Journalistic Routines Research Articles

Journalistic Power: Constructing the “Truth” and the Economics of Objectivity

ABSTRACT This article explores journalists’ role as truth tellers by investigating the distinctions journalists draw between journalism and activism. Relying on 30 in-depth interviews with journalists and theories of media power, objectivity, and epistemology, two key themes are discussed: (1) narrative framing and style, and (2) the economics of objectivity within digital media. Examining journalism as culture, I offer a theory of journalistic power—the recognition that journalism is never neutral, truths are never disinterested, and journalists’ epistemic practices are influenced by the power dynamics embedded in the sociopolitical and historical contexts in which they work. This study reveals how the political economy of digital media and activist media-makers are complicating journalists’ truth claims, upending journalistic routines, and redefining the field. Journalism scholars and practitioners must identify the spaces of media power during all stages of news production and distribution.

“Our Company is in Survival Mode”: Metajournalistic Discourse on COVID-19’s Impact on U.S. Community Newspapers

ABSTRACT This study explores how U.S. reporters, columnists, editors, and state newspaper associations explained to their audiences the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on journalism. Our examination of news articles and columns found an emphasis on explaining the industry’s financial struggles in the 2000s, the strain of the pandemic on journalistic routines, the historical legacies of newspapers, and journalism’s role in democracy. We also found that state newspaper associations served as morale boosters for member newspapers to remind them of their essential community role, provided advice on innovation, played an advocacy and lobbying role in support of newspapers. The findings of this study illustrate the discursive strategies that journalists use as they appeal to readers to keep journalism alive.

Vaccine Hesitancy in the Age of Coronavirus and Fake News: Analysis of Journalistic Sources in the Spanish Quality Press.

The study of the quality press and the use of sources is relevant to understand the role of journalists in scientific controversies. The objective was to examine media sourcing patterns, using the case of vaccines as a backdrop. Articles were retrieved from the national quality press in Spain. Content analysis was undertaken on the sources and on other variables such as tone, frames and journalistic genre. The software myNews and NVivo were used for data collection and coding, while SPSS and Excel were used for statistical analysis. Findings indicate that sources related to the government, professional associations and scientific companies are the most frequently used, confirming the central role of government institutions as journalistic sources. These were followed by university scientists, scientific journals and clinicians. On the other hand, NGOs and patients groups were included in fewer than 5% of the articles. More than 30% included none or just one source expressing unbalanced perspectives. Frequent use of certain source types, particularly governmental, may indicate state structures of power. The study provides a better understanding of journalistic routines in the coverage of vaccines, including fresh perspectives in the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Telegram como herramienta para periodistas: Percepción y uso

La búsqueda de modelos de negocio alternativos y el auge de las nuevas tecnologías han propiciado una transformación en las rutinas de los periodistas y en el rol de las audiencias. Este debate se ha acrecentado a raíz del protagonismo de plataformas como las redes sociales o las aplicaciones de mensajería instantánea. El presente estudio analiza la instrumentalización de Telegram en las rutinas periodísticas debido a la utilidad, seguridad y privacidad que ofrece la plataforma. Gracias a estas cualidades técnicas que presenta, Telegram ha irrumpido en las prácticas rutinarias de los periodistas, especialmente, como fuente de información personalizada y como canal de distribución de noticias. La percepción de los profesionales y estudiantes de comunicación es positiva, en relación al consumo de información a través de las breaking news y titulares relevantes por la sencillez y originalidad de uso de la aplicación. Sin embargo, pese a su incursión en la actividad periodística, su escasa implantación social todavía representa un importante escollo para su desarrollo a nivel de la población.

News Work: The Impact of Corporate-implemented Technology on Local Television Newsroom Labor

ABSTRACT By virtue of their licenses, local television stations in the United States must serve in the public interest of their communities. Because many stations’ ownership is by corporate conglomerates, however, that public interest is often considered secondary to revenue maximization. Labor is exploited to meet this goal, with technology deployed in newsrooms to consolidate job descriptions, replace human labor with computers, and add sales-ready content platforms, while drawing as much surplus value from workers as possible. This study sought out newsroom employees, including rarely-studied behind the scenes personnel, in the 25 largest metropolitan areas of the country to find out how this utilization of technology affected their journalistic work routines and output. Their responses via online surveys and semi-structured interviews highlight the challenges of juggling ever-increasing tech-enabled job responsibilities while still providing quality reports for their audiences in a corporate ownership environment focused on profits.

