2021).In this study, gender was not a triggering factor, neither was race.This means that perpetrators of online harassment in Nigeria do not target their victims due to their gender or ethnicity.However, our results demonstrate that they were targeted mainly because of their profession (journalists), and the news beats that they may have been assigned (e.g., covering a political event or politician).Online harassment of the press as an institution describes online attacks aimed at the media as an independent societal institution (Löfgren Nilsson and Örnebring 2016).From our result, perpetrators of online harassment are usually activists who want the press to add their voice to public debate or who feel that journalists are concealing the mismanagement of the country's resources by the ruling elites.Thus, they try to coerce the press into including them in the debate.
Outside the finding that online harassment of journalists on social media platforms is prevalent, this study extends the journalism studies literature by demonstrating that media organisations in Nigeria have methodical means to confront this issue.Our results show that journalists in Nigeria expressed how their media houses are helping them to cope with online harassment.Our data show that our participants mentioned how they seek solutions and take care of their mental health.This study illustrates how media organisations are developing strategies and policies to support their staff during online harassment.The study also uncovers how in many cases the journalists and their media organisations work synergically to seek solutions to excessive (escalatory) online harassment.
This study also showed that journalists reported self-coping through talking to family members, visiting their psychologists and doctors as another coping strategy.Some of the journalists reported feeling tired, burnout and looking for jobs in other sectors (Bossio and Holton 2021).Our interview results indicate that journalists in Nigeria are adapting their methods to work as a way of minimising the possibilities of online harassment.To appear unbiased and to minimise the chances of online harassment, journalists in Nigeria are refusing to report on dicey political topics and are engaging in "strategic ritual" (Tuchman 1972) form of objectivity.This happens when journalists assume an unquestionable vantage point to repel claims of bias, most times to the disadvantage of their reporting.
This study makes a trifecta theoretical contribution to the journalism studies literature.First, the study shows that journalists in Nigeria ignored acute forms of online harassment and waived such harassments as just "online notice-me".They excused acute online harassments by rationalising them as a type of media criticism that is focused on journalism efficiency and reportage (Carey 1974;Von Krogh and Svensson 2017).But ignoring and laughing-off of such online harassments instead of acting as a panacea to the problem, exacerbates online harassment of journalists.Second, this study demonstrates that some media organisations get it.Our participants praised their media organisations for their help and understanding.This contrasts with findings from Chen et al. (2020).Results from this study show that online harassment of journalists in Nigeria is not gendered and that the coping strategies were not gendered either.In this study, male and female journalists have similar coping strategies to mitigate online harassment.We found that our participants, like those from Tandoc, Sagun, and Alvarez (2021), Miller andLewis (2022), andKoirala (2020) approached their peers, organisations, and limited their online activities.This finding extends our understanding of coping strategies of journalists experiencing online harassment.Particularly as it relates to media organisations' methodic approach.Extant studies argued that media organisations are hopeless and hardly help their staff in issues of online harassment.This study shows that in Nigeria, media organisations work in tandem with journalists to not only support the journalists affected but are increasingly developing strategies for combating online harassment of journalists.
Third, results from this study improve the journalism literature by uncovering that political and investigative reporting as well as journalism as an institution triggers online harassment of journalists in Nigeria.While this contribution relates to some aspects of Nerone (1994) contributions, it extends our knowledge in this regard when it uncovered that political and investigative reporting exacerbates online harassment of journalists.This finding is important, a bit novel but not surprising.Politics is usually partisan and very competitive.A critical coverage of a politician could upend their electoral campaigns.Thus, it is not surprising that partisans in Nigeria target political and investigative reporters when their media reports are critical of their political party, and candidates.This level of online haranguing of journalists is not new.Carlson, Robinson, and Lewis (2021) argue that political expediency contributed to Donald Trump's assault on US journalists as "enemies of the people" (p.734).This study fleshes out how critical political and investigative reports trigger political partisans into harassing of journalists online.

Conclusion
This study demonstrates that despite some journalistic issues, online harassment of journalists in Nigeria is ubiquitous and insidious as our participants reported experiencing online harassment.The ubiquity of online harassment of journalists in Nigeria and their levels reveals significant safety issues for journalists in Nigeria.This study also uncovered that journalists who reports on politics and investigative reporters in Nigeria experience significantly more online harassment than their colleagues assigned to other news beats.This means that online harassment is worse for political and investigative reporters as a group in Nigeria.When Chen et al. (2020), Tandoc, Sagun, and Alvarez (2021), and Kim and Shin (2022) are perused together with this study, there is clarity on the intensity of online harassment that journalists are experiencing globally.This study shows that journalists in Nigeria are experiencing chronic and escalatory harassment.It further illustrates the strategic goal that harassment plays in Nigeria.The specific strategic idea that perpetrators of online harassment are pushing is to silence the journalists and to stop the press from reporting news stories that are critical of political actors in Nigeria.Unfortunately, this strategic use of online harassment is increasingly becoming successful in Nigeria as journalists have started engaging in self-censorship and self-moderation.
Our study also reveals strategies that journalists in Nigeria adopt to deal with online harassment.This study shows that some of these strategies include self-censorship, developing a thick skin, media organisations' encouragement, and therapy.Unlike Holton et al. (2021), this study finds that some media organisations in Nigeria are proactively helping their staff to manage these online harassments on an individual basis but not in a systemic way.However, our study, like Chen et al. (2020) uncovers that some journalists in Nigeria are still trying to grow a thick skin and ignoring online harassment.Such self-coping mechanism is unhelpful and may cause more harm.Due to these risky self-coping methods, this study argues that a systemic approach needs to be adopted at the organisational level to help victims of online harassment.This system-level intervention may include adding online harassment and how to manage it into the organisations' policies, procedure, and training.Education around online harassment can be organised by the organisations to mitigate the harmful effects of online harassment.One positive is that a good number of journalists are increasingly seeking professional help and talking about their mental health and online harassment experiences with their family members and close friends.
While semi-structured interviews offer robust data, this study depends on a small and unrepresentative sample.Our aim was to find meaning via our participants' comments and not to provide generalisable inferences.Future research should use a quantitative study to ascertain the extent and impact of online harassment of journalists in Nigeria.Doing so will help generate generalisable dataset from which a more robust inference can be drawn.Also, we suggest that a research study be conducted to evaluate online harassment of journalists in Nigeria that seeks audience perspectives.In this suggested study, researchers should make attempts at understanding from the audience what motivate them to engage in online harassment of journalists in Nigeria.Providing and understanding audience perspective will be a valuable addition to the literature and may give scholars the needed data points to recommend an overreaching and comprehensive solution to this online harassment phenomenon.

Table 1 .
Description of the interview sample.

Table 2 .
Sample themes.that you are an APC apologist in the closet.Your coverage is bias against my party, the PDP"), and online threats of physical battery.For example, one of our participants in Port Harcourt, explained how she was severely harassed online and threatened with assassination during the 2019 governorship election in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.She further narrated how the online harassment spilled over to her work environment when she was physically assaulted by party agents during the elections.She noted, "I We know that nothing last forever, not even online mob.With that understanding, I just do my job knowing that one day, there the ******* you see today, you see them no more.Participant 2, Newspaper Columnist, 31, Port Harcourt I try to remain calm and report the truth.It is very difficult.I have refrained from publishing anything on social media.boss