Dr Sara Torsner

Sara’s research focuses on understanding risk to journalism via restrictions and attacks on the communicative capacity of journalism and the consequences of such constraints for collective associative civil life.

Sara’s current research builds on her doctoral dissertation entitled 'Profiling the Civil Diminishment of Journalism: A conceptual framework for understanding the causes and manifestations of risk to journalism'. Through this research Sara developed a holistic sociological approach, or risk profile, for mapping risk to journalism as a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon in various societal settings. The risk profile facilitates an understanding of aggressions against journalism as a form of civil diminishment which renders civil society fragile when it comes to its capacity to enable inclusion, mutual respect, and a sense of common meaning among members of society.

Sara is currently working together with Professor Jackie Harrison on a book on the relationship between the civil diminishment and the civil resistance of news journalism. This book draws upon Sara’s doctoral work and Jackie’s book The Civil Power of the News. The research explores the conditions of civil diminishment of news journalism as occurring through various forms of anti-civil power that distort the civil role of news journalism and the capacity of news journalism to 'fight back' against and resist such anti-civil forces of diminishment.

Other areas of research

Global UNESCO study on the Online Harassment of Female Journalists

Sara is a co-investigator on a UNESCO funded global study on the Online Harassment of Female Journalists led by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ).

Research project on monitoring violations against journalists in line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.10.1

Sara is co-investigator on an interdisciplinary research project that aims to strengthen current monitoring of violations against journalists in line with SDG 16.10.1. The project combines expertise from the Department of Journalism Studies and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield alongside experts in the field of human rights monitoring and civil society organisations that monitor violations against journalists in national contexts. The overall aim of the project is to develop tools that will facilitate the comprehensive analysis of shifting safety trends and contribute towards the building of a comprehensive evidence base to improve understanding of how and why violations against journalists occur.

Research on media and information literacy and the safety for journalists

Sara is part of a collaborative research project which looks at the connection between media literacy and the safety for journalists. The research is being undertaken with Silvia Chocarro from Article 19, Albana Shala from Free Press Unlimited under the auspices of the UNESCO Chair on Media Freedom, Journalism Safety and the Issue of Impunity.