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The historically ambiguous relationship between journalism and Big Tech can be traced back to the late 20th century, when news organizations started to recognize the potential of the Internet as a distribution platform. While a growing body of literature is concerned with power asymmetries between Big Tech and journalism, the role of place in shaping the layered histories of journalism remains underexplored. This study uses a framework of place—conceptualized as material and geographic, a setting for action and lived experiences carrying the legacies of their past, and a site of accumulating histories of cultural meaning and power (Usher, 2019)—to examine how Silicon Valley and Fourth Estate ideals converge. Empirically, the study analyzes job advertisements of four US and UK print-legacy news outlets serving as a window into shifting expectations, skills, and values that news organizations seek in their employees, reflecting broader trends in journalism. Findings show that journalism draws on Silicon Valley ideals, merging datasolutionism with Fourth Estate narratives of audience access. Some news organizations are not only tech-oriented but frame themselves as tech companies with a Fourth Estate mission. While both Silicon Valley and Fourth Estate narratives promote ideals of equal power distribution, findings indicate the reinforcement of hegemonic power structures in the news industry. We conclude that the influence of Silicon Valley on journalism is one of consolidating power through location, action, and cultural meaning, as news organizations construct datasolutionism as a pivotal novel layer to achieve long-standing Fourth Estate ideals. This analysis contributes to our understanding of the historical context and evolving nature of the relationship between journalism and Big Tech, highlighting the significance of place in shaping the dynamics between these two increasingly intertwined industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Horizons of Politics / Horyzonty Polityki is the property of Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The traditional foundation of the placed reserved for the Fourth Estate in democratic practice is under pressure. To revitalize this idea, a focus upon how journalists handle silence professionally is suggested. It is argued that it is important to bring out how the handling of silence is carried out, and to understand that silence is not only something to be avoided. Silence is of foundational importance for communicative significance to emerge. In a reading of Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida, we argue for a model in which silence is necessary for significant communicative exchanges. We avoid thoughtlessness by allotting a function to silence; for communication requires not just information but a channel of silence, so to speak. It is, finally, argued that it is important not to expect the revealed forms of silence to be problematic. It is demonstrated that certain forms of silence can be analysed as democracy enhancing because they permit less heated exchanges that make room for thoughtful contemplation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Horizons of Politics / Horyzonty Polityki is the property of Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The historical partnership between whistleblowers and journalists has produced some of the most consequential news stories of the 20th and 21st centuries. However, this partnership has also experienced deep ruptures, most notably after the attacks on 9/11 that reordered the fourth estate's (the press) approach to publishing stories on national intelligence and politically powerful figures. While sensational developments in information accessibility such as WikiLeaks and online document repositories have meaningfully changed the activity of newsgathering and how stories are published, this article instead looks to the more delicate activity of whistleblower rhetoric and its role in recalibrating the place of the fourth estate in a liberal democracy. What follows is an analysis of how a small, vulnerable, and otherwise heterogeneous group uses a rhetoric of praise and blame to achieve a vision of the fourth estate's essential role in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studies in Politics & Society / Polityka & Społeczeństwo is the property of University of Rzeszow and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores relationships between media power and older people in Western and non-Western settings, utilising the examples of Australia and Malaysia. Drawing on Fairclough's three-dimensional critical discourse analysis and a dataset of articles from Australian and Malaysian newspapers, it reveals that despite differences in journalistic practices in the two countries there is a common thread of disparate representation of voices of older people and elites in news about older people. This demonstrates the exercise of power by journalists – and the influence of broader media and socio-political environments – in sustaining and reproducing social inequalities, including opportunities for people to have their stories and issues portrayed fairly and accurately. While the lack of critical engagement by Malaysian journalists can be linked to social norms and ideas of Asian-based development journalism, the absence of critical engagement from the Australian news media can be seen as conflicting with their Fourth Estate watchdog role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Horizons of Politics / Horyzonty Polityki is the property of Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Horizons of Politics / Horyzonty Polityki is the property of Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While considerable academic attention has been paid to