Journalism Facing Autocratization: Analyzing Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) as Instruments for Media Capture

This article interprets Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) as a strategy of media capture in the context of autocratization processes, and addresses them as a multidimensional phenomenon, beyond the juridical process that is at the core. This approach is applied to an exploratory analysis of the situation in three countries with different autocratization trends: Germany, Croatia and North Macedonia. Through focus groups with journalists, lawyers and activists, we trace the diversity of actors and strategies involved in SLAPPs. The discussion pays special attention to the initiatives for resistance against these attacks on media freedom, and proposes an analytical model based on the multiple dimensions emerging from the empirical data: juridical, political, professional, financial and social.