Traditional Journalistic Norms Research Articles

Shared concerns versus ideological preferences: The New York Times’ coverage of two Olympics games held in the global health crisis

The Olympic Games are often framed by the U.S. media as political events, with the media’s preference for democratic political systems, while global health crises are often framed in a similar way, demonstrating shared concerns about human interests. When the Olympics occur during a global health crisis, a tension emerges between the ideological framing of the Olympics and the shared concern for human interests in media coverage. By analyzing New York Times coverage of the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics and the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, this study aims to show how ideological preferences in Olympic coverage interact with shared concerns about health crises. Furthermore, the analysis of this interaction leads to a rethinking of traditional journalistic norms that view journalists as detached observers.

News from the User’s Perspective: With Naivety to Validity

In journalism studies, news is still closely tied to journalistic institutions. However, the rise of digital platforms as gateways to news, catalyzing processes of dedifferentiation, challenges established news definitions. This makes a dedication to the audience understanding of news all the more urgent. That is, in order to measure news in everyday life contexts as validly as possible, scientific operationalization and lay definition of news should be as close as possible. Accordingly, drawing on 26 semi-structured in-depth interviews with subjects diverse in age, gender, and education, this article explores what constitutes news from user’s perspectives, and to this end, differentiates between news originator, content, style, channel, and function. Interviews were complemented by card-laying tasks with participants being asked to decide whether or not different actors, actants, headlines, and social media posts were news (dimensions). Findings show that people have a heterogeneous understanding of news originators and channels, but their associations of news content and style are informed by traditional journalistic norms. Thereby, audiences emphasize neutrality and news as output of selfless activity. The article concludes that an institutionally shaped definition of news does not capture the term’s extension in people’s everyday exposure any more. Finally, methodological-practical implications are discussed.

From “Cool Observer” to “Emotional Participant”: The Practice of Immersive Journalism

ABSTRACT Over the past years, innovative technologies (such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR)) have become more common within news organizations. These technologies allow users to immerse themselves in a virtual world. With these types of productions, the journalist tries to engage and involve the user by introducing emotional styles, often to create empathy. This does not only demand new technological skills, but also challenges the way journalist allow emotions in journalistic productions, and what role they take in relation to the story and the user. Through fifteen in-depth interviews with immersive producers and experts in renowned news organizations across the globe, this paper examines both the motivations of journalists who produce immersive stories, and how they seek to balance traditional journalistic norms and emotionality in them. The results show that journalists believe that emotions and facts can be compatible with journalistic production. Yet, they struggle with their role in relation to the user. Immersive journalism obliges journalists to carefully reconsider their relationship with their public. In sum, this study illuminates an ongoing professional debate on the role of emotionality, user agency, and journalistic control and autonomy.

Obsessive–Activist Journalists: A New Model of Journalism?

ABSTRACT This study exposes a unique model of journalism – “obsessive-activist” reporting. Motivated by a strong sense of justice and a passion to make a significant change, these journalists promote their social or political agenda in both spheres: the professional and the public. In the professional, they do it through an obsessive and continuing reporting on the issue they care for, while in the public sphere, they are personally involved in activities such as lobbying and consulting politicians and bureaucrats, or personal assistance to individuals and groups in need. Based on a thorough review of literature on journalism models and on studies of journalistic role perceptions, and after a series of in-depth interviews with 17 obsessive-activist journalists, the authors suggest that obsessive-activist journalism is a unique model of journalism and the most interventionist one. However, unlike other interventionist models of journalism, the obsessive-activist journalists adhere most of the time to traditional journalistic norms and practices. While former interventionist models challenged mainstream news reporting from outside, obsessive activists hybridize it from the inside, adding new avenues to adjust and survive in rapidly changing news environments.

Mapping the territory of data journalism: A practical concept explication

The prevalence of data journalism in recent years has challenged traditional journalistic norms as well as the relationship between journalism and other subjects, affecting journalism both internally and externally. While the practice of data journalism has become increasingly pervasive around the world, systematic research on data journalism is only just starting to receive scholarly attention. The multi-aspects of data journalism cause difficulties in attempts to define it critically and clearly, and the limited number of previous studies suffer from a lack of coherent connections bridging the field’s academic and professional dimensions. Through a concept explication, this article generates theoretical and operational definitions of data journalism via empirical analysis and meaning analysis.

