Adapting under attack: Online hostility and the communicative practices of female journalists in Azerbaijan and the Philippines

Journalists increasingly experience online hostility from various actors around the globe, yet little is known about how female journalists in repressive contexts respond to online abuse. Using a case study approach involving female journalists from Azerbaijan and the Philippines, we conducted a content analysis of approximately 50,000 social media posts, reflecting their Twitter/X data between 2015 and 2022. Our findings reveal that female journalists change what they post about, how much they post, and how they interact with audiences. Despite these behavior changes, they rhetorically reinforced the importance of their journalistic roles to society. This article therefore reveals how online hostility against female journalists in understudied, authoritarian contexts can result in repressing communicative activity and journalistic role performance, highlighting repercussions for freedom of expression more broadly.