Journalistic Identity Research Articles

Swiss Journalists’ Role Performance

Journalism scholars have mostly studied journalistic role conception and their manifestations in news separately. This study merges these two research approaches to suggest a holistic understanding of the relationship between role conception and role performance. The Swiss case offers a unique context for studying the relationship between ideals and practice because of comparatively weak economic and political pressures on journalism, thus leading to a strong connection between journalistic ideals and practice. This study combined a content analysis of 519 news articles—published in German, French, and Italian—with an online survey of 62 authors of these articles. The analysis reveals that Swiss journalists perceive several role conceptions as important and say they frequently perform these roles in their daily work. Although they claim to have rather high freedoms in reporting, journalists’ conceptions of their role performance do not correspond to their actual role performance in news coverage. Factors that influence journalistic coverage are critically discussed to explain the relationship between role conception and role performance in a media system that offers high autonomy to journalists.

Trust in the Age of Social Media: Populist Politicians Seem More Authentic

The current debate about declining media trust is related not only to the disruptive changes in the media but also to the general decline of trust in institutions and politicians. This article combines the perspectives of media trust and political trust, by examining to what degree voters perceive politicians as “honest” in the contexts of various media and communication forms. Comparing the voters’ evaluation of politicians’ trustworthiness in talk shows, news interviews, speeches, flyers, social media, and opinion pieces makes it possible to measure the impact of media contexts on the level of trust. A key finding is that voters deem politicians as more honest in social media and opinion pieces, compared to talk shows and news interviews. Second, voters tend to evaluate politicians as more honest in the media formats they most often consume; a finding that confirms the virtuous circle theory; young people typically found politicians to be more dishonest in mainstream media compared to social media A third finding is that the voters tend to evaluate populist politicians as more authentic than traditional politicians and that female politicians were regarded as more authentic compared to male politicians. These findings have implications both for journalistic ideals for coverage of politics in and for political strategic communication.

The professional identity of Czech journalists in an international perspective

This article, placed in the field of comparative journalism studies, explores the extent to which Czech journalists share their professional identity and compares the congruence of their professional identity with selected Western journalistic communities working in the liberal, democratic-corporatist, and polarized pluralism media model defined by Hallin and Mancini. The results show that the professional identity structure of Czech journalists does not, in principle, differ from that of foreign journalists. This implies that they have cut themselves from the Soviet journalistic model. Czech journalists do not significantly differ in the intensity of the selected professional values, and the measure of their professional identity split is comparable to that of their foreign counterparts.

Paradox of professionalism: The professional identity of journalists who work across media cultures

Growing media practitioner mobility, as well as the migration of Transnational Media Corporations across borders and media cultures, gives rise to new questions about how journalistic professionalism travels. Transnational Media Corporations carrying their own organisational cultures must operate in wider national, political and cultural settings that may create dissonance for the organisation and its professional journalists. Normativisation of journalistic professional practices shapes professional identity formation and journalists’ perceived roles of professionalism in the news-making process. A degree of dissonance may be expected when practitioners who have been trained in and first worked under traditional liberal Western press cultures, take up journalistic positions in State-Owned Transnational Media Corporations belonging to countries that the West characterises as authoritarian. The case of CCTV-NEWS,1as a State-Owned Transnational Media Corporation that recruits Western journalists, will be investigated to find out how journalists manage the potential dissonance. The significance of this interpretive research is that it offers a glimpse into how journalism professionalism travels in the context of increasing international employment mobility for journalists. In addition, research into CCTV-NEWS, as a State-Owned Transnational Media Corporations, from the perspective of professional identity of international employees, is an innovation.

Representações cinematográficas do jornalismo investigativo em Todos os homens do presidente (1976) e Spotlight (2015)

O artigo avalia a construção dos sentidos mobilizados em relação à figura do jornalista investigativo em produções cinematográficas, com o propósito de entender estas representações e de que modos interagem com os processos de construção da identidade jornalística. São analisadas duas produções hollywoodianas, baseadas em casos reais: Todos os homens do presidente, de 1976; e Spotlight, de 2015. Os filmes mobilizam estereótipos duradouros (credibilidade, neutralidade, heroísmo) sobre os jornalistas investigativos e a um dado reconhecimento de seu poder no espaço social. Além disso, essas narrativas apresentam-se, elas mesmas, como versões “neutras” e verídicas sobre os fatos que abordam, apagando os processos de seleção e edição – comuns ao jornalismo e ao cinema – e, no caso do segundo, o próprio contexto do jornalismo no século XXI. O referencial teórico-metodológico se apoia na análise de discurso textualmente orientada (Fairclough, 2001) e na semiologia dos discursos sociais (Pinto, 2002).

