The Political in Cultural Journalism

This article explores how nine Swedish cultural editors and managers in mainstream media institutions define cultural journalism and its political dimensions during times of increased digitization and media convergence. Swedish cultural journalism is aesthetic and political critique applied to subject areas (music, literature, etc.) and contemporary societal and ethical issues. Drawing on Zelizer we ask whether there is a common interpretive community of cultural journalists in different media regarding: (1) how they define their scope, (2) how they understand “the political” in cultural journalism and its implications for democracy, and (3) how they view media convergence and digitalization. We find that although editors/managers from different media share a basic understanding of cultural journalism as an alternative perspective to news, “the political” in cultural journalism is approached differently in the press and the public service broadcast media. Furthermore, due in part to structural conditions, they also see the effects of digitization differently, forming sub-communities on two counts. This study thus contributes new knowledge to a field previously focused almost exclusively on newspapers.     

Politicians as Media Producers

The emergence of social media raises new questions concerning the relationship between journalists and politicians and between news media and politics. The increasingly complex media milieu, in which the boundaries between media producers and audiences become partly dissolved, calls for new theoretical approaches in the study of journalism. This article reassesses central theoretical arguments about the relationship between journalism, sources, politics and democracy. Drawing on a pilot study of the printed press, it explores the increased social media use among politicians in Sweden and its implications for political journalism. The article suggests that power relations between journalism and politics can be fruitfully explored from the perspective of mediatized interdependency, a perspective that acknowledges that journalists and politicians have become both actors and sources through mutual interaction in online spaces. Furthermore, it argues that social media use has expanded journalism's interest in the private life of politicians, thereby contributing to a de-politicization of politics.     

Managing Conflict of Interest

When a journalist returns to political reporting after working as a political media adviser it can trigger concern about conflict of interest based on a suspicion of partisanship. Despite this, there is little discussion in the journalism literature about how reporters should manage this type of conflict when it arises. This paper reports on a selection of findings from wider inductive, qualitative research into the career transition from journalism to political media advising and back again. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted with 21 journalists who had moved between the two roles revealed that the media advisers took four main routes back to journalism in an attempt to manage the possible conflicts: “Escape”; Being “laundered”; Going “straight back in”; and “Cooling-off”. Based on these findings, this paper argues that a uniform approach to managing the transition from political advising to journalism could be useful in easing public concern about conflicts of interest.     

STRUCTURAL CHANGE AND JOURNALISM PRACTICE

This paper examines structural changes to Chinese news organisations in the new millennium and their impact on journalism practice, with a particular focus on the Xinhua News Agency. The paper attempts to understand the complexity of these changes and their implications for journalism, media and communications studies.     

转型期俄罗斯新闻业透视

自苏联解体以来的“社会转型期” ,俄罗斯新闻业经历了一场裂变 ,死而复生 ,却又命运多舛。具体体现在 :管理模式从垂直管理到平行管理 ,媒体性质从事业单位到商业机构 ,媒体角色从印刷媒体唱主角到电子媒体唱主角 ,新闻理念从马列主义到西方理论。作者通过对以上变化的分析 ,探明俄罗斯政治变革乃至整个俄罗斯社会运行的轨迹     

RE-EXAMINING “GATEKEEPING”

Journalists in the “new media” era confront important questions as to whether, or how, they adapt their professional practices to a new interactive on-line form that allows citizens to become involved in the news-making process. This paper seeks to re-establish the relevance of traditional journalism practices in the modern era and suggests that they will remain very much a part of the “new journalism” beyond the digital divide. It does so through examining how broadcast journalism interviews challenge authorities in the “public interest”, and suggests, in conclusion, that such practices remain undiminished by the technical, and accompanying social, changes that are driving the “new media”.     

