Freelance Research Articles

The Role of Organisational Factors and Working Conditions for the Autonomy of Journalists in an Unstable Economy

ABSTRACT The article examines which organisational factors and working conditions are more or less significant for developing journalistic professional autonomy under unfavourable economic conditions. The empirical study employs the case of Lithuania, as the autonomy of journalists working in this country is relatively well guaranteed at the system level of the media. However, the economic context in Lithuania has been unfavourable for media organisations in recent years. The analysis is based on data from a representative survey of Lithuanian journalists, in which 302 journalists from all media sectors were interviewed. The study found that a higher position in the editorial, a higher income, longer working hours per week and membership in professional organisations are associated with greater professional freedom. Owners, managers, editors, editorial policy, and, in some cases, advertising decisions and profit expectations are the organisational factors that significantly limit the autonomy of Lithuanian journalists. If we divide the media by sector, into public and private-commercial or national, regional and local, we see apparent differences where the mentioned factors have no influence or are very pronounced. We found no differences in the perception of autonomy between freelance and contract journalists in Lithuania.

“journalists are just employees”: Examining Journalistic Autonomy from an Audience Perspective

ABSTRACT Autonomy is a fundamental requirement for the professional practice of journalism. However, while its role in ensuring well-informed audiences is widely acknowledged, the way in which audiences make sense of journalists’ autonomy remains unexplored. Similarly, the understanding of how audience perceptions of journalists’ autonomy, their attributed professionalism and authority, and the resulting impact on journalism practice remains incomplete. To address these gaps, this study conducts a qualitative analysis involving semi-structured interviews with 64 news users in Chile. Results show that journalists’ autonomy, from audiences’ view, is limited by labor forces and organizational influences. Journalists’ working conditions are perceived to be connected to high levels of editorial control, yielding a deficiency of autonomy that relegates journalists to a subservient role, compromising their professionalism, undermining their authority, and eroding the quality of the information they provide. Also, findings show that autonomy assumes a prominent role as a distinct form of authority when journalists diverge from conventional news norms, establishing a closer connection with their audience. Furthermore, independent journalists frequently garner recognition for their autonomy and credibility, attributed to their detachment from specific media outlets. The article delves into the implications of these findings for journalism studies and practice.

Le Pakistan face aux interdictions, à la censure et aux ordonnances présidentielles : le cas de Naya Pakistan par PTI

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), in its manifesto, promised a free and independent media with an autonomous Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) which does not become a tool in the hands of the ruling party (Insaf, 2018). The present study examines the increased control of the PTI government and the military on media outlets, independent journalists, artists, and literary figures around the country. The paper also discusses the rebalancing of power structure and political dynamics in Pakistan, along with the role of presidential ordinances: Pakistan Media Development Authority (PMDA) and amendment to Prevention in Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), which aim to bolster control, curb the narrative, and further limit the freedom of expression. The paper investigates the institutionalization of these draconian regulations whose impact has already started to appear with the confiscation and setting ablaze of Urdu translations of Mohammad Hanif’s novel: A Case of Exploding Mangoes by unknown men in Karachi, a novel which illustrates the historical fictional account of General Zia’s last days as President of Pakistan (Hussain, 2020). Dawn, one of the country’s oldest newspapers, has been banned and denied distribution in army cantonments since 2018. It is hoped that the present study will create awareness regarding this shift of balance towards authoritarianism and provide factual understanding of the country’s current political milieu.

Habermas the Freelance Journalist: The Relationship between Theory and Practice in Habermas’s Early Career

Habermas the Freelance Journalist: The Relationship between Theory and Practice in Habermas’s Early Career

Digital Literacy to Improve The Professionalism of Online Media Journalists in Bengkulu, Indonesia

