Journalists Construct Research Articles

Intervening by staying professional: How Nordic environmental journalists make sense of their roles

Abstract The notion of intervention is gaining traction among Western environmental journalists. While existing research has predominantly focused on countries outside the Nordic region, in our study we investigate the self-perceptions of professional journalists in the Nordic countries of Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Through semi-structured interviews, we examine the roles that Nordic journalists construct when reflecting on covering the environmental beat, paying particular attention to how they make sense of the idea of intervening – that is, their involvement in interpreting, making sense of, and engaging the public in environmental issues. Using thematic qualitative analysis to analyse the interviews, we have identified four journalistic roles: 1) objective news provider, 2) critical watchdog, 3) sense-maker and educator, and 4) environmental advocate. Our findings suggest that Nordic journalists intervene byadhering to professional norms and practices and renegotiating them. While the role of objective news provider remains prominent among Nordic journalists, it is intertwined with various forms of intervention across all identified roles.

Covering the Distant Other: Discursive Construction of the Makoko Community in Nigeria as “Venice of Africa”

ABSTRACT Journalistic texts are sites for the construction of meaning. Through their work, journalists construct, enact, and sustain identities and social realities. In particular, journalistic representations of poverty have implications for how poverty is perceived and addressed, and although extensive research has examined media representations of domestic poverty in the United States, very little is known about how American news organizations represent poverty in other contexts. Nonetheless, Western media have been criticized for presenting a homogenizing and totalizing image of Africa as the “dark continent.” This study explores CNN’s representation of Makoko, a low-income community in Nigeria, as the “Venice of Africa.” Critical discourse analysis of CNN stories about Makoko published between 2012 and 2023 reveals a complicated practice. CNN constructed different identities for Makoko, such as victim, achiever, and spectacle, thereby challenging notions of stereotypical representations of countries in Africa by Western media. However, a predominant focus on success, and the discursive strategy of transforming suffering into artistic spectacle, suggests an exclusive ideology, which contributes to a public ambivalence toward addressing the structural issues faced by this community.

Contested languages in the contemporary Italian press: an analysis of language ideology

ABSTRACT Based on a critical discursive perspective, this work analyses the ideology around the languages spoken in Italy, namely Italian and contested languages such as Lombard, Neapolitan or Sicilian, which are commonly referred to as ‘dialects’. The aim is to study how journalists construct, spread and justify a monolingual ideology that favours central nationalism (or macronationalism). Seventy-one articles have been examined, which were published online by the major Italian newspaper la Repubblica (www.repubblica.it) in 2011, the year of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy. The analysis shows that journalists contribute to Italian macronationalism mainly through three discursive strategies: references to plurality, language hierarchisation, and suffering erasure. In the first strategy, contested languages are negatively framed as many, unintelligible and divisive. In the second, a categorisation such as ‘language/dialect’ is used which legitimises Italian and delegitimises contested languages by negating their very languageness. In the third strategy, narratives on the unification process are used that erase the suffering brought about by the eradication of contested languages.

When Socialism Meets Terrorism: A Computer-Assisted Discursive News Values Analysis of Chinese Newspapers’ Coverage of Domestic and International Terrorist Attacks

ABSTRACT Terrorist attacks, as a particular type of negative social event, are a potential threat to the establishment of a “Socialist Harmonious Society” advocated by the Chinese government. To shed light on how Chinese journalists construct reports on terrorist attacks and, more broadly, how non-Western countries report on negative social issues, we compared newspaper coverage of one domestic attack with four international incidents. Starting from Bednarek and Caple’s framework, we further developed the computer-assisted Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) they proposed by adapting individual definitions of news values and dividing them into 15 subcategories to suit the Chinese context, the topic of terrorism, and the automatic processing of large-scale datasets. Based on our understanding, we developed an open-source list of Chinese lexical indicators by Part of Speech tagging, sentiment, collocation, and concordance analysis, with a view to providing resources to support future quantitative DNVA. Following this approach, we found that while market factors enabled Chinese newspapers to cover domestic terrorist attacks, media adopted specific media strategies to meet political needs, which differed from those used to cover international attacks. These different media strategies can be explained by the Chinese developmentalist ideology and harmonious cultural traditions.