the effect of industry turbulence on journalists’ perceptions of their professional identity and the normative values of journalism over the past two decades, there has been less focus on how transformations wrought by digital incursion, corporate economising, and the rise of neoliberal ideologies might have injured journalist’s industrial agency. This article argues that journalists’ willingness to assert or advance their industrial rights at work has been diminished in Australia by the increase in precarity that has arisen as a result of shifts in the media landscape. It argues disruption has created precarious working environments in which uncertainty and fear drive an unprecedented and almost universal sense of self-preservation that has detached journalists from industrial engagement and the mechanisms that support safe and secure working conditions—to the detriment of the journalism industry and the public it serves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That the news media should operate as an impartial and responsible "fourth estate" in a democracy is a pervasive ideal, but there are serious obstacles – economic, organizational and political – to its achievement in practice. These obstacles, we argue, may be lower when an outlet reports on politics in another country, which is strategically allied to its own. And, for this reason, the quality of news coverage of that country's politics may be higher in the reporting by foreign media outlets than in the reporting by domestic outlets. This article outlines the theory behind this conjecture and then examines it empirically through a content analysis of media representations of Donald Trump's rise in two non-American outlets, The Australian and The Guardian. Their coverage, our analysis suggests, approximated fourth-estate ideals more closely than did the domestic coverage of Trump's rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers the formation and influence of the fourth estate of government, ie independent journalism, on anti-corruption and de-oligarchic state initiatives in the democratic political system of the United States for the period 1890-1920. In the early twentieth century, in the United States lasted transformational processes for the democratization of the political system, which had no world analogues: the abolition of social society and rethinking social ideals in the nineteenth century led to the emergence of industrial oligarchs and total corruption in political circles. The emergence of investigative journalism as a genre and its publication in small independent magazines, journals and small publishing houses has led to waves of state anti-corruption and de-oligarchization measures, which today form the basis of many US democratic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers the formation and influence of the fourth estate of government, ie independent journalism, on anti-corruption and de-oligarchic state initiatives in the democratic political system of the United States for the period 1890-1920. In the early twentieth century, in the United States lasted transformational processes for the democratization of the political system, which had no world analogues: the abolition of social society and rethinking social ideals in the nineteenth century led to the emergence of industrial oligarchs and total corruption in political circles. The emergence of investigative journalism as a genre and its publication in small independent magazines, journals and small publishing houses has led to waves of state anti-corruption and de-oligarchization measures, which today form the basis of many US democratic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an opinion paper that takes issue with glib referencing to policing professionalism by politicians in South Africa. As such it juxtaposes the real and the normative situation to policing professionalism in South Africa as seen by an opinionista with the status of an indigenous outsider participant observer. The real situation regarding policing professionalism, as pronounced and practised by the political elite in South Africa, is a far cry away from scientific peer reviewed evidence on the imperatives of policing professionalism in our country. The latter should be regarded as the normative situation, the place where we actually want to be. However, what South Africans hear and see about the interplay between politics and policing, read in the works of the Fourth Estate's muckraking specialists and identified in the SAPS occupational environment, differs drastically from the conceptual and contextual analysis of policing professionalism as reflected in available research. The value of an informed opinion by an Indigenous Outsider Participant Observer, as compared to a traditional, more conservative, approach to epistemology, should not be underestimated: it contributes to the discourse on ontological pluralism. It therefore provides a different (and, for some scholars, uncomfortable) view of describing and evaluating phenomena in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of public relations and technology, the question arises more and more often whether the media, which provide the most dynamic opportunity for communication between state bodies and citizens, have not replaced the formally established three authorities that form the basis of any democratic society. The metaphor “Fourth Estate” most clearly shows the need for independent control, on behalf of the public, over the other three powers – the judicial, legislative and executive. Thus, it is important to note that information campaigns designed to manipulate public opinion with false or misleading social media posts have become a standard political practice. The media are called upon to be an objective corrective and an expression of the public interest, even