Nobel laureate Maria Ressa says research by Oxford institute can be used against reporters | Maria Ressa

Nobel peace laureate Maria Ressa has claimed Oxford University’s leading journalism institute is publishing flawed research that puts journalists and independent outlets at risk, particularly in the global south.

One of the world’s most prominent and respected journalists, Ressa said she resigned last year from the advisory board of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ), because of deep concerns about how it compiles an annual Digital News Report.

Its findings include rating Rappler – the outlet Ressa co-founded, and whose work was cited in her Nobel prize nomination – the least trusted media outlet on a list of those surveyed in the Philippines.

She had kept the decision to resign private but has gone public with her concerns this year after nothing was done to address them.

Ressa said the report, funded in part by Google, fails to take into account the impact of disinformation campaigns, particularly in countries where governments use their powers to attack free media. Nor does it reflect bias in tech platforms that have huge control over news distribution or the impact of disinformation campaigns.

“Last year I resigned from the board because I thought it was horrendous that they went ahead with it and that it was weaponised and used against us, at a critical time. Government officials were quoting Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism to attack us,” she told the Guardian.

“I still have decades of jail hanging over me. So to actually do this again, despite repeated warnings, is just unfathomable to me.”

The Reuters Digital News Report has been running for over a decade. It aims to give an overview of digital news consumption, based on a YouGov survey of over 90,000 online news consumers in 46 countries, over half in Europe, with India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Brazil among major markets in the global south that are now covered.

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, the director of the RISJ, said: “We deplore the abuse against Maria Ressa and the way that our research has been misrepresented. We have publicly pushed back against it and will continue to do so.

“We believe the methodology in our report – which covers nearly 50 countries – is robust. For example, it helps us document that people who rely on social media for news are more likely to be concerned about coming across fake news online.”

There are caveats in the report, which in its text discusses threats to media including Rappler. It noted that “some independent outlets respected for their reporting on those in positions of power are often actively distrusted by supporters of the politicians in question […] so scores should not be seen as a measure of the quality or trustworthiness of the content”.

Ressa said those nuances are discarded by Rappler critics who exploit the findings to attack the outlet as untrustworthy. “In the Philippines this survey is degrading what journalism is. The news organisations that try to stand up, to hold public discourse together, are punished under this methodology,” she said.

Her concerns are not just about the Philippines. The approach and methodology that make the report so dangerous to journalists in her country, also provide weapons to any government that wants to attack and undermine free media, Ressa said.

“We are not alone. This ‘study’ is like giving a loaded gun to autocratic governments trying to silence independent journalists not just in the Philippines but in countries like Brazil and India, where information operations and the lawfare are used to persecute, harass, and chill.”

“It admits that social media has taken over distribution, but it is not critical of biases that are implicit in social media and how this has turned the world upside down,” she said

Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia, which studies the impact of social media on journalism, said the report offered only a partial perspective on the contemporary media industry.

“[This report] is interpreted as being a comprehensive view of everything going on in journalism but, if you only take an audience view of the threats to journalism, specifically in markets where you do not have strong protections for a free press, you are at high risk of ending up with a distorted picture,” she said.

“This began as an Anglo-centric, Eurocentric report. They have been able to expand it to include more countries but you do have to question if it can be presented as something comprehensive. I would argue that journalism research should be advocating more strongly for journalism.”

“You also have to look at the funding for the research,” she added. Bell is also a director of Guardian News and Media, the Guardian’s parent company.

Oxford University’s own figures show Google was the largest single sponsor of the Digital News report and related Digital News project, providing £4.77m to fund research for the three years to 2023. From 2015 to 2020, Google provided £8.47m to fund the report and project, along with over a dozen other sponsors.

Ressa called for academics studying journalism to ensure their research was not used to attack it. “In the Philippines we can win our battle for facts, for democracy – but not if our perceived allies, the people who are supposed to be helping journalism survive, are killing us.”

RISJ’s Nielsen said the institute had included Ressa’s input in a review of methodology. It also said: “We have taken further steps this year to mitigate against the risk of abuse while also continuing to operate in line with the University of Oxford’s code on academic integrity in research, which explicitly prohibits the omission of inconvenient data from analysis and publication. Like all work in the public domain, our research can be abused.”