This study aims to know the competence of digital literacy Online media journalists in Bengkulu City in complying with cyber media guidelines to support professionalism ranging from verification activities to writing news or delivering coverage to editors. Also to identify efforts made by online media journalists in Bengkulu City using tools for fact checking to verify news materials. This research uses a qualitative descriptive approach. The data collection method uses interviews, observation and focus group discussion. This study's Informants are journalists registered as members of the Indonesian Cyber Media Network (JMSI) and the Indonesian Cyber Media Union (SMSI) in Bengkulu. The results of the study concluded that the literacy of journalists in using digital media is quite good. However, it cannot be included in the excellent category because journalists lack knowledge and skills in digital literacy competencies. Moreover, journalists knowledge and skills upgrades such as fact-checking or digital literacy training is minimal, eventhough journalists understand the challenges in publishing journalistic works today. Generally, journalists use tools for checking facts or verifying sources of information either conventionally or manually. However, the strength in publishing journalistic works is the collaboration of cyber media within press companies to produce quality work. The FGD found that only Bengkulu Eskpress conducts fact checks in its journalistic work, because its journalists have received fact-check training conducted by the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI). The study results also show that online media utilize digital-based tools because they have received fact checking training, namely Bengkulu Ekspress. Keywords: Digital literacy, professionalism, online media, journalists, fact checking.

Англоязычный авторский трэвел-блог: жанровые, структурные и прагмастилистические особенност

The aim of the article is to identify genre, structural, pragmatic and stylistic features of English travel blogs. Travel blog as a genre is a form of Internet communication that combines elements of different registers; it is marked by its dialogic, interactive and polycode features, that is a combination of verbal and non-verbal components serving informative, appealing and persuasive purposes. The article uses discourse, pragmastylistic and contextual analyses. It is obvious that the genre features of analyzed messages of the travel blog are speech forms combining neutral and colloquial registers. The blog structure is horizontal with themes arranged in line with posts links behind them. The posts themselves have no rigid structure, the mandatory parts are headlines and subheadlines – rubrics and the final part containing either impressions of the trip, advertising a certain destination and sponsor, or appeal to the readers to discuss the contents and persuade them to go to the described places. The main part of the blog can have rubrics (tips or description of sights and their evaluation); it can be the interchange of trip experiences with their evaluation and photos for each of those. The pragmastylistic features of the narrative are the syntactic means serving expressiveness and stimulating interest in the blog content, as well as in future trips: parallel constructions, inversion, parcellation. Lexical means create an atmosphere of real communication and trustworthiness: the use of abbreviated morphological and grammatical forms, words formed by conversion, idioms, interjections; phonetic-graphic means include graphon, emoticons, multiplication, capitalisation to accentuate certain parts of the utterance and convey emotions. The paper concludes that both linguistic and extralinguistic means reflect the key genre features and serve the author’s purpose – to get and keep the readers interested, to persuade them to act. The research material were 113 pragmastylistic language units from 15 posts of an English travel blog, where the author shares with the subscribers her impressions of travelling in Europe, Asia and Latin America. The American blogger and freelance journalist Ciara Jonson was chosen due to her blogs being ranked as one of the best travel blogs by travel editions and other bloggers.

Freelance journalism in Zimbabwe: Challenges and opportunities

In Zimbabwe, the comatose economy has had an impact on the media industry. Since 2000, media houses have been shutting down due to lack of financial support or poor business environment. For some news organisations, they have been retrenching their staff as a cost cutting measure. This has also led to retrenched journalists to write for other publications as freelance journalists. This study examines the state of freelance journalism in Zimbabwe. It aims to assess their role and contribution to the media industry, challenges they face, and also the survival strategies they are adopting. This qualitative study is informed by Bourdieu’s field theory. It used in-depth interviews while thematic analysis was employed in analyzing data. Findings demonstrates that freelance journalists are contributing to the growth of media industry in Zimbabwe by writing on specialised beats like science reporting. Besides such contributions, findings further demonstrated that freelance journalism is seen as ‘curse’ as journalists are easily harassed by the state agents who rarely recognizes someone not working for an established organisation.

