Journalistic Narratives Research Articles

Eastern callings: domestic tourism and nation-building in Syria

ABSTRACT This paper explores the development of domestic tourism in Syria in the early 1990s. Drawing upon a series of articles published in the national newspaper Al-Bath, it analyses the rhetoric and the symbols used by journalists to domestically promote a new tourism project, the Desert Festival (al-mahradjān al-ṣaḥrāwī). It argues that domestic tourism was used both as a mechanism for economic recovery and a nation-building tool by the Syrian regime. Journalistic narratives revolved around an Arab socialist imagery of unity, progress and modernisation, as well as Orientalist fantasies of desert romance and mystery, inviting nationals to immerse themselves in a Bedouin heritage described as being both familiar and strangely exotic.

Constructing Authenticity as an Alternative to Objectivity: A Study of Non-Fiction Journalism in Chinese Media

In recent years, non-fiction journalism, regarded as a subset of literary and narrative journalism, has garnered significant attention in Chinese media. This trend underscores a notable departure from traditional journalistic norms of objectivity toward an emphasis on authenticity. Drawing upon a comprehensive analysis of 348 articles sourced from Southern People Weekly, a prominent media outlet for non-fiction journalism in China, this study examines the construction of authenticity along two distinct dimensions: voice and visibility. The voice dimension encompasses the utilization of first-person narratives by sources, the expression of authorial voice, and the orchestration of polyphony between journalists and their sources. The visibility dimension pertains to the portrayal of sources through visual imagery, the strategic presentation of journalists, and the scenic depiction of context and environment. Based on these findings, this study discusses the challenges posed by this narrative paradigm to the traditional notion of objectivity and its implications for the rising ideal of subjective journalism.

From the outbreak to the truce, informative narratives during the war on Gaza 2023–24 in the Latin American press

The world has not been blind to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, thanks to the media. This research aims to unravel media management in the coverage of the war on Gaza and other Palestinian cities in the Latin American press, through the analysis of informative narratives that are rarely addressed in the international discussion and in the approaches of the editors of five journalistic platforms. The research combines content analysis and interviews in order to recognize the predominant frames, to verify the accuracy of the information against bias and misinformation and to identify the work routines in the output of the news. It concludes that the coverage has confronted two media frames: conflict and human interest; the former is evident in the journalistic narrative, in the prioritization of topics, actors and sources; the latter is found in the testimonies of the editors and their personal framings. The research found that journalists avoided the usual orientalisms in their news reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian situation but did not avoid contextual biases and misinformation. Despite the distance between the Middle East and Latin America, this war has altered the working and organizational routines of the media outlets hereby examined.

Transplante de órgãos no SUS e as disputas narrativas: uma análise do “caso Faustão”

This work aims to analyze the journalistic narratives referring to the heart transplant carried out by presenter Fausto Silva, known as Faustão, in August 2023, published by the newspaper O Globo, on its Instagram profile, as well as the comments on the publications. In this way, using the tools of Narratology, we intend to understand the social production of meanings formed from such “news capsules”and how much they invite interlocutors to adhere to such narrative constructions. With the statements produced by the vehicle, amidst a debate about whether or not there would be privileges in the so-called transplant queue, what is produced as a consequence is an increase/decrease in the credibility of the SUS.

Narratives Beyond Borders: Arab Testimonies about the Ukraine War

ABSTRACT This study scrutinizes the testimonies of eleven Arab war correspondents covering the protracted conflict in Ukraine. Originating from Palestine, Syria, Morocco, and Iraq and affiliated with Aljazeera Arabic, these journalists present a unique lens on the conflict, particularly in their portrayal of the Ukrainian refugees. Central to this analysis is the exploration of the extent to which their personal and regional histories of conflict inform and shape their journalistic narratives. Drawing on van Leeuwen's legitimation strategies, this study unveils the ethical underpinnings of war journalism, elucidating how the introspective deliberations of the correspondents not merely recalibrate the focus towards the tribulations of Arab/Syrian refugees but also forge an alternative narrative space that challenges and seeks to rectify the prevailing biases within Western reporting. This study contributes to the paucity of research on authorial subjectivity within non-Western journalistic paradigms, thereby broadening the academic understanding of journalistic practices across diverse cultural contexts.

