“Leave a Mark More Permanent than the Moment Itself”

Authoritarian Populism and the Challenges for News Journalism: A Discourse Approach is a cutting‑edge study of the practices of news journalism against the background of surging authoritarian populism. This book traces key challenges for news journalism when reporting on authoritarian populism or on topics (such as immigration and terrorism) that are typically leveraged by far‑right actors and platforms as a way of attracting media attention and boosting their popularity with national electorates. It also offers in‑depth analyses of how these challenges are responded to by news journalists in the actual, day‑to‑day practices of news production, as evidenced in the discourse of news. By placing qualitative, critical analysis of discourse at the heart of the systematic inquiry into authoritarian populism in the news media, this book applies a broad methodological framework for studying (a) political performances and their mediated representations, (b) the complex and, often contradictory, normalizing processes at work in the news media, and (c) the attendant challenges and critical tasks for contemporary news journalism. Based on detailed analyses of political and news discourse in various European contexts, and in the US, spanning a decade (2014–2024), this book makes a timely and relevant contribution – as liberal democracies could be facing a new turning point in the global rise of authoritarian populism. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of journalism, media studies, political communication, political science, sociology, and discourse studies who are interested in authoritarian and far‑right populism, related discourses of nationalism and xenophobia, populist communication, and the role of news media and journalism. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

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.

Background: News journalists are an occupational group with a unique task at the scene of an unfolding crisis—to collect information and inform the public about the event. By being on location, journalists put themselves at risk for being exposed to the potentially traumatic event. Objective: To compare potentially traumatic exposure during work assignments at a crisis scene and in personal life as predictors of the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in news journalists. Further, to investigate the mediating effect of depression between the predictor and predicted variables. Method: With a web-based questionnaire, information from a sample of Finnish news journalists (n=407) was collected. The data collected included details on the range of potentially traumatic assignments (PTAs) at the crisis scene during the past 12 months, lifetime potentially traumatic events (PTEs) in personal life, PTSD symptoms, and level of depression. Results: Approximately 50% of the participants had worked with a PTA during the past 12 months. Depression had a significant indirect effect on the relationship between PTAs at the scene and symptoms of PTSD. A similar result was found regarding the relationship between personal life PTEs and PTSD. Depression had a complete indirect effect in the case of PTAs and a partial indirect effect in regard to PTE exposure in personal life. Conclusions : Exposure to PTAs is common within journalistic work. The results reflect the importance of understanding the underlying mechanisms of the measured symptoms (PTSD, depression) in relation to trauma history. The main limitations of the study include the cross-sectional design and the nature of the instruments used for the collection of work-related trauma history. For the abstract or full text in other languages, please see Supplementary files under Reading Toolsonline

This article examines the Norwegian media coverage of and public debate about a series of anti-Muslim demonstrations in which Qur’ans were burned in Sweden and Norway over the Easter of 2022. Conceptualizing Qur’an burnings and the ensuing riots in Sweden and Norway as a media event, the article explores how different actors manage, negotiate, and use the mediated attention constituting such an event. The empirical material consists of all articles published by ten selected Norwegian newspapers between 14 and 30 April 2022, as well as interviews with seven journalists from these newspapers. A key point the article makes is that news journalists are mindful of how they cover and frame such an event. They take steps to ensure that their coverage accords with professional journalistic standards. The analysis shows, however, that the media coverage is complex and multi-layered, and that news journalists’ managing strategies only influence a small part of the total coverage and debate. A media event is by its nature discursive, and the article discusses how the event’s ‘real meaning’ is contested as various actors within and outside the media reframe it to fit already established discourses.

Research has demonstrated that first responders may develop psychological trauma/ posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the performance of their duties. Often overlooked in these studies of police, firefighters, and paramedics is an additional group of providers who also respond to these same events: news journalists and photo journalists. Although limited in scope, the research literature from 1980 to 2010 assessed an association between PTSD and some news journalists. The strength of these findings are limited due to serious methodological limitations. The present paper reviewed the journalist/PTSD literature from 2011 to 2020. There were 4558 subjects in 23 studies, which were world-wide in scope. There were 2633 male reporters (58%) and 1925 female journalists (42%). The average age of subjects was 34.37 years and the average length of experience was 10.68 years. Many reported either PTSD, PTSD symptoms, depression, and/or substance use. A detailed methodological critique is presented.

Through an analysis of news journalism in Sweden, the development of a more adversarial, critical or interpretive news journalism is discussed in this article. A frequent form of politicians’ appearances in the news is in short-form interviews in news stories. Such interviews are often reduced to single turns or answers. The aim of this study is to identify the more communicative techniques used, when politicians’ answers are cut and incorporated into news stories, and how these techniques are related to the roles set up for politicians and reporters. What potential relationships are set up between politicians, reporters and the viewers? Swedish television data from 1978, 1993 and 2003 have been analysed. The analysis shows that in the early period, news journalism appears as a mediator or interrogator. In the latter periods, news journalism appears in an adversarial role. It becomes more of an interpreter or a critical interrogator of politician’s actions.