Twitter como herramienta de aprendizaje en los estudios de Periodismo: content curators en el proyecto International Journalism Tweet Week

Las redes sociales, y en concreto Twitter, se han convertido en parte esencial de las rutinas periodísticas. En ámbitos como el periodismo internacional su uso ha favorecido, además de la cobertura móvil y en tiempo real, proyectos de rotación semanal de curators para el control del contenido de una cuenta. Este artículo presenta el proyecto de innovación docente “International Journalism Tweet Week” que se desarrolló, aplicando la InteRmetodología del factor Relacional, del 14 de septiembre al 9 de diciembre de 2018 en la asignatura de “Periodismo Internacional I: la información global” de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, con 51 alumnos participantes y un total de 6.130 tuits, con un impacto potencial de 1.787.155. Los resultados mostraron una mayor participación de los alumnos basado en el aprendizaje colaborativo, un aumento del interés por la asignatura y los temas internacionales, una mejor selección de la información y las fuentes en Twitter, y un elevado grado de satisfacción con la asignatura.

The BRI and China’s Soft Power in Europe: Why Chinese Narratives (Initially) Won

The article aims to contribute to our understanding of China’s soft power in Europe and the impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in this regard. We conduct analyses of two leading newspapers in the United Kingdom, in Spain, and in Poland to discover how the BRI was framed there in the period from mid-2013 to mid-2017. The empirical results show that the media reported about the initiative quite positively – especially compared to the general media picture of China in Europe – and to a considerable extent followed Chinese narratives of economic opportunities while overlooking geopolitical and security worries. Theories of “journalistic routines” and linguistic “affective sticking points” will be suggested as possible explanations of these dynamics, highlighting both the fact that Chinese narratives outnumbered European ones in the initial period quantitatively, and were able to offer something that resonated with the audience qualitatively.

Rutinas periodísticas de los periodistas ecuatorianos en el contexto de Twitter durante el juicio de Jorge Glas

La presente investigación pretende comprobar cómo fueron afectadas las rutinas periodísticas de los periodistas ecuatorianos, tomando en cuenta el juicio de Jorge Glas en el contexto de Twitter. Se realizó un análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo del contenido publicado en Twitter por periodistas durante el juicio a Jorge Glas y entrevistas a expertos en el uso de Twitter como herramienta de trabajo. Llegando a la conclusión que Twitter, al ser usado como una herramienta de trabajo para periodistas y medios de comunicación, ha modificado el proceso de trabajo, pero no ha cambiado su esencia y que los modelos periodísticos tradicionales se están adaptando a los requerimientos de la comunicación digital de la actualidad.

Social media as public opinion: How journalists use social media to represent public opinion

Public opinion, as necessary a concept it is to the underpinnings of democracy, is a socially constructed representation of the public that is forged by the methods and data from which it is derived, as well as how it is understood by those tasked with evaluating and utilizing it. I examine how social media manifests as public opinion in the news and how these practices shape journalistic routines. I draw from a content analysis of news stories about the 2016 US election, as well as interviews with journalists, to shed light on evolving practices that inform the use of social media to represent public opinion. I find that despite social media users not reflecting the electorate, the press reported online sentiments and trends as a form of public opinion that services the horserace narrative and complements survey polling and vox populi quotes. These practices are woven into professional routines – journalists looked to social media to reflect public opinion, especially in the wake of media events like debates. Journalists worried about an overreliance on social media to inform coverage, especially Dataminr alerts and journalists’ own highly curated Twitter feeds. Hybrid flows of information between journalists, campaigns, and social media companies inform conceptions of public opinion.

Transnational news media coverage of distant suffering in the Syrian civil war: An analysis of CNN, Al-Jazeera English and Sputnik online news

This study analyzed news stories published on the online sites of CNN, Al-Jazeera English, and Sputnik to investigate how the transnational news outlets framed the human suffering associated with the Syrian war. Unlike prior studies that have tended to be based on traditional nation-state paradigms, this research approached the analysis from a cosmopolitan perspective. The findings revealed that in concert with standard journalistic routines and news values, all three news outlets commonly employed a mass death and displacement frame to depict human suffering inside Syria. The adoption of this frame suggests that in telling the story of human suffering, the three media outlets focused on brief facts and shocking statistics without detailed depictions of the human suffering. The meager presence of a cosmopolitan outlook in the news coverage indicates that although transnational media target a global audience with English as Lingua Franca, they cannot be completely independent of geopolitics.

