Scoping Review: The Landscape of Digital Risks and Cybersecurity Solutions for Journalists

The ever-evolving digital world impacts those far beyond the Information Systems (IS) field. Due to the nature of current day journalism practices, journalists are required to use digital resources to be successful in their line of work. Meanwhile, they are battling new and existing digital risks that target their work and personal lives and can lead to psychological and physical harm, reputational damage, and diminished freedom of the press. This article identifies the current landscape of digital risks that individual journalists face in their line of work to address areas in which cybersecurity and journalism can intersect. Based on our findings, online harassment and surveillance are the most identified and researched digital risks to journalists. Therefore, future IS security research could help further identify risks outside these two domains. A comparison is then presented between journalists’ digital risk management recommendations and prominent cybersecurity risk management guidelines, including ISO 31000, NIST frameworks, and a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA). The most prominent finding from the comparison is that cybersecurity risk management guidelines are process based while journalists risk management recommendations focus on specific action items. Lastly, the paper addresses whether cybersecurity and journalists risk management practices provide individual journalists with a comprehensive process to address their digital risks.