Role Of Journalism Research Articles

Changing the Paradigm of Traditional Journalism to Digital Journalism: Impact on Professionalism and Journalism Credibility

The development of information technology and the internet has significantly transformed the landscape of media and journalism. Traditional journalism, which relied on print and electronic broadcasting, has evolved into digital journalism supported by online platforms. This change has had a profound impact on the professionalism and credibility of journalists. This research aims to analyze the paradigm shift from traditional journalism to digital journalism and explore its impact on journalistic professionalism and credibility. The methods used in this study are literature review and comparative analysis. In the literature review, we examine the relevant literature on the paradigm shift in journalism and its impact on journalistic professionalism and credibility. Comparative analysis is carried out by comparing the characteristics of traditional journalism and digital journalism and analyzing the changes that have occurred. The results of the study indicate that the paradigm shift from traditional journalism to digital journalism has changed the role of journalists in gathering, editing and delivering news. Digital journalism provides greater freedom and flexibility for journalists in creating content, but it also brings new challenges related to the validity and credibility of information. Journalists today are faced with demands to adapt to new technologies, master algorithms, and build a strong online presence. The results of the study indicate that the paradigm shift from traditional journalism to digital journalism has changed the role of journalists in gathering, editing and delivering news. Digital journalism provides greater freedom and flexibility for journalists in creating content, but it also brings new challenges related to the validity and credibility of information. Journalists today are faced with demands to adapt to new technologies, master algorithms, and build a strong online presence.

Is journalism just a job? Findings on journalists’ career motivation, news efficacy and news avoidance from structural equation modeling in China

With the profound transformation of Chinese journalism under the commercialized trend of thoughts, there is a debate on whether Chinese journalists still maintain the public service ideal or just regard it simply as a job. In other words, is journalism a “vocation” or a “profession”? Therefore, it is necessary to conduct an empirical study on journalistic roles. Drawing on the self-determination theory, this study constructs a framework of “career motivation–news attitude” to build a bridge between role orientations and performance, in order to comprehensively understand the Chinese journalistic roles. In this study, a quota sampling survey ( n = 1000), multiple linear regression (MLR), and structural equation modeling (SEM) are used to examine the influence of advocacy and utilitarian motivations on news efficacy and news avoidance, corresponding to news production and consumption attitudes. Furthermore, the study divides the journalistic roles in China into four categories: purposive advocate professionals, dedicated advocate professionals, workaday journalists, and adrift journalists. The results show that advocacy motivation, or the public service ideal, is more significant than utilitarian motivation in the journalistic roles. The former is associated with higher news efficacy and lower news avoidance, while the latter is only associated with higher news avoidance. The study also discusses the demographic factors of journalistic career motivations.

Is It Us or Them? The Challenge of Getting Journalists to Participate in Academic Research

ABSTRACT For journalism research rooted in a sociological framework, gaining access to journalists is crucial for data collection. However, journalists are documentably difficult to recruit as participants, frequently due to limited time and resources in shrinking newsrooms, sometimes because of roadblocks put up by leery newsroom management. As part of the data collection process for the Canadian branch of the international Journalistic Role Performance project, researchers tracked issues raised by journalists that may have impacted survey recruitment and completion. These issues were frequently grounded in the context of survey questions designed to be operationalizable in vastly different cultures, and were also documented by other researchers in both the Global North and South who were cooperating in this comparative study. Despite first refusing or completely refusing survey participation, though, some Canadian journalists were willing to be interviewed, giving researchers the opportunity to explore how to best engage journalists in the research process, and design research tools to be shared in different media systems. Using a lens of social exchange, this paper provides unique insight, from the perspective of researchers and participants, on the importance of relationship-building as a focal point in order to adequately contextualize findings within a sociology of news framework.