Melodrama y escándalo de madre. Relatos biográficos sobre celebridades en el periodismo de espectáculos y chimentos

From multiple stories about the intimate lives of female celebrities, entertainment journalism constructs evaluations and judgments about emotions and behaviors that fuel cultural perceptions about motherhood. This article identifies two cultural frameworks involved in the journalistic narrative of entertainment and celebrity coverage —melodrama and scandal—, and analyzes their articulation in the biographical production about famous mothers that proliferates in magazines, TV shows, and platforms dedicated to celebrity news. Embedded in the tradition of discourse criticism, the work investigates the staging of melodramas and scandals in the journalistic construction of six stories linked to motherhood involving different famous Argentine women. From the analysis of different sources that threaded those stories, a moral rhetoric is observed, expressed by the complementary alternation between tales of misfortunes and maternal transgressions.

The Representation of Refugee Experiences in Christy Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo (2019)

This paper explores The Beekeeper of Aleppo (2019) by Christy Lefteri as a work of historical fiction that shifts the focus from general informative narratives to universal humanitarian experiences, emphasizing the individual lives of refugees rather than dehumanizing statistics or generic representations. By interweaving stories of Syrian refugees Nuri and Afra with those of refugees from diverse nationalities, Lefteri underscores the shared resilience and suffering of displaced individuals worldwide. The novel critiques stereotypical portrayals of refugees, presenting a nuanced depiction of their virtues and flaws, while dismantling simplistic binary distinctions of "good" and "bad" refugees. Through the use of detailed personal narratives, Lefteri contrasts the reductive coverage of refugees in news media and historical accounts, which often focus on numbers and geopolitical implications rather than individual experiences. The novel's vivid depictions of traumatic events, such as harrowing sea crossings and encounters with smugglers, highlight the refugees' emotional and psychological struggles, fostering empathy and understanding in readers. By bringing to light the complexities of refugees' decisions and the humanity behind their journeys, Lefteri moves beyond the confines of traditional historical and journalistic narratives, encouraging readers to see refugees not as faceless masses but as individuals with unique stories. This study points out the role of historical fiction in bridging the gap between the factual and the personal, revealing how art and literature can humanize historical events and challenge preconceived notions. The findings emphasize the power of storytelling in encouraging empathy and reshaping public perceptions of humanitarian crises, with implications for how societies engage with displaced populations.

The Multifunctional “I” in Narrative Journalism: First-person Narration, Character Functions, and Voice in Audio Stories

The Multifunctional “I” in Narrative Journalism: First-person Narration, Character Functions, and Voice in Audio Stories

A narradora de Caderno Afegão: uma jornalista na borda do mundo

The proposal of this article is to investigate, through the analysis of the narrator's voice in Caderno Afegão, the interchange between personal diary and reporting, as well as the adherence between textual and authorial identities, manifested from gender issues, which the clash between different cultures brings forth. Our hypothesis is that the narrator's subjectivity is constructed, textually, from the cultural encounters she experiences. Thus, gradually, the distant gaze of a foreign reporter gives way to a feminine perspective, of solidarity with Afghan women. The examination of the work brings at least two important contributions to the study of journalistic narrative: first, it allows understanding fluctuations between genres of non-fiction and hybridizations, present in contemporary Portuguese-language journalism; second, it problematizes, in the field of narratology, the relationships between the empirical author and the narrator in factual accounts.

Adriana Negreiros and a Feminist Ethics of Testimonial Narrative: Reflections on Life Will Never Be the Same

I seek to analyze the narrative construction of the reporter’s book A Vida Nunca Mais Será a Mesma (Life Will Never Be the Same Again, 2021), which tells stories of sexual violence against women and also features the first-person account of the author herself, Adriana Negreiros. I try to understand (a) how journalistic fundamentals such as precision and objectivity are articulated/tensioned with lacunar and fragmentary traces of testimony; and (b) how adopting a feminist/gendered perspective on journalistic narrative can bring to light traumatic female experiences that, throughout history, have been placed in the background. To do this, I examine the book and an interview conducted with the author in 2023, concluding that a feminist approach to journalism and testimony can open up affective spaces for women’s stories to be told.

An examination of immersive journalism by bibliometric analysis from 1999 to 2023

Immersive journalism is an innovative storytelling approach that aims to enable the audience to experience the event or situation in the news using virtual reality, unlike traditional news narration. In this study, the literature related to the subject was searched using the keywords Immersive Journalism, 360-Degree Video, Narrative journalism, Newsgame, VR Storytelling through the Web of Science database and a data set was created from 955 publications between 1999 and 2023. No filter was applied to the studies in the data set of the study and articles, books, and early access publications as well as book chapters, editorial materials or conference proceedings in the Web of Science database were included in the study. Bibliometric analysis techniques were applied to the obtained data set and the collaboration status and citation maps of authors and institutions were revealed together with various parameters including authors, institutions, keywords used, number of citations and distribution of publications according to countries.As a result of the analyses, while the number of studies related to the subject has increased since 2017, the highest number of studies was conducted in 2021. The most articles on the subject of the study are in the “Communication” category. While the majority of academic studies on the subject were carried out in the United States, studies originating from this country were cited the most. While “Virtual Reality” is the most commonly used word in the studies on the subject, “IEEE Access” stands out as the journal with the most publications on the subject. On the other hand, the study revealed important authors, studies and themes in the literature on immersive journalism, emphasised the interactions between authors and disciplines, and provided a road map for future research. The study has limitations in terms of the publication languages of some of the studies in the dataset, the time period of the dataset and the singularity of the preferred database.

