Methodology used for compiling the World Press Freedom Index 2023
From 2022 onwards
The purpose of the World Press Freedom Index is to compare the level of freedom enjoyed by journalists and media in 180 countries and territories. The definition of press freedom used by RSF and its panel of experts to compile the Index is the following:
“Press freedom is defined as the ability of journalists as individuals and collectives to select, produce, and disseminate news in the public interest independent of political, economic, legal, and social interference and in the absence of threats to their physical and mental safety.
On the basis of this definition, the press freedom questionnaire and map are broken down into five distinct categories or indicators (political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context and safety).
The Index is a snapshot of the situation during the calendar year (January-December) prior to its publication. Nonetheless, it is meant to be seen as an accurate reflection of the situation at the time of publication. Therefore, when the press freedom situation changes dramatically in a country between the end of the year assessed and publication, the data is updated to take account of the most recent events possible. This may be related to a new war, a coup d'état, a major attack on journalists, or the sudden introduction of an extreme repressive policy.
The panel that has been assisting the revision of the Index’s methodology since 2020 has seven members:
- Thomas Hanitzsch, comparative research director in the department of communication studies and media research at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and a specialist in global journalism cultures and comparative methodology;
- David Levy, senior research associate and former director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and member of RSF’s UK board;
- Sallie Hughes, professor in the department of journalism and media management at the University of Miami, and a former journalist with the Miami Herald, Washington Post and Maclean’s;
- Herman Wasserman, professor of media studies at the University of Cape Town and editor of African Journalism Studies;
- Laura Moore, journalist, head of research and evaluation at Deutsche Welle Akademie, and author of “Measuring global media freedom” (Springer VS, 2020);
- Thibaut Bruttin, RSF’s deputy director-general;
- Blanche Marès, head of the World Press Freedom Index, after Nalini Lepetit-Chella and Prem Samy.
Scoring countries and territories
The Index is based on a score ranging from 0 to 100 that is assigned to each country or territory, with 100 being the best possible score (the highest possible level of press freedom) and 0 the worst.
This score is calculated on the basis of two components:
- a quantitative tally of abuses against media and journalists in connection with their work;
- a qualitative analysis of the situation in each country or territory based on the responses of press freedom specialists (including journalists, researchers, academics and human rights defenders) to an RSF questionnaire available in 24 languages.
Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, English, German, Persian, French, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian.
Press freedom map
The press freedom map offers a visual overview of the scores of all the countries in the index. The colours and classifications are assigned as follows:
- [85 - 100 points] good (green)
- [70 - 85 points[ satisfactory (yellow)
- [55 - 70 points[ problematic (light orange)
- [40 - 55 points[ difficult (dark orange)
- [0 - 40 points[ very serious (dark red)
Evaluation criteria: five contextual indicators
Each country or territory’s score is evaluated using five contextual indicators that reflect the press freedom situation in all of its complexity: political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context and safety.
A subsidiary score ranging from 0 to 100 is calculated for each indicator. All of the subsidiary scores contribute equally to the global score. And within each indicator, all the questions and subquestions have equal weight.
Political context
33 questions and subquestions
They aim to evaluate:
- the degree of support and respect for media autonomy vis-à-vis political pressure from the state or from other political actors;
- the level of acceptance of a variety of journalistic approaches satisfying professional standards, including politically aligned approaches and independent approaches;
- the degree of support for the media in their role of holding politicians and government to account in the public interest.
Legal framework
25 questions and subquestions
They aim to evaluate:
- the degree to which journalists and media are free to work without censorship or judicial sanctions, or excessive restrictions on their freedom of expression;
- the ability to access information without discrimination between journalists, and the ability to protect sources;
- the presence or absence of impunity for those responsible for acts of violence against journalists.
Economic context
25 questions and subquestions
They aim to evaluate:
- economic constraints linked to governmental policies (including the difficulty of creating a news media outlet, favouritism in the allocation of state subsidies, and corruption);
- economic constraints linked to non-state actors (advertisers and commercial partners);
- economic constraints linked to media owners seeking to promote or defend their business interests.
Sociocultural context
22 questions and subquestions
They aim to evaluate:
- social constraints resulting from denigration and attacks on the press based on such issues as gender, class, ethnicity and religion;
- cultural constraints, including pressure on journalists to not question certain bastions of power or influence or not cover certain issues because it would run counter to the prevailing culture in the country or territory.
Safety
- 12 questions and subquestions (⅔ of the safety score)
The questions concern journalists’ safety. For this purpose, press freedom is defined as the ability to identify, gather and disseminate news and information in accordance with journalistic methods and ethics, without unnecessary risk of:
- bodily harm (including murder, violence, arrest, detention, enforced disappearance and abduction);
- psychological or emotional distress that could result from intimidation, coercion, harassment, surveillance, doxing (publication of personal information with malicious intent), degrading or hateful speech, smears and other threats targeting journalists or their loved-ones;
- professional harm (for example, the loss of one’s job, the confiscation of professional equipment, or the ransacking of installations).
- 1 abuses score (⅓ of the safety score)
The abuses score is calculated from RSF’s tally of abuses against media and against journalists in connection with their work, by means of the following function:
where x is the weighted sum of the abuses in a country or territory in the calendar year prior to the Index relative to the decimal logarithm of the population size:
where:
- pop is the population size;
- each xi represents the number of abuses in a category (murders, physical attacks, etc.);
- each ki represents the coefficient associated with this category;
- n is the number of categories for which abuses were registered;
- K is the coefficient used as a mathematical device to create a score distribution ranging from 0 to 100. It is 0.15.
This function has been chosen for the following reasons:
- When no abuse against journalists is registered in a country in a given year, the abuse score is 100.
- When the number of abuses increases, the score declines and tends towards 0.
Our data gathering
- RSF’s staff constantly gathers information throughout the world about abuses against journalists in connection with their work.
- The information about journalists who are held hostage, imprisoned, killed or missing is updated every day on RSF’s press freedom barometer.
Choice of coefficients
The ki coefficients establish a hierarchy of the different kinds of abuses. Three main levels of seriousness are established:
- Abuses not contravening a non-derogable right under Common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions (coefficient of 1):
- physical attack or psychological aggression
- arrest (for less than 48 hours)
- ransacking, destruction, closure or suspension of a media outlet
- Abuses contravening a non-derogable right under Common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions:
- torture (coefficient of 25)
- abduction or enforced disappearance (coefficient of 50)
- detention (coefficient varying from 25 o 50, according to length of detention)
- murder (coefficient of 100)
Coefficients
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*House arrest is counted as detention in our data.
Population data sources
The country or territory’s population size is used to calculate the abuses score. The population figures used are those published by the World Bank, except in the following cases, where the source is specified:
- Taiwan: local Statistical Bureau;
- Cyprus: Eurostat;
- Northern Cyprus: World Bank figure for the total population of the Island of Cyprus less the Eurostat figure for the population of the part of Cyprus that is an EU member;
- Montserrat, a member of the OECS: local government;
The population figures used are the most recent available, namely 2021 for the 2023 Index, with certain exceptions.
Regional analyses, updated every year, shed light on the trends of each edition and provide additional information. The positioning and press freedom situation of each of the 180 countries in the Index are also detailed in country profiles, which can be consulted on the website.
Regional analysis
Survey
File with the survey in 24 languages