News Practices Research Articles

Medical Residents Perceptions of Communication Skills a Workshop on Breaking Bad News

ABSTRACT Introduction Breaking bad news althoughfrequent among healthcare professionals and their patients is still considered a very difficult task. These communication skill main determinants in the physician-patient relationship. Objective In view of the need to promote academic spaces that provide opportunities to learn breaking bad news , thisstudy aims to evaluate the medical residentsin relation to their interest in learning communication skills, as well as their skills in breaking bad news, before and after a workshop on the topic. Methods All the medical residents in the first year ofnternal edicine of a public general hospital in Belém-Pará, Brazil inwere invited to answer a questionnaire sociodemographic data and questions about their communication skills in clinical practice, as well as the Communication Skills Attitude Scale (CSAS), which addressed their interest in learning communication skills. The questionnaire. This research uses both uantitative and qualitative methods. The quantified data were statisticallyanalyzed by the Wilcoxon test (),Chi-Square test G-test adherence (quantitative variables of the questionnaire on communication skills). The qualitative evaluation Content Analysis based on Bardin. Results Ten residents attended the workshop. The results show that after taking part in the workshop, the resident’s perceptions of the practice of breaking bad news had improved (in 80% of the participants), as well as their attitudes to learning communication skills ( CSAS = 99.5 and 105, before and after the course, respectively p = 0.0039). Conclusion Eighty percent of residents (n = 08) considered their communication skills have improved as a result of the workshop (p = 0.0078). Most of the participantsbecame more aware of the importance of considering the patient’s perspective, and admitted positive changes following the course. Conclusion A positive effect on the participants’ perceptions of communication skills and on their interest in learning these skills, were identified after an intervention focused on the context of breaking bad news.

CITIZEN MOVE TO JOURNALIST? DINAMIKA PRAKTIK JURNALISME WARGA MELALUI MEDIA BARU

Abstract The rise of new media and ubiquitos of technology encourages the practice of news reporting by citizens. Public space crisis in mainstream media, making new media elucidate to revitalize the opportunities that citizens be apart of social changes. The new media has provided the widest space for citizens to engage in the delivery of news or information. This involvement is also supported by the development of citizen media or which is an extension of mainstream media such as Kompasiana owned by Kompas and NET CJ owned by Netmediatama. However, the trend of citizen journalism is still a question of whether to lead to the manifestation of democracy or even cause new problems related to journalism credo? This research is a qualitative research using descriptive analysis and using constructivist paradigm. Data collection using documentation study of citizen journalism practices that exist on NET CJ and Kompasiana website. This study also uses literature review with similar research to strengthen arguments and analysis. Keywords: new media, citizen journalism, citizen media, public participatory DOI :https://doi.org/10.26905/nomosleca.v4i2.2545

News Flows, Inter-Media Connectivity and Societal Resilience in Times of Crisis

This article analyzes how inter-media connections and news flows can establish societal resilience in times of crisis. The article is framed by understandings of the discursive practice of news as polyvocal and networked, and that social media as much as legacy media are important to a society’s resilience to crisis situations. Based on an analysis of the Norwegian public sphere during and immediately after the terrorist attacks of 22 July 2011, the article finds that the Norwegian public sphere established societal resilience through what we identify as “uniformed polyvocality”. This analysis reveals that an inter-connected news landscape, in which power is distributed and trust in established news institutions is intact, is key to the formation of societal resilience in times of crisis. The analysis is based on the following empirical material: Hyperlinks in the Norwegian Twitter-sphere and in online news sites, and sources referenced in stories about the attacks published in the most read Norwegian online and print news outlets. The findings, and the methodology presented in this article, have important implications for future research related to discursive practices of news and societal resilience in times of crisis.

Best Practices of News and Media Web Design

As more print media move to online, news and media websites have evolved with increasing complexity in content, design, and monetization strategies. In this article, the authors examined and reported the web design patterns of 150 leading news and media websites in six different categories: TV news, online newspapers, online magazines, and technology news, sports news, and business news, using 28 analytics metrics in four dimensions: content structure, multimedia, social sharing, and advertising placements.

Millennials at the back gates: how young adults’ digital news practices present a new media logic for news gathering and gatekeeping as user-oriented activities in a participatory news ecosystem

ABSTRACTThe participatory nature of the contemporary news ecosystem makes it increasingly important to examine how digital news users are active participants in selecting, authenticating, contextualizing, and distributing digital news content, redefining our understanding of news gathering and gatekeeping as being user-oriented activities in this digital order. This qualitative study provides insight into the motivations, perceptions, and attitudes of millennials regarding their digital news practices, while highlighting their roles as distributive news gatherers and reciprocal gatekeepers.

