Journalistic Role Performance Research Articles

Journalistic Roles and Political Parallelism in a Transitional Society: The Case of Ethiopia

ABSTRACT The article is an assessment of journalistic role performance and political parallelism in an African media system, specifically Ethiopia. Transitional countries such as Ethiopia are often associated with high levels of political parallelism in the media landscape. However, the assumption tends to be drawn on the basis of ownership only, while the degree to which political parallelism transpires in journalistic role performance is rarely subject to systematic study. The article takes up the challenge by scrutinizing ten outlets representative of the private and state media sector in Ethiopia (print, radio, television and online). A total of 1200 stories were coded. Ownership appeared as a strong predictor of journalistic role performance. Among six pre-defined roles, four roles were predominant in the state media: interventionist, loyal-facilitator, service and civic roles. The watchdog and entertainment roles, on the other hand, dominated in the private media. A more nuanced analysis of the private media, however, found significant differences in role orientation between different media institutions. The differences are explained by media–political affiliations and changes in the country since 2018. The article argues that systematic analysis of media content can be a sophisticated method to study political parallelism in a country’s media system.

Scrutinizing Algorithms: Assessing Journalistic Role Performance in Chinese News Media’s Coverage of Artificial Intelligence

ABSTRACT Coverage of artificial intelligence and algorithms has been largely examined by scholars studying countries in the Global North that have historically supported conditions for critical journalism and watchdog journalistic role performances. However, it is unclear if the findings from such work would be applicable to authoritarian contexts that do not share those conditions. This study addresses this gap through a textual analysis of 23 journalistic investigations of AI and algorithmic systems published in Chinese news media between 2019 and 2023. We found that Chinese journalists were critical of multiple aspects of algorithmic systems and called for urgent AI governance at the nation-state level. Despite the technical nature of the issue, those journalists overwhelmingly employed traditional reporting techniques to uncover political and economic intersections—namely those resulting from the rise of tech companies and the algorithms they implement. Chinese journalists simultaneously performed the roles of being watchdogs and loyal facilitators by highlighting the risks posed by private platforms and their algorithms while casting the state as a protector and responsible steward of technological development. The study thus highlights the intricate roles necessary to perform critical journalism in authoritarian contexts, and the possibilities that the case of AI permits.

Time-based Variability in the Presence of Infotainment, Service, and Civic Roles in Czech Quality Press

ABSTRACT Evidence on how journalistic role performance changes in time and in relation to which factors is largely missing. This study investigates the presence of civic, infotainment, and service roles in the news, and examines whether their presence varies in time given the worsening economic conditions on the press market and changes in ownership type. A longitudinal content analysis of a representative sample of news (N = 1871) published in four Czech quality dailies during three year-long periods (i.e., 2006–2007, 2011–2012, 2016–2017) was conducted. Bivariate analyses showed that the presence of the roles varied in time for all of the newspapers but to a relatively small extent. Ridge logistic regressions revealed that the presence of all three audience-related roles was associated with specific dailies and ownership types, but not with worsening economic conditions. As compared to privately-owned newspapers, likelihood for the presence of the service role was bigger in corporate-owned newspapers, and for the civic role it was bigger in oligarchic-owned newspapers. The findings suggest that corporate-owned dailies responded to worsening economic conditions by preferring a service role rather than an infotainment role, and that the effects of oligarchic ownership on journalism practice are complex and far from being straightforward.

Interpreting or Reporting? An Analysis of Journalistic Interventionism Across Western European Countries

ABSTRACT The literature comparing journalistic roles around the world highlights different ways of understanding journalistic work across countries. One of the main differences in conceptualising concerns the journalist’s propensity for intervention: where in some contexts it is common practice for journalists to intervene with commentary and interpretation; while in others there is a tendency to adopt a more neutral reporting style. Through the conceptual lens of journalistic role performance, this study investigates the performance of the interventionist role within its two analytical sub-dimensions (content-driven interventionism and style-driven interventionism), together with the specific indicators related to each of the two (interpretation, journalist point of view, call to action, qualifying adjectives, and use of the first person) across nine Western European countries. Contrary to expectations, our data show a higher level of interventionism—particularly content-driven—in Central and Northern European countries when compared to those belonging to the polarised pluralist model theorised by Hallin, D. C., and P. Mancini. (2004. Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge University Press). Moreover, in almost all the countries considered, when journalists do intervene with their own voice, they predominantly do so through rhetorical devices of interpretation and by expressing their point of view.

