A new study has shown that newsroom journalists working with images of traumatic events and extreme violence, things that are regularly submitted to newsrooms, are at a higher risk of developing psychological disturbances such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The study was recently published in the journal JRSM Open (Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine) and reveals that journalists working with user generated content (UGC) or ‘live’ material, which exposes them to frequent, repetitive viewing of graphic violence and traumatic images, have an increased risk of developing symptoms of anxiety, depression, PTSD and increased alcohol consumption. User generated content consists of photographs and videos recorded by technologies such as smart phones or pocket cameras, usually submitted to the newsrooms by the public; UGC has become an important source of information for almost all new organizations.

Newsroom journalists have to work with and edit uncensored material containing distressing images in order to make them suitable for public viewing, frequently witnessing a variety of disturbing and terrifying images for prolonged periods of time. The new study shows that the frequency, rather than the duration, of a newsroom journalist’s exposure to photos and videos containing graphic violence from user generated content to be more adverse to their psychological health.

Three international news organizations took part in the study and provided researchers with the names and email addresses of 144 English speaking journalists who worked with user generated content. Of these 144 journalists, 116 journalists (80.6 percent) agreed to take part in the study. A special website was created to collect the data, with each participating journalist being provided with a password and an identification number to log in to the website.

The study included four questionnaires, with answers being recorded through the website. The first questionnaire consisted of four sets of data collection including questions about basic demographic data including gender, age, marital status, education level, number of years employed as a journalist and number of years working with user generated content. The second set measured each subject’s UGC-based emotional upset score by asking questions related to UGC based work such as how often they viewed violent images and the number of hours spent per shift viewing violent images. The third set collected data on the psychiatric history of the participants and the fourth set collected data about alcohol intake per week by the participating newsroom journalists. The second questionnaire consisted of 22 questions from the Impact of Event Scale-revised (IES-R), which closely follows the American Psychiatric Association’s criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The questionnaire looked at intrusive, avoidance and hyper-arousal phenomena. Participants were asked to report symptoms occurring during the last seven days only and related to their UGC work.

The third questionnaire consisted of 21 mood-related questions from the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) assessing the depression score of the participants. The fourth questionnaire consisted of 28 questions from the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) and was comprised of four subscales. Each of the four subscales, consisting of seven questions, reported symptoms of anxiety, somatic complaints, depression and social dysfunction, respectively. The subscale scores were added in order to have an overall index of psychological distress.

In terms of the exposure to the user generated content, forty-seven journalists (40.9 percent) out of 115 journalists (13.0 percent) reported daily exposure to the violent images. Fifty three (46.1 percent) journalists reported weekly exposure and 15 journalists reported monthly exposure. Thirty journalists, accounting for 25.9 percent, reported prior contact with a psychiatrist. The number of participating journalists whose General Health Questionnaire score exceeded the threshold was 40 out of 109, accounting for approximately 37 percent. Ten male journalists were reported to have excessive alcohol consumption, while the corresponding number for female journalists was found to be eight.

The frequency of exposure of the journalists to the user generated content emerged as an independent predictor of the severity of symptoms on the Beck Depression Inventory-II, Impact of Event Scale-revised, alcohol consumption and the anxiety and somatic subscales of the General Health Questionnaire. The duration of exposure per shift of the journalists to the user generated content independently predicted intrusive post traumatic stress disorder symptomatology only. The results also showed that neither the time period of a participant’s employment as a journalist nor the period of time employed on user generated content predicted any psychological distress indices.

The main finding of this new study is that the frequency of a journalist’s exposure to user generated content is independently and consistently linked to psychological health, whether it be PTSD, depression, anxiety or alcohol consumption. The duration of exposure to UGC appears to be less closely associated with a journalist’s emotional health, with the exception that prolonged exposure independently predicts unwanted and intrusive recollections of violence or other traumatic events.

This new study creates a task for news organizations, requiring them to take steps to decrease the risks inherent in viewing the user generated content so that newsroom journalists have less exposure to such traumatizing material.