Renegotiating the Journalism Profession in the Era of Social Media: Journalism Students From the Global North and South

Relying on theories of journalistic ideals and critical discourse analysis, a case study was conducted to investigate how journalism students (re)define journalism ideals in the era of social media. Data were gathered from focus group interviews with European and African students participating in a joint journalism program. The results indicate that the renegotiation of journalism occurs in the discourses of open and collaborative journalism, accountable digital journalism, and challenging and contextualized journalism ethics, where an autonomous journalism profession moves toward collaboration with citizens. An accountable and transparent news process and public awareness of the need for journalism ethics are vital.

Journalists at a crossroads: Are traditional norms and practices challenged by Twitter?

This article aims to identify the hybridization that journalists have created to reconcile the pressures arising from the affirmation of the culture of participation and sharing of social media with the traditional norms and practices that are the basis of the journalistic identity. This study analyses the behavior of 1202 Italian journalists on Twitter between 1 January and 29 February 2016, focusing on the interpretation of the transparency norm, the gatekeeping function, and audience engagement. These are norms and practices that are both old and new and that allow us to understand the adaptations journalists make in order to respond to the technological transformations that have affected existing models of journalism and the degree of professionalization of journalists themselves. Through the analysis of the 23,515 tweets published by journalists of different media outlets (newspapers, wire services, TV news, and only-online media), this study has allowed to empirically test the existence of a general adoption of Twitter by Italian journalists, characterized by a ‘hybrid normalization’, that is, a combination of old practices with new modalities with the dual aim of sharing the culture of social media and legitimizing the professional position of journalism.

A comparação da identidade dos jornalistas online em suas relações com os públicos no Brasil e na França

This paper analyses the interactions between journalists and the public in Brazilian and French online newsrooms. The study discusses the new modalities of audience participation in journalism. Thus, it aims to understand the possible changes in this relation. The role of national contexts on structuring the practices of journalism and the public is also considered. This comparative and qualitative research is focused on in-depth interviews with 10 journalists from each country and used a common guide. The results reveal resemblances on how journalists enunciate their interactions with public from both countries: their representations are stereotyped and audiences are perceived through a quantitative bias. These findings reinforce other studies that minimize the ability of online newsrooms to integrate the public. From the viewpoint of comparative studies, our hypothesis of a transnational identity of online journalists is strengthened. This hypothesis is mainly based on the circulation of structured discourses related to this practice.

“I Did What I Do” Versus “I Cover Football”

As athletes added their voices to the fall 2014 protests against police violence, in-house reporters, that is, content producers paid to produce stories for team websites, were part of the press pack describing these actions. Despite working for teams, many view themselves as sports journalists, despite working for teams, view themselves as sports journalists. This collision of sports and politics posed a challenge to the professional identities they try to maintain. Using interview data and textual analysis, this case study examines the ways that in-house sportswriters understood and operationalized their professional identities at a moment when they came into potential conflict with their employment situations. Their answers reflect boundary work on the part of in-house media members, who stressed their independence and news judgment in explaining their choices around this story even if their actions diverged. The work raises questions for understanding how journalistic identity translates to new contexts such as brand publishing.

Normalization of War and Conflict in Iraq’s Iraqiya Televison

This article examines the practice of news journalists at Iraqiya, the Iraqi state broadcaster, in the context of the continuing conflict in Iraq. The paper draws on eighteen months of fieldwork at the channel’s headquarters in Baghdad and on interviews with media practitioners throughout the news department. In this article, I show how Iraqiya news employees redefine media professionalism and ethics in the context of an ongoing conflict. I argue that Iraqiya’s news practitioners exist in a liminal state that emerged from their lived experience of the ongoing conflict, a conflict that has brought about new journalistic identities and modes of practice as violence and war have become normalized in everyday practices and lives.

