Fight, Flight, or Fawn: A Playbook for Challenging Authoritarianism Through Critical Journalism

Author: Acadia Bost

Field of Study: Social Sciences

Program Affiliation: Source Project Research Program

Faculty Mentors: Matthew Cole

Easel: 53

Timeslot: Afternoon

Abstract: There is a wealth of scholarship on journalists' power to protect against authoritarianism, as well as retroactive analyses of journalists' role in democratizing movements – but what about the everyday work of journalists in authoritarian and mixed regimes? This paper draws on qualitative data collected by field researchers, as well as independently conducted interviews with critical journalists in Russia and China. Initial findings point towards the effectiveness of a hybrid method incorporating collaboration with the regime while maintaining underlying oppositional sentiment, though more research is needed to test the feasibility and practicality of this hybrid approach. This paper contributes to the field of critical journalism by presenting a future-oriented approach – the comparative analysis goes beyond highlighting differences toward creating a multinational template based on the strengths and weaknesses of both countries' approaches to critical media.