Educate. Empower. Revolt

This analysis examines how citizen journalism in two very resource-poor areas in India is mobilizing communities and sparking movements demanding change. The Video Volunteers and CGNET Swara are two citizen journalism organizations that work in Central India, in areas whose human and development indexes are among the lowest in the country. Citizen journalism has been studied both as a consequence and as an instigator of social revolution. The Arab Spring movement and the case of Mohamed Bouazizi in the 2010 Tunisian uprisings are prominent recent examples. But citizen journalism in these and similar cases usually focus on the framing of martyr narratives where individuals and their protests or reactions against human rights atrocities make them “a symbol of the struggle for justice, dignity and freedom.” Through a content analysis of 400 news stories posted in the year 2015–2016 and qualitative interviews with 30 participants and a focus group of 15 participants, this study analyses how the Video Volunteers and CGNET Swara train citizens to produce news, the kinds of frame that are used to mobilize audiences, and encourage them to articulate outrage against the many human rights atrocities that occur in these areas. Findings show that citizen journalism succeeds because of the culturally resonant frames used and effective frame alignment that resonate with their main audiences and producers. The news produced and disseminated activates connective structures to facilitate collective action among audiences and communities who earlier had little means or recourse to address such issues. This collective action encourages participants to gather offline to fight for their demands and positively transform their communities.     

And Deliver Us to Segmentation

Non-profit news publishers, a small but growing piece of the news media environment, often explicitly attempt to build strong ties with their audiences. Many assume this approach differs from that of legacy newsrooms, which have historically kept the audience at arm’s length. In this article, I argue that this distinction has blurred. In-depth interviews with reporters and editors at a daily newspaper (The Chicago Tribune) and a local news non-profit (City Bureau) reveal that: (1) both organizations are pursuing a more collaborative relationship with their audiences; and (2) this pursuit is ill-suited for the traditional mass audience approach to news production. I conclude that journalists aspiring to work more closely with the audience find greater success when that audience is narrow to begin with.     

Covering Mass Shootings

Using data from a national survey of US newspaper journalists (N?=?1318), this study examines attitudes toward news coverage of mass shootings. Following Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchical model, the analysis also considers how individual characteristics, journalistic practices, and organizational factors influence these attitudes. Participants generally agreed that coverage had become routine. Journalists were largely supportive of coverage of perpetrators and were ambivalent about acknowledging a relationship between media coverage and a contagion, or “copycat,” effect. A participant’s age was generally the strongest predictor of attitudes toward media reporting on mass shootings. Findings also indicate differences in attitude according to job title, role perception, and whether or not a journalist had covered a mass shooting. A majority of respondents appeared to favor traditional, “neutral” approaches to coverage of mass shootings; however, journalists also wanted to see more comprehensive reporting, including coverage of solutions and community resilience.     

Where Do Facts Matter?

Print magazines are unique among nonfiction media in their dedication of staff and resources to in-depth, word-by-word verification of stories. Over time, this practice has established magazines’ reputation for reliability, helped them retain loyal readers amid a glut of information sources, and protected them from litigation. But during the past decade, websites, mobile platforms, and social media have expanded the types of stories and other content that magazines provide for readers. Doing so has shortened the time between the creation and dissemination of content, challenging and in some cases squeezing out fact-checkers’ participation. This study examines the procedures applied to stories in magazines and their non-print platforms, seeking to discern what decisions were made in response to the speed of digital publication, what effects these decisions have had, what lessons have been learned and what changes have been made over time. The results suggest that fact-checking practices for print content remain solidly in place at most magazines, if executed with diminished resources; however, magazine media are also exploring new processes to ensure accuracy and protect their reputations in an accelerated media environment.     

Measuring and Evaluating Reciprocal Journalism as a Concept

Building on research proposing reciprocal journalism as a concept underlying participatory practices and norms in journalism, this study examines how reciprocity might meaningfully be measured in a journalistic context. Using a survey of US journalists, this study adapts measures of reciprocal attitudes and behaviors to journalistic practices. It also develops measures of direct, indirect, and sustained reciprocity as applied to journalism, and explores the relationship between each of these reciprocal forms and one type of participatory behavior: interacting with audiences online. The results indicate that some measurements of positive reciprocity can be meaningfully translated to a journalistic environment and may help to predict forms of audience interaction. For future research, the findings point to the potential for forms of reciprocity to be explored as antecedents for other journalistic norms and practices.     

An Illusion of Interactivity

This study explores paternalism in contemporary data journalism, a hybrid form of journalism where parts of the engineering culture are blended with the culture of journalism. Technologists often question paternalistic elements in design, whereas journalists consider paternalistic decision-making to be justified as an inherent part of what journalism is. Based on a predominately qualitative content analysis of paternalistic elements in 31 data journalistic projects submitted to the Nordic Data Journalism Awards in 2013, 2015 and 2016, three characteristics of paternalism were found: controlling functionality, the illusion of interactivity and linearity. All three characteristics include several types of control over the audience control, embedded in the design, and as previous research has found that paternalism is often associated with negative effects, on the basis of journalistic choices in design and presentation involving technology, the problem is whether the audience begins to perceive data journalism as controlling, non-transparent or intrusive.     

130年前的民生新闻—《申报》的市井新闻

“民生新闻”作为新闻学的一个新名词始于2002年,而事实上的民生新闻早在130年前就已经出现,即《申报》的市井新闻。《申报》作为中国最早也是影响最广的市民报纸,一直以关注百姓生活为己任,其市井新闻也是今日民生新闻之鼻祖。对《申报》市井新闻的梳理以及对《申报》市井新闻与当时上海社会的关系的分析有助于加深人们对当下民生新闻的思考和创新。     

深度报道源流探析

深度报道从理念的萌芽到今天的兴盛，已经走过了八十年的历程，在我国新闻界从实务运用到理论的研究仍然方兴未艾。本拟从客观报道及其缺陷、深度报道的产生与源流、我国深度报道的历史状况等三个方面，全面梳理深度报道的源流以及我国深度报道的发展历程，以助于深度报道的进一步研究。     

Copyright and Commerce: The DMCA, Trusted Systems, and the Stabilization of Distribution

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has been criticized for granting too much power to copyright holders, offering them new technological controls that may harm the public interest. But by considering this exclusively as a copyright issue, we overlook how the DMCA anticipates a technological and commercial infrastructure for regulating not only copying but every facet of the purchase and use of cultural goods. In upholding the law in Universal v. Reimerdes, the courts not only stabilized these market-friendly arrangements in cultural distribution; they extended these arrangements into realms as diverse as encryption research and journalism, with consequences for the very production of knowledge.