PREPARING FOR AN AGE OF PARTICIPATORY NEWS

In a time of declining public trust in news, loss of advertising revenue, and an increasingly participatory, self-expressive and digital media culture, journalism is in the process of rethinking and reinventing itself. In this paper, the authors explore how journalism is preparing itself for an age of participatory news: a time where (some of) the news is gathered, selected, edited and communicated by professionals and amateurs, and by producers and consumers alike. Using materials from case studies of emerging participatory news practices in the Netherlands, Germany, Australia and the United States, the authors conclude with some preliminary recommendations for further research and theorize early explanations for the success or failure of participatory journalism.     

NEWS ACCURACY IN SWITZERLAND AND ITALY

Nearly 80 years of accuracy research in the United States has documented that the press frequently errs, but empirical study about news accuracy elsewhere in the world is absent. This article presents an accuracy audit of Swiss and Italian daily regional newspapers. Replicating US research, the study offers a trans-Atlantic perspective of news accuracy. To compare newspaper accuracy in Switzerland and Italy to longitudinal accuracy research in the United States, the study followed closely the methodology pioneered by Charnley (1936) and adapted by Maier (2005). News sources found factual inaccuracy in 60 percent of Swiss newspaper stories they reviewed, compared to 48 percent of US and 52 percent of Italian newspapers examined. The results show that newspaper inaccuracy—and its corrosive effect on media credibility—transcends national borders and journalism cultures. Nowadays, digitization offers new ways of implementing correction policies. Media organizations need, however, to adapt to these changes and to adapt their structures in particular to new forms of participative and interactive two-way communication.     

The History of Paper and Public Space

This article introduces a group of articles on the history of paper and issues of scarcity in the history of newspapers and news media generally. The articles discussed share a concern with the parallels between paper scarcities in newspaper history and spectrum scarcities in broadcast history. This introductory essay comments on the similarities and differences between the two kinds of scarcity and comments more broadly on the rise and fall of bottlenecks in media systems, paying attention both to how scholars have discussed materialities of media communication and how legacy news media in the digital era have encountered a new competitive landscape.     

THE JOURNALIST IS MARKETING THE NEWS

This study, based on case studies of three online newsrooms, seeks to understand the patterns of how journalists use social media in their news work. Through 150 hours of observations and interviews with 31 journalists, the study found that journalists are normalizing social media while also reworking some of their norms and routines around it, a process of journalistic negotiation. They are balancing editorial autonomy and the other norms that have institutionalized journalism, on one hand, and the increasing influence exerted by the audience—perceived to be the key for journalism's survival—on the other. In doing so, journalists are also seeing a reworking of their traditional gatekeeping role, finding themselves having to also market the news.     

Convergence Between Platforms in the Newsroom

Through ethnographic observation and content analysis, this study aims to classify the Al-Jazeera Mubasher (AJM) newsroom according to the Schantin model of newsrooms, describe the network’s convergence level based on the Dailey, Demo, and Spillman Dynamic Scale Model, and present a unique model elucidating how, specifically, convergence works at AJM. Based on the Schantin model of newsrooms, AJM can be classified as a second-generation newsroom, a “cross-media platforms newsroom.” Convergence among the different platforms of AJM is considerable, but still below full convergence level. Accordingly, the AJM newsroom can be classified into the fourth level of the Dailey et al. Dynamic Scale Model — “content sharing.” The unique AJM-specific model presented near the end of this paper depicts the ways in which different AJM platforms function and interact inside the newsroom, explains the degree of convergence between platforms, and classifies the newsroom in terms of its convergence level.     

News Diversity and Minority Audiences

The rapid growth of Hispanics in the United States, the parallel growth of Spanish-language media, and the difficulties that this population continues to experience in terms of important socio-demographic indicators such as education, immigration, healthcare, and criminal justice, requires research that investigates the ways in which Spanish-language news outlets are delivering the information needed by this group in terms of providing a public service and contributing to democratic notions of the press. Democratic theories of the press posit that in order for a democracy to function properly, all groups should be provided with news coverage that reflects the voices, concerns, and interests of their communities. However, it has often proved difficult for news industries undergoing rapid growth and increasing corporate concentration to serve audiences with diverse news and information needs. In order to examine the extent to which Spanish-language news outlets are providing a diverse range of news and topics relevant to their audiences, researchers used software that gathers Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds to archive, organize, and analyze over 10,000 news stories posted to 28 Spanish-language news websites during October 2012. The results show some diversity in the range of topics covered, but the widespread duplication of content across platforms owned by a small handful of media conglomerates found in the results raises important questions about the impact of increasing news homogenization in the digital age and the potential implications for minority audiences.     

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.     

CRITICAL FOUNDATIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR THE TEACHING OF NEWS JOURNALISM

It sounds like a laudable but vainglorious exercise to want to reconcile the diverse ways of teaching news journalism with each other, to show that they share common grounds, are driven by the same concerns and follow the same directions albeit in their own peculiar ways. Nevertheless, I believe that such reconciliation occurs when we ask what it is we are, as educators, responding to when teaching news journalism. I think we are responding to two things. First, a particular set of foundational questions which, when asked, force us to consider the rationale and purpose of news journalism itself. Second, bringing these considerations to light in the classroom where they can be cast into the setting of students who are actually practising news journalism itself. In this paper I argue that there are three foundational questions to which we, as news journalism educators, should respond and conclude that the classroom is a place where those responses are given dramatic practical expression. It is this process, undertaken in a self-knowing manner, which ultimately unites news journalism education no matter where it is taught.     

