Abstracts Category : Other

'Love and courage'| Resilience strategies of journalists facing trauma in Northern Mexico

by Stephen Choice

Mexico is widely known as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, according to advocacy groups and human rights organizations. The phenomenon is especially true in northern Mexico, where journalists have to cover violence committed by drug cartels that seek to hold on to turf in which to conduct operations to sell narcotics to the lucrative U.S. market. This study focuses on the types of trauma that journalists working in an environment marked by violence and threats experience, as well as the resilience they must employ to continue working as a professional there. Twenty-six print journalists in eight cities near the U.S. border have been interviewed to discover the types of trauma and the extent of resilience they have achieved, as well as the way they go about doing so. The study utilizes Shoemaker and Reeses Hierarchy of Influences model to examine trauma and resilience.