The questions asked for this component 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 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 resulting from, for example, the loss of one’s job, the confiscation or professional equipment, or the ransacking of installations.

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.