Il femminicidio in rete: social media e copertura informativa del caso Cecchettin. Nuove sfide per la media education

The article proposes a reading of the connections between the logic of digital media and the contemporary critical issues of Italian journalism, focusing on the news coverage of a femicide (that of Giulia Cecchettin), which raises important cultural, political and educational questions. It is underlined the persistence of several critical issues, already highlighted by studies on the journalistic narrative of feminicide in Italy. In addition, new information circuits have been activated between news professionals and social media users, who are currently engaged in newsmaking and news searching practices. The analysis confirms the presence of dramatizing narrative stereotypes, but also new spaces for discussion and participation for individuals.

Subjectivity conditioned by narrative form: A narratological approach to emotion in narrative journalism

In recent years, media researchers have displayed an increased interest in emotion as an element of the content in both news journalism and narrative journalism. These studies lack a theoretical definition of emotion and do not usually specify what characterizes narrative journalism more than it being “not objective” and, consequently, not similar to conventional journalism. In practice, they identify emotion through frames of personalization or explicit expressions of feelings and evaluations. However, narrative journalism integrates implicitly conveyed emotion. To enable a broader understanding of the function of emotion in narrative journalism, this article gives examples of and analyzes how emotion and the related concept subjectivity is used and discussed in two different fields of research: social sciences-influenced journalism studies and literature-influenced studies. The dualistic view on journalism as either subjective or objective is questioned when narrative journalism (also known as reportage or literary journalism) is placed in a professional context, where the genre is based on its own tradition and represents its own form of knowledge, due to its main characteristic: a narrative form. Finally, the article demonstrates how tools drawn from narratology can illuminate diverse storytelling techniques that transmit emotion implicitly rather than explicitly.

From Niche Narrative to Audio Blockbusters

From Niche Narrative to Audio Blockbusters

Popular Catholicism Puerto Rican Style: The Virgin of Rincón, Human Agency, and Miracles

In the past, popular Catholicism in Latin America and the Caribbean was perceived with suspicion by liberation theologians and official Roman Catholicism for its eccentricities, lack of doctrinal coherence, and fears of syncretism with folk religions. Nowadays, popular Catholicism in Latin America and the Caribbean has been a source of theological reflection, ecumenism, and religious revitalization. The apparition of the Holy Mother in 1953 at barrio Rincón in Sabana Grande, Puerto Rico, is a case study in global Catholicism that exemplifies this turn to see popular Catholicism as a source of liberation, perseverance, and deep spiritual devotion by the faithful. Using cultural, social, and reception historiography, the article argues that the Puerto Rican faithful were not passive recipients of the literary narratives of journalists covering the events as narrated by the main protagonists, the children/seers, but rather themselves formulators of history through their reception and participation. This is demonstrated by the allegiances of the faithful to popular Catholicism and their rejection of the official mandates of the clergy to ignore the events taking place at barrio Rincón regarding the apparition of the Virgin.

A FEMALE JOURNALIST REPORTER IN 1930s PALESTINE: DOROTHY KAHN BAR-ADON AND THE PALESTINE POST

The article follows the footsteps of the American Jewish newspaperwoman Dorothy Kahn Bar-Adon, who immigrated to Palestine in 1933 and became a central field reporter of the most important English-language newspaper in the country, The Palestine Post, owned by pro-Zionist proprietors. It explores how she transformed the newspaper over the years as a site of dialogue between the Jewish and the Arab societies, especially by her narrative journalism and her human-interest story angle, and how her writing in English – the language of the international power (Britain) designated by the League of Nations to administer the country, rather than in local languages – enabled her to propose a somehow distanced perspective on Palestine, while still promoting Zionism.