Patient communication in radiology: current status of breaking bad news among radiologists and radiology trainees in Pakistan.

Breaking bad news can be an intimidating task for any physician. The aim of this study was to record the practices of breaking bad news to the patients by Pakistani radiologists and trainees. The radiologists and trainees attending the 26th National Radiological Conference in October 2010 in Karachi, Pakistan, were surveyed. The response rate was 76%. The respondents included residents (51%), private practicing radiologists (28%), academic radiologists (13%), and other trainees (8%). Most of the academic radiologists communicated with their patients. The daily frequency of breaking bad news by residents was noted, which was highest in the public teaching hospitals (71%). For severe abnormalities such as malignancy, 50% residents, 55% of the academic radiologists and 74% of the private practicing radiologists were very uncomfortable in disclosure of results. Differences in frequency of communication with patients were noticed with both different training levels, and different settings of practice in a developing country.

Nothing but the Facts?

This paper seeks to understand how journalists deal with storytelling and truth-seeking in their daily news practice. While storytelling is usually studied through texts, we approached it from a practice perspective, combining data from three ethnographic studies in which 36 beat reporters and 13 journalistic storytelling experts were extensively interviewed. Because of the emphasis journalists place on “finding out the truth” in public discourses, it is tempting for academics to present them as naive truth-seekers. However, by means of an interpretative repertoire analysis of their “practice” discourses, we seek to enlarge the discursive space to talk about the supposed tension between story and reality. Although departing from the idea that all news making is storytelling, the interviewed journalists consider news making and storytelling as distinct—and sometimes opposing—practices. These professional practices serve as the framework around which five storytelling repertoires are organized.

Critical Care Nurses' Involvement, Feeling, Perception and Barrier for Practice Breaking Bad News in Jordan

Background. Breaking bad news (BBN) is one of the most difficult tasks faced by healthcare providers. In addition, breaking bad news is stressful for both; healthcare providers and patient. Nurses can play an important role in the process of BBN. Whereas, effective communication by critical care nurses improves patients' understanding of their health status and decreases their stress level. Furthermore, effective BBN process requires effective communication skills. Aims. To assess critical care nurses' knowledge level regarding breaking bad news process, assess their involvement in the process of BBN, andto determine the barrier of practicing breaking bad news process as perceived by critical care nurses to identify the factors that affect nurses' practice of breaking bad news in the critical care units. Methods. Descriptive cross-sectional design, using self-reported questionnaires. Results. The study showed that most critical care nurses in Jordan are highly involved in BBN process 77% (n=157), Also, nurses are highly perceived themselves as an active part in BBN process 76% (n=155). The major barrier in providing BBN was relatives requesting that a patient is not told bad news 75% (n=152). Conclusion. Current study revealed that Jordanian critical care nurses took different roles in the process of breaking bad news and they are highly involved in BBN news, creating a base of knowledge regarding BBN among critical care nurses in Jordan. Thus, the study recommends the policymakers to empower nurses role in this process through design an educational program regarding practice BBN and clarify nurses’ role in this process.

Mediated conversation and political propaganda: A discourse analysis of news practices on Greek prime-time news

This article examines the discourse practices of Greek journalism on mainstream commercial prime-time news. The article draws on data from Greek prime-time news and political current affair programmes over a 15-year period (from the early 2000s to date). By focusing on discourse and conversation analysis of journalistic talk in the studio, it will be shown that shifting discursive practices already in place long before the onset of the financial crisis that has afflicted Greece since 2010 have endowed Greek journalism with the discursive entitlements (or ‘frame space’) to challenge and hold politicians to account, in principle, allowing for more democratic journalistic gatekeeping. In reality, however, these same practices have created the conditions for an epistemological upgrading of opinion to the status of factual news reporting, in fact proposing ‘conversation as news’. These conversational practices have facilitated the Greek media’s role in shaping public opinion while allowing for the ideological manipulation of audiences.

Nature’s Economy and News Ecology

This essay challenges journalism scholars to confront critical ambiguities in the use of the news ecosystem metaphor in discourses on digital-age journalism. This metaphor is frequently used to suggest that news media take shape through spontaneous, self-ordering principles associated with ecological systems. At its worst, the news ecosystem metaphor simply stands for the news marketplace while, quite literally, naturalizing current trends in the diffusion and development of news practices. The intellectual history of the ecosystem concept shows its grounding in liberal economics and its association with a normative view that competitive individualism establishes a natural order. The conventional use of the ecosystem metaphor in debates about digital journalism frames the dynamics of news ecosystems as expressions of competing and symbiotic relations among news producers. This strips from view social, political, and economic decisions and norms that set the stage for the digital media landscape.