Independent Long COVID Journalism as a Lens for Critical Information Literacy: Conversations with The Sick Times Founders Betsy Ladyzhets and Miles W. Griffis

Both the COVID-19 pandemic and the acceleration of climate change illuminate how difficult it can be to make sense of information about wicked problems—that is, issues that are highly complex and have no simple or complete solutions (Rittel & Webber, 1973). One approach to grappling with wicked problems is to consider the information practices that different people, communities, or professions use to make sense of those issues. In this Perspectives piece, I explore possible ways to practice and teach about critical information literacy by looking to the views, experiences, and professional practices of two independent journalists who report on an urgent but still under-reported wicked problem: Long COVID. Betsy Ladyzhets and Miles W. Griffis are the co-founders of the website The Sick Times, which is dedicated to reporting on Long COVID and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Following highlights from their interviews with me about their work, I consider potential implications of these journalists’ experiences for practicing and teaching critical information literacy.

Boycotting in journalism: how journalists quietly protest in an authoritarian country

A plethora of studies about boycotting exist in political science, marketing, business, and other areas of scholarship, but this theme has been largely overlooked in journalism. This case study contributes to scholarship on an underexplored aspect of journalism and its relationship with politics and public affairs by examining journalists’ boycotting behavior in a Central Asian context, focusing on Kazakhstan. This study uses interviews with journalists and editors to examine their boycotting behavior. The findings suggest that journalists and their news outlets in this politically constrained environment employ somewhat hidden, non-confrontational, or unannounced tactics to boycott certain news sources, events, and political decisions even when they consider boycotting ineffective. Accumulated professional tensions in an economically restricted and authoritarian context lead to such forms of resistance and protest, including boycotting. Financially independent journalists are more likely to boycott certain news sources, boycott the dissemination of certain language and information, challenge authorities, and protest or show resistance; their less financially secure counterparts are more reluctant to challenge external forces affecting their own professional practices. This study discusses the findings in relation to Bourdieu’s field theory.

Rancang Bangun Aplikasi Penyedia Pekerjaan Lepas Trivial Menggunakan Metodologi Agile

Freelancers are individuals who perform specific tasks for a number of different organizations, rather than committing to a single one. By the mean of freelance marketplace technology, it is now easier for recruiters and freelancers to meet and discuss. However, jobs on most freelance marketplaces today are categorized, focusing on more highly-skilled jobs. Thus, jobs such as daily and trivial ones cannot be found. Therefore, this research aims to develop a freelance marketplace application to help solve the existing problem of freelance work supply demand. This application, by accommodating trivial freelance jobs, is expected to promote inclusivity by providing job opportunities for freelancers with general skill sets. This research is performed using agile methodology, consisting of requirement analysis, design, application development, and black box testing. It was obtained that the web application for admin and the mobile application for user are functioning properly and could met the users� need.

From Social Clubs to Champions for Sports Journalistic Identity and Integrity

Taking the FIFA World Cup in Qatar as a point of departure, this article analyses the changing role of national associations of sports journalists in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Introducing the concept of meta-journalistic discourse and well-established media system theories, it is argued that Nordic sports journalism’s negotiations of professional practices and standards are shaped by a particular media systemic context with distinct Nordic welfare state-oriented features. One such feature is a tradition of using collective, organized social groups, like democratically based voluntary associations, as instruments for social change. The empirical study explores this through a qualitative thematic analysis of the changing structures, identities, and practices of the national associations of sports journalists across the three countries. This illustrates how the organizations in particular during the last two decades have started very similar processes of transformation away from being mainly social clubs. The associations have used their collective frameworks and bargaining power to ensure independent journalists’ access to sports organizations and athletes, and they have engaged in negotiations of what sports journalism is and what constitutes sports journalism in a sports media landscape shaped by strong combined forces of digitization and politicization.

Cybersecurity Literacy Among Mass Media Journalists In Central Java

Notes of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI Indonesia) at the end of 2022, the number of digital attacks on journalists increased compared to 2021. There were 15 digital attacks in 2022, while in 2021, there were only 5 cases recorded. Attacks, or what is commonly referred to as digital violence, refer to the notion of violence in which the perpetrator attacks network infrastructure or uses digital technology. Meanwhile, digital attacks becoming a trend during 2022 are hacking experienced by journalists and DDoS targeted at media organization sites. However, not all mass media have prepared anticipation for the potential for digital violence, including not all journalists who understand cybersecurity's importance in carrying out their duties. This research seeks to explore the meaning of journalists related to cyber security in their journalistic work and to record real experiences of how anticipation and strategies are carried out so that they do not just become victims of cyber-attacks. The method used is qualitative with an interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach. An approach where data is obtained and studied in an in-depth way, and sees each case is something that has its characteristics. The key word of this research lies in the technique of analysis and interpretation of data that is descriptive, which is presented using a distinctive language and does not aim to generalize the results. The research location is in the city of Semarang, with data collection techniques through in-depth interviews, surveys, observations, and documentation of the research subjects, in this case, journalists from various mass media in Central Java.

