News Journalism Research Articles

Data Journalism as a Service: Digital Native Data Journalism Expertise and Product Development

The combined set of skills needed for producing data journalism (e.g., investigative journalism methods, programming, knowledge in statistics, data management, statistical reporting, and design) challenges the understanding of what competences a journalist needs and the boundaries for the tasks journalists perform. Scholars denote external actors with these types of knowledge as interlopers or actors at the periphery of journalism. In this study, we follow two Swedish digital native data journalism start-ups operating in the Nordics from when they were founded in 2012 to 2019. Although the start-ups have been successful in news journalism over the years and acted as drivers for change in Nordic news innovation, they also have a presence in sectors other than journalism. This qualitative case study, which is based on interviews over time with the start-up founders and a qualitative analysis of blog posts written by the employees at the two start-ups, tells a story of journalists working at the periphery of legacy media, at least temporarily forced to leave journalism behind yet successfully using journalistic thinking outside of journalistic contexts.

Social media in Uganda: revitalising news journalism?

The article discusses the role of social media in relation to the traditional journalistic sphere in Uganda. Through an analysis of how journalists in three Ugandan newspapers use social media in their daily work, the article discusses how social media affect conventional sourcing practices, reportage and professional norms. The article is particularly interested in how Facebook and Twitter serve as alternative channels through which sources with less access to traditional means of communication get their message(s) across to journalists. The findings are discussed in light of the present development of social media legislation in Uganda. The discussions feed into a larger reflection on social media’s potential to create avenues of access in a semi-democratic setting where attempts to curtail media freedom and freedom of expression are frequent.

Fact Searching in Investigative Reporting in Indonesia: A Case Study of Tempo and Gatra Magazines

Investigative journalism is a new development in the Indonesian press and the study is at infancy. However, news magazines have investigated quite a number of scandals and problems in Indonesia during the Reformation era, post-New Order authoritarian regimes. This research examines fact searching activities at two main news magazines in Indonesia namely Tempo and Gatra in the process of producing investigative stories. This study deploys case study and an in-depth interview in its exploration of identifying specific processes involved in the process of producing investigative stories in these two news organizations. The interview was conducted with six informants including journalists at Tempo and Gatra news magazine, book authors and journalism analysts. The results of the study indicate that news magazines in Indonesia reveal various issues and cases, which are deliberately hidden to the community. The findings also demonstrate that the facts searching process encompasses several styles that effectively complement each other in news narration, especially with the particular concept, attitude, direction and effort to report its best to the society. This suggests that investigative stories in Indonesia news magazines emphasize the originality of news with in-depth coverage based on independent position, free from the influence of other societal entities, government’s pressure, as well as from other interests. Keywords: Investigative journalism, reformation era, news magazine, Tempo, Gatra.

What Affects First- and Second-Level Selective Exposure to Journalistic News? A Social Media Online Experiment

ABSTRACT On social media, journalistic news products compete with entertainment-oriented and user-generated contents on two different stages of news use: First, users navigate their attention through a continuous stream of information in their newsfeed and, second, they potentially click on some of these posts to spend time with the actual full-contents. The present study conceptualizes these two types of news use behaviors in social media environments as first- and second-level selective exposure. Based on this new approach, we investigated main drivers of journalistic news exposure on both exposure levels in an online survey experiment before the German federal election in 2017 (N = 210). To achieve high ecological validity, we developed a Newsfeed Exposure Observer (NEO)-Framework to recreate realistic user settings for online experiments studying selective exposure in the digital era, where news posts are complemented by popularity cues like social endorsements or individual recommendations. Findings show that, at the first level of selective exposure, attention to journalistic news posts is particularly affected by political interest. However, the decision to click on posts in the newsfeed and to spend time with the linked contents seems more strongly driven by social factors than by individual predispositions.

Transforming News Journalism from Newspapers into Online Media Outlets in Kosovo

Abstract The development trend of online journalism in Kosovo continues with great strides in relation to newspaper journalism. Some newspapers are continuing to survive and still on market despite the decline of readers as part of a worldwide trend of readers moving to online platforms. This study will analyze the content of journalistic texts in newspapers and online media, measuring their core values. This study is about the transformation, namely the change of journalism standards from traditional media (newspapers) to online media. Journalism theorists argue that the standards of journalism should be the same in newspapers and online media. But the practice in Kosovo is completely different. The main hypothesis of this study is that professional standards in online journalism in Kosovo have fallen; in newspaper journalism, however, there is still a high level of professionalism in writing and reporting. To test these two hypotheses, texts from two newspapers and two online media shall be analyzed. Therefore, the analysis will be done on texts from “Zëri” and “Koha Ditore” newspapers, and their online versions, “zëri.info” and “koha.net”.

