Journalistic Narratives Research Articles

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.

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.

„Poukraińskie” i jego polskie losy

“THE POST-UKRAINIAN” IN POLAND: A STORY OF VANISHING In the literature on the heritage of the post-migration areas of south-eastern Poland, as well as in the nationwide information space, too little attention is paid to the Ukrainian legacy. Although since 1989, the topic has been discussed more often and more freely, and the knowledge in this area has significantly expanded, still the issue of Ukrainian heritage is underrepresented in scientific and journalistic narratives and public administration practices of eastern border regions Polish. Within the present borders of Poland, there are over a thousand postUkrainian localities, whose tangible and intangible heritage has been destroyed, forgotten, and repressed from social consciousness, it has become invisible. In this article we try to explain how this happened. We ask about the decisions, people, and events that caused the ‘Ukrainian’ in Poland to become a symbolic ‘after’ – ‘post-Ukrainian.’

Constructive journalism and its effects on environmental discourses

Concerning the existence of all living beings, environmental issues take a crucial standpoint in the area of constructive journalism. Through positive psychology and solution-based approaches, it moves from the rigid ethical tenets of objectivity and impartiality, and employs practices based on reflexivity and advocacy for social concerns including pressing environmental issues. Can this change of journalistic narrative be considered significant? If so, does it imply any shifts in existing media culture that embodies a new set of ethics? This paper studies the ethics emerging out of constructive journalism based on environmental discourses and reviews 25 global environmental stories with constructive attributes through content analysis. With non-alarmist headlines, solutions-based and restorative approaches, and comprehensive narratives, it was found that these articles did not flout any ethical principles besides environmental advocacy. A shift in ethical code is recommended to entirely accommodate reflexive and transformative narratives in the field of journalism.

Victim, villain, or scapegoat? Mediating organizational crises embedded in social problems and the transformation of order

ABSTRACT Western crisis communication theories focusing on individual attribution and stable underlying norms fail to account for crises embedded in larger social problems that lead to regulatory changes. By analysing three cases that Chinese crisis managers initially identified as “commission”, “control” and “agreement” situations (Bradford & Garrett, 1995) but ended up as crises involving “absent standards”, “bad standards” and “overrated standards”, in which the first two resulted in normative changes, we highlight the deliberative potential of crisis communication embodied in the “standards situation”. When neither journalistic narratives portraying the accused as a “villain” nor organizational accounts foregrounding a “victim/scapegoat” self-perception can contain attribution at individual levels, the society enters a deliberative mode that interrogates actors’ collective guilt complicit in a crisis.

Mixed method research in narrative journalism: use of journalistic narrative techniques in newspaper news stories to communicate scientific and technological information to non-expert audiences

This paper explores the centrality of the mixed methods approach in narrative communication research, the processes as well as challenges related to mixed methods in relation to the communication of scientific and technological information to non-expert audiences. Implications of mixed methods in narrative communication research are also discussed. In recent times, studies have been conducted on journalistic narrative techniques under the realm of narrative journalism and communication with non-expert audiences in the fields of health sciences, political science, sociology, and technology, just to name a few. A majority of these studies have paid little attention to the research methodologies employed in the fields. These studies have employed either a quantitative or a qualitative approach. This paper discusses the use of mixed methods in the use of journalistic narrative techniques in selected newspaper news stories that communicate science and technology to non-expert audiences.

“Despite everything, love”: Commemorative journalism and the rereading of the critical rereading of the Israeli past

This study examined how commemorative journalism shapes collective memory by exploring 18 supplements and special projects commemorating Israel’s 70th anniversary. The research questions focused on three central narrative characteristics of journalism: protagonists, plots, and narrators. Our examination revealed the ways in which those located at the fringes of the ethnic-national community were excluded from these journalistic narratives, conveying mostly a tale of Israeli strength, narrated mostly by Jewish men. We maintain that the current dominant memory version narrated by the supplements reflects a withdrawal from and rejection of recent, more critical journalistic readings of the Israeli past. This conscious return to older, hegemonic patterns of narration of the national past could be understood within the context of two central conditions, shaping the construction of Israeli reality over the past two decades: the growing dominance of the political Right and changes in Israel’s media map.

Mujeres Magazine as a Classifying Space of the Performativities of Being a Woman in Cuba

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the journalistic discourse of the Cuban magazine Mujeres between the years 2010–2015, by questioning its thematic agenda as a dynamic resource for meanings. The main objective of the study is to understand the singular knowledge produced about the experience of women in the economic spheres in Cuba. For this, the qualitative research crosses the meanings produced about the participation of Cuban women by journalistic narratives with the specific characteristics of the productive scenarios where they act, thus revealing how Mujeres promotes particular readings of those contexts and their subjects. The asymmetry in the visualization between the state and non-state economic spheres, the politicization of women's roles in non-state productive scenarios and the disregard of other forms of participation of Cuban women, are among the main results achieved. These limits of the constructed meanings allow us to understand how the journalism of the magazine operates as a classifying device of being a woman in Cuba.