Regulation of the international legal status of journalists during the war

The article highlights the problems of the legal status of journalists and their protection during the war on the basis of international legal acts. Attention is focused on the norms of the Geneva Convention of 1949 and its Additional Protocols, which regulate the status of journalists during armed conflicts. Attention is focused on the fact that it is necessary to distinguish two categories of journalists: war correspondents and independent journalists, which are considered separately, and war correspondents are protected by the armed forces, and independent journalists do not have such special protection. It is noted that international humanitarian law considers journalists working in areas of armed conflict as civilians subject to the protection by Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols. Deficiencies in the protection of journalists in the context of considering them as ordinary civilians are pointed out. The possibility of creating a single special international legal act is being considered, which will determine the legal status of journalists during their stay in combat zones, taking into account their important mission of conveying true information to society and the functions they perform at the same time. Attention is focused on the need to identify journalists, provide assistance and protection by states, ensure free movement of journalists and respect the confidentiality of their sources. The importance of investigating cases of violence or deaths of journalists was emphasized.

Love, cynicism, wanderlust: the role of emotions in the career trajectories of precarious journalists

This article addresses a lacuna in the literature on the ‘emotional turn’ in journalism by examining how emotions shape journalists’ career trajectories. In-depth interviews conducted at two points in time reveal that love leads journalists to accept precarious work. Over the years, cynicism developed. Cynicism shaped careers in two ways: some moved into public relations and expressed emotions of relief. Others left media organisations to work as freelance journalists, expressing emotions of wanderlust and love. We address the ambivalence of love as an emotion. It leads journalists to accept precarious work that prevents investigative journalism. However, love of journalism has led others to pursue careers outside of media organisations that offer more freedom of expression, which is crucial for democracy.

Benchmarking Large Language Models for News Summarization

Abstract Large language models (LLMs) have shown promise for automatic summarization but the reasons behind their successes are poorly understood. By conducting a human evaluation on ten LLMs across different pretraining methods, prompts, and model scales, we make two important observations. First, we find instruction tuning, not model size, is the key to the LLM’s zero-shot summarization capability. Second, existing studies have been limited by low-quality references, leading to underestimates of human performance and lower few-shot and finetuning performance. To better evaluate LLMs, we perform human evaluation over high-quality summaries we collect from freelance writers. Despite major stylistic differences such as the amount of paraphrasing, we find that LLM summaries are judged to be on par with human written summaries.

Care(lessness) in precarious journalism, before and during the pandemic: Freelancers’ work-life experiences and coping strategies

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, interest in care as a potential remedy for a variety of issues and crises, such as improving global health justice or creating more “caring” educational systems, has increased across academic disciplines. This article contributes to this literature from the perspective of journalism studies. It explores whether the notion of care captures and addresses one facet of the contemporary news industry crisis, namely the precarity of journalists. I focus on the work-life narratives of a small group of freelance journalists in Germany and Canada before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying a care lens articulates the struggles the freelancers experience regarding income, social security, housing, and childcare as a result of careless states and careless markets. Furthermore, the care practices journalists use as coping strategies merge mutual aid for fellow freelancers or members of their local communities with entrepreneurial networking for professional survival. However, such informal care practices cannot make up for structural gaps in support. Waged work—outside journalism—in the formal labor market, performed by the freelancers themselves or their life partners, turned out to be more important for coping with precarity. Overall, the pandemic meant more continuity than change for the care struggles as well as coping strategies of the journalists examined here. Nevertheless, those with residential property, gainfully employed life partners, and established care networks fared best, hinting at the crucial role of privilege in shaping the work experiences of precarious journalists during crises.