Uber’s entrepreneurship discourse and its neoliberal appeal: analysis of coverage in English-language dailies in India

ABSTRACT This study examines how the top two English-language newspapers in India constructed the entrepreneurship discourse used by online cab aggregator firm, Uber Technology Inc., in India, its second-largest market after the United States. A critical discourse analysis study of related news coverage in The Times of India and the Hindu newspapers was undertaken in three stages including an analysis of media texts, discursive practice and social practice. This paper unravels how the dominant discourses reproduced and reinforced Uber’s entrepreneurship rhetoric, embedded in the neoliberal assumption that the self-reliant, individual entrepreneur is the ideal person who will play an important role in the story of India’s economic growth. Counter-discourses that challenged such assumptions were limited and found primarily in a few opinion pieces in the Hindu newspaper. While media-centric factors such as news values and journalistic routines often privilege established sources of news, in this case, Uber officials, this study also highlights the influence of a media organization’s corporate policy and economic imperatives on news discourses. Further, this study highlights how Uber’s entrepreneurship discourse was strengthened by political actors eager to reap rewards from portraying a greater role in generating employment and attracting investments.

Las rutinas en la crónica periodística: el proceso de producción de los autores ecuatorianos en las revistas especializadas

Las rutinas en la crónica periodística: el proceso de producción de los autores ecuatorianos en las revistas especializadas

Rutinas de trabajo de los periodistas de noticias policiales de la televisión en Argentina (2011-2015)

En este artículo, a partir de 10 entrevistas a periodistas especializados en noticias policiales que trabajan en canales televisivos, se analizan las rutinas periodísticas, la construcción de la agenda mediática y la relación con las fuentes. Se observa que en el periodo 2011-2015, durante el segundo mandato de Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, el sentimiento de inseguridad aumenta tanto como la percepción del riesgo. Este posicionamiento de la inseguridad como problema público, afecta la moral de los periodistas, lleva a modificar las formas de presentar la información y, por lo tanto, de construir las noticias.

Narrowing the discourse? Growing precarity in freelance journalism and its effect on the construction of news discourse

ABSTRACTAs the number of freelance journalists increases, the changing nature of work in journalism has effects and possible implications for the kinds of news discourses that are circulated. This paper explores the experiences of freelance journalists in the Republic of Ireland in the context of increasing casualised work. We consider whether challenging working conditions impacts the type of journalism work carried out by freelancers and by extension influences the construction of news and wider discourse. Following the constructionist school, this paper explores the journalistic routines and practices employed by freelancers who are often constrained by resources and time. We do so to consider the impact of these influences on discourse before the text. The study was conducted by interviewing freelance journalists about their lived experiences. This paper contributes to debates around journalism’s so called ‘fourth estate’ function. In particular we question if this role is undermined by changes in the working environment of freelance journalists and posit that growing precarity in the news industry may act to constrain journalism that challenges power.

Regional newspapers’ sourcing strategies: Changes in media-citation and self-citation from a longitudinal perspective

In the light of profound transformation processes shaping news media markets during the last decade, in particular local and regional news markets are confronted with consolidation and concentration processes. As a result, newspaper organizations are required to adapt their organizational strategies and editorial routines to face these challenges. Among journalistic routines, the use of sources is a prime example for an analysis of changing patterns in news production. This article investigates regional newspaper’s use of self- and media-citations in a longitudinal design (1995, 2006, 2015). Based on a content analysis of German regional newspapers (N = 4713 articles), we illustrate changing patterns in the use of sources over a period of 20 years. Results point to an increase in other media outlets as sources indicative of an eligible and cheap content sourcing strategy. Self-citation is mainly used in articles that cover regional and local events mirroring the core business of local news media.