AN EDUCATION FOR INDEPENDENCE

News industry employers want recruits to meet their stated needs for an ever-expanding range of skills, and their wishes largely determine the form of journalism education. But traditional news work and career paths appear to be dissolving. Boundaries between work in journalism, PR and information brokerage are porous. Careers on which journalism graduates are embarking, like those of many journalists today, are increasingly likely to feature consecutive and concurrent periods of long-term employment, short-term contracts, self-employment, working in temporary clusters on specific projects—and perhaps outside media, news and communication altogether. In the light of these changes, this paper argues that educators should look beyond the demands of traditional employers of journalists and strive to give students the opportunity to become entrepreneurial self-employed agents, who might compete with, as well as serve, other media organisations. The argument here is that students need to gain skills and knowledge to act as reliable analysts and brokers of information in ever-more complex social and political contexts, and, in doing so, develop creative, innovative, experimental and entrepreneurial approaches to journalism. The paper concludes by highlighting several strategies to encompass these objectives within a coherent curriculum, but does not claim that these suggested solutions are exhaustive.     

Making (Branded) News: The Corporate Co-optation of Online Journalism Production

ABSTRACT

As traditional news outlets decline and corporations cultivate publisher ambitions, brand journalism (i.e., native advertising and content marketing) has grown robustly. This paper examines and critiques the various ways in which those corporations have adopted and mirror news production practices, given the “techno-logics” of convergence culture and the political economy pressures of our media era. The research draws upon 28 in-depth interviews with brand journalism professionals who operate in the United States along with years of trade press coverage of the phenomenon. Findings illustrate how brand journalism is informed by traditional reporting fundamentals and techniques, the affordances and demands of online environments, and industrial shifts in media labor allocation.     

Citizen Photojournalism

In recent years there has been an explosion of citizen-produced content appearing in mainstream media outlets. Terms such as convergent journalism, citizen journalism and user-generated journalism are all widely used in an attempt to define this growing phenomenon. This paper explores the specific genre of citizen photojournalism (CPJ). It is argued this is a definitive genre of its own and has important implications for audience perceptions due to the narrative or “storytelling” role of the visual mage. An “action genre” approach is used to examine how this new photographic genre has been enabled within current technological, cultural, political and economic environments That is to say, that photographic production processes, undertaken by amateur photographers are examined to identify patterns of activity that comprise the genre of CPJ. Through a review of existing literature on how citizens work in the field, and the way the resulting photographs are used in mainstream media, I offer a conceptual structure to delineate recognisable patterns of activity that comprise the genre of CPJ. The strength of this approach is that it allows me to describe CPJ in a way that reveals how external factors and the practice of citizens taking photojournalistic images impact upon the final product published in influential publications including popular press, books, magazines and internet publications.     

Beyond the Four Theories of the Press: A New Model of National Media Systems

Work on categorization of national press systems in the last 40 years has been grounded in the well-known Four Theories of the Press. Whereas this approach has been strongly criticized by international scholars for its idealism and its poverty of empiricism, it is still widely taught in introductory journalism courses across the country, and few theorists have engaged in grounding the theory with data in international settings. Although journalism is contextualized and constrained by press structure and state policies, it is also a relatively autonomous cultural production of journalists negotiating between their professionalism and state control. This article thus proposes a new model incorporating the autonomy of individual journalistic practices into political and social structural factors-the interaction of which might currently more accurately represent press practices in the new international order. With an understanding of the background of the journalistic practices and state policies of 4 countries/cities, the multinational media coverage of a specific event is explicated in the light of the new model. This new model explains the journalistic variations that cannot be clearly revealed using a state-policy press model alone.     

2019年中国的新闻学研究

本文从近30种中文学术期刊(包括港台地区)遴选出在问题意识、研究视角、论证方法等方面较为创新的新闻学研究原创文章,并从媒介转型、新闻从业者研究、新闻与社会记忆研究、技术视角下的中国新闻业、作为公民与用户的受众、新闻基础理论研究、报刊史与近代政治以及新闻学科建设与反思等八个话题对相关文献加以回顾。研究发现,2019年中国的新闻学研究主要呈现为四个特征:一是围绕新闻行业生态变革的重要研究议题涉及面较广,比较亮眼的研究是以新的理论视角观照中国语境下的本土实践;二是对中国新闻从业者与新闻受众的不少研究表现出明显的社会学取向,阶层特征、群体分化、角色冲突以及管辖权成为主要的概念切入点;三是新闻理论研究兼顾对经典新闻理念的反思与新兴新闻实践及其理论化现状的引介;四是报刊史研究注重在专门史与近代政治史的脉络和问题框架中组织材料与观点,试图开拓研究视野从而避免内卷化的学术意图比较明确。     

