Perspective Of Journalists Research Articles

Vaccine Hesitancy in China: A Qualitative Study of Stakeholders' Perspectives.

A series of vaccine incidents have stimulated vaccine hesitance in China over the last decade. Many scholars have studied the institutional management of these incidents, but a qualitative study of stakeholders’ perspectives on vaccine hesitancy in China is missing. To address this lacuna, we conducted in-depth interviews and collected online data to explore diverse stakeholders’ narratives on vaccine hesitance. Our analysis shows the different perspectives of medical experts, journalists, parents, and self-defined vaccination victims on vaccination and vaccination hesitance. Medical experts generally consider vaccines, despite some flaws, as safe, and they consider most vaccine safety incidents to be related to coupling symptoms, not to vaccinations. Some parents agree with medical experts, but most do not trust vaccine safety and do not want to put their children at risk. Media professionals, online medical experts, and doctors who do not need to align with the political goal of maintaining a high vaccination rate are less positive about vaccination and consider vaccine hesitance a failure of expert–lay communication in China. Our analysis exhibits the tensions of medical expert and lay perspectives on vaccine hesitance, and suggests that vaccination experts ‘see like a state’, which is a finding consistent with other studies that have identified the over-politicization of expert–lay communication in Chinese public discourse. Chinese parents need space to express their concerns so that vaccination programs can attune to them.

Ubuntuism as a Foundation of Media Ethics in Zimbabwe? Journalists’ Perspectives and Discontents

There are debates on the relevance of Eurocentric normative frameworks for studying the media in post-colonial Africa. Emerging from these debates is a rebuttal of the dominant Western-derived paradigms for the conceptualisation of journalistic norms, values and practices. Given that the dominant Western liberal models for normative media ethics are incongruent to the needs of Africa, there is a growing call to reconceptualise media ethics anchored upon alternative epistemologies and moral foundations such as ubuntuism. Although there is existing scholarship on ubuntuism as a framework for media ethics in Africa, none of these studies has focused particularly on Zimbabwe. Using the 16 August 2019 (hereafter August 16) protests as a photojournalistic “moment” as a frame, this article explores the views and perspectives of Zimbabwean journalists on their understanding of media ethics and professionalism. Further, it probes the possibilities of ubuntuism as a moral foundation of journalistic practice in the country. Journalists’ views are diverse and contested on the nature and practice of media ethics in the country. Although ubuntuism is touted as a normative framework for media ethics, the Western liberal perspectives remain dominant. As such, post-colonial theory offers a useful approach to understanding the interconnections, contradictions and tensions underpinning media ethics in post-colonial Zimbabwe.

Tracking COVID-19 from a Journalist's Perspective with STAT's Helen Branswell.

Tracking COVID-19 from a Journalist's Perspective with STAT's Helen Branswell.

The impact of citizen journalism engagement in Indonesian television on citizen journalists and society: A case study of the NET Citizen Journalist (NET CJ) programme

Citizen journalism in television in Indonesia has flourished in the past decade, with two national commercial companies broadcasting citizen programme on occasion and three stations engaging in ongoing citizen journalism initiatives. This article uses a case study of Indonesia’s NET Citizen Journalist (NET CJ) programme to study perspectives of citizen journalists about the impact of citizen journalism in television on themselves and their society. Surveys and interviews with active CJ members indicated that collaboration between citizen journalists and television networks democratizes information by allowing a wider range of people to share information and perspectives, and drives positive changes in citizen’s surroundings and self-development in terms of knowledge and skills in news video production. However, potential negative side-effects are the high risk of being sued by injured parties and dissatisfaction about limited opportunities to have community videos broadcast on television.