The political context for practicing free and independent journalism has always been challenging in Turkey and ever more so after the failed coup d’état of 2016. This article examines and analyzes the changes brought about by this failed coup d’état in terms of their civil, legal, and political significance for news journalism and news journalists. More specifically and based on two sets of semi-structured interviews with Turkish editors and senior journalists supported by an analysis of gray literature, we argue that between 2013 and 2018 Turkey has moved from a pre-coup repression of news journalism (2013–2016) to a post-coup oppression of news journalism (2016–2018). The former was characterized by unsystematic attacks on news journalism conducted with impunity leading to a climate of fear that made self-censorship inescapable. In contrast, the latter relied on constitutional changes and the use of law to systematically compromise the civil institution of news journalism and to cast news journalists as political enemies of the Turkish state resulting in what can be likened to a loss of their citizenship. We further argue that the development from the repression to oppression of news journalism has been ‘authorized’ and ‘legalized’ by the constitutional changes that came into force on 9 July 2018.

This paper seeks to provide an answer to the question of the role that news journalism can play in the building of civil peace as peaceful cooperation in post-civil war settings. Alternatively expressed, how it can utilise its communicative capacity to facilitate and contribute to contextually and culturally appropriate versions of sustainable peace within civil society. Peacebuilding tool kits are wide and varied and often narrowly focus on news journalism as a political actor and its role in political life. We would like to shift the focus away from the ‘political’ to the role that news journalism can play in the (re-)building of an associative and cooperative civil society. Specifically, we believe that news journalism should and can develop for itself an ethos of civil norm building that aims to stimulate a civil consciousness in its audiences which is indispensable for the practical application of the categories of civil norms of peaceful cooperation in everyday life. To understand how such an ethos can be developed we need to recognise three features that are necessary for news journalism to achieve its potential as a civil norm builder: (1) its transformative communicative capacity, (2) its institutional and organisational commitment toward news reporting that exemplifies peaceful cooperation in everyday life and (3) the way it can concretely undertake the application of editorial guidelines in post-civil war settings which exemplify the three basic categories of civil norms of peaceful cooperation: (a) assent to civil peace, (b) substantive civility and (c) building civil capacity and civil competencies.

The authors consider the “big data” method as an information and communication phenomenon that allows for a deeper understanding of the needs and values of society and is designed to search for socially signifi cant information in a large array of unstructured data. However, convergent processes in news journalism have led to an increased volume of data in diff erent formats and, at the same time, to an imbalance between information and the functional orientation of the visualization form, leading to violations of legal and ethical standards. The scientifi c novelty of the research is in a comprehensive analysis of the problems of big data visualization in news journalism, leading to violations of legal and ethical aspects. In this regard, the purpose of the study is to study the legal and ethical aspects of big data visualization in social news journalism. The research was conducted using the following methods: theoretical analysis of scientifi c papers on the research problem, survey, content analysis, comparative analysis. The hypothesis of the study is that the possibilities of big data visualization in Russian and foreign news journalism are not fully used. The article focuses on big data visualization technologies and the specifi cs of their application in Russian and foreign social news journalism, taking into account legal and ethical aspects. The choice of media is explained by the scale and popularity of the publications. The article assumes a limited genre and thematic diversity of big data materials and an incorrect ratio of information and visualization forms, which leads to ethical and legal violations. The prevalence of standard big data visualization technologies has been revealed, which does not always correlate with the specifi cs of the information. The research results can be used in the study of big data and its visualization in an appropriate format.

A fake news story can travel half way across the world as the truth puts on its socks. There are myriads of challenges facing journalists in spotting fake news hence its wide proliferation. Fake news has become a prominent subject of enquiry especially following its alleged influence of the 2016 general elections in US. Unfortunately, research on fake news has focused on social media, politics, elections, and economies. Few studies have focused on the challenges that TV journalists face in spotting fake news prompting this study. The specific research question was; what are the challenges facing television journalists in spotting fake news in Kenya? The study adapted a relativist-constructivist/interpretivist ontology and epistemology, qualitative approach and multiple case study methodology. Data was generated through in-depth interviews, direct observation and documents review. The study used purposive sampling to generate data from 16 journalists. Data was then analysed in themes and presented in narrative form. Key findings were that in spotting fake news, journalists faced challenges like; loss of viewers, lack of authoritative contacts, sources who gave fake news for personal, business, political, and economic benefits, ability of fake news to camouflage real news, speed of fake news, typologies of fake news, live reporting, inexperienced correspondents and interns, and social media. The study concludes that the challenges facing journalists in spotting fake news were majorly based on sources, technology, education, skills and training, and its typology. The study therefore recommends that editorial boards invest in experts to train journalists on styles, architecture, propagation and use of fake news, inoculation of journalists and audiences, raising fake news literacy levels, and use of technology based approaches like reverse search and fact checking sites.
 Key words: Fake news, journalists, spotting, challenges, television, Kenya

Public talk about mainstream U.S. news journalists' use of the term “refugee” in the wake of Hurricane Katrina constituted a social drama that illuminated widely held beliefs about two categories of person in some American public settings: the “citizen” and the “refugee.” This study examines a corpus of 193 mass media texts that contested the symbols, meanings, premises, and rules for public talk about “citizens” and the differences between them. Using the perspective of speech codes theory, this study expands upon the cultural codes underlying a rule of speaking identified by Philipsen (2000) in the “discourse of difference.”