驯化、人机传播与算法善用：2019年智能媒体研究

以人工智能技术为内核的机器人写作、新闻推荐系统、自动化事实核查、智能广告在2019年得到更广泛的应用,智能技术带来的理念重塑和实践变革在新闻界产生持久而深刻的影响。在人工智能与新闻界的深度结合已成为业界新常态的情况下,学术界对智能媒体的研究逐渐超脱出对实践样态的描摹,转而对新技术形态下人与算法的相处模式进行深入诠释,对算法的价值观风险、公共性与正当性等问题进行批判性反思。本文梳理了2019年国际国内的百余篇核心期刊上的智能媒体研究,对目前研究热点和潜在趋势进行解剖。我们发现,2019年学术界对智能媒体的研究主要集中在驯化、人机传播、算法善用、算法公共性和算法正当性这五大前沿主题。相比2018年学术界对智媒问题的全方位探索,2019年学术界对智能媒体的探讨逐渐进一步聚焦深化,出现诠释转向和思辨转向。一方面,学术界较多采用诠释经验主义范式,阐释人类在日常新闻实践中对算法的意义解读,还原媒体、平台、算法与用户之间动态的相处机制;另一方面,越来越多学者开始探讨算法对于既有的传播理论体系的补充,反思智能媒体在公共性、正当性层面扮演的角色,以及围绕智能技术产生的权力角逐。     

Political News Journalists in Social Media

Social media allow everyone to show off their personalities and to publicly express opinions and engage in discussions on politicised matters, and as political news journalists engage in social media practices, one might ask if all political news journalists will finally end up as self-promoting political pundits. This study examines the way political news journalists use social media and how these practices might challenge journalistic norms related to professional distance and neutrality. The study uses cluster analysis and detects five user types among political news journalists: the sceptics, the networkers, the two-faced, the opiners, and the sparks. The study finds, among other things, a sharp divide between the way political reporters and political commentators use social media. Very few reporters are comfortable sharing political opinions or blurring the boundaries between the personal and the professional, indicating that traditional journalistic norms still stand in political news journalism.     

Conversing Ethics in India’s News Media

This paper identifies the significant ethical challenges expressed by journalists and editors working in media companies in the city of Hyderabad, India. Keeping those dilemmas and challenges in mind, the authors propose economist and Noble laureate Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach as a theoretical outline for the development of future journalism ethics curricula. The major challenges described by the journalists and editors were cross-media ownership, which fosters a political economy focused on revenue generation rather than journalism for public good; problems with the publication of inaccurate information, which are now precipitated by the omnipresence of social media; and a culture of “democratic deficit” where journalists find it increasingly difficult to practice journalism safely and to report about poverty, corruption, crime, environment, caste, and gender. The specific knowledge systems from Sen’s capabilities approach suggested for integration are the study and coverage of injustices in a democratic society; the focus on whether people have flourishing lives that give them the opportunities, freedoms, and choices they need; and economic and political freedoms that give journalists an understanding and appreciation for reporting on inequality and strengthening democratic institutions.     

The Internet and the Narrow Tailoring Dilemma for “Asian” Democracies

The Internet has become a medium for contentious political journalism in Malaysia and Singapore, two countries known for their enthusiastic adoption of information technologies as well as their illiberal controls on political expression. These alternative sites inhabit a regulatory gap within an otherwise closed media system. Internet laws in these two settings provide a degree of freedom that is significantly greater than experienced in print and broadcast media. This article tries to explain this anomaly. It argues that the Internet’s perceived economic value dominated the authorities’ policy formulation, subordinating the goal of political control that historically shaped media policy. When dealing with print and broadcast media, the authorities had been able to tailor their political interventions narrowly, such that these actions did not smother their economic priorities. In contrast, the Internet was not as amenable to narrow tailoring. The two governments decided to tolerate a lesser degree of political control than that to which they were accustomed. While the governments maintained the prerogative to mete out after-the-fact punishments against any offending Internet publication, they were less capable of imposing prior restraints or encouraging self-censorship-their more routine forms of media control. It is not argued that the resulting advantage for radical journalism was either absolute or permanent, only that it presented a sufficiently attractive opportunity for action.     

