The Scholarship

Reporters Without Borders Germany offers journalists from war zones and crisis areas the opportunity to take a break in Berlin for four months and complete a training program in digital security.

The program is funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises.

It aims to provide participants with practical knowledge and skills to protect themselves against digital threats such as surveillance or hacker attacks in their journalistic activities. In a second phase, with the support of the trainer team, the participants prepare their own training concept, through which they can pass on their newly acquired knowledge to colleagues in their home countries as trainers. In this way, journalists outside the scholarship program can also benefit from the digital security skills taught in the program.

For 2024, a total of six scholarships will be awarded to journalists from war zones and crisis areas for a period of six months.

What we offer

We cover the travel costs, take care of all visa-related matters, provide and pay for an apartment in Berlin for the duration of the scholarship, grant a monthly allowance of 1000€/month, free use of public transportation in Berlin and an extensive training program with qualified experts in the field of digital security. Furthermore, during their stay in Berlin, scholarship holders will be given insights into the activities of Reporters Without Borders, a globally-active journalist and human rights organization.

Main topics of the digital security training

  • Holistic security basics for journalists, bloggers, media professionals and citizen journalists at risk
  • Operational security including risk assessments and security planning
  • Online identity management for investigative journalists, including technical background and practical use of anonymization tools
  • Secure online communication concepts, technology and tools, including secure online conferencing for interviews
  • Password and account security and data protection on social media and other online accounts for media work
  • Device security for computers and mobile phones of journalists at risk
  • Website security for media websites under attack
  • Secure online and offline data storage including encryption for media files
  • Online information verification and Open Source Intelligence
  • Digital Violence (Online Gender Based Violence, Doxing, Impersonation, Trolling)