The virtuous cycle of news sharing on Facebook: Effects of platform affordances and journalistic routines on news sharing

A growing body of literature shows how important content is in terms of news sharing. Nevertheless, the same literature overlooks the theory and corresponding effects on audience metrics produced by news routines adapted to platform affordances. This article aims to contribute to closing this gap by investigating 99 Facebook news pages covering 13 countries ( n posts = 823,184). Causality tests demonstrate that a combination of posting regularity, the use of native video and balance of posting may lead to a virtuous cycle of news sharing. Since this is not a trivial endeavour, we conclude that success of news media requires strategic planning of news routines to make them suitable to each platform. In terms of implications for future research, the accumulated knowledge on news sharing should be reassessed since our data show that the same content has greater chances of being shared according to the variables investigated in this research.

Journalistic practices in the representation of Europe’s 2014–2016 migrant and refugee crisis

Abstract Since its surge in 2014, the migrant and refugee crisis has been a major issue for the European community, not only impacting the geopolitical, economic, societal and humanitarian sectors but also challenging media practices, narratives and framings. This special issue investigates journalistic routines, norms and representations of migrants and refugees in western mainstream and digital media by questioning innovations in journalistic practices. Drawing on a wide range of case studies and various methodological approaches, the contributions in this issue, both from scholars and practitioners, analyse different journalistic ecosystems and visual narratives. Have stereotypical portrayals of migrants and refugees from previous episodes of massive displacement been challenged? How were the visual politics of migration shaped by a humanization discourse? To what extent did editorial choices and newswork routines adapt to this type of crisis reporting? How have media narratives shifted through several western contexts to engage audiences into this human tragedy? In the end, this issue aims at exploring a variety of dynamic approaches related to the media perspective on representations of migration and refugee studies, in the light of new potentials offered by storytelling and immersive forms of journalism.

The Role of Social Media in Journalism: An Examination on Turkish News Organizations

This study, seeks to understand the role of social media in journalistic routines by examining Turkish news organizations, and asks: How do Turkish news organizations use social media as a newsgathering tool? Do they consider social media as a trusted source? Which social media platforms are being used most by news organisations? Do they integrate user-generated content into their news? How do they struggle with fake news? How do they evaluate the future of journalism? To answer these questions, we conducted 12 semi-structured interviews with media professionals working for newspapers, television, news agencies and the web. We carried out the interviews in Istanbul and Ankara between February and March 2017. The total length of all interviews is more than 600 minutes. All interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed conducting a qualitative content analysis. The current findings illustrate that the impact of social media on journalistic routines is limited. It can be contended that professional journalistic norm and practices continue their importance in Turkish news organizations.

This Reporter is so Ugly, How can She Appear on TV?

In Taiwan, 25 professional female journalists were interviewed, to understand how they negotiate gender and professional identities online and offline through the lens of Shoemaker and Reese’s media routines and the socialization theory as articulated by Rodgers and Thorson. The findings suggest that while Taiwanese women journalists found that gender in some aspects of reporting is an asset, gendered harassment online and incivility in the digital sphere are important issues with which they have to contend. Comments on stories and professional identities online primarily focused on their looks and physical attributes. They were openly uncivil and abusive. Such incivility affected normal journalistic routines and prevented them from being impartial conveyors of information. Not just online abuse but cultural norms that expect women to be subservient deterred them from promoting stories on personal social media and negatively affected their coverage of controversial issues. In some cases, though gender provided certain advantages, the participants were aware that these gains were limited and ultimately patriarchal in nature. Although the study’s primary focus is on Taiwan, the analysis is applicable beyond national boundaries.

News values: a review of academic literature/Valores noticiosos: una revisión de la literatura académica

Se revisa la literatura académica del concepto “Valores noticiosos” y corresponde a la primera fase de la investigación “Efecto de la fotografía de homicidios, accidentes y heridos en las emociones humanas”. El objetivo es investigar tendencias, metodologías, origen de los estudios, revistas que los publican, entre otros. Se aplicó un análisis de contenidos, a una muestra 50 artículos con criterios de inclusión y exclusión. Los resultados sugieren la identificación de seis tendencias emergentes en la literatura académica: 1. Tipologías de news values. 2. Selección. 3. Cobertura. 4. Rutinas periodísticas. 5. Web y. 6. Redes sociales y concluye evidenciando una concentración de la investigación en revistas académicas europeas, ubicadas en Scopus y con una presencia nula estudios de Latinoamérica.