Assigning Responsibility for Depression and Diabetes: Frame Building Factors in Health Coverage

ABSTRACT Although frame building is a crucial part of framing in health communication, it is much less understood than media frames or their effects on audiences (i.e. frame setting). To address this research gap, we analyzed the individual, organizational, and external factors of influence contributing to the media’s portrayal of responsibility for two major health issues: depression and diabetes. To identify relevant factors, we conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with German journalists who regularly report on these health issues. Our findings indicate that the way in which media coverage portrays responsibilities in depression and diabetes is affected by a variety of factors. These include individual (journalist role perception, journalistic routines, academic background and personal experiences with depression, diabetes-related knowledge, and personal values and beliefs), organizational (editorial lines, space limits, time limitations and payment, and newsroom structures), and external (health news sources, audience interest, newsworthiness, and social norms) factors. Notably, there are differences between depression and diabetes coverage – especially regarding individual factors – confirming that frame building, similar to framing in general, should be examined with regard to specific issues. Nevertheless, some factors that seem important across different topics could be identified.

Funktionen von Unsicherheitsthematisierungen in journalistischen Medien

Theoretical and methodological approaches of discourse analysis in the wake of Foucaultfocus on how knowledge is constituted in discourses. They are therefore well suited forinvestigating the epistemic status of knowledge, and thus also uncertain knowledge and ignorance.However, discourse research does not offer specialized analytical approaches to media discourseswith their specific boundary conditions and inherent logics, while at the same time inpractice many analyses deal with media products. Some writers even bemoan a “media oblivion”in discourse theory. This article aims to demonstrate how theoretical approaches in communicationstudies can help to specify the role of journalists as discourse producers and participants,as well as journalistic production principles. In the empirical part of the article, the scientificallyambiguous knowledge about burnout is used as an example to show ten discursive-communicativefunctions that the thematization of epistemic uncertainty can have in journalistic articles.

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS OF THE RELIGIOUS JOURNALIST

As we all know, the role of journalists in providing information to people is incomparable. Journalists work in accordance with their professional ethics. The professional ethics of journalists includes the practice of values such as responsibility for the profession, timely performance, honesty, stability, character, justice, intelligence. These are the same feelings for religious journalists. Paying deeper attention to the same issue, that is, analyzing the professional ethics of religious journalists, is the main goal of this article. According to the results of the research, religious journalists' regular observance of their professional ethics plays an important role in ensuring the peace of this country and the harmony of nations.

Climate Change, the Journalists and “the Engaged”: Reflections from South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya

ABSTRACT This paper explores the political dimension of mediated climate change communication and the role of climate journalists in it. While the increasing plurality of actors engaged in mediated ways of sensemaking around climate change is well documented, the role of journalists in facilitating engagement between actors is less clear, especially in Africa. Using an African relational framework (ARF) that emphasises inter-subjectivity and co-creative deliberation, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 journalists covering climate change in three African countries to gain insights into the political dimension of climate journalism. Results indicate that several interacting factors, clustered around the journalists’ role orientation, norm application and work environment, influence how climate journalism is practised in these African settings. One of such interactions relates to how the journalists’ “disseminator” role orientation, commitment to “objectivity” and “authority-order” norms, and resource deficits interact to orient the coverage of climate change in the cases towards elites and away from other subjectivities and place-based knowledge. Based on the insights from the relational media framework, the paper argues that climate journalism can benefit from a perspective grounded in the ability of people to “commune with”, rather than “communicate to” others.

Two Journalisms? Linear and Curvilinear Relationships Between Journalists’ Role Ideals and Degree of Democracy

ABSTRACT If there are authoritarian, transitional, and democratic political and media systems, are there associated authoritarian, transitional, and democratic role profiles for journalists? The relation between countries’ degree of democracy and the importance of journalistic role conceptions among journalists in a country is analyzed based on the World Journalism Study (Wave 2). I find that journalists in democratic political systems generally subscribe to fewer role conceptions than journalists in authoritarian political systems; Journalism-for-Democracy is more defined by what it is not (i.e., journalists reject the typical role conceptions of Journalism-for-Authoritarianism and Journalism-in-Transition) than by what it is. Journalism in transitional political systems (i.e., hybrid regimes and deficient democracies) is characterized by a specific set of role conceptions that are linked to political activism, which journalists in full democracies tend to reject. The study reassesses which role conceptions might be typical for which kind of political systems leading to revised hypotheses regarding the link between democracy and journalistic role conceptions.