网络新闻互动表现及发展趋势——台湾地区报社、广播电台和电视台设置的网络媒体之内容分析结果

本文探讨网络媒体方面的互动问题 ,采用内容分析法及深度访谈 ,来探讨台湾报社、广播电台及电视台所设置的 45家网络媒体 ,所提供的网络媒体互动功能现况 ,及其未来可能的功能     

PRACTICE REVIEW: JOURNALISM ETHICS AND CONFESSIONAL JOURNALISM

Confessional journalism has become a staple of contemporary journalism, either in the form of first-person real-life experiences (often ghosted by journalists) or regular columns by journalists detailing intimate details of their lives. The form is now recognised as a distinct genre but what has not received attention, except as an internal debate within journalism itself, are the consequences of this form of writing for journalism and journalists. There is mounting evidence that editors are exerting pressure towards this form of writing, favouring particular types of writers. This review investigates the compelling ethical implications for writers and their subjects within the genre and argues that these implications are producing distinctive journalistic responses and strategies.     

“Arab Spring is Wake-Up Call for Kim Jong-Il”

This study explores how differently and similarly the liberal and conservative newspapers in South Korea framed the Arab Spring in their opinion sections. By employing a qualitative framing analysis of editorials and columns, it found that the ideological views of the news outlets themselves had a considerable influence on the opinion discourses. Compared to the liberal papers, the conservative papers more persistently linked the Arab Spring to South Korea's confrontation with North Korea and portrayed the North Korean regime as the world's most infamous and brutal suppressor of human rights. While the conservative papers rarely saw the Arab Spring as the result of West-led neo-liberal globalization, the liberal papers characterized the Arab Spring as being part of the resistance to “neo-liberalism.” This ideological divergence media made possible the presentation of a variety of views about a public issue within a South Korean context. However, it is a matter of grave concern that news outlets' ideological orientations can also impede the objective presentation of an international issue or event, such as the Arab Spring.     

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.     

Networking or Not Working?

This paper examines journalists' changing sourcing practices in the context of an emerging media ecology initiated by processes of globalization, digitization, commercialism and concentration. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube provide the means to access a more diverse range of sources, including civil society organizations and ordinary citizens. We developed a quantitative content analysis to examine to what extent Belgian news coverage showed signs of diverse sourcing practices during the 2011 uprisings in three Arab countries. We analysed a total sample of 1121 news items about the street protests in Syria, Egypt and Tunisia, in four Belgian newspapers (two popular and two quality dailies) and two Belgian broadcasters (the public broadcaster VRT and the commercial channel VTM). The analysis shows that ordinary citizens and non-mainstream groups are important news sources and that social media platforms are consulted relatively often compared to everyday foreign news coverage. In terms of inter-media differences, the findings show that broadcasters' dependency on video footage and eyewitness accounts is reflected in their use of ordinary citizen sources and amateur footage. Moreover, the analysis confirms that quality newspapers display more diverse and more innovative sourcing practices than popular newspapers.     

PREFERENCE,PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE

Many studies reveal that quality journalistic writing in the form of well-written feature stories is one of the few true journalistic tools that help newspapers in their struggle against declining readership. In Slovenia, however, there is little acknowledgement of this. Academic research illustrates that readers want well-written sophisticated feature stories, but they are offered poorly written elementary feature stories. One of the reasons for this discrepancy might be the tradition of the latter in Slovene press; besides few practising journalists are familiar with the theory of journalistic forms, and most of them are not aware of the advantages of quality, sophisticated feature stories. Feature stories are undervalued in Slovene press to such an extent that as a genre they are rarely examined in commercial readership surveys. Thus, the readers’ preference for them remains vague and ambiguous. Such surveys do not help the newspaper publishers determine what kind of articles their readers really want and in what form/genre they want them.     

Decisión 2016: Comparative Analysis of Journalistic Role Performance on Spanish- and English-language TV Networks

ABSTRACT

This study is one of the first to compare journalistic role performances of English– and Spanish–language TV networks during the 2016 U.S. primaries. Previous research finds that the corporate structure of Spanish–language media in the United States is looking more like its English–language counterparts and that Latino journalists share the norm of objectivity. Meanwhile, research suggests that individuals of different ethnicities turn to different communication channels and that this divergence can be explained by the degree of alignment in linguistic and cultural orientation. In this study, we therefore assess how linguistic differences of TV networks impact journalistic culture during the presidential primaries in 2016. As a crucial component of journalistic culture, we focus on journalistic role performance and find important distinctions: Findings reveal that the greater coverage of presidential candidates as sources on English-language networks have significant consequences for the roles journalists perform. Results suggest that the Spanish–language networks performed significantly more civic journalism roles than their English–language counterparts that perform an interventionist and service role. These differences are discussed alongside different audience-orientation of the networks that reflect deep racial and ethnic divides.     

Role regulation and normative expectations: the discursive erasure of Middle Eastern forced migrants in U.S. news outlets

ABSTRACT

This thematic analysis of 510 news articles – spanning the leftist-rightist ideological spectrum – examines media rhetoric surrounding President Trump’s 27 January 2017 Executive Order (EO) 13769 barring immigrants and refugees from U.S. resettlement. In this article, I examine how both liberal and conservative news media rhetoric reinforce respectability politics that create a hierarchy of victimhood for those affected by the EO. Interrogating U.S. civil society’s discursive construction of the forced migrant, I expose expectations for appropriate roles for these communities seeking asylum, though these roles are often veiled by normative U.S. mythology. As this analysis illustrates, the news media articles’ discursive erasure of Syrian, Iranian, Sudanese, Iraqi, Libyan, Somali, and Yemeni immigrants and refugees elide forced migrant self-representation and neglect the political/historical reasons for fleeing from their nations of origin.