ONLINE FEATURE JOURNALISM

Although online journalism is still dominated by breaking news coverage, new genres are emerging that differentiate it more and more from old media journalism. This article explores the emergence of feature journalism in online newspapers. Through comparative qualitative text analysis of feature journalism in the US online newspaper palmbeachpost.com and the Norwegian online newspaper dagbladet.no, two widely different approaches to the production of feature journalism on the Web are uncovered and a critical perspective on the remediation of journalistic genres in online newspapers is elaborated. The analysis shows that both these approaches display a clash between discourses of traditional feature journalism and discourses of online communication. It further reveals that genre development in online journalism is a complex process marked by contradictions and inconsistencies and that online newsrooms are struggling to find solutions on how to differentiate online journalism from old media journalism.     

新闻美学论纲

本文主要从新闻美学的美学观基础、新闻美学的方法论基础、新闻美的内容凝聚与形式积淀等三个方面,对新闻美学这门集美学理论和新闻学理论于一体的新闻学应用学科进行论述和阐释,以期提供建立新闻美学演绎体系的基础理论,并使之胜任引导新闻事业走向更高层次发展的美学使命奠定基础。     

BETWEEN POLITICS AND PROFESSION

This article examines the key factors shaping the opportunities for feminist journalism in large, mainstream media organizations. It shows how journalists' notions about gender, different professional journalistic ideals, and feminist media activism advance or hinder feminist journalism at different levels of media production. The impact of these factors is explored further in the particular contexts of the post-authoritarian societies of contemporary Serbia and Croatia. While individual Serbian and Croatian pro-feminist journalists were often able to pursue socially committed journalism in their day-to-day choice of topics, sources and approaches, their opportunities to affect programme, departmental or channel policy were more limited. Such opportunities depended on a constellation of the following factors: the strength of women's non-governmental organizations' media activism; media management's support for gender equality initiatives and/or critical forms of journalism; and the broader political developments concerning gender and media politics in the two countries.     

Tackling Uncertainty for Journalism Graduates

As journalism struggles to adapt to technological disruption, journalism educators are searching for ways to prepare students for an industry in flux. Entrepreneurial journalism has been incorporated into university curricula as a solution, however the discourse and application lacks a theoretical basis. This article aims to address these gaps by clearly defining entrepreneurship, its theoretical principles relevant for journalism education and then outlining the trial of a Multidisciplinary Experiential Entrepreneurship Model (MEEM), designed to enhance graduates’ career aspirations through cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset. The MEEM trial was assessed using a sequential mixed-methods approach, consisting of survey data collected at the start and completion of the course and interview data collected two months later. The findings demonstrate that the theoretical principles underpinning MEEM not only enabled students to create a new media venture, but the skills acquired also provided a method for entrepreneurial problem-solving and innovating, which is valuable to students working inside or outside traditional news media. This paper contributes theoretically by outlining five principles of entrepreneurial problem-solving and providing a teachable method that can be deployed through an effectual entrepreneurship pedagogy.     

新制度主义视野下的新闻生产研究

本文从新制度主义的分析范式入手,探讨在有关新闻生产的研究中所运用的社会科学理论的最新进展情况。在同样将新闻视为社会建构的产物的基础上,新制度主义更强调嵌入于更广阔的社会部门和领域的媒介组织的政治和文化因素,认为新闻生产通常存在于被视为理所当然的、受文化认可的传统或制度中,由此说明组织对更广范围的文化规范及来自支配领域的压力的遵从。本文认为,新制度主义范式将制度变量引入了新闻生产的分析中,开拓了我们从社会学角度开展的一系列新闻研究,其对关键节点和时序划分等概念的强调,也有助于我们克服对新闻业自身发展的历史做因果直线式的"决定论"的偏向。