Does the audience welcome an audience-oriented journalism?

Although the ‘audience turn’ ( Costera Meijer, 2020 ) in journalism has been extensively discussed in studies, and journalists acknowledge the need to improve their relationship with their audience ( Nelson and Lewis 2022 ), the audience’s perspective on journalistic roles remains underexplored ( Riedl and Eberl, 2020 ). Generally, the examination of journalistic roles has been from a production perspective ( Hanusch 2019 ). We aim to address this ‘gap’ by examining journalism as a discursive institution ( Zelizer 1993 ), and focusing on audience-oriented roles, defined in the Worlds of Journalism-study as accommodative roles ( Hanitzsch et al. 2019 ). We surveyed a representative sample (N = 1577) of Flemish respondents about their news use, news attitudes, and their views on audience-oriented journalistic roles. Regression models were used to predict differences in how different subsets of news users view the importance of these journalistic roles. Our findings reveal that subsets of users have diverse expectations of what journalists should do, for instance, younger audiences expect journalists to act less as explainers than older audiences. Incorporating the audience’s views in the discussion of journalistic roles could be a useful approach to strengthen the audience-journalism relationship.

Performance of journalistic professional roles in digital native media news in Spain: Toward a journalistic micro-culture of its own

On the basis of the argument that media platforms generate journalistic micro-cultures and that the nature of journalistic roles is contextual, the possible existence of a journalistic model of digital native media coherent with its own professional culture is addressed. Through a content analysis of a sample of 2,729 news items published in four Spanish digital native media, the presence of six professional roles (interventionist, watchdog, loyal-facilitator, service, infotainment, and civic) is measured and compared with the implementation of these roles in news items published in press, radio, and television (N = 3,362). In addition, the factors that influence the presence of each role in the news of the selected digital native media are analyzed. The results show that digital native media distinguish themselves by putting into practice all the journalistic roles, except for the civic one, to a greater extent than other platforms. Likewise, the service role presents similar levels of presence in the four newspapers analyzed, indicating an approach to audiences more as customers than as citizens. In terms of the factors associated with the presence of each role, we found that the subject matter of the news item has a greater predictive capacity in all roles than other elements. Although we cannot confirm the existence of a journalistic micro-culture, we do find some particularities of the digital native media, mainly stemming from the need to build audience loyalty.

Place in Disaster Coverage: Newspaper Coverage of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico

ABSTRACT Natural hazard news coverage research has examined frames, sources, and journalistic roles. An examination of place in such coverage is missing. Using the hierarchy of influences model, this study analyzes the coverage of place during Hurricane Maria in three major newspapers in Puerto Rico in the pre-crisis and crisis stages of the event. The study examined the roles of routines, organizational factors, and social systems factors in the coverage of Puerto Rican municipalities and the topics covered. Results show a primary focus on highly populated areas, reliance on governmental sources, and differences across the three newspapers studied. Implications for disaster coverage as well as theoretical arguments about the hierarchy of influences are discussed.

Does News Platform Matter? Comparing Online Journalistic Role Performance to Newspaper, Radio, and Television

The shifting role of journalism in a digital age has affected long-standing journalistic norms across media platforms. This has reinvigorated discussion on how work in online newsrooms compares to other platforms that differ in media affordances and forms. Still, more studies are needed on whether those differences translate into distinct practices, especially when examining cross-national studies. Based on the second wave of the Journalistic Role Performance (JRP) project, this article reports the findings of a content analysis of 148,474 stories produced by 365 media organizations from 37 countries, comparing the performance of journalistic roles in online newsrooms to three other types of media—TV, radio, and print. The paper analyzes if journalistic roles present themselves differently across platforms, and if these differences are constant or they vary across countries. Results show that there are measurable differences in role performance in online journalism compared to other platforms. Platform had a significant impact, particularly in terms of service and infotainment orientation, while the implementation of roles oriented toward public service was more similar. Additionally, country differences in the relationship between role performance and platforms mainly emerged for roles that enable political influence on news coverage, with differences in the relationship between online vs. traditional platforms appearing to be distinct features of the specific political system.