Discursive construction of identities for older people in news: A critical discourse analysis of Malaysian newspapers

This article examines how Malaysian journalists discursively construct identities for older people through the manipulation of language, reporting styles and the prioritization of certain news actors and their voices over others. Based on a critical discourse analysis of newspaper articles published between 2011 and 2021, this study reveals the social, cultural, journalistic and economic forces that affect how the media construct ‘older’ people. We demonstrate that newspapers in Malaysia construct identities through familial discourses, which indicates that the dependence of older people on family plays a significant role in the way they are perceived and constructed by the media. Journalists construct and propagate narratives that place the responsibility for caring for elderly Malaysians on family members. These narratives appear to absolve the government of responsibility for this role.

Sustaining the “Pink Ghetto”? The identity negotiations of Chinese women journalists in the field of digital journalism

ABSTRACT Feminist studies of the media have shown different degrees of gender inequality in journalism organizations. Drawing on the notions of field and gendered habitus, the authors of this study conducted in-depth interviews with 30 Chinese women journalists to explore their experiences of digital journalism production, their survival logic in the field, the associated gender power relationships, and the reconstruction of ‘Pink Ghetto’ in the digital news field. The research shows that women journalists with more opportunities for work and career development while generating various gender-related challenges related to blurred boundaries between work and family life, deviations from career paths, and the risks of using digital platforms. The study explains how women journalists’ identities negotiate between the gendered habitus and the professional identity. Those journalists construct multiple identities by adopting four strategies, namely ‘strong gender’, ‘weak gender’, ‘de-gendering’, and ‘trans-gender’, which proposed a framework of identity negotiation. The study thus offers a broad perspective in feminist media research in developing countries.

Writing about health in a women’s magazine: Journalists’ discursive constructions of health, agency and science

This article examines women’s magazine journalists’ discourses and ideologies of health, agency and science, and how these are shaped by journalists’ attitudes to health, and views on the magazine and readership. Health coverage has grown, and impacts behaviour, governmental policy and societal notions of health. Consequently, it is essential to understand how journalists construct notions of health, and how these notions feed into production processes. To examine the journalists’ discourses and ideologies on health, eight research interviews were analysed. The analysis shows that journalists construct health as a subjective, dynamic experience of feeling well, in which patients’ individual agency is central. This is consolidated by their view on readers as intelligent and independent, who read health content to become more well-informed. This neo-liberal view on health and agency leads to perspectives in which scientific expertise as no longer seen the only source of expertise to self-manage health, but as part of a bigger information landscape which includes pseudo-scientific information. This, in turn, is consolidated by ideas on open-minded journalism: good journalists are non-biased, consider all expertise, and let intelligent readers decide what is relevant knowledge.

Sifting through sand: Community news coverage of fractured sand mining

This content analysis examines how journalists construct local news stories when the new issue of a fractured sand mine is proposed to a community. Results reveal that initially journalists opt for the use of thematic framing to more thoroughly explain the background and complexities of silica sand mines, as well as related issues such as environmental and economic impacts. Over time, however, episodic frames become more prevalent following mining routine event coverage. Overall, political and industry communications produced economic frames, which dominated coverage more than environmental frames, despite concerns by scientists and citizens about environmental impact.

Direct Reader Address in Health-related Online News Articles: Imposing Problems and Projecting Desires for Action and Change onto Readers

ABSTRACTThe digitalisation and commercialisation of the news mean journalistic practices are changing. Traditionally, readers are not addressed in written news stories. This study documents practices of direct reader address in online news headlines on health topics from three Nordic countries. The study focuses on the linguistic means of constructing the reader and journalist-reader relationship through forms of direct address. For this purpose, we take pragmatic-interactional and discourse-analytical approaches. Building on a discursive view on news values, the paper analyses three practices of addressing readers in headlines, outlines how news values are discursively constructed through these practices, and examines how journalists construct their target audience discursively by imposing problems and projecting desires for action and change onto readers, indicating assumptions about the readers’ knowledge. We argue that, by using such practices, journalists construct journalistic authority.

Constructing Expert Identity as a Health Journalist: A Discursive Analysis

Health journalists have been heavily criticized in academic literature for bad and inaccurate reporting, but little research has considered factors like discursive identity and roles to gain a better understanding of their daily journalistic practice. This paper examines how specialized journalists construct and negotiate their expert identity in the field of health, medicine and science. We conducted a fine-grained analysis of three interviews, with journalists that have various degrees of specialisation, and different backgrounds and working circumstances. Taking into account discursive markers, this analysis provides us with new insights in the arguments and factors that journalists refer to when reflecting on and constructing their expert identity when discussing health topics.