This paper explores the work of news agency journalism, an increasingly important node in circuits of news communication across the world. My ethnographic site is a medium‐sized news agency office in Germany and I focus especially on ‘slotwork’, a rotating role in the editorial collective where one editor is responsible for coordinating incoming news streams, for determining which stories are of substantial news value, for distributing stories to newswriters on shift and editing their work, and for monitoring and synchronising the agency's news output with the streams of key competitors and clients. In the spirit of the special issue, I discuss how digital information technologies, professional editorial practices and powerful praxiological and mediological discourses on the character of slotwork define the daily life of newsmaking. I am particularly interested in news journalists’ epistemic and practical strategies for dampening the dense informational mediation of digital news in order to retain a sense of professional and practical agency in the face of many contingencies.

Online media environments have changed the way young people access news. Despite much research on the topic, the expectations of journalistic news by young adults who have turned their back on traditional news media remain unclear. We use a novel multimethod qualitative online study design to investigate the perceived quality, functions, and expectations toward journalistic news of young adults in Switzerland who use social media as their main source for news and rarely consume traditional media. Nineteen young adults between 20 and 25 years of age with different educational levels participated in our study in May 2020. Our results show that even though the participants only occasionally use traditional news media channels, they still consider journalistic news relevant and appreciate quality standards of professional journalism such as actuality and veracity (Swart 2021b). Among the functions of news, the participants highlighted sociability and identification. Exchange and discussion of news are, thus, of high relevance online but also offline. Also, the participants show a high affinity toward news on mobilizing topics, which are of interest to themselves and their peers, and motivate them to engage with news more intensely. According to the participants, news should be attractively prepared, such as with audiovisual formats and easy to understand and integrate into everyday life. The participants also expressed a preference to consume news articles from different media brands within a single platform. Our study outlines a fruitful path for comprehensive qualitative research with innovative online tools.

On social media, journalistic news products compete with entertainment-oriented and user-generated contents on two different stages of news use: First, users navigate their attention through a continuous stream of information in their newsfeed and, second, they potentially click on some of these posts to spend time with the actual full-contents. The present study conceptualizes these two types of news use behaviors in social media environments as first- and second-level selective exposure. Based on this new approach, we investigated main drivers of journalistic news exposure on both exposure levels in an online survey experiment before the German federal election in 2017 (N = 210). To achieve high ecological validity, we developed a Newsfeed Exposure Observer (NEO)-Framework to recreate realistic user settings for online experiments studying selective exposure in the digital era, where news posts are complemented by popularity cues like social endorsements or individual recommendations. Findings show that, at the first level of selective exposure, attention to journalistic news posts is particularly affected by political interest. However, the decision to click on posts in the newsfeed and to spend time with the linked contents seems more strongly driven by social factors than by individual predispositions.

<p><strong><em>The purpose</em></strong><em> of the research is to characterize the construction of news reality in the information environment.</em></p><p><strong><em>Research methodology.</em></strong><em> The methodological basis of the study is the empirical method – we determined the news content, we characterized the researched news content on information platforms using the analysis method, the content of the news was singled out with the help of mass communication using the comparison method, where information penetrates into all spheres of social life, the observation method to influence the audience as a consumer of mass information. </em></p><p><strong><em>Results.</em></strong><em> News journalism in the modern information space is in the process of constructing reality, since all events taking place in the world receive an objective and unbiased reflection in the mass media. Quite naturally there is the question: what are the criteria that journalists use to determine the correctness of writing news, what should be transferred from the status of an event to the status of news , and which ones are not. If this issue remains understudied in both social communication theory and applied social communication technology research, there is a tacit consensus. Therefore, at the time of rapid development of online platforms, mass</em><em> </em><em>media should improve their news products for high-quality and successful promotion. Thus, the considered professional tradition of selection and presentation of news is paradoxically proportional to the imagination with the lens of ectivism and intuitionism.</em></p><p><strong><em>Novelty.</em></strong><em> The directions of construction of news reality are outlined, the advantages and disadvantages of news platforms are determined, and a comparative characterization of the essence of the genre-forming news tools, which serves for prompt, reliable, objective, balanced display of events, is carried out.</em></p><p><strong><em>Practical meaning.</em></strong><em> The obtained results of research work can be used in the empirical-applied component for the training of young specialists in news, cross-media journalism and news agency journalism.</em></p><strong><em>Key words:</em></strong><em> news journalism, mass media, media, information society, genreology, audience.</em>