Exploring Journalists’ Narratives on Challenges to Climate Journalism in Pakistan

Background and Study Aim: Pakistan has been classified among the five most vulnerable societies to climate change, yet its coverage in Pakistani media remains event-driven and limited. Given the absence of research in field, this qualitative research, based on focus group discussion, documents the narratives of Pakistani journalists about challenges to climate journalism in Pakistan. Methodology: This qualitative research was conducted through a focus group discussion, collecting data from 11 Islamabad-based Pakistani journalists who have been serving different print, electronic and digital news media organizations as news reporters and news editors. Findings: The findings of the study reveal event-based media coverage of climate change, lack of prioritization and desensitization of media on climate change, the influence of policy agenda on media coverage, and the lack of professional journalistic training and education. Conclusion/Policy Recommendations: The study concluded/recommended that addressing the challenges to climate journalism in Pakistan required specialized training and sensitization of the journalists, besides the establishment of dedicated climate beats and desks within the media organizations. Enhancing the utilization of technology and fostering journalists-media academics collaboration, independent editorial policies, and introduction of climate change education in academic curricula can improve the quality and consistency of climate change awareness and coverage in Pakistan.

The Imagined User: Creating Interactive Narratives in Journalism

ABSTRACT Designing for interactivity for audience engagement in journalistic narratives is a new practice that emerged after The New York Times’ success with Snow Fall in 2012. Journalists have begun collaborating with designers in interdisciplinary teams to design these interactive narratives. Few studies describe the new practice that is the result of this collaboration. In this study, we examine the production processes of three journalistic interactive narratives and their design for audience engagement by focusing on the imagined user as part of the production process. Our analysis shows how producers develop the role of users by considering the narrative’s experience and accessibility. Together, these two concepts underpin the practice of designing for audience engagement and subsequent entextualisation. Our findings show that, although producers claim that they approach users differently when designing texts for interactive audience engagement, their concepts of the interactive user are grounded in more traditional notions of authorship and audience in journalistic practices.

A fome no Brasil: notas sobre as narrativas no jornal Folha de São Paulo no período pandêmico de 2020

ABSTRACT Objective This survey aims atreviewing the journalistic narratives of the newspaper Folha de São Paulo (digital edition) about hunger in Brazil during the 2020 pandemic period. It is known that journalism plays an important role in keeping the public informed and in helping to contribute to the shaping of society's opinion. Despite hunger being a structural phenomenon in this country, little is published in the mainstream media discussing the magnitude of the problem and the articulation of measures taken in the three government spheres (federal, state and municipal), to ensure access to food to the most vulnerable populations. Method News excerpts addressing hunger as the main topic were selected from Folha de São Paulo daily newspaper and were highlighted based on reading keys (n=11, published between March and December 2020). Results In all the selected articles, the newspaper addressed the cause of hunger from the perspective of the pandemic (passing event and manifestation). Issues linked to the economic and social crisis experienced in the country were not emphasized. This form of covering hunger in news articles can enhance the idea that the poor are the result of the currently spreading fatality. Conclusion Finally, from these first results we could infer that the newspaper, when addressing hunger in Brazil in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, sought to construct a biased reality that hunger was derived from the health crisis, at the same time that it presents the hungry people narratives as a discursive strategy to sensitize the reader to Folha de São Paulo intentions.

Journalism’s Power of Discourse: Be it Through A Periscope or Kaleidoscope

The present research paper delves into the power of journalism’s discourse through a comparative analysis of literary and non-literary journalism. Drawing on the metaphorical imagery of periscopes and kaleidoscopes, the study aims to explore how journalism’s discourse shapes readers’ perceptions and interpretations of events, blurring the line between reality and fiction. The paper adopts a qualitative research approach with a phenomenological design. Through in-depth analysis and interpretation, the study examines the power of fictional and non-fictional journalism, drawing upon the concept of metaphor to describe how the discourse of journalism operates. The research questions are explored within the frameworks of Post-Truth, Linguistic Relativism, and Transcendentalism to gain a comprehensive understanding of the power inherent in these two genres of journalism. The empirical material for this research comprises a wide range of literary and non-literary journalistic texts, including articles, news reports, and narrative journalism pieces. Additionally, scholarly works discussing the impact of journalism’s discourse on readers’ perceptions are included to provide a holistic view of the subject. The study reveals that journalism’s discourse, whether in literary or non-literary form, holds a double-edged power over readers’ minds. Utilizing the metaphorical comparison of periscopes and kaleidoscopes, the research highlights the relative and manipulative nature of journalistic language. Moreover, the power of literary journalism, bolstered by imaginative and creative writing techniques, exerts a profound influence on shaping readers’ worldviews. The research emphasizes the significance of understanding journalism’s power in shaping public opinion and perception. While acknowledging the complexity and nuance of this phenomenon, the study underscores the need for continued research to gain further insight into the workings of journalism’s discourse in a rapidly evolving media landscape.