Ética periodística para una información con perspectiva de género

Main topic / subject: The objective of this work is to carry out a theoretical reflection on new communicative strategies, focused on journalistic ethics. This ethics would be useful for the setting-up of a journalism with gender perspective. The research addresses the role of the media in the social construction of gender, based on the social responsibility paradigm. Logical development of the subject: In recent years, the concern for the informative treatment of these issues has increased exponentially, at the same time that a greater degree of awareness about the relationship between men and women has taken place. Traditionally, media representations of gender had contributed to the reinforcement of stereotyped archetypes. Against this, journalistic organizations must modify their approach, using a gender perspective. This responsibility in a broad sense is what our study is based on. Author’s point of view and contributions: Our main contribution is a new assessment of the concept of journalistic ethics, which becomes central to news with gender perspective. This ethics includes all phases of the information production process. Therefore, it is put forward as a tool for the media to fight sexist gender roles as a whole. Implications and conclusions: The conclusions have impacts on the social representation of gender, triggered by the development of a journalistic perspective that helps to ending macho archetypes. In addition, our approach involves an amendment to the main ethical codes applied in Spain, outdated in gender equality. On the other hand, some regional audiovisual councils are aligned with our ethical dimension. Journalism, as a social profession, has to be open to these proposals that would contribute to meeting the informational needs of women, usually forgotten by the masculinized nature of media companies.

Trying to Survive While Eroding News Diversity: Legacy News Media’s Catch-22

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I present the results of an in-depth content analysis of over 12,000 print and online articles of four Flemish newspapers belonging to the same media corporation, Mediahuis, carried out between February 2018 and May 2019. I assess the degree in which articles are being recycled across the four different titles and find that news diversity is significantly lower online than in print. These results are contextualised through findings from an ethnographical observation study within the newsroom of the leading Mediahuis newspaper, which took place simultaneously with the quantitative analysis. I pinpoint five key drivers which facilitate the recycling of news content across titles on a daily basis and find that the attempts of the Mediahuis newspapers to adopt the “digital first”-approach are hampered by the lack of a sustainable business model for online news. I conclude that while there are viable economic arguments to justify the recycling of news content, it is not defendable from a journalistic perspective, as it erodes news diversity with possible negative effects for society and democracy, particularly in small and highly concentrated media markets.

Communicating a Health Risk/Crisis: Exploring the Experiences of Journalists Covering a Proximate Epidemic

Media are an indispensable partner in health communication, but there is often concern about how the media cover health and science issues. These critiques tend to be based on analyses of news content that don’t consider the production process of the content. Using a media sociology framework, the article examines the news production process of the Ebola outbreak from the perspective of Ghanaian journalists. The study finds that existing and new routines influenced what the media produced. This study reiterates the call for public health to work closely with the media and to provide translated health information in multilingual low-literate societies.

Best Practices for Journalistic Balance: Gatekeeping, Imbalance and the Fake News Era

ABSTRACT The concepts of balance and fairness are considered pillars for ethical journalism. However, balance is not clearly defined within the working profession, and more importantly, the construction of a balanced news story is often subjective to its creator and institution, leading to calls of imbalance by both the public and political figures. This study examines the construct of balance and if there is a connection between imbalance and fake news from the perspective of news journalists within the United States. Interviews with television journalists across the U.S. show the definition of balance is widely varied, with a need to expand beyond the traditional two-sides-of-the-story model; a recognition that the expanse of the Internet has created a force of un-vetted gatekeepers allowing for imbalanced reporting, and that the threat of fake news could seriously harm balanced journalism.

International and African media’s representation of African Debt to China: From stereotype to solution with constructive journalism

Abstract Constructive journalism justifies its existence by an orientation towards solutions to vexing social issues. The central idea of this article is to discuss why constructive journalism could be an important approach for African journalistic practice. The research analyses African and international media reports on the China–Africa debt issue as a case study. It also discusses how the debt issue is depicted in online articles and reports from a content illustration of western, African and Chinese online media pools. Arguably so, there is a strong assumption that western and African media share more similarities than differences in representing Africa’s debt to China compared to their Chinese counterparts investigated in the study. In the framework of finding solutions and offering alternative journalistic perspectives, the study brings to light the fact that constructive journalism approaches, if applied by African media, have the potential to positively and objectively contribute to communication about the African debt with an inclination to solution-based applications. The study closes by a call to action for African media to be more responsible for their own image and to work towards a more balanced and focused coverage of not only the debt issue but other matters of international interest currently trending on the continent.

