Journalism Practice

Peifer, Jason T.; Partain, Laura P.B.

doi: 10.1080/17512786.2023.2202207pmid: N/A

This exploratory research introduces and evaluates the effectiveness of a “citizen forum” transparency initiative. Survey research shows that most U.S. citizens have a weak sense of connection to news organizations. Many U.S. Americans question the news media’s trustworthiness, believe that their news media sources undervalue their audience, and feel that news media do a poor job of explaining story production. Designed to address such disconnects, this research initiative involved conducting two day-long events in two different U.S. Midwestern towns. Inspired by “citizen academies” facilitated in other local civic contexts, the initiative featured in-person panels and forum discussions with journalists and journalism educators. Panel participants talked about journalism-related issues and engaged with audience-posed questions/comments. Employing survey questionnaires and focus group interviews, this study’s mixed-method research agenda was structured to examine the extent to which such citizen forum programming can serve to promote understanding of journalism, facilitate a sense of connection with local journalism, and bolster/sustain news trust more generally. Ultimately, this multi-pronged case study offers evidence of positive outcomes relative to citizen forums promoting “engaged journalism,” though not without caveats and challenges.

Peeters, Maud; Maeseele, Pieter

doi: 10.1080/17512786.2023.2197414pmid: N/A

Considering the precarious state of independent news organizations, this article seeks to understand alternative news media’s struggle for survival and success. By acknowledging their distinct habitus and nomos (i.e., independent, community-driven and engaged), we expand the methodological framework of field theory by deliberately positioning these news organizations as a field of their own in comparison to legacy/mainstream media. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with both editors-in-chief and staff members of five Flemish alternative news media, combined with a document analysis of their mission statements. We conclude by discussing how such an assessment of their dispositions and practices not only helps us rethink alternative news media’s contributing role to society in terms of trust, representation, empowerment and citizenship. It also opens up a discussion about the inequalities of symbolic and economic capital in highly concentrated media markets.

Bisiani, Simona; Abellan, Andrea; Arias Robles, Félix; García-Avilés, José Alberto

doi: 10.1080/17512786.2023.2191866pmid: N/A

In the last decade, data journalism has established itself as a thriving field. Recently, COVID-19 has boosted the demand for data-driven reporting to make sense of the pandemic, increasing the importance of studying the evolution of this rapidly evolving and technology-bounded practice. However, the number of efforts to map and systematically measure the data journalism industry are few. This paper analyses the findings of The State of the Data Journalism Survey 2021, currently the most extensive study on the characteristics surrounding the workforce producing and contributing to the data journalism industry. The outcome is an understanding of an expanding workforce with a geographically uneven distribution, which is still homogeneous in terms of tools and educational paths. Self-taught, resourceful, and multi-skilled, data journalists often work in isolation but share pressures of limited resources, time limitations, and access to quality data. The pandemic appears to have directly increased those struggles, although data journalists agree that the field’s reputation has ultimately benefited from it.

Lu, Shuning; Luqiu, Luwei Rose

doi: 10.1080/17512786.2023.2201582pmid: N/A

While online harassment directed towards women journalists are under wide discussion, the mechanism of audience intervention in stopping online harassment is less explored. Integrating bystander invention, ambivalent sexism, and social identity theories, we propose and test an integrative framework of audience intervention in online harassment of women journalists. Results from an online experiment in Hong Kong showed that type of harassment, ideological similarity between the audience member and the harassed journalist, and the presence of other responsive bystanders could shape the appraisal of harassment incidents and willingness to intervene. The study advances the literature by clarifying the contextual nuances and challenges of audience intervention in online harassment of women journalists. It bears practical implications on how to defend women journalists so as to protect press freedom, cultivate journalist-audience relationship, and enhance an inclusive and egalitarian online space.

Chen, Sibo; Roburn, Shirley

doi: 10.1080/17512786.2023.2197420pmid: N/A

Social media’s influence on journalistic norms and practices is a prominent theme in journalism studies. For small news organizations, there is not always a clear line between their public image and the online identities of their journalists. Focusing on such ambiguity, this article examines the integration of social media use and journalistic practice at The Local, an independent online news magazine based in Toronto, Canada, as well as its potential implications for community journalism. A qualitative thematic analysis of 300 tweets about the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto, posted by the magazine’s official account and its two star journalists, revealed a unique journalistic approach that prioritized hyper-local, data-informed, and affective storytelling over the traditional norm of journalists as detached observers and information providers. This finding sheds light on how journalism practices at The Local and other comparable digital news startups may contribute to the revival of community journalism.