Distinction recapped: Digital news repertoires in the class structure

This article mobilizes Pierre Bourdieu’s full theory-method to study how class shapes our news orientations in a digital, high-choice media environment. An online survey ( N = 3850) was used to create a statistical representation of the contemporary Swedish social space with variables measuring access to economic, cultural, social, and cosmopolitan capital. A range of digital news preferences and practices were then given co-ordinates in that space. Results highlight the importance of class habitus for the formation of digital news repertoires. Since different groups form altogether different news repertoires—and distaste the preferences of the groups most different to themselves (in terms of access to capitals)—news practices and preferences solidify the positions of groups in the social structure. The study sheds light on the relationship between social and digital inequality and challenges the psychological and individualistic bias in contemporary research on news media use.

Natural selection: Empiricist discourse in the talk of broadcast journalists

Journalists are frequently used as a source of information for those studying news production and practice and as a means of describing the ‘real’ world of news. However, these conversations between researcher and journalist have often largely been treated as a transfer of neutral, transparent information about news practice rather than a discursive practice in itself. Discourse analysis has been extensively applied to the output of news, yet is underdeveloped in the area of production studies. This article argues that a more discursive approach to news production studies yields a more nuanced understanding of journalistic culture and practice. This is illustrated by using the tools of discursive social psychology to analyse interviews with 23 broadcast journalists about the nature of news. The analysis helps with the identification of the use of empiricist discourse to construct a ‘natural’ journalism and to justify certain constructions of journalistic practice.

Genre(less) and purpose(less): Online news galleries

Online news galleries are an example of the new storytelling practices in online media. They draw on existing practices of news reporting (e.g. employing news images with headlines, captions, and sometimes leads), yet offer new possibilities due to their unique features, which allow for large numbers of images of a single event to be published, and to be the featured medium of a given story. The combination of a new social context for the exchange of meanings and new potential for storytelling would suggest that online news galleries could be expected to be a location for the emergence of new genres. However, ‘new’ or ‘emerging’ genres in online news galleries are limited. This is due to a combination of factors, including the economic/commercial environment in which online newspapers operate, and the institutional practices by which galleries are produced. Drawing on datasets collected in 2009 and 2013, we identify and describe two genres, and one potentially emerging genre. Variations on some familiar genres do appear to be emerging in published online news galleries. The extent to which novel genres will emerge over time will depend on developments in the media landscape, and on the adaptability of the mass media institutions that author and publish them.

Anti-intellectualism among US students in journalism and mass communication: A cultural perspective

This study explores how support for journalistic anti-intellectualism is condoned in the views of emerging adults in the United States as they develop attitudes toward news, audiences, and authority. Anti-rationalism and anti-elitism as cultural expressions of anti-intellectualism correlate as expected with approval of corresponding news practices. Identification with professional roles generally fails to inoculate college students against the endorsement of journalistic anti-rationalism and anti-elitism. With the exception of the adversarial function, role identities appear to justify journalistic anti-intellectualism beyond the influence of cultural anti-intellectualism. While reflexivity is often viewed as conducive to critical thinking, affinity for transparency in news work associates with a populist suspicion of intellectuals and their ideas.

Stopping Fake News

When faced with a state-sponsored fake news campaign propagated over social media, in a process we dub “peer-to-peer propaganda,” a group of volunteer Ukrainian journalistic activists turned fact checking into a counter-propaganda weapon. We document the history of StopFake, describe its work practices, and situate them within the literatures on fact checking and online news practices. Our study of its work practices shows that StopFake employs the online media monitoring characteristic of modern journalism, but rather than imitating new stories it applies media literacy techniques to screen out fake news and inhibit its spread. StopFake evaluates news stories for signs of falsified evidence, such as manipulated or misrepresented images and quotes, whereas traditional fact-checking sites evaluate nuanced political claims but assume the accuracy of reporting. Drawing on work from science studies, we argue that attention of this kind to social processes demonstrates that scholars can acknowledge that narratives are socially constructed without having to treat all narratives as interchangeable.

