Resilience in Newsrooms in Times of Authoritarian Resurgence: We Went From the Sky to Under the Ground

Abstract

This article examines resilience as a framework for explaining how individual journalists cope in restrictive political environments, using Egypt and Algeria as case studies. Focusing on the everyday lifeworld of journalists, it investigates how their practices shape conditions of survival under unequal power dynamics. Drawing on semi structured interviews and life histories with a sample of dissenting journalists in both countries, the article explores the forms of resilience employed to withstand extreme pressures at the micro level. It argues that journalists deploy shifting strategies of adaptation to circumvent structural limitations while preserving professional gains achieved during previous periods of relative openness. Journalistic resilience manifests as pragmatic reworking of opportunities for “breathing,” far removed from the model of the heroic journalist defending freedoms at all costs. This reworking encompasses a spectrum of practices, ranging from “getting by” through adaptation, exit, silence to, in rare cases, radical voicing.