EXAMINING THE ROLE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF EMERGING SOCIAL NEWS OUTLETS AND THEIR ADVOCACY JOURNALISM IN THE 2017 AUSTRALIAN SAME-SEX MARRIAGE POSTAL SURVEY

This paper examines emerging news forms and journalistic practices within Australia that are native to social media. It argues that these shared forms and practices constitute a new genre of ‘social news’. Social news embodies specific kinds of platform vernaculars and pop-cultural sensibilities, and challenges journalistic norms of ‘objectivity’ and ‘balance’ by consistently adopting an overtly positioned perspective. Three Australian-based outlets are studied through this conceptual lens: BuzzFeedOz News, Junkee Media, and Pedestrian.tv. Using digital tools alongside manual methods, this paper investigates the role and significance of these outlets on Twitter and Facebook during the August-November 2017 same-sex marriage postal survey. The survey was commissioned by the incumbent conservative Liberal-National Australian government to gauge nationwide support for same-sex marriage. During the survey, social news outlets played an advocacy and activist role. These outlets refrained from publishing provocative ‘No’ op-eds, and Junkee Media and Pedestrian.tv actively encouraged readers to enrol and vote ‘Yes’. Preliminary findings indicate that social news outlets were moderately-to-highly visible on Twitter during the postal survey period. On Facebook, advocacy posts received low-to-moderate levels of engagement. These findings indicate a shifting but not yet transformed Australian news ecology. In addition, social news’ eschewing of ‘balance’ indicates a challenge from emerging outlets to traditional journalistic norms in Australia. Significantly, in this case the challenge comes from outlets that intelligently critique the value in publishing both sides. Overall, this research highlights that disruptions from social media platforms and cultures can be sources of positive potential for news and journalistic practice.

It Does Become Personal: Lessons From a News Organisation’s #Metoo Campaign

ABSTRACTThis paper reports on a #metoo campaign by a mainstream news organisation. The campaign generated a high number of disclosures from survivors and was notable for its adoption of a survivor-led approach, in its efforts to minimise potential harm to survivors. It offers lessons for reporting on #metoo issues, including the best practice for dealing with survivors, campaign management and ultimately the implications for shifting editorial news values. Journalists demonstrated a heightened awareness of source subjectivity and were able to reconcile this with traditional journalistic norms.

“The truth is not in the middle”: Journalistic norms of climate change bloggers

Climate change has often been presented in a biased way in traditional media outlets, due to journalists’ adherence to the norm of balanced reporting. More generally, journalistic norms shape the selection and composition of news and thereby influence how climate change is covered in traditional media. Climate change coverage is also prominent in new media outlets, such as blogs. The current research aims to identify which journalistic norms are supported in the climate blogosphere, on the basis of 27 interviews with climate change bloggers. The results show that climate change bloggers support the traditional journalistic norms of personalization, dramatization, novelty, authority and order, but not balance. Beyond the traditional journalistic norms, climate change bloggers identify contextualization, clarity, decency, and particularly truth as important journalistic norms. Truth is understood as a multi-dimensional norm comprising objectivity, transparency, and honesty. No differences are identified between norms supported by climate sceptical and climate mainstream bloggers, but each group operationalizes the norms differently. These results challenge and redefine traditional models of journalistic norms, and contribute to theorizing how journalistic norms shape climate change coverage in new media outlets. As such, this research on climate change bloggers and their journalistic norms is crucial for a fuller understanding of current climate change communications.

What’s newsworthy about ‘social news’? Characteristics and potential of an emerging genre

This article describes the emerging genre of ‘social news’ – characterised by a ‘born-digital’ form of journalism which is both symptomatic of and a pragmatic response to the logics of social media. The article outlines the genre’s key formal characteristics, illustrating them through discussions of three key Australia-based publications – BuzzFeed Oz News, Junkee, and Pedestrian.tv. The analysis of these examples indicates that social news departs from traditional journalistic norms around objectivity, instead exhibiting a strong and explicit positionality, and actively critiquing ideas like ‘balance’. The article argues that social news demonstrates the progressive potential of new forms of journalism that have emerged from the same technological and economic developments that have caused the crisis in the news business. It concludes with a more elaborated description of the social news genre, with suggestions for further research.

