In episode 5 of the Centre for Freedom of the Media podcast, presented by Dr Gemma Horton, we're taking a deep dive into Slapps - strategic lawsuits against public participation.

There's been a lot of attention on these legal cases in recent years, and activists in the world of media and press freedom say they are having a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

Slapps are costly lawsuits brought by wealthy individuals or organisations - or by governments - to stop journalists from investigating stories of corruption or other wrongdoing. The idea is they intimidate journalists or impede their work to such an extent and with such heavy legal costs, that they halt their reporting.

They are used in several countries but the UK's defamation laws mean it is particularly appealing to file a case here, and activists want the new government to take urgent steps to address them.

We talk to three Slapps experts working in the UK and abroad: 

• Fiona O’Brien - UK director of Reporters Without Borders 
• Susan Coughtrie, director of the Foreign Policy Centre think tank and co-chair of the UK Anti-Slapp Coalition
• Peter Coe - Associate Professor in Law at the University of Birmingham and a member of the Council of Europe's Expert Committee on Slapps

This is a podcast from The Centre for Freedom of the Media (CFOM), an interdisciplinary research centre hosted in the Department of Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield CFOM aims to inform and advise governments, policymakers and stakeholders internationally on threats to media freedom, in order to bring about positive changes to laws, policy and practice and to uphold standards of journalism safety.

You can contact CFOM on cfom@sheffield.ac.uk or on X at @CFOMsheff

Presented by Dr Gemma Horton

Produced by Anna Jones