The playful newsroom: Iterating and reiterating the news and its publics

The crisis in the journalism industry, intensified with the popularization of the World Wide Web, warrants radical rethinking of the professional identity of journalists and their role in society. This paper first suggests replacing the Habermasian public sphere with Dutch historian Johan Huizinga’s magic circle of play to describe the relationship between the press and its audience. Within this new model, the writer configures the rules and boundaries in which the reader is free to respond and subvert, an interplay that increasingly shapes both current news production and expectations of the public. This paper then explores play and playful attitudes in newsroom practices and output through semi-structured interviews with journalists, game designers and educators. The “Game Team” at the news and entertainment Web site BuzzFeed acts as a primary case study of a group of journalists who make a variety of playful products — from full-fledged games to interactives — which they iterate and improve over time, in response to readers’ feedback.

O silêncio como prescrição para o trabalho do jornalista

O artigo apresenta uma discussão sobre o silenciamento, ou o ato impositivo do silêncio, como prescrição para o trabalho do jornalista. Para tanto, desenvolvemos o tema em dois tipos de problematização: a) os jornalistas que migram para os blogs, o fazem em busca de maior autonomia, para fugir das prescrições coercitivas das empresas de mídias tradicionais; b) a prescrição para o uso argumentativo dos números configura-se como estratégia persuasiva desviante, que, por sua aparente força de objetividade, silencia outros argumentos mais relevantes para a reflexão crítica do cidadão, consumidor do jornalismo. Essas duas questões são abordadas, tendo como orientação conceitual o binômio comunicação e trabalho e os resultados das pesquisas do Centro de Pesquisas em Comunicação e Trabalho – CPCT, da ECA-USP, membro da Rede de Estudos sobre Trabalho e Identidade do Jornalista.

It’s About Me

Media sociology literature supports the assumption that freelancing as a way of life should have an impact on the self-presentation behaviors of journalists. The present research is concerned with how journalists—employed and freelance—frame their identities and disclose relevant information in social media spaces through a quantitative content analysis of Facebook fan pages (N = 468). Freelance journalists, faced with employment instability and fewer organizational constraints, may hypothetically be less guided by journalistic principles. Specifically, we created measures to investigate how their visual (i.e., profile images) and verbal (i.e., self-categorization, textual formality, skills) fronts differed in these settings. The results revealed that freelance journalists communicated a more serious professional self, emphasizing their journalism skills and identifying less with organizational attributes. A separate analysis showed that females were more likely to post an image with a smile and share personal information on social media channels, while men presented a more serious front. These results suggest that freelancers similarly align with employed journalists concerning their journalistic ideals, but the need to secure consistent work likely influences the degree that they share personal content. Overall, however, descriptive results show that most journalists wrote about themselves rather than writing about their connection to journalism or humanity.

A Welfare State of Mind?

The development of journalism in the Nordic countries has been shaped by two interconnected ideologies: the welfare state and democratic corporatism. International reviews have repeatedly emphasized the similarities of the media systems in these countries. However, less work has been done on the professional identity of individual journalists working within these systems. In this article, the similarities and differences between journalists’ professional values and perceptions in the Nordic countries are explored based on survey data from the Worlds of Journalism Study. The results indicate that despite country-specific variance, Nordic journalists share a vision of their professional identity especially in terms of seeing themselves as detached watchdogs and renouncing the role of opportunist facilitator. Another Nordic characteristic is the low level of experienced economic influence on journalistic work. In important ways, thus, Nordic journalists’ professional views appear to reflect central characteristics of the political culture and media systems in which they work.

Citizen Journalism at The Margins

Amidst burgeoning literature on citizen journalism, we still know relatively little about how and why genuinely marginalised groups seek to use this form of reporting to challenge their exclusion. In this article, we aim to address this gap by analysing two UK citizen journalism initiatives emanating from The Big Issue Foundation, a national homeless organisation, and Access Dorset, a regional charity for disabled and elderly people. These case studies are united by the authors’ involvement in both instances, primarily through designing and delivering bespoke citizen journalism education and mentoring. Based on over 40 hours of interviews with participants of the workshops and 36 hours of participant observation, we analyse the challenges participants faced in their journey to become citizen journalists. This included: low self-esteem, physical health and mental wellbeing, the need for accessible and adaptable technology, and overcoming fear associated with assuming a public voice. We also analyse marginalised groups’ attitudes to professional journalism and education, and its role in shaping journalistic identity and self-empowerment. Whilst demonstrably empowering and esteem building, our participants were acutely aware of societal power relations that were seemingly still beyond their ability to influence. Those who are marginalised are, nevertheless, in the best position to use citizen journalism as a conduit for social change, we argue—though challenges remain even at the grassroots level to foster and sustain participatory practices.