“Whether That’s Truly Objective Journalism, Probably Not”. Professional Retreatism and Professional Dilemmas When Reporting on Muslims

ABSTRACT Professional retreatism can be seen as a central concept in guiding journalistic role performance. It relates to how journalists distance themselves from the stories they produce by drawing upon professional ideals such as objectivity to produce a non-interventionist detached account of the news. But what happens when this professional retreatism ends up reproducing, rather than challenging, an existing media bias that contributes to the further marginalisation of a minority group? Drawing on 23 qualitative interviews with British press journalists, the article examines the dilemmas they face in their professional roles when it comes to negotiating objectivity in the reporting of stories involving Muslims. The study finds that objectivity as a form of professional retreatism can work in a counter-productive way to limit journalists’ abilities to value and act upon their own moral and ethical judgements when producing Muslim-related stories. The article further argues that recent scholarship on journalistic role performance and the tensions between journalistic ideals and practices can provide an important missing insight into why spaces for resistance and contradiction can also coexist alongside the more negative representations.

Sports News in Five Arab Countries: A Comparative Study of Journalistic Role Performance Across Platforms and Sources

This study examines journalistic role performance in sports news in five Arab countries in relation to country, geographic frame, platforms, and sources. The comparative content analysis of three journalistic roles – loyal-facilitator, watchdog, and infotainment – in Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) relies on 874 sports news stories from 40 print, broadcast, and online outlets, sampled in 2020 through a constructed, two-week stratified-systematic approach. Results point to variations in all roles as a function of some predictors more than others. Specifically, the UAE tended to be the most loyal/cheerleader, whereas Qatar led in the infotainment role. Loyalty was also apparent across the region in domestic news that was more loyalist than foreign news. Sources mattered in that political sources tended to predict higher levels of loyalist content, while sports sources did not have any impact on any role. Sources’ viewpoint of diversity, on the other hand, revealed multiple perspectives to be associated with more infotainment and watchdog content. The results indicate the loyalist cheerleader role that sports journalists in the West have been associated with for decades also applies to the Arab region, suggesting sports journalists behave in a similar manner irrespective of their country of origin.

Catch, Engage, Retain: Audience-Oriented Journalistic Role Performance in Canada

ABSTRACT To understand audience-oriented journalistic role performance, one must understand how journalists conceptualize and cater to their audience. Giving the audience what it wants is a complex endeavor, with varying goals and hybridized end results, in newsrooms with fewer resources serving increasingly polarized audiences. Through a triangulation of data—content analysis at the subdimension level to examine the range and hybridity of audience-oriented journalistic product presenting the civic, service and infotainment roles; a survey to identify journalists’ attitudes toward the use of audience data and social media in their work; and interviews with journalists that revealed how their journalistic practice and audience perceptions were impacted by quantitative (metrics and analytics) and qualitative data (comments/social media interactions)—this research fills a gap in understanding about the connection between journalists, their audiences, and audience data when it comes to journalistic role performance. Findings show that in Canada the infotainment role is a significant part of reporting, but entertaining often comes with a goal of educating, as does service journalism. There are no “bad” journalistic roles, but there are a lot of journalists trying to figure out which ones might best catch, engage, and retain an ever-shrinking news audience.

