Far-right attacks on the press as a spatial phenomenon: New study and guest article by Michael Krell et al.

The emergence of the far right in Germany has resulted in an elevated risk for the safety of journalists covering this beat. Attacks on the press have escalated considerably since the rise of large-scale anti-asylum protests, such as PEGIDA, particularly in East Germany. Despite the fact that the media has repeatedly expressed dismay at the severity of violence against the press by far-right groups, there has been little academic discussion of this phenomenon to date. This article addresses this research gap by examining the impact of the far right on journalistic work and the professional and everyday lives of journalists. The main finding of this study is that freelance and local journalists, who are typically positioned at the ›front line‹ of reporting , are exposed to a diverse array of threats from the far right. Utilizing the spatial concept of performative and affective territorialization, hostility towards the press is analyzed in terms of its function as a spatialized form of far-right power seeking. The findings reveal the existential threat posed by hostility towards the press at the individual level to journalists and thus to press freedom as a whole.

Michael Krell, Research Associate at the Chair of Human Geography, and his colleagues recently published their findings on this issue in the journal "Journalism Research". The article with the title: "»It determined my everyday life, it makes you just afraid.« A socio-spatial investigation into the effects of freelance and local journalism on the far right in East Germany" is available in German and English .

Michael Krell wrote a guest article in the weekly DIE ZEIT summarizing the results of the study and focusing on current issues. The article entitled: "Nur noch mit Pfefferspray auf die Straße" is available online free of charge.