State Aid for Independent News Journalism in the Public Interest? A Critical Debate of Government Funding Models and Principles, the Market Failure Paradigm, and Policy Efficacy

This study critically reviews scholarly debates on state aid for independent, professional news journalism in the public interest, its funding models and principles, the market failure paradigm, and policy efficacy. State aid is handed out by government agencies which believe that their support can help independent, professional journalism thrive in the digital, mobile, and platform-dominated future. Government support mainly comes as direct financial grants or indirect tax offsets. It aims at engendering economic opportunity and prosperity, while safeguarding journalistic independence and quality of output. Ideally, this shall foster the production, distribution and consumption of original and high-quality news in the public interest, which, in turn, shall keep people informed, facilitate public debate, and hold power to account. Still, this study finds arguments that government funding models for independent journalism in the public interest are limited by several critical challenges that endanger their principles, do not avert failure in the news media market and prevent effective policy governance. These deficits may even be exacerbated in the digital era.

Ann Gibbons Receives 2019 David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism–News

Ann Gibbons was awarded the 2019 David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism–News at the AGU Fall Meeting Honors Ceremony, held on 11 December 2019 in San Francisco, Calif. The award is given “for excellence in news reporting about the Earth and space sciences, with a deadline of one week or less.”

Sex Tourism in Digital Age, a Dark Side of Paradise, Bali Indonesia

The research paper is aiming at identifying the dark side of Bali and the reason behind the growth of its sex tourism industry in this digital era. The main focus of this research paper is the process by which the digitalization supports stimulating sex tourism in Bali. The researcher is focusing on executing the secondary form of research method to collect necessary data. The data gathering process is carried out with the help of news articles and journals of the previous researches. With the help of the collected information, the researcher can ful fill the research questions with the help of representing the facts in the results and analysis section. The research is also focusing on the limitations of this research study and the conclusion section provides stress on those limitations.

Quantitative readability analysis of websites providing information on traumatic brain injury and epilepsy: A need for clear communication.

The use of the Internet for health-related questions is increasing, but it is not clear whether individuals can understand the information available online. Most health organizations recommend that health educational materials (HEMs) be written below the sixth grade reading level. This study was designed to evaluate the readability level of available online HEMs pertaining to traumatic brain injury (TBI), epilepsy, and posttraumatic epilepsy (PTE). This cross-sectional readability assessment included HEMs from TBI and epilepsy stakeholder organizations and those obtained from four Internet searches. The search strategy was designed to replicate a nonmedical individual's keyword searches. Each HEM was assessed with an online automated readability tool using three indices (Flesch Reading Ease Score, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook). Findings were compared as a function of organization type (journalistic news or health organization), targeted medical condition (TBI, epilepsy, or PTE), or content topic (patient health education, clinical research education, or both). Readability analysis of 405 identified HEMs revealed scoresabove the sixth grade reading level recommendation. Only 6.2% of individual HEMs met the sixth grade recommendation. Journalistic news organizations' HEMs had similar readability levels to health organizations' HEMs. PTE-related HEMs required the highest readability level, >11th grade (P<.001). There were significant differences in the readability scores (P<.01 for all indices) among HEMs with information on health education, research education, or both topics. The highest required readability level (>12 grade level) was for HEMs that included both health and research education. The majority of TBI-, epilepsy-, and PTE-related online HEMs do not meet the sixth grade reading recommendation. Improving the readability of HEMs may advance health literacy around TBI, epilepsy, and PTE, leading to more effective participant recruitment/retention strategies for future antiepileptogenesis trials in persons with TBI and perhaps better patient-centered outcomes.

Trust in Communication Research: A Systematic Literature Review of Trust Studies in Leading Communication Journals

What has been referred to as the crisis of trust in social institutions has deep connections with communications, whether it be declining trust in news media and journalism, or the many debates and enquiries into the power of digital platforms. But communications as a field is not prominent in trust research, as compared to philosophy, sociology, political science and economics. Through a systematic literature review of the concept of trust in three leading ICA publications – Journal of Communication, Communication Theory and Annals of the International Communications Association (formerly Communication Yearbook) – 157 articles are identified as engaging with trust in a sustained way, at the societal (macro), institutional (meso) and interpersonal (micro) levels. It is argued that there are prominent strands of trust research in communication that warrant greater acknowledgement.