Taylor, Ian

doi: 10.1080/17512786.2023.2200748pmid: N/A

Although there has been a great deal of research on professionalism within the context of journalism, much of this research is highly generalised in nature rather than focused on the reporting of specific events. Through a series of interviews with print and television journalists, this paper investigates the extent to which many of the tenets that are said to characterise professionalism in journalism resonated with and may have even guided journalists when reporting on the protests against Donald Trump when the then American President visited London in 2018. The paper explores how certain aspects of professionalism relate to the practice of journalism, especially when reporting on protests. Particular focus is given to investigating how journalists guaranteed their “detachment” from the protests, as well as what it means for the journalists to have practiced “balanced” reporting in this case. Although the journalists claimed to be “balanced”, protesters and protest organisers were still not treated as fully legitimate actors as was evident from how protest organisers were typically denied any opportunity to articulate their grievances in depth.

Okoliko, Dominic Ayegba; de Wit, Martin Petrus

doi: 10.1080/17512786.2023.2200744pmid: N/A

This paper explores the political dimension of mediated climate change communication and the role of climate journalists in it. While the increasing plurality of actors engaged in mediated ways of sensemaking around climate change is well documented, the role of journalists in facilitating engagement between actors is less clear, especially in Africa. Using an African relational framework (ARF) that emphasises inter-subjectivity and co-creative deliberation, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 journalists covering climate change in three African countries to gain insights into the political dimension of climate journalism. Results indicate that several interacting factors, clustered around the journalists’ role orientation, norm application and work environment, influence how climate journalism is practised in these African settings. One of such interactions relates to how the journalists’ “disseminator” role orientation, commitment to “objectivity” and “authority-order” norms, and resource deficits interact to orient the coverage of climate change in the cases towards elites and away from other subjectivities and place-based knowledge. Based on the insights from the relational media framework, the paper argues that climate journalism can benefit from a perspective grounded in the ability of people to “commune with”, rather than “communicate to” others.

Rajeesh Kumar, T. V.; Vethanayagam, S. Anand Lenin

doi: 10.1080/17512786.2023.2197416pmid: N/A

Though journalistic labour in India has constantly been evolving, news workers’ issues and concerns remain a relatively less addressed area. As a result, the democratic rights of the news workers in their working atmosphere have also not been addressed. In this context, this study explores the labour condition of television news workers in privately-owned native language news channels in the southern state of Kerala. The in-depth interviews with the working journalists, the former employees, and the office bearers of major journalists’ trade unions help to analyse to what extent the news workers have the freedom to express their dissent inside their organisation. The study found that the profit-oriented restructuring in the technology and labour process has embarked on far-reaching labour issues, which points to holistic problems that undermine the basic tenets of journalism and human rights. The issues such as weakened editorial boards, the inclusion of marketing representatives in the editorial, and the direct intervention by the management are destroying a democratic atmosphere in the newsroom. These scenarios intensify other democratic issues, such as the individual freedom of a journalist to express their dissent in the workspace.

Kiflu, Gebru Kahsay; Nigussie, Hagos

doi: 10.1080/17512786.2023.2191865pmid: N/A

This paper explored the practices of Habermasian Ethical Discourses. It focused on three Ethiopian television programs: the EBC's ETV Medrek, the FBC's Zuria Meles, and the LTV's Sefiw Mehidar programs. It aimed to examine the extent these programs constitute engaged debate and discussion that provided features of deliberative communication. Results showed that the televised debates constituted the Discourse Quality Index (DQI) criteria. Though there were certain incivilities, the debates were conveyed mainly with respect. The EBC's ETV Medrek and FBC's Zuria Meles debates successfully managed the deliberations as the debaters mainly were from academia, experts, and government authorities. But the LTV's Sefiw Mehidar debates created conflicting interests resulting in positional politics. Most of the debaters on LTV's Sefiw Mehidar were opposition political parties who came out with their party's initial motions. The findings of this study become central for public forum participants to adhering ethical and moral principles of deliberations. Also, it is valuable to recognize how the news media shape and construct public debate/discourse in Ethiopia.

Vella, Norman; Borg, Joseph; Lauri, Mary Anne

doi: 10.1080/17512786.2023.2199719pmid: N/A

All political parties represented in the Maltese Parliament own and run various news media platforms, including television stations. Though small, Malta’s media system became the subject of unprecedented international interest after the political assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, its most renowned journalist, in 2017. This study investigates this media system from the perspective of its journalists and editors, applying the four dimensions of the theoretical framework put forward by Hallin and Mancini, namely political parallelism, journalistic professionalism, the role of the state and the media market. Using a mixed methods approach, this study triangulates qualitative and quantitative data to understand the characteristics that journalists attribute to the media system in which they work. The results show that the movement of Malta’s media system from the Mediterranean Model towards the Liberal Model was adversely affected by increased advocacy by all media organizations together with endemic characteristics such as the pronounced role of political parties and the small size of the market.