Journalism Metadiscourse on Professional Identity and Verification in UAE

ABSTRACT This paper examines journalistic metadiscourse on verification and professional identity in the UAE. Using in-depth interviews with journalists from various UAE institutions, the study interprets journalism as a culture of practice where journalistic roles and practices are discursively constructed as a “part of a wider framework of meaning” within the parameters and conditions where news are produced and circulated. Drawing on the hierarchy-of-influences model, the paper analyzes the epistemological, institutional and professional factors shaping journalists’ construction of journalism as a field of practice and professional identity. It also examines how journalists in the UAE interpret the notion of verification and apply it in their work, especially in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. The paper argues that journalists’ professional identity in the UAE is marked by an exclusionary boundary discourse legitimizing the social role of journalists within a loyalist press model that is increasingly challenged by a fast changing communicational ecosystem at the regional and global levels.

The Framing of Anti-Fake News Law in Malaysian Newspapers

The government of Malaysia enacted an Anti-Fake News law right before the 14th general election. In more ways than one, this law relates to Malaysia’s practice of development journalism, which is a tool for the government to foster economic growth and nation-building. The main aim of this study is to explore the differences between Malaysian serious newspapers and tabloids in terms of frames employed in the Anti-Fake News Law reports. This study applied the generic frames of the framing theory in quantitative content analysis. The serious newspapers chosen in this study were Bernama and The New Straits Times, while the selected tabloids were The Sun and The Malay Mail. Results from the analysis of the 212 news reports retrieved showed that serious newspapers favored the use of the attribution of responsibility frame, while tabloids favored the use of the human interest frame. Additionally, the findings showed that the attribution of responsibility frame was more susceptible to a positive tone and the conflict frame was more susceptible to a negative tone in reports. In conclusion, this study gained insights into journalistic role performance under the practice of development journalism in Malaysia, particularly pertaining to the Anti-Fake News Law.

“Here comes John Curtin”: The historical consciousness of a journalists’ hero

This article reveals fresh insights into the central, largely unexplored role of journalists as agents of memory for shaping a sense of historical consciousness among public audiences. Journalism has been anchored in the retelling of dramatic stories about heroic characters representing national values. Rüsen (2004) refers to this technique as exemplary narration, which he defines as a type of historical consciousness. This article draws on Rüsen’s theory to provide new views of journalists’ ongoing work in developing the story of an exemplary national hero. Many studies have focused on a single message dominating collective memories. This study shows how journalists helped to create, then disrupt and later reconstruct memories of Australian World War II Prime Minister John Curtin as an example of hope during a major crisis. They developed diverse narratives that portrayed a heroic leader representing national values within the theme of nation building. Recognising exemplary narratives as an ongoing, changing work helps to illuminate journalists’ efforts to orient public views of history that suggest future possibilities.

Journalists under attack: self-censorship as an unperceived method for avoiding hostility

This study investigates journalists’ self-censorship and introduces a phenomenon of unperceived collective self-censorship that demands a combination of detection methods. We conducted a content analysis of media critique texts (N=156) that discuss attacks on Estonian journalism. These results were combined with the content analysis of journalistic roles in the news (N=2409) and a survey on journalists (N=99) and completed with semi-structured interviews (N=14). The findings showed that accusations against journalists were frequently related to discourses regarding journalists’ interventionist or watchdog roles. Juxtaposing these results with quantitative data, it became evident that when aspects of interventionist and watchdog roles were criticized in the media texts, the performance of these roles decreased in the news. However, journalists’ self-assessment does not show the perception of this change. We argue that self-censorship was created unknowingly within the newsroom. External pressures – such as politically motivated attacks on journalism – may promote unperceived self-censorship.

Oakland’s Mayan Diaspora Overcomes Language Barriers and Finds Refuge in Radio B’alam

ABSTRACT Over one-million immigrants of Mayan descent live in the United States, but unlike other ethnic groups, Mayan diasporas struggle to create visibility, political and social capital, and acceptance through media. This case study used a qualitative methodology to analyze how Radio B’alam, the first Mam-language radio program in the U.S., emerged during a global pandemic to fill a community’s need for critical information. The study is grounded in the theoretical framework of geo-ethnic media and explores the roles of citizen journalists in decreasing information gaps and overcoming language barriers, while reaffirming the importance of radio in times of crisis.