The societal context of professional practice: Examining the impact of politics and economics on journalistic role performance across 37 countries

The impact of socio-political variables on journalism is an ongoing concern of comparative research on media systems and professional cultures. However, they have rarely been studied systematically across diverse cases, particularly outside Western democracies, and existing studies that compare western and non-western contexts have mainly focused on journalistic role conceptions rather than actual journalistic practice. Using journalistic role performance as a theoretical and methodological framework, this paper overcomes these shortcomings through a content analysis of 148,474 news stories from 365 print, online, TV, and radio outlets in 37 countries. We consider two fundamental system-level variables—liberal democracy and market orientation—testing a series of hypotheses concerning their influence on the interventionist, watchdog, loyal-facilitator, service, infotainment, and civic roles in the news globally. Findings confirm the widely asserted hypothesis that liberal democracy is associated with the performance of public-service oriented roles. Claims that market orientation reinforces critical and civic-oriented journalism show more mixed results and give some support to the argument that there are forms of “market authoritarianism” associated with loyalist journalism. The findings also show that the interventionist and infotainment roles are not significantly associated with the standard measures of political and economic structure, suggesting the need for more research on their varying forms across societies and the kinds of system-level factors that might explain them.

Between Headlines and Punchlines: Journalistic Role Performance in Western News Satire

ABSTRACT News satire has proliferated worldwide and has emerged as a valid site for public discourse. What we see today is a spectrum of news satire formats ranging from the predominantly absurd and comedic to more overtly journalistic satirical deconstructions of current affairs. This maturation of news satire as an alternative form of journalism thus underlines the necessity for further research into the journalistic roles that certain news satire formats carry out. This study assesses the journalistic roles in three international news satire formats i.e., the United States’ Last Week Tonight, the Swedish Svenska Nyheter, and the Dutch Zondag met Lubach and presents the findings of a content analysis of 150 satirical segments having aired from October 2020 to April 2023. We conclude that Western news satire displays a fairly united execution of journalistic role performances with high scores for the Advocate, Watchdog and Civic Educator roles, yet low scores for Reporter and Loyalist roles. Furthermore, we present the Comedic Interlocutor role, and discuss its place in alternative conceptions of professional journalism today. This study empirically validates that humor and entertainment are not irreconcilable with a factual, civically engaged, critical kind of journalistic coverage.

A Watchdog That No Longer Barks: Role Performance of Investigative Journalism in China in the Digital Age

ABSTRACT This article examines the practices of investigative journalism in China in changing times. It does so by focusing on the case study of Southern Metropolitan Daily (SMD), a well-known newspaper in China which built its name on investigative journalism. The aim is to understand how the changing social conditions have shaped investigative journalism and transformed the role performance of investigative journalists. Drawing on data from multiple sources, including archival research, in-depth interviews, and news content analysis, the study found that under a trio of pressures: technological disruption, economic downturn and most importantly tightened political control, the media have been repositioning and reorienting themselves in relation to power. Investigative journalism, although it still retains the name, has shifted to trumpeting the value of constructiveness rather than criticism. This study contributes to the ongoing debates on journalistic role performance by showing how the watchdog and facilitator roles are combined in the practice of Chinese investigative journalists in changing times. It reaffirms the complex cooccurrence of journalistic roles and adds insights into the possibility of roles overlapping, not only across different dimensions but within the same dimension of power relations.

Journalistic Role Performance in Australia During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Events, Media Systems and Journalistic Practice

ABSTRACT This study analyses data gathered as part of an international comparative study of journalistic role performance during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We situate role performance at the intersection between anterior factors that shape journalistic decision-making and practice, and the contingent events and issues journalists are tasked with communicating. Based on this, we ground our analysis by considering (a) how news is shaped by media systems, and how Australia’s media system may be characterised; (b) studies of journalists’ work during previous health crises; and (c) analyses of media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis focuses, firstly, on whether role performance in Australia’s 2020 news coverage was discernibly “consensus-based”; and, secondly, on whether there were any indicators of Australian coverage being “polarised” during this period. Our findings suggest role performance in 2020 was broadly reflective of a relative political consensus and that evidence of polarisation was limited. We find, nevertheless, that there were notable differences between different mediums and outlets, and reflect on factors that may have contributed to such differences. In light of this, we emphasise the importance of taking account of the relationship between local contexts and historical contingency in considering how role performances are produced.