The representation of ordinary people: A discursive study of identities constructed in China’s news reports of social conflicts

The development of information technologies has made traditional news media aware of a public desire for bottom-up participation in the news production process. As a result, ordinary people have frequently participated in or even become the focus of news output. By following van Dijk's socio-cognitive approach of critical discourse analysis, this article examines how ordinary people are represented in China's news reports of social conflicts. The data include 106 news reports collected from the state-run websites of Xinhuanet and People's Network. Analytical results show that ordinary people have an either positive or negative representation in three relations constructed between ordinary people and government institutions, namely, antagonistic, jural and harmonious relations. It has also been found that journalists construct super-ordinate identities for ordinary people and represent them either positively as advocates of government policies or negatively as violators of social rules. The representation of both identities and relations of ordinary people is realized through both macro and micro discourse strategies. In essence, the complex representation of identities and relations is the result of the diversified ideologies underlying China's news reports.

Journalists' attitudes towards homeopathy: survey data from Germany

AbstractBackgroundBy selecting and shaping potential news content, journalists construct mediated realities that in turn can contribute to the public's mental picture of health, including issues related to controversial complementary and alternative medicines such as homeopathy. As previous research has shown, journalists' reporting is influenced by their own attitudes; thus, positive attitudes towards homeopathy may contribute to favourable, uncritical or even enthusiastic reporting.ObjectivesTo investigate how journalists in Germany view homeopathy and whether demographics, organisational factors and attitudes towards conventional medicine influence journalists' attitudes towards homeopathy.MethodWe surveyed journalists in order to investigate their attitudes towards homeopathy, predicted by demographics (i.e. age, gender, education, political leaning), organisational factors (i.e. professional experience, senior position, working on health‐related content) and attitudes towards conventional medicine.ResultsAlthough the ‘average' journalists showed favourable attitudes towards homeopathy, the opinion climate was highly polarised. Women, journalists in senior positions and health journalists showed more positive attitudes towards homeopathy. Attitudes towards conventional medicine were unrelated to attitudes towards homeopathy.ConclusionBecause journalists act as the ‘gatekeepers' of evidence‐based scientific knowledge, targeted scholarly attention on journalists' attitudes is important. A thorough understanding of journalists' attitudes may contribute to a better dissemination of evidence‐based scientific knowledge to the wider public. This may ultimately contribute to better‐informed patients who make their health decisions by considering evidence‐based knowledge instead of widely shared myths.

News place-making: applying ‘mental mapping’ to explore the journalistic interpretive community

Scholarship in visual communications, media, and geography explore how news media assign meanings to environment through narratives of and about place. In this study, however, the author aims to move scholarship from evaluating journalistic place representations to exploring the cultural and ideological processes of how these place representations come to be. Understanding how journalists construct place adds depth to knowledge about news as a social and cultural construction, and contributes to previous research on news place-characterizations. This study enacts a methodology called ‘mental mapping’ and serves as a call for communication scholars to consider such participatory methods. Data for this study come from interviews with 30 participants, including reporters from three newspapers, public officials, and residents of Iowa City, USA. In the end, this study identifies a visual methodology for exploring the role and influence of how journalists work and represent place in the news, a process the author calls news place-making.

Values, imaginaries and templates of journalistic practice: a Critical Discourse Analysis

This article shows that templates are not only crucial for the ways in which journalists construct or structure the media discourse but also for how they perceive themselves and others in the process of journalistic practice. A Critical Discourse Analysis of interviews with Polish journalists on their practices related to reporting migration – a topic largely discarded and ignored by the Polish media – shows that the construction of practice in the journalistic field constantly negotiates the contradiction between “knowing-it-all”, a key element of the template of journalistic habitus/identity, and the frequent lack of experience or limited knowledge of practice and of journalistic work. The analysis reveals that, while often using a discursive strategy of pre-legitimation, journalists enact templates that blur the boundaries between discourses about experiences of journalistic work and imaginaries or scenarios of actions they would only potentially undertake. Journalistic discourses of practice thereby become increasingly displaced, that is, they run along similar templates of discourse of/about quasi-universalised ethics and values of journalism almost irrespective of media organisations of the informants. By the same token, it is emphasised that, rather than being limited by the ideologies and powers of media organisations, agency seems to be often self-constrained by journalists in their self-entrapment in values, templates and imaginaries of journalism.