An image of refugees through the social media lens: A narrative framing analysis of the Humans of New York series ‘Syrian Americans’

Abstract In this article we analyse the visual portrayal of Syrian refugees in the Facebook group ‘Humans of New York’ – a citizen journalism site run by a New York-based photographer. Specifically, we use narrative theory and its related method, narrative framing analysis, to examine the visual rhetoric of the European refugee crisis that emerges on this site, and the images that were most popular with the site’s viewers. Our findings indicate that while mainstream media images marginalize and dehumanize refugees by portraying them as pollutants and terrorists, alternate sites such as HONY do not function under traditional journalistic norms and routines, and provide alternate portrayals. The three narrative frames that emerge are as follows: refugees are skilled, normalized and are ideologically American. The overall narrative is a social master analogue that indicates that refugees are capable of assimilating into American life.

The effects of news consumption via social media and news information overload on perceptions of journalistic norms and practices

Given the widespread adoption of social media for sharing and accessing news, as well as the possibility of news consumers' direct interactions with journalists through social media, this study analyzed the relationships among news access via social media (NASM), perceived news information overload (NIO), news consumption, and perceptions of journalistic norms and practices. The results indicated that NIO moderated the relationships between NASM and selective exposure and between NASM and willingness to pay for quality news. Regarding journalistic norms and practices, participants valued the speed of journalism when they frequently accessed news on social media more so than traditional journalistic norms. Finally, there were statistically significant interactions between NIO and two types of news consumption behaviors (i.e., selective exposure and news avoidance) concerning participants' perceptions of news quality.

Intrapreneurial Informants

As newspapers continue to wrestle with diminishing resources, they have, in part, turned to freelance journalists to help fill holes in content production. In light of this amplified reliance on freelancers, some media scholars have examined the ways in which they fit into the news process, arguing that they have the potential to override traditional journalistic norms in ways that can enhance news work and audience engagement while possibly breathing new life into news organization business models. Semi-structured interviews with 19 freelance journalists and nine newspaper editors in the United States help reveal that freelancers are harnessing social media to engage with and build audiences and individual brands. Freelancers frequently immerse themselves in social media experimentation that editors monitor and often incorporate into organizational strategies that may help inform newsroom practices and audience engagement. This hints at a shift for freelance journalists from the timeworn role of newsroom outsider to one of “intrapreneurial informant.”

Citizen Journalists' Views on Traditional Notions of Journalism, Story Sourcing, And Relationship Building

This study examines whether citizen journalists adhere to traditional journalistic norms when reporting. A nationwide survey and follow-up interviews with selected US citizen journalists showed they do consider traditional norms such as objectivity, gatekeeping, and balance to be very important. This is contrary to what some previous studies have found. Citizen journalists also indicated that both official and unofficial sources were integral to storytelling. This study's findings point to the need to examine further how citizen journalists incorporate traditional notions of journalism practice into their approaches to gathering and reporting news.

Shifting Borderlines in the Practice of Verification: Some Social Media Lessons from India

Verification is an exclusive jurisdiction of the professional journalist as far as traditional news practice is concerned. However, with the popularity and prominence of newsworthy user generated content on social media, verifying them is becoming a daunting task for journalists. Very many instances of seemingly genuine user generated content tricking veteran news organisations show that accurately describing the reality is no more a straight line game as it used to be, before the emergence of social media. Moreover, the practice of verification, at times, is taken over by vigilant social media users even after stories gathered through traditional methods get published. The jurisdictional conflict arises when social media users, who are outside the authority to carry out verification as per traditional journalistic norms, doubt and question and sometimes expose verification pitfalls from professional journalists. By examining some instances from regional and national Indian press, the paper argues that the idea of verification and its jurisdiction is being challenged as social media is reshaping the news landscape.