Technologies of participation: Community news and social media in Northern Sweden

This article explores how different meanings of ‘participation’ are developed in the intersection between local journalism and social media. The study is based on qualitative interviews with media professionals working in community media organisations in northern Sweden. Three key themes are identified: participation as marketisation, participation and production, and participation and democracy. This article discusses how these three different forms of participation contribute to the constitution of journalistic identities in a local context and to its meanings within the media sphere in general. This article argues that the emergence of new digital media has not so much renewed the role of the media professional as it has led to a cementing of their professional identity. Social media are a necessity for the development of journalism and are celebrated for their potential to include audiences; yet journalists paradoxically seem to consider these same technologies of participation as a threat, not only to journalism but also to democracy.

Identity lost? The personal impact of brand journalism

Researchers have explored the role of organizational and personal branding in journalism, paying particular attention to digital media and social network sites. While these studies have observed a rise in the incorporation of branding practices among journalists, they have largely avoided questions about the implications such shifts in practice may have on the personal identities of journalists. This study addresses that gap, drawing on interviews with 41 reporters and editors from US newspapers. The findings suggest that as reporters incorporate branding into their routines, they may feel as though they are sacrificing the ability to simultaneously maintain a personal identity online. For their part, editors seem to sympathize with journalists’ loss of personal identity but defer to organizational policies.

Public roles and private negotiations: Considering city magazines’ public service and market functions

Editors at city and regional magazines face the same competing loyalties as other local journalists, including sharing information about their cities while considering the interests of their organizations, readers, and advertisers. This study used in-depth interviews with city and regional magazine editors ( N = 11) around the country to explore how they navigate public and private interests affecting their work and the implications of these negotiations for their journalistic identity and the perceived functions of their publications in communities. The results shed light on how the editors negotiate a focus on private-service content, which attracts readers and revenue, and public-service content, which serves the magazines’ journalistic role.

Participation and the Blurring Values of Journalism

This paper examines journalism’s values and ethical principles by analysing how participation is becoming a part of the journalism culture in Finnish news media. The focus is on journalists’ perceptions of the roles and practices of professional journalists and the audience in journalism practice. Of special interest is how the modern ideals of journalism affect its reinvention. The conceptual framework relies on theorizing journalistic ideals and critical discourse analysis. The data consist of in-depth interviews with journalists conducted from 2010 to 2011 and 2013 to 2015 in Finnish media. The data are approached using analysis of the discourses as a method. The discourses of professional news production, citizen debate and interactive news “produsing” are analysed. In the first discourse, professional skill is valued highly and connected to the experience of pursuing journalism, which follows the modern ideal of “good” journalism. A demarcation is constructed between professionals and amateurs, and between journalism and “non-journalism”. In the second discourse, the participation of the audience is associated with discussion forums and is represented as a needed but problematic conversational recourse. Within the third discourse, journalism’s ideals are reinvented. Emerging news media is portrayed as semi-social media with changing ethical principles. News making is portrayed as a collaborative practice between the newsroom and a community of local reporters and volunteers. Discursive boundaries between “user comment” and “editorial material” are fading. The evolution of the discourses indicates a nascent re-articulation of journalism’s values, including the logic of control, in Finnish journalism practice.

The Internet’s Transformative Power on Journalism Culture in Greece

News and journalism practices are undergoing complex changes under the influence of technology. As the internet facilitates new ways of collecting and reporting information, conceptions of journalistic identity based on normative values such as objectivity, impartiality and gatekeeping are being contested. These ideals have become a central reference point in empirical evaluations of technological innovations in journalism cultures. However, as they are engrained in Western models of news production, they often mask the nuances that exist in the appropriation of the internet in different locales. In order to offer a better understanding of online technologies as they are adapted in different cultures, online journalism research can benefit from more conceptual clarity in defining journalism culture. We argue that such clarity can assist in capturing the complexity of online journalism as the outcome of profound changes taking place in different societies. We aim to contribute to current debates by borrowing an existing theoretical conceptualization of journalism culture to explore online journalism in Greece. Through interviews with professional journalists, we show the nuances of online journalism as this evolves through a dynamic interaction between technology and local contingencies in a climate of financial uncertainty.