What Political Science Can Teach Us About the Killing of Journalists

A memorial for slain journalists in Mexico. Credit: Knight Foundation

We are nearly six months into the year and already nine journalists have been killed in 2017, including four in Mexico alone. That figure comes from Reporters Without Borders and is part of a larger data set that researcher Sabine Carey is collecting on the murders of journalists around the world.

Carey is a political scientist at Mannheim University in Germany, and co-author with Anita Gohdes of a new study about the killing of journalists around the world. Their research finds that the murder of journalists can predict the deterioration of human rights in a country within two years of the murder. Their study Canaries in the Coal Mine: What the Killing of Journalists Tell Us About Future repression is published in the academic Journal of Peace Research.

In this conversation Carey discusses her research and the broader political and policy implications of her findings. If you want to learn what social science can teac…