Chinese Journalists' Discursive Weibo Practices in an Extended Journalistic Sphere

This study examines Chinese journalists' Weibo practices by analyzing 2659 Weibo posts by journalists. Previous studies indicate that Western journalists generally “normalize” their posting activities on social media to fit their professional standards and practices, but this normalization practice is conducted in a more complicated way in China. Our findings suggest that Chinese journalists' Weibo practices are influenced by four offline journalistic discourses: Party-press, professionalism, market economy, and Confucian intellectual. Overall, Chinese journalists' Weibo discourses exhibit political caution, professionalism deviation, marketing commitment, and Confucian intellectual expression. By comparing officially oriented and commercially oriented journalists, we find that commercial journalists who are subject to less political and organizational control were more politically engaged, professionalism deviant, and socially conscious. This study treats “journalists' Weibo” as a spin-off journalistic sphere. On this new technological platform, Chinese journalists are able to enjoy increased journalistic autonomy and freedom. Thus, while Chinese journalists normalize their Weibo practices based on their existing offline journalistic discourses, the spin-off sphere of Weibo provides them with new opportunities to deviate from traditional journalistic norms. Yet, we find that official political and organizational control is still tight. Thus, technological innovation and socio-political context are both important in influencing journalists' discursive practices on this extended news sphere.

Political News Journalists in Social Media

Social media allow everyone to show off their personalities and to publicly express opinions and engage in discussions on politicised matters, and as political news journalists engage in social media practices, one might ask if all political news journalists will finally end up as self-promoting political pundits. This study examines the way political news journalists use social media and how these practices might challenge journalistic norms related to professional distance and neutrality. The study uses cluster analysis and detects five user types among political news journalists: the sceptics, the networkers, the two-faced, the opiners, and the sparks. The study finds, among other things, a sharp divide between the way political reporters and political commentators use social media. Very few reporters are comfortable sharing political opinions or blurring the boundaries between the personal and the professional, indicating that traditional journalistic norms still stand in political news journalism.

Do old Norms Have a Place in New Media?

Emerging business models for news have the potential to affect the nature of democracy. As the economic foundations of mainstream journalism become increasingly shaky, a new economic model is emerging in the form of news organizations operating as nonprofits. These are mostly run by former newspaper journalists bringing with them traditional journalistic norms they worked under previously; now they are operating under a vastly different economic framework. These organizations are producing a growing amount of public affairs news while mainstream news production shrinks. The research question examined here is whether this emergent form (1) changes but maintains core norms and practices of the journalistic culture from which it arose, or (2) transforms norms and practices into something new. I briefly review norms and practices of traditional journalism to create a framework against which to compare behaviors at one nonprofit news organization, MinnPost, through ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews. My findings indicate that MinnPost values some traditional norms (e.g. loyalty to citizens); other norms are valued but not fulfilled in a traditional way (e.g. comprehensiveness of news coverage); yet others are largely eschewed (e.g. forum provision). This suggests a set of evolving journalistic tenets, which observations indicate are linked to MinnPost's economic structure. It points toward how emerging business models are changing journalism, and by extension could be affecting American democracy. This paper is part of a larger project investigating how nonprofit news organizations are changing the information available in local news environments.

Political journalists and Twitter: Influences on norms and practices

ABSTRACTThis study explores the ways in which Twitter has impacted the norms and practices of political reporters and editors who tweet. In-depth interviews with political journalists at US newspapers during the 2012 presidential campaign indicate that Twitter use has caused substantial changes to daily reporting practices, in part because Twitter is considered more consequential for their job than any other form of social media, including Facebook. Several themes emerged as to how the changes have helped and harmed their ability to report and write stories. However, participants do not use Twitter in ways that suggest a major shift in traditional journalistic norms, such as objectivity and gatekeeping.

New media, old criticism: Bloggers’ press criticism and the journalistic field

Bourdieu’s field theory suggests that the rise of the internet and blogs could generate a shift in the journalistic field – the realm where actors struggle for autonomy – as new agents gain access. This textual analysis of 282 items of media criticism appearing on highly trafficked blogs reveals an emphasis on traditional journalistic norms, suggesting a stable field. Occasional criticisms of the practicability of traditional norms and calls for greater transparency, however, may suggest an emerging paradigm shift.

The political j-blogger

This study explores how the increasingly popular blog format, as adopted by journalists affiliated with mainstream media outlets, affects long-standing journalistic norms and practice. It focuses on non-partisanship, transparency and the gatekeeping role, using a content analysis of 20 weblogs dealing with politics or civic affairs. Although expressions of opinion are common, most journalists are seeking to remain gatekeepers even in this highly interactive and participatory format. Political j-bloggers use links extensively - but mostly to other mainstream media sites. At least in their early use, journalists are ‘normalizing’ the blog as a component, and in some ways an enhancement, of traditional journalistic norms and practices.