Open and commercial tools to generate a digital interactive story in journalism: systematic review and features analysis

ABSTRACT The constant technological advances are transferred to the area of journalism with significant contributions to the production of innovative formats adapted to the multimedia, interactive and multiplatform scenario. Since interactive narrative journalism is one of the trends of digital journalism, it is necessary to approach the offer of services that facilitate the journalistic creation of dynamic and interactive journalistic contents. The main objective is to analyze web programs and applications for the creation and publication of interactive digital narratives. Based on the PRISMA systematic review methodology, a total of 15 programs and web applications were identified after reading 28 articles and examination of 54 webpages with value in interactive digital journalism. Five are open-source applications, which invite the community to continue developing improvements that make these tools innovative and adaptable to future changes. Our study reveals the highly valued functionalities, such as the capacity for data analysis and teamwork, among others that allow the integration of 360° multimedia, the management of the interaction map, the preview in different output formats, such as tablet or mobile. However, there is a lack of journalistic roles in these tools that let them coordinate and optimise the publication process to produce the final news.

ԷՎՐԻՍՏԻԿԱԿԱՆ ՄԵԹՈԴՆԵՐԻ ԿԻՐԱՌՈՒՄԸ՝ Կրթական էկոլոգիայի խնդիրները հաղթահարելու միջոց

The article analyzes the experience of the "Narrative Journalism" course at the Faculty of Journalism of Yerevan State University. The chosen teaching method is interpreted as an example of applying the principles of heuristics. The article first discusses some problems of the ecology of education in Armenia, in particular, the difficulties of teaching and mastering modern humanities, then suggests the use of heuristics as an expedient educational strategy in the context of existing problems.

How the work of a Ukrainian journalist changed during the war

Journalism and war or journalism in the conditions of war is a special type of journalism, specific media communication aimed at covering military conflicts. Today, Ukraine is directly involved in the war, so it is very important to study the changes that took place in journalism during the military confrontation between Ukraine and Russia. The article analyzed how the work of a Ukrainian journalist changed during the war from the point of view of both the audience and the journalists themselves. The main emphasis is on the analysis of the professional skills of journalists, which are transformed under the influence of war and impose many responsibilities and restrictions on journalists, and the specifics of the information war as a second front. Journalistic activity in the conditions of war is analyzed from the point of view of social responsibility and the struggle for information space in the conditions of propaganda and fakes, which are an integral part of the struggle for victory. Disinformation and the spread of fake news, which are tools of socio-political and military confrontation, also became the subjects of this study. It is important for recipients of news messages to develop the ability to think critically, check facts, and analyze primary sources to establish true information. Such skills make the work of Ukrainian journalists much easier, and it will be more difficult for propagandists from the aggressor country to win the heads and hearts of our people who observe information hygiene. The article examines the special language of the media in the conditions of war, analyzes the change in journalists’ rhetoric, the transformation of speech, and the introduction to the modern use of war-related neologisms, which play a significant role in journalistic narratives, the correlation, and correspondence between information policy and journalistic standards, which can change in the conditions of war. Based on foreign experience, in particular Israel, examples of media models that can be applied in the Ukrainian context are given. It is important that Ukrainian experts are able to competently and professionally build the media world in the conditions of war in such a way that it does not harm either the military or the victims of Russian aggression.

Ирония и юмор в публицистике как когнитивная стратегия (медийно-культурологические аспекты)

Irony as a narrative-cognitive strategy, in comparison with social and ethical analytics in the media or with the entertaining pathos of laughter in journalism, rarely attracted the attention of researchers, although its heuristic potential is self-evident and is reflected in the works of many researchers. The study and explication of the interaction and contradictions of “cognition” and “hedonism” is topical. The purpose of the study: to show, using examples of predominantly English-language texts, the specificity of ironic overtones that create additional narrative expression related to the cognitive strategies of the authors, that is, to the setting for expanding the horizons of knowledge in the context of the modern development of the theory of mass media, communication and literary criticism. Methods of the study: cognitive-contextual, combined with historical and cultural analysis of ironic discourses. The nature of the information and cultural potential of ironic discourses is characterized, taking into account the “postmodern sensitivity”. The pragmatic expediency of the interaction of irony and analytics in the construction of the epistemological paradigm of journalistic narratives is substantiated. Conclusions are drawn about the cognitive-heuristic significance of comic elements in journalistic texts, about the benefits of intrusion of hedonistic values into serious media discourses, about the conflict of interests of “humorists” and “cognitivists” in media narratives and in the science of mass communications.