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.

Digital Transformation of Media Companies in Lebanon from Traditional to Multiplatform Production: An Assessment of Lebanese Journalists’ Adaptation to the New Digital Era

This research aims to assess Lebanese media organizations’ and journalists’ readiness and adaptation to the new digital era requirements. Journalism has always been affected by technology. Adopting new information and communications technology has obliged changes in journalistic practices and led to new business models and journalistic practices. For example, implementing Newsroom Computer Systems (NRCs) in media companies has led to radical changes in the departments of these organizations, and in particular in the newsrooms. The journalists in newsrooms are the human factor that is considered an essential element in this change. It touched on the depths of productivity and the mode of journalistic work. In the new era of media convergence, journalists are called upon to follow this trend (modern journalism) and become more versatile, where their work becomes streamlined and redesigned. The new and more flexible journalistic practices emerging in newspaper and television production, in combination with online journalism, have a profound effect on the role of journalists and their competencies requirements. Having multi competencies is explained by mastering the basic rules (writing, etc.) in the journalism profession and digital knowledge related to this profession (visualizing data, using the digital tools necessary for work, etc.).
 This study uses quantitative, descriptive, and deductive approaches supported by a structured survey questionnaire. The sample in this research constituted 96 respondent journalists selected conveniently. Data were analyzed descriptively and reported in charts for clarity. Results show that from an overall analysis, Lebanese media organizations and journalists are moderately prepared to deal with the digital era requirements. Most of the research variables scored between 40 to 50% in terms of preparedness and functionality during the digital transformation era. The research implications show that in Lebanon, as elsewhere in the media industry, the human factor’s digital culture plays an essential role in the advancement of the companies towards the digital environment. In the Lebanese organizations’ case, the economic and monetary crisis factors besides the human factor, have affected the technical implementation and the digital transformation of the media outlets. In this media landscape, the role of academic institutions (i.e., universities and research centers) must be proactive to define the new set of digital and journalistic skills required and needed to enhance the transformation towards the digital multitasking and cross-platform profiles needed to adopt the digital mindset effectively and efficiently.

Tweeting television between innovation and normalization: How Lebanese television and audiences are making use of Twitter in political talk shows

Traditional media have progressively integrated newer media practices, with the constant emergence of new digital technologies, without abandoning their former ones. The adoption of Twitter by TV channels and by other social actors during political talk shows is a case in point. This article aims to assess whether the hybridization of TV talk shows and Twitter has innovated or normalized existing patterns of communication. In the former case, by enabling more interaction between different actors and space for audience deliberation, or in the latter case, by reproducing a traditional one-way communication and a centralized network of information that remains controlled and oriented by the elite (journalists and politicians). The incorporation of older and emergent media logic has an impact on the construction and distribution of political information as well as on the power relationships between journalists, politicians, and TV audiences. Besides allowing political talk shows to expand their flow of information, and to promote their news online, hybridized practices have not only altered the way citizens consume and engage with political information but also how they counter-frame traditional political media content by producing new ones. The research methodology consists of descriptive, content, and network analyses of tweets collected from three Lebanese local TV political talk show “Sarelwa2et” (MTV), “Btefro’ aa Watan” (Al Jadeed), and “Vision 2030” (LBCI) between February and March 2022. Results revealed that TV talk shows are making use of Twitter as a top-down transmitter of information and resorting poorly to its interactive potential. Some newer media practices of Twitter, such as @mention and replies are being applied but only to interact with politicians and journalists, failing to engage with a larger array of voices and thus, leading to an elite-centric discourse within the network. Also, tweets are mostly used to inform audiences and promote TV programs. In addition, network analyses of talk shows via hashtags demonstrated the central and not monopolized role of politicians and journalists as influencers, bridges, and quick spreaders of information. Finally, content analysis of dual screeners’ tweets (n=6000) indicated very little space in a Habermasian public sphere. The total of subjective opinions, irony, and attack/insult tweets are still higher than the total of the introduction of new issues and counter-frames tweets.