Producing Journalistic News Satire: How Nordic Satirists Negotiate a Hybrid Genre

ABSTRACTPolitical satire is an elusive hybrid genre that through its evolution over the past two decades has gained both media and scholarly interest. Inspired by American TV shows like Last Week Tonight, a new wave of more journalistic news satire has spread across the world. Studies have scrutinized its contents and effects, but the production side has remained largely uncovered. This study applies the concepts of genre and boundary work to analyze how advocates of this practice relate themselves to news journalism and previous satire. Based on qualitative interviews with 16 key production team members of four topical satire programs, we investigate how Nordic news satirists interpret their aims and work routines. We argue that both Finnish and Swedish news satirists embrace some of the traditional values of journalism such as striving for factuality, political relevance, and monitoring the powerful while they simultaneously aim for more emotional, opinionated, and exaggerated expression than in regular news reporting. The implications of this hybrid, “neomodern” ethos are examined.

Enterprise Journalism in Migration News: A Six-country Comparison of Source Power

ABSTRACT The issue of international migration has not attracted a comprehensive global attention from media scholars, who mainly focus on migrants’ destination countries and overlook their countries of origin. We sought to obtain a broader understanding of migration news by examining news sources used by journalists in migration-related news from origin and destination countries in South Asia and the Pacific. We utilised the notion of “enterprise journalism” (Hansen 1991, “Source diversity and newspaper enterprise journalism.” Mass Communication and Journalism Quarterly 68 (3): 474–482.) to measure the relative power of sources of information and journalists to shape the news. We quantified different sources of migration news in six countries and examined the patterns of sourcing in what could be categorised as the product of both “routine” and “enterprise” journalism. Our data support the findings of many previous studies in demonstrating that official and elite political sources dominate migration news overall. However, in enterprise news content, the position of migrant sources is significantly enhanced in South Asia, which indicates a willingness of journalists from this region to present the lived experiences of migrants in global deliberations on migration issues.

“Trolls” or “warriors of faith”?

PurposeThe idea that user comments on journalistic articles would help to increase the quality of the media has long been greeted with enthusiasm. By now, however, these high hopes have mostly evaporated. Practical experience has shown that user participation does not automatically lead to better journalism but may also result in hate speech and systematic trolling – thus having a dysfunctional impact on journalistic actors. Although empirical journalism research has made it possible to describe various kinds of disruptive follow-up communication on journalistic platforms, it has not yet succeeded in explaining what exactly drives certain users to indulge in flaming and trolling. This paper intends to fill this gap.Design/methodology/approachIt does so on the basis of problem-centered interviews with media users who regularly publish negative comments on news websites.FindingsThe evaluation allows for a nuanced view on current phenomena of dysfunctional follow-up communication on journalistic news sites. It shows that the typical “troll” does not exist. Instead, it seems to be more appropriate to differentiate disruptive commenters according to their varying backgrounds and motives. Quite often, the interviewed users display a distinct political (or other) devotion to a certain cause that rather makes them appear as “warriors of faith.” However, they are united in their dissatisfaction with the quality of the (mass) media, which they attack critically and often with a harsh tone.Originality/valueThe study reflects these differences by developing a typology of dysfunctional online commenters. By helping to understand their aims and intentions, it contributes to the development of sustainable strategies for stimulating constructive user participation in a post-truth age.

Adapting to Mitigation Efforts: Evolving Strategies of Coordinated Link Sharing on Facebook

In the context of a larger study on the spread of COVID-19 related mis/disinformation in Italy, we detected a network of 26 Facebook Pages that performed Coordinated Link Sharing. The potential reach of the network is significant, with a cumulative subscriber count close to 6 million users. Each month, the network publishes more than 18,000 posts. Half of the posts are type photos (64%), followed by status (22%) and links (14%). However, one third of the photos include links in the message/description of the post. The goal of the network is to drive traffic to the howtodofor.com domain, a news source that, according to NewsGuard, fails to meet several basic journalistic standards and republished articles from other media without mentioning the original source. The network is organized in different clusters that, beside various forms of links pointing to the main domain, also post the same image macros at approximately the same time. These types of posts tend to perform better in terms of volume of interaction received. Beside the obvious economic driver, one specific cluster also appears to be ideologically motivated. Over the year, the network experimented with different strategies aimed at maximizing the exposure of their content and, possibly, sidestepping Facebook’s community standard. Starting in March, a growing number of the links shared are posted in the first comment of click-bait posts (either photos or status). More recently, the network also started posting links to well-respected journalistic news sources such as La Repubblica and La Stampa.

Narrative Frames and Framing Narratives – The Role of Non-Journalists in Narrative News Discourse

Narrativity and transparency in news journalism can be seen as responses to the changing mediascape where various actors compete for claims to truth. However, the relationship of narrativity, transparency, and truth, is complex, and there is a need for studying their relations from the perspective of narrative persuasion. This article explores a form of narrative persuasion through which non-journalist participants may affect news discourse by importing content from outside the primary “news frames” and cueing into culturally recognizable “framing narratives”. It introduces a conceptual model for assessing narrative transparency and applies it to a case study of a political interview.