Journalistic Role Performance in Times of COVID

ABSTRACT This paper examines journalistic role performance in coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a content analysis of newspaper, television, radio and online news in 37 countries. We test a set of hypotheses derived from two perspectives on the role of journalism in health crises. Mediatization theories assume that news media tend to sensationalize or to politicize health crises. A contrasting perspective holds that journalists shift toward more deferential and cooperative stances toward health and political authorities in a health crisis, attempting to mobilize the public to act according to the best science. Hypotheses derived from these perspectives are tested using the standard measures of journalistic roles developed by the Journalistic Role Performance Project. Results show that the deference/cooperation/consensus perspective is better supported, with media moving away from the Watchdog and Infotainment, and toward performance of the Service and Civic roles. We also explore differences in the pattern by country.

Lexico-grammatical Analysis of Media Representation of Men in Rape Coverage

This study seeks to examine the representation of men in rape coverage produced by Thai media. The analysis is theoretically triangulated between Biber et al.’s markers of stance and Mellado’s journalistic role performance. Methodologically, corpus-assisted discourse analysis is adopted. The corpus consists of 167 news articles with a total number of 126,150 words. The period of publication ranges from 2007 to 2022. Findings indicate that male perpetrators are discursively vilified through discourse structures which signify augmented agency to inflict harm upon victims. To illustrate, the lexical item rape is made to occur simultaneously with other material verb processes which intensify an act of violence such as bludgeon and kill. In contrast, the agency of male victims is downplayed. This is evidenced in the fact that their voice is expressed through other parties such as witnesses and NGO officers instead of emanating from the victims themselves. Possible ways to humanise the representation are discussed.

Patterns of Journalistic Role Performance during Public Health Crises: Covering COVID-19 in the UK

ABSTRACT While journalism scholarship has long been exploring how journalistic role performance (“JRP” thereafter) varies in different scenarios, seldom have studies captured how JRP during public health crises reflects the all-around influence of such crises on journalism practice. To fill the gap, our study examined the patterns of JRP in UK news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. We draw on a content analysis of 4,184 news stories from 15 UK national news outlets across television, radio, print, and online platforms in 2020. Our results indicate that UK journalism emphasised the performance of the service role by providing news of use to the public, the civic role by (partially) inviting the public into political life, and the interventionist role by explicitly bringing to the fore journalists’ voices. UK journalism also suppressed the infotainment role. The power relations between UK journalists and the government showed a more complicated picture. UK journalists performed a watchdog role by maintaining a seemingly sceptical and distant approach to government sources, yet also showed traces of cooperation with government agendas in ensuring compliance with public health messaging. These findings are discussed in relation to ongoing debates in health and crisis news, and journalistic role performance.

Permanences and Mutations in the French and German Media Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed journalistic practices and media roles in France and Germany. Analysis: As part of the Journalistic Role Performance Project (JRP), 9,438 articles published in France and Germany in 2020 were analyzed to determine trends in journalistic sources and the presence of six professional roles (watchdog, loyal facilitator, interventionist disseminator, service, infotainment, and civic) in news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusions and implications: Professional roles in French and German media production are similar despite the countries having distinct media systems. However, notable differences exist in terms of journalistic practices. German media are characterized by the use of sources to justify institutional decisions. In contrast, French journalistic content is less politicized with a focus on “health” sources.

Investigating the Gap Between Journalists’ Role Conceptions and Role Performance in Rwanda and Ethiopia

ABSTRACT This study reports select findings from the second wave of the Journalistic Role Performance cross-national project involving 37 countries (www.journalisticperformance.org). Specifically, this study combines survey (N = 83) and content analysis data (N = 4,044) to explain gaps between journalists’ role conceptions and their media organizations’ performance in two African countries, Rwanda and Ethiopia. In 2020–21, we analyzed news stories from 10 media houses — including TV, radio, print and online — and subsequently surveyed journalists who worked at those outlets. Among other findings, the data showed larger gaps between conception and performance for Rwandan journalists than Ethiopian journalists. Journalists in both countries revealed a large gap for the Watchdog role, suggesting journalists valued this role much more than their organizations actually performed it. Interestingly, a greater sense of autonomy predicted larger role gaps in several cases. Results extend the Hierarchical Influence Model into new territory by gauging the influence of multi-level factors in Ethiopian and Rwandan journalistic cultures.

