| Abstract [eng] |
This master’s thesis, “These Topics Are Off-Limits”: Lithuanian Journalists’ Experiences of Self-Censorship and Professional Identity, examines self-censorship as a lived professional mechanism rather than a purely structural indicator. The study addresses the tension between formally guaranteed freedom of expression in a democratic system and recurring everyday practices through which journalists narrow, soften, postpone, or abandon public-interest information—often without an explicit prohibition, yet with very real anticipated costs. Self-censorship is defined as the conscious and voluntary withholding of factually reliable information that is considered important when no formal legal or institutional obstacle prevents disclosure. This distinction is crucial: ethical editorial decisions (e.g., source protection, harm prevention, professional standards) follow a logic of responsibility, whereas self-censorship begins where information is publishable in principle, but its projected “price” becomes too high. The term (self-)censorship marks a continuum between direct censorship and internalized restraint, while self-censorship is reserved for the operationally delimited phenomenon defined above. The research aims to reconstruct how Lithuanian journalists experience, reflect upon, and rationalize self-censorship situations, and how these episodes reshape professional identity, including the relationship to journalism’s normative democratic mission (the “watchdog” role). Empirically, the thesis uses a qualitative design: 15 semi-structured in-depth interviews (13 journalists and 2 newsroom leaders), conducted and analysed in 2025–2026 using thematic coding and episode-based (micro-event) analysis, informed by a phenomenological orientation to experience, temporality, and meaning. The theoretical framework is multi-level. At the micro level, Bar-Tal’s conceptualization provides criteria for distinguishing self-censorship from routine selection. At the macro level, Bourdieu’s field theory and Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model illuminate how ownership, advertising dependence, ratings logic, source regimes, and organized backlash (“flak”) shape what becomes sayable long before a single sentence is written. At the meso level, gatekeeping theory locates where restraint materializes in the newsroom chain. Noelle-Neumann’s spiral of silence conceptualizes audience pressure and reputational sanctioning, while Merleau-Ponty and Hochschild help explain how structural pressure enters the body as micro-pauses, tonal discipline, anticipatory avoidance, and a sedimented reflex of “better not.” The analysis shows that self-censorship most often functions as anticipatory self-editing—an internal gate activated before a statement exists—emerging through overlapping structural filters, editorial gatekeeping, and audience sanctions. Restraint is frequently normalized through rationalization: decisions are re-described as professionalism, neutrality, responsibility, or common sense, making the mechanism socially acceptable and less visible to the actor. In terms of professional identity, the thesis documents a shift from journalist-as-watchdog toward journalist-as-risk-manager, for whom the boundary between democratic mission and self-protection becomes a daily negotiation; the “electric fence” of discourse increasingly operates as an internal reflex, teaching thought to reroute before it becomes a sentence. |