Diasporic Epistemologies in Cuban Independent Journalism

This article examines how digital diasporic journalism changes epistemic practices in the Cuban context. The last decade has seen a practical transnationalization of digitally native independent news sites in Cuba in light of two phenomena: the emigration/forced exile of many young journalists and the affordances of digital technologies, making it possible for these journalists to continue reporting despite their spatial dispersion abroad. How are digital and diasporic ways of knowing changing Cuban journalists’ epistemic practices? By taking a relational approach, we explore digital diasporas as a site of connectivity co-inhabited by multiple and hybrid traveling imaginaries. The article is based on 44 interviews with Cuban independent journalists, which are analyzed through postfoundational discourse analysis (PDA) and situational mapping. The data reveals three important epistemological cleavages that shape digital diasporic journalists’ access to knowledge. These are (1) place as an epistemic category, (2) the epistemic status they confer on themselves and other social actors, and (3) the autonomy they claim when constructing clear boundaries between journalism, activism, and propaganda.

Technology and Disintermediation in Online Marketplaces

With the development of communication technology that makes online transactions easier, there is also an increased risk of disintermediation—sellers and buyers circumventing a platform to transact directly—in online two-sided marketplaces. Such disintermediation may lead to significant revenue loss for online platforms. However, it remains unclear how the characteristics of platforms affect their vulnerability to disintermediation. Using the blockade of Skype in mainland China as a natural experiment, this study examines how online communication technologies affect disintermediation and transaction outcomes in a large U.S. online freelance marketplace. The results show that restricting this alternative communication technology, which platforms struggle to monitor, reduces disintermediation by around 18%. This effect is potentially due to economic frictions in transactions, as the reduction in disintermediation is greater for high-transaction-cost jobs, such as time-sensitive jobs, communication-intensive jobs, and high-skilled jobs, as well as for cost-sensitive users, such as experienced users and personal users as opposed to enterprise users. With these results, platforms can reduce disintermediation risks when making investment and market entry decisions. This paper was accepted by D. J. Wu, information systems. Funding: This work was supported by the Strategic Management Society [SRF Dissertation Research Grant]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.02736 .

The Role of the Alliance of Independent Journalist (AJI) Palembang in Dealing with Hacking and Disinformation of Journalist

In the midst of the rampant hacking and disinformation efforts of journalists. The Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) Palembang continues to work on preventing hacking and disinformation, with the dynamics of rapid information transformation. Professional journalists are demanded not to get caught up in disinformation. The challenge of dealing with this problem is getting tougher when the onslaught of social media (Medsos) occurs. Social media is a public space for exchanging opinions and information which is very popular at this time. This is a challenge for the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) Palembang in determining the initial steps that must be taken in the role of preventing and protecting journalists who have experienced hacking and disinformation. Researchers used qualitative methods through documentation, observation and interview approaches. From the results of the research that has been done, it can be concluded that the role of AJI in dealing with hacking and disinformation is through the workings of the press. This step is consistently carried out by AJI considering that hacking and disinformation are also often used to undermine press freedom or the credibility of press freedom defenders.
 AJI's goal is none other than to support a healthy information ecosystem for the public. In accordance with the Press Law number 40 of 1999, journalists have freedom in carrying out journalistic work. So there must be efforts of terror and silencing. Any physical or non-physical attacks and disinformation efforts cannot be justified. AJI sharply condemned these steps. In addition, AJI also provides digital security training and seeks to advocate for every journalist affected by digital attacks or disinformation for legal settlement.

Data Collaboration: the Aftermath of Operation Sirli

Abstract This article analyses the collaboration between the French external services and the Egyptian government of President Sissi. In a first part, it recounts the revelations of the Disclose journalists in 2021 and their interview with an anonymous source, as well as the follow-up investigation in 2023 by the European Consortium of Independent Journalists. In the second part, the two authors comment on the relationship between data cooperation and counter-terrorism activities, the way in which the sale of arms and spying tools undermines the legitimacy of cooperation, and the way in which the French government has used the argument of defence of secrecy to prevent investigative journalists from investigating the issue.