Public journalism公共新闻——A reply to critics对批评的回应

公共新闻运动在新闻学者和新闻从业者中是个颇具争议性的话题.它始于上世纪90年代早期,是对政府和公民、新闻机构和受众间日益扩大的分歧的回应.也就是政治选举中选民参与的下降,更普遍的说,是公民参与本地社区事务的衰退,这被视做公民普遍退出民主进程的例证.     

Perpetual development journalism? Balance and framing in the 2006 Singapore election coverage

This study sought to determine if Singapore's press model has evolved beyond the development model to take on characteristics of other press models. It examined balance and framing in election coverage in the Straits Times, Singapore's dominant English newspaper, over 16 days before the 2006 Singapore General Election. As expected under the development model, and contrary to expectations under the social responsibility model, we found coverage of the competing parties lacked balance, as indicated by more coverage with a more favorable tone for the ruling People's Action Party. In framing, we found game frames predominated over issue frames, as predicted by media intrusion theory, in which commercial media favor competitive aspects of campaigns as a result of following commercial journalistic values. This finding contradicts the expectation that development journalism would likely have more issue frames, since it emphasizes issues and policies, and suggests that some commercial journalistic imperatives outweigh development model imperatives in the Singapore press.     

Naturalizing negativity: how journalism textbooks justify crime,conflict, and “bad” news

This critical analysis of U.S. journalism textbooks from 1894 to 2016 shows how texts across decades have (re)constructed a discourse of damage through news values emphasizing and rationalizing conflict and bad news. Findings are reported in the context of literature suggesting that negative news values foster a distorted sense of social relations, increase fear, and depress civic participation. Literature also indicates that non-journalists often view news through less conflict-oriented, and more value-laden, frames, suggesting that journalistic values are not natural or inevitable but subject to change. The discourse in journalism textbooks can be a key site for understanding and influencing journalism culture. Constructive alternatives to the dominant discourse are suggested.     

The legend of Texas Western: journalism and the epic sports spectacle that wasn’t

This essay interrogates journalistic accounts of Texas Western College’s 1966 college basketball championship, a game in which an all-Black team defeated an all-White team. The analysis traces the evolving portrayals of the game over 45 years. In 1966 American journalists did not emphasize the racial aspects of the game and it was largely forgotten. Twenty-five years later, however, journalists reconstructed the game as a racialized legend, and this account evolved into an epic American narrative. The author argues that the epic portrayals, although aesthetically appealing, reflect problems with accuracy, appropriation, and commercial exploitation. The latter factor led to the legend’s motion picture adaptation as part of a troublesome “White Savior” cinema genre.     

Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model and the circulation of journalism in the digital landscape

ABSTRACT

Notions of circuitry are central to Stuart Hall’s conceptualization of how communities, cultures, and media constitute each other. This is very explicit in his encoding/decoding model from 1973. Hall here reserves the term “circulation” for a delimited process within a broader argument for a circular movement, or a “reproduction” of culture through media. In this broader view, however, Hall sees circulation as both technological and hermeneutical processes through which meaning and/or ideology move into and out of discursive form. The encoding/decoding text(s) refer on several occasions to “current affairs” but later applications of this model have somewhat neglected the sphere of journalism. This paper consequently situates Hall’s notions of circulation in relation to new modes of circulating journalism on participatory digital platforms. Given the status of Hall’s model, the overall goal of this re-reading is twofold: seeing Hall through contemporary issues puts into perspective key aspects of Hall’s thinking, while Hall’s framework in turn helps illuminate important characteristics of how journalism is ascribed meaning in a digital landscape. The paper ultimately argues that while Hall’s insistence on seeing the circulation of journalism within a broader circuit of culture is as important as ever, some of his main tenets and assumptions need to be rethought and supplemented in light of newer developments.     

Does China's outward focused journalism engage a constructive approach? A qualitative content analysis of Xinhua News Agency's English news

This study examines the rationalisation of the news frames of currency-related international economic interaction by analysing news articles from the ‘China Focus’ column in China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency. Thematic analysis of the main themes in the news articles shows dominant positive coverage of China’s economic development. Using qualitative content analysis, it also investigates the breeding of the ‘emergence’ of constructive journalism practices in China. It finds that Xinhua prioritises the frames of referring to solutions to the conflict and problem and mentioning the social and economic stability, sustainability, and prosperous development. The frames of moral judgement, conflict and its formation, and human interest are less applied in news articles. It bears elements of constructive journalism, but still needs efforts to make a clear division from positive journalism and Party journalism.