Dążenie do prawdy a język informacji prasowej

W pierwszej części artykułu zostały omówione teoretyczne aspekty problemu, w drugiej dominuje perspektywa praktyczna – w centrum rozważań znajdują się wybrane teksty prasowe opublikowane w języku niemieckim i angielskim (w tłumaczeniu autora). Cel i hipoteza: Przedmiotem badań czyni się w artykule to, w jakim stopniu dążenie do prawdy określa język informacji prasowej. U podstaw niniejszych dociekań leży założenie, że analiza środków wyrazu w tekstach informacyjnych pozwala w dużej mierze ustalić, czy poszukiwanie prawdy pozostawało w konkretnych przypadkach wartością priorytetową, czy nie. Metody badań: Analiza tekstu, metoda porównawcza. Wyniki i wnioski: Analizując i porównując wybrane informacje prasowe, w kontekście polskiej i zagranicznej literatury naukowej, starano się wykazać, że tekstom informacyjnym można nadać wysoki stopień obiektywizmu, a co się z tym wiąże – prawdziwości. Wartość poznawcza artykułu: Zwrócenie uwagi na lingwistyczne aspekty dążenia do prawdy w dziennikarstwie informacyjnym, głównie przez pryzmat badań polskich, niemieckich, brytyjskich i amerykańskich.

Factors Affecting Job Stress of Fashion &amp; Lifestyle Journalists

Credible and result-oriented organizations,all over the world,attempt to keep the employees stress-free and exultant. In the realm of Indian Media organizations, however, the concepts of job stress, work-home conflict and other organizational barometers to test out the wellbeing of work place and employees have gone unnoticed so far. While the gigantic media and entertainment industry in India continues to flourish with steadfast market reports suggesting considerable growth in near future, the employees’ concerns are overlooked particularly in a situation where media refrains from talking about media itself. One may have rarely heard instances of internal conflict among media organizations or discomfort of media employees in the open domain. This study examines the job stress of fashion and lifestyle journalists in the Indian media organizations with an aim to bring forth issues related to media professionals, specifically the working journalists for whom juggling between work, family, meeting deadlines, producing high quality stories- all often becomes an arduous task. It measures aspects of age, income of these journalists among others. The findings of the study are a reflection of the significant difference between the convention hard news journalism and the fashion and lifestyle journalism as a profession. Fashion and lifestyle journalism, as a genre, is much different and the demands are dissimilar to the hard news journalism. The present study takes a leap ahead and explores job stress among Indian fashion and lifestyle journalists

Escaping the news desert: Nonprofit news and open-system journalism organizations

This case study examines the social institutional influence on how a nonprofit community newspaper conducts newswork. Utilizing both in-depth interviews and participant observation, the data illustrate how the government, the audience, donors and advertising impact news construction processes. The results are analyzed through both management and media sociology theories. Finally, the authors elucidate how nonprofit news organizations can optimally operate as an open-system (or organism), allowing for all peripheral social institutions to impact newswork without losing any autonomy over the journalism.

A whole new ball game: How Sky Sports News journalists are learning from the academy

This article outlines an academic development programme at Sky Sports News (SSN), a 24-hour rolling news television channel in the United Kingdom. The course counters negative industry perceptions of journalism education. It demonstrates that a major news organization and a significant employer of sports journalists in the United Kingdom considers that academia has an important role to play in the professionalization process. SSN’s commitment to resourcing such a programme should also be seen as an attempt to raise professional standards and overcome the derogatory ‘toy department’ reputation that has hampered sports journalism. This article outlines how industry professionals are connected to academic learning and encouraged to critically reflect on their practice. The article intends to raise awareness of the programme across contexts and countries and, in doing so, provide a blueprint for similar industry-academic collaborations.

The Power of Commercial Influences: How Lifestyle Journalists Experience Pressure from Advertising and Public Relations

ABSTRACT The growth of advertising and PR industries in recent years, combined with the economic downturn in many news organizations has led to renewed debates about the influence of commercial pressures on journalistic work. While the relationship has frequently been studied in relation to hard news journalism, less attention has been paid to other beats, especially those which have always had a closer relationship with commercial interests. Focusing on the field of lifestyle journalism, this article presents the results of a survey of more than 600 Australian lifestyle journalists. It examines in detail how these journalists experience working with advertising and PR interests, as well as the provision of free products and services. It finds that lifestyle journalists broadly deny being influenced too much by these pressures, however, regression analysis suggests that, in particular, younger journalists experience more pressure, as do magazine journalists, as well as those working in the areas of travel, fashion and beauty journalism.