Effect of Press Freedom on Sudanese Newspapers Framing of Corruption Issues

<em><span lang="EN-MY">This research aims at exploring the effect of the press freedom on the newspapers’ framing of the issue of corruption in Sudan. A qualitative method was adopted using in-depth interviews to adequately explore the perspectives of the Sudanese journalists and editors towards the press freedom effect on the Sudanese newspapers in terms of framing the issues of corruption. A purposeful sampling was employed in selecting 20 Sudanese journalists and editors across both the governmental and private newspapers. Therefore, the study has significantly contributed to the overall perspectives of how newspapers framing affects public awareness about corruption and possible remedies in Sudan. The findings revealed that the legislation is significant in developing the press industry which has a great role in addressing the issues of corruptions.</span></em>

Periodistas valencianos de los años 20 y 30. Algunos nombres de referencia de la generación del exilio de 1939

Durante los años 20 y 30 del siglo XX surgió en el País Valenciano una generación de periodistas entre los que se encuentran algunas de las firmas más destacadas del periodismo valenciano de todos los tiempos. Paradójicamente, se trata de trayectorias que han quedado desdibujadas por las circunstancias históricas, fundamentalmente por el exilio republicano. Este trabajo parte de la selección de aquellos más relevantes, desde una perspectiva periodística profesional. Atendiendo a su trayectoria y su producción, se han seleccionado los más relevantes para reconstruir sus biografías profesionales como punto de partida para su recuperación como grupo y el posterior estudio de su obra.

Brazilian newspaper management on the internet: a study about acceptance, impacts, and opportunities in the digital environment

The objective of this research was to define and evaluate the threats and opportunities of digital media pose to traditional print media, from the perspective of journalists and readers with regards to the future of the press. The research took the form of an online survey, which produced two databases, one for journalists and one for readers. A variety of analysis techniques were applied, like exploratory factorial analysis and multiple regression. From the readers' perspective, three dimensions influence the use of the web for reading news: the practicality of the platform, the knowledge of the technology and external influence. For journalists, the use of language, the layout, the process of migration from the printed word to the internet, and the advantages over competitors are the determining factors for digital media becoming the primary source of income for traditional print media companies.

Brazilian newspaper management on the internet: a study about acceptance, impacts, and opportunities in the digital environment

The objective of this research was to define and evaluate the threats and opportunities of digital media pose to traditional print media, from the perspective of journalists and readers with regards to the future of the press. The research took the form of an online survey, which produced two databases, one for journalists and one for readers. A variety of analysis techniques were applied, like exploratory factorial analysis and multiple regression. From the readers' perspective, three dimensions influence the use of the web for reading news: the practicality of the platform, the knowledge of the technology and external influence. For journalists, the use of language, the layout, the process of migration from the printed word to the internet, and the advantages over competitors are the determining factors for digital media becoming the primary source of income for traditional print media companies.

A System to Automatically Predict Relevance in Social Media

The rise of online social networks has reshaped the way information is published and spread. Users can now post in an effortless way and in any location, making this medium ideal for searching breaking news and journalistic relevant content. However, due to the overwhelming number of posts published every second, such content is hard to trace. Thus, it is important to develop methods able to detect and analyze whether a certain text contains journalistic relevant information. Furthermore, it is also important that this detection system can provide additional information towards a better comprehension of the prediction made. In this work, we overview our system, based on an ensemble classifier that is able to predict if a certain post is relevant from a journalistic perspective which outperforms the previous relevant systems in their original datasets. In addition, we describe reminds: a web platform built on top of our relevance system that is able to provide users with the visualization of the system’s features as well as additional information on the text, ultimately leading to a better comprehension of the system’s prediction capabilities.

<b>The Candlin Researcher Award:</b> Balancing journalists’ and scientists’ professional practices

This paper analyses how health-related media content is produced by the editorial board of an infotainment TV show on food. Health-related news and other media content is on the rise, and impacts laypeople’s health knowledge, their behaviour, the public agenda and governmental policy. At the same time, it is criticized for being inaccurate, badly framed and sensationalist. This is generally attributed to the difficulty of linearly ‘translating’ scientific findings into journalistic findings, which results in the collision between scientific and journalistic perspectives and practices. This paper questions the idea that producing health-related media content is just linear translation, and looks into how two current societal trends, the rise of healthism and soft news, shape the production process. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic data from fieldwork at the editorial board of the show, two case studies are analysed qualitatively and in-depth to gain deeper insight in the complex dynamics of producing health-related media content. The data show that producing health-related media-content indeed is not a matter of translating biomedical science to a journalistic perspective, but of intense coproduction of journalistic and scientific practices, and nowadays as well as of coproduction with new, non-scientific pseudo-experts and pseudo-scientific practices.