Literary War Journalism: Framing and the Creation of Meaning

Relatively few studies have systematically analyzed the ways literary journalists construct meaning within their narratives. This article employed rhetorical framing analysis to discover embedded meaning within the text of John Sack’s Gulf War Esquire articles. Analysis revealed several dominant frames that in turn helped construct an overarching master narrative—the “takeaway,” to use a journalistic term. The study concludes that Sack’s literary approach to war reportage helped create meaning for readers and acted as a valuable supplement to conventional coverage of the war.

Covering Death in Conflicts: Coverage of the Second Intifada on Israeli and Palestinian Television

This exploratory study attempts to explain how journalistic routines for covering violent conflict lead to the construction of ethnocentric news. A distinction is made between two sets of routines. One set is permanent and ensures ethnocentric control over the flow of information, while a second set varies as journalists construct coherent narratives for particular events. This latter set of routines is further broken down into what are labeled the `Victims Mode' and `Defensive Mode' of reporting. The Victims Mode is used when one's own citizens have suffered an especially tragic loss of life, while the Defensive Mode is employed when one's forces have carried out an attack that has inflicted a similar loss on the enemy. It is argued that each of these modes of reporting parallels psychological reactions that have been found in individuals. The ideas raised in the theoretical discussion are investigated by comparing coverage of two events by Israeli and Palestinian television. Two events were chosen for analysis: a Palestinian suicide bombing that killed 19 Israelis, and the killing of Hamas leader Sheik Salach Shehadeh in which 16 Palestinians were killed. An in-depth reading of the six news broadcasts provides important insights into how journalists' routines ensure a steady flow of culturally acceptable news stories that reinforce hatred between enemies.

Competitors, collaborators or compaions? Gossip and storytelling among political journalists in Northern Ireland

In this paper, I discuss the gossiping practices of political journalists in Northern Ireland. Passing on the latest gossip to sources is a way for a journalist to demonstrate their usefulness as a contact, whilst still maintaining a trustworthy character. Acquiring sources is vital for career success, and gossip plays an important role in this process. Gossip between journalists can have a competitive edge, as reporters try to outdo one another by revealing their knowledge of political intrigue. Yet gossiping with colleagues can also be a collaborative practice ‐ a method of signalling one's membership in a common journalistic world. Such exchanges set up a space in which cultural intimacy can be created. In this inner arena, journalists play with the well‐known stereotypes surrounding their profession, and re‐claim them for themselves. Furthermore, through gossiping about politicians' indiscretions, journalists construct themselves as educated liberals in contrast to the subjects of their conversations who are portrayed as political and religious fanatics.

News About the Other in Jordan and Israel: Does Peace Make a Difference?

This article examines whether the inauguration of peace between countries has a significant effect on how the news media cover the other side. It is argued that, due to the nature of news, leaders will generally find it easier to mobilize the media for conflict than for peace. However, the actual role the media will play in such attempts can be understood by looking at the political and media environments in which journalists construct news about peace. A joint project was conducted involving both Israeli and Jordanian researchers. The methodology included in-depth interviews with journalists from both countries and a content analysis of newspaper articles published during three different historical periods. The findings demonstrate that although there was a temporary improvement in the media image of the other side, there was little evidence that peace had a significant and lasting influence on coverage. There were, however, some important changes in the prominence of certain news slots. The interviews with the journalists provided valuable insights about some of the political and professional reasons for these findings.

Journalistic construction of news: information gathering

Describes the work carried out at doctoral level which investigated the ways in which journalists construct environmental news in Scotland. Focuses on the methods and tacit rules which reporters employ to locate, select and retrieve information for news stories. Journalists retrieve information from a complex range of sources. Addresses the information sources which are used in the news process. Examines the preference for human sources as opposed to library‐based information and discusses the influence of pragmatic constraints like time and space on the production of news.

Out of work and on the air: Television news of unemployment

Issues concerning the ideological role of television are examined through a study of television news coverage of unemployment during the first six months of 1983. The study focuses on the explanations of unemployment contained in the coverage and the thematic structure of the news stories. The stories were found to contain few explicit explanations, but a diversity of thematic structures revealed the societal frameworks within which television journalists construct stories about this issue. The diversity of thematic structures raises questions as to whether television acts as disseminator of a “dominant ideology” or as a “cultural forum.”