Comparing Journalistic Role Performance Across Thematic Beats: A 37-Country Study

Studies suggest that, at the routine level, news beats function as unique “micro-cultures.” Exploring this “particularist” approach in news content, we compare how the interventionist, watchdog, loyal, service, infotainment, and civic roles materialize across 11 thematic news beats and analyze the moderating effect of platforms, ownership, and levels of political freedom on journalistic role performance in hard and soft news. Based on the second wave of the Journalistic Role Performance (JRP) project, this article reports the findings of a content analysis of 148,474 news items from 37 countries. Our results reveal the transversality of interventionism, the strong associations of some topics and roles, and the limited reach of news beat particularism in the face of moderating variables.

Is It Us or Them? The Challenge of Getting Journalists to Participate in Academic Research

ABSTRACT For journalism research rooted in a sociological framework, gaining access to journalists is crucial for data collection. However, journalists are documentably difficult to recruit as participants, frequently due to limited time and resources in shrinking newsrooms, sometimes because of roadblocks put up by leery newsroom management. As part of the data collection process for the Canadian branch of the international Journalistic Role Performance project, researchers tracked issues raised by journalists that may have impacted survey recruitment and completion. These issues were frequently grounded in the context of survey questions designed to be operationalizable in vastly different cultures, and were also documented by other researchers in both the Global North and South who were cooperating in this comparative study. Despite first refusing or completely refusing survey participation, though, some Canadian journalists were willing to be interviewed, giving researchers the opportunity to explore how to best engage journalists in the research process, and design research tools to be shared in different media systems. Using a lens of social exchange, this paper provides unique insight, from the perspective of researchers and participants, on the importance of relationship-building as a focal point in order to adequately contextualize findings within a sociology of news framework.

Does News Platform Matter? Comparing Online Journalistic Role Performance to Newspaper, Radio, and Television

The shifting role of journalism in a digital age has affected long-standing journalistic norms across media platforms. This has reinvigorated discussion on how work in online newsrooms compares to other platforms that differ in media affordances and forms. Still, more studies are needed on whether those differences translate into distinct practices, especially when examining cross-national studies. Based on the second wave of the Journalistic Role Performance (JRP) project, this article reports the findings of a content analysis of 148,474 stories produced by 365 media organizations from 37 countries, comparing the performance of journalistic roles in online newsrooms to three other types of media—TV, radio, and print. The paper analyzes if journalistic roles present themselves differently across platforms, and if these differences are constant or they vary across countries. Results show that there are measurable differences in role performance in online journalism compared to other platforms. Platform had a significant impact, particularly in terms of service and infotainment orientation, while the implementation of roles oriented toward public service was more similar. Additionally, country differences in the relationship between role performance and platforms mainly emerged for roles that enable political influence on news coverage, with differences in the relationship between online vs. traditional platforms appearing to be distinct features of the specific political system.

The Framing of Anti-Fake News Law in Malaysian Newspapers

The government of Malaysia enacted an Anti-Fake News law right before the 14th general election. In more ways than one, this law relates to Malaysia’s practice of development journalism, which is a tool for the government to foster economic growth and nation-building. The main aim of this study is to explore the differences between Malaysian serious newspapers and tabloids in terms of frames employed in the Anti-Fake News Law reports. This study applied the generic frames of the framing theory in quantitative content analysis. The serious newspapers chosen in this study were Bernama and The New Straits Times, while the selected tabloids were The Sun and The Malay Mail. Results from the analysis of the 212 news reports retrieved showed that serious newspapers favored the use of the attribution of responsibility frame, while tabloids favored the use of the human interest frame. Additionally, the findings showed that the attribution of responsibility frame was more susceptible to a positive tone and the conflict frame was more susceptible to a negative tone in reports. In conclusion, this study gained insights into journalistic role performance under the practice of development journalism in Malaysia, particularly pertaining to the Anti-Fake News Law.