Young People, Class and the News

Journalism studies almost exclusively rely on a “sociology of integration” perspective when theorizing the social function of journalism. Focus is put on if and how journalism facilitates democratic processes, encourages civic engagement and strengthens the sense of community. In providing an alternative view, this study mobilizes the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu—a “sociologist of conflict”—in order to study how young people’s conditions of existence have given rise to vastly different orientations towards news and the normative order surrounding journalism. Based on focus group interviews with young people in Brazil and Sweden, the study shows that socialization into the world of news in the family and in school generates class-distinctive news orientations. The world of news is a site where social groups draw moral and cultural boundaries against each other. Since different social groups monopolize completely different news practices and preferences, they work to legitimate social differences. As such, the findings challenge common notions of news as creating the “healthy citizen”, and that news media provide spaces for the practice of civility and citizenship.

A practice approach to the study of news production

Among news production scholars, interest in the theories of Bourdieu, Giddens, Latour, and related authors has grown in the last 20 years. However, few have recognized that these theories contribute to a broader practice perspective in social theory that traces back to the writings of Heidegger, and more directly, to Wittgenstein. In this essay, I outline four basic elements of this approach that are shared across these theories. Among these elements is the notion that social action is organized into discrete practices, and that these practices are produced and reproduced in their performance by individuals. I then assess the practice scholarship in the sociology of news in the context of these elements. I show that while a great deal of research has focused on news practices, relatively little has investigated journalistic performance. Thus, the field has not exploited, as well as it might, the panoply of tools and concepts developed by practice theorists.

Naturalising the new cold war: The geopolitics of framing the Ukrainian conflict in four European newspapers

The conflict in Ukraine has prompted analyses about the return of cold war divisions to Europe. This study focusses on the role the news media plays in the conflict by examining how the visual and textual practices of news framing help constitute geopolitical rationality and legitimise foreign policy. We analyse how the framing of the conflict in Die Welt, Dagens Nyheter, Helsingin Sanomat and The Guardian developed through four key events between February 2014 and February 2015. The analysis indicates that by promoting particular news frames the newspapers contributed to the legitimation of European Union policies, which are premised upon supporting the Ukrainian government in its military campaign in eastern Ukraine and placing responsibility for the conflict onto Russia. Hence, we argue that the news framing eventually contributed to the naturalisation of the ‘new cold war’ as a geopolitical rationality, orienting and legitimising foreign policy in Europe.

Time, realism, news

News time has since the late 19th century moved away from storytelling to embrace modern progress. But time in news is elusive. The digital era splinters time, leaving news practice and research behind. A project to track US news into the 21st century documents a history of time in news: the realism of ‘who’, ‘where’, and ‘what’ declined, and the modernism contexts of ‘when’ and ‘why’ expanded. All five Ws moved contrary to expectation. Modernism tries to map time, but its definition is undecidable – even among logicians. Practitioners of news grapple with their topic: the realist now, and try to fit it into the modernist ‘standard time’, a time regime that imposes a big-picture interpretation onto their readers. The modern view equates clock time, a purely social invention, to quantifiable nature. Clock time offers an artificial view of the passage of time, but scientists dictated another big picture. ‘For us’, wrote Einstein, ‘who are convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future has no other meaning than that of an illusion, though a tenacious one’. Time, although quantifiable, does not pass; its passing is an illusion and the objective view of the world is an immutable one. Coming to grips with the elusiveness of time, as it slips away from reporters and the grasp of scientists, creates opportunities for practitioners of news to align with contemporary mediated experiences. Facing the problem of time is done through Alfred North Whitehead, in whom the present moments is not a point of infinitessimal length on a single modernist time-line but an indivisible event that ‘grows literally by buds or drops’ of experience (William James in Whitehead), a landing ground which he calls the ‘actual occasion.’ Past, present, and future are not illusions, but symptoms of the subjective experience of process, which is not only real; it is part of the fundamental actual occasion. Weaving in Arendt’s distinction between ephemeral labor and permanent work illustrates how process philosophy can be grounded in both the labor and work of journalists, allowing news practitioners to adapt to digital times.

Mapping the emergence of social media in everyday journalistic practices

While there is much research to describe journalists’ use of social media to source and disseminate news about major events and interact with global audiences, there are few studies that focus on journalists’ use of social media within everyday news practices. This article uses qualitative surveys to provide a preliminary understanding of how journalists in Australia are utilising social media content in everyday news sourcing and reportage. The purpose of this study is, first, to understand journalists’ perceptions of how and why they use social media to source news and information and, second, to understand the organisational and professional implications for news sourcing in social media-enabled environments.