Casting shadows of doubt: Perspectives of reputable journalists on fake news

This study explored how three of Davao City’s reputable and veteran journalists viewed fake news, and what they perceived as its causes and consequences. Since the term fake news elicits public attention because of its role in international and national elections, problems have been attributed to it. From in-depth interviews with the participants, results revealed that they viewed fake news as fabricated, unacceptable, causing ignorance, and moneymaking. The causes were pointed out as can be done by anyone, deliberate and motivated, and for profit. They identified the consequences as negative but entertaining, leading to generalized judgment of news, and destructive. In conclusion, the effects of fake news must be understood by society because it affects everyone. In a democratic society which engages every individual to be involved in every dialogue, it is important for the press and the public to understand that fake news can come from anyone in the city, in the country or in the world.

Digital Innovation During Terror and Crises

Terror attacks are moments of chaos and destabilization. From a journalistic perspective, terror attacks disrupt everyday news work where journalists find themselves struggling to restore order and report the event at hand as accurate and speedy as possible. From the perspective of the affected audience, journalism fills vital functions in making sense of the attack, by responding to a complex and rapidly changing mix of social needs. In this article, we explore how such disrupting events as terror can contribute to newsroom innovation in terms of journalistic processes, journalistic products, and even journalistic genres. We use the terror attack and massacre in Norway on 22 July 2011 as a case study, as it to a large extent forced journalists to think outside the box in order to meet the audience’s informational and rhetorical needs. The study shows that innovation is tightly connected to the development of the rhetorical situation through three phases: shock, start-up, and transformation. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with journalists who covered the attack, as well as a rhetorical exploration of the evolving situational context and the texts that were created in response.

Popular Criticism that Matters

Popular criticism of legacy news media is argued to have the capacity to influence journalistic practice and subsequently keep journalists accountable. Scholars give prescriptions of the kinds of criticisms journalists need, if they are to be kept accountable to journalistic norms and values, but this has not been matched with perspectives of journalists. Following in-depth interviews with 24 practising journalists in Kenya and South Africa, the study found that although journalists treat fairness, facts and positiveness as “good” attributes of media critique, they are more inclined towards criticisms that show an understanding of news processes.

Elevated Influences

This study examines the perspectives of local journalists through an ethnographic case study of D Magazine in Dallas, Texas. The study assesses how staff members discursively construct journalistic identities within a geographically focused media organization, including the influences of their organizational roles, the company mission, and perceptions of their audience. The study also considers the relationship between journalistic identity and community identity by addressing how staff members describe their publication’s role within Dallas.

Framing corruption narratives in Zimbabwe: A critical review of the Zimdef corruption scandal as portrayed in Zimbabwean newspapers

Abstract In the modern world, the media has become an important tool for shaping public discourse. Although it is not clear to what extent public opinion is shaped by media frames, there is no doubt that the media plays an important role in providing information to the public and influencing the way in which reality is perceived. This article critically analyses the framing of corruption narratives in Zimbabwean newspapers through the prism of framing theory. Scholars have long established that news disseminated by the media is not necessarily neutral information but frames and/or ideological perspectives of news organizations and/or journalists. When news organizations report news, they do so from a certain perspective, guided by the policies and interests of the media organization and its sponsors. Post-2000 Zimbabwe has faced an unprecedented economic/political crisis that has arguably created a conducive atmosphere for corruption. This article focuses on the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (Zimdef) corruption scandal of 2016 in which the then Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Professor Jonathan Moyo, was implicated. The objective is, first, to determine how corruption is framed in Zimbabwean newspapers, and second to critically analyse the different frames of the Zimdef corruption scandal as presented by selected newspapers. The results of the analysis show that newspapers in Zimbabwe frame corruption as a moral issue with economic consequences and suspects of corruption are often framed as morally bankrupt criminals.