if this may bring about political change. An emblematic example of this is the research and revelations of two Washington Post journalists (Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein), who provoked the Watergate scandal and led to US President Nixon's resignation in 1974. Today, the Fourth Estate has more power than ever to be a mediator possessing access to the authorities and the people it must serve. An example of this are the recent US presidential elections. But the Fourth Estate is also an indicator of truth in today's digital society, where news spreads in seconds and the social media raise the question as to whether it is possible to control information without affecting its truthfulness and reliability. The question is, are the media and technological giants not actually the new rulers and the foremost power [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Jihočeský Sborník Historický is the property of Jihoceskeho Muzeum v Ceskych Budejovicich and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

By the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, populists have taken charge in Turkey, India and Israel, all previously heralded as exceptional democracies in difficult regions. This moment offers a unique opportunity to explore populism in power outside Europe and the Americas, in three states shaped by deep social, ethnic and religious divisions. This article locates Turkey, India and Israel within a global wave of electorally successful populist movements. It explores how populism can jeopardize democratic choice in deeply divided societies and whether Erdoğan's capture of democracy in Turkey offers a blueprint for the political strategies employed by Modi and Netanyahu. In unravelling parallels between the three administrations, our analysis uncovers a common populist playbook of neoliberal economic policies, the leveraging of ethnoreligious tensions as well as attempts to denigrate independent news media, by portraying it as the "enemy of the people". Although their position on the spectrum between democracy and authoritarianism differs, our analysis reveals striking continuities in the erosion of democracy in Turkey, India and Israel as a result of these policies, thus highlighting the vulnerability of political systems, particularly those of deeply divided societies, to democratic decay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media scholarship has commonly regarded newspapers as an essential element of strong democratic societies: a forum that structures public debate, providing engaged citizens with coherent frameworks to identify, interpret and tackle complex issues. Despite general agreement on the merits of this goal, there is little empirical evidence suggesting it approximates the democratic role historically played by newspapers. We examined three decades of newspaper coverage of chicken meat production in the UK to find evidence relevant to the normative expectations of the democratic role of newspapers as forum for public debate, by means of a two-stage framing analysis of 766 relevant articles from seven outlets. We found mutually disconnected episodic coverage of specific issues whose aggregate effect is consistent with the diffusion rather than the structuring of public debate. Newspapers here afforded polemic rather than the systemic contestation expected. The polemic contestation we found, with diffusion of public debate as an emergent political effect, troubles the assumptions subsequent to which it is possible to argue for the democratic role of newspapers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reform of the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo in the 1980s has been often presented by scholars and the reformers themselves as an example of a process of journalism modernization inspired by the US Fourth Estate model. However, a close examination of documents publicized by Folha and members of the management team ahead of the reform suggests that other elements – associated to a Neoliberal and a Leninist view of journalism – performed a role as important as the Fourth Estate as sources of the newspaper's model of journalism. Contrary to the conventional knowledge, this article suggests that the core reason behind of reform was the perception, shared by Folha's managers that they have lost control over the newsroom, and their consequent effort in restoring their authority, rather than merely emulating a foreign model. It is argued that a better understanding of journalism modernization in non-western societies requires going beyond the usual model adoption and model adaptation approaches and exploring a multiple modernities perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political communication researchers often take for granted that a free press is one of the most important pillars of a solid democracy. Based on the western Fourth Estate model, they suppose that a free press naturally acts as an accountability agent, by protecting the interests of common citizens against government corruption and political abuses. Like many other nonwestern regions of the world, studies about the relationship between media and politics in Latin America usually adopt a 'transition to democracy' approach, by evaluating them more or less positively in reference to their degree of conformity to western examples. Typically, these studies describe advances of Latin American media toward a more democratic model or point to the obstacles preventing this from happening. However, these studies rarely explore a third possibility: What about cases in which the free press seemingly conspire against the democratic order? The 2016 parliamentary coup that overthrew President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil provides a vivid example of such a possibility. Based on this case, this article contends that analyses about the press/politics relations in Latin American societies must consider other factors, such as those related to their postcolonial nature. In particular, I argue that Latin American elites and their media portray themselves as a westernized minority endowed with a civilizing mission regarding their societies as a whole, and manipulate the Fourth Estate discourse toward their own benefit, as a means for securing and legitimizing their own privilege. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stripped of Myanmarese citizenship in 1982 and persecuted for three decades, stateless Rohingya have long found precarious refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh. This study explores the framing of the Rohingya in Bangladesh's largest circulating English language newspaper The Daily Star, to examine how one of the nation's most prominent newspapers of record framed refugee migration into the country. Analysing two distinct random samples of news stories published on The Daily Star website between 1 December 2011-31 November 2012 and 1 August 2017-31 October 2017, this article argues that The Daily Star's press identity, defined though a nationalist frame, failed to successfully deliver human rights-based journalism though a globalist Fourth Estate imperative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As critical issues such as climate change, exploited fisheries, declining human rights, and reconfiguration of political systems inherited at independence increasingly challenge the microstates of Asia-Pacific, approaches to news media and journalism education are also under strain. University-based journalism education was introduced to the South Pacific in Papua New Guinea at independence in 1975 and in Fiji at the regional University of the South Pacific in 1987, while Technical Vocational Educational and Training institutions have been a more recent addition in the region. Some scholars argue there is little difference between Pacific and Western approaches to journalism, or that some journalism schools are too focused on Western media education, while others assert there is a distinctive style of journalism in Oceania with cultural variations based on the country where it is practiced and parallels with some approaches in Asia such as "mindful journalism." This paper examines a "Pacific way" journalism debate which echoes a regional political concept coined by the late Fiji president, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara. The paper argues for a greater appreciation of the complexities of media cultures in Pacific nations and proposes a more nuanced, reflexive approach to journalism in the Pacific region. This is reflected in a "talanoa journalism" model that he advocates as a more culturally appropriate benchmark than monocultural media templates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main narratives of prevailing ideas of the Fourth Estate were articulated in the era of traditional mass media, and these traditional narratives are challenged by the changing media landscapes. This raises the question whether traditional narratives of the Fourth Estate should be maintained. We will argue – through a close reading of Derrida’s reflections on the relationship between communicative significance and silence, combined with a deliberative ideal for democracy – that the new structures of communication call for a Fourth Estate that focuses on creating spaces for flexible structures of silence in the public sphere. The Fourth Estate has an obvious assignment of counteracting problematic structures of silence (if certain important voices are not being heard). In this article, we will, however, bring out assignments of creating spaces of silence in the public sphere: by (a) silencing certain dominant voices, (b) making room for an increased lack of answers and (c) creating an awareness of the insufficiencies of the public spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

News coverage and analysis of the Edward Snowden revelations provide rich material with which to investigate the dynamics of the networked fourth estate. To understand the links between legacy news and new information actors, this article employs the notion of news flashpoints as a heuristic for making sense of instances when peaks in coverage and interest sync up across various types of news media and platforms and across professional-amateur-special interest borders. By identifying flashpoints, as well as the news events, actors, and themes that anchored the development of the story, the article demonstrates how stories related to the leaks were sustained and broadened in this hybrid environment and considers the implications for the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media convergence poses an existential threat to the continued existence of the press, but some conceptions of its role are sufficiently important to a healthy democracy to justify a new constitutional and regulatory settlement in which the press is given protection in return for acknowledging the need for proper accountability and good standards of journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalism's relationship with the public has historically rested on an assumption of its Fourth Estate roles and as fulfilling democratic imperatives. The normative dimensions of these ideals have also long been “taken as given” in journalism studies, serving as a starting point for discussions of journalism's public service, interest, and role. As contradictions to these normative ideals expose flaws in such assumptions, a reassessment of this normative basis for journalism is needed. This paper looks to challenge normative legacies of journalism's societal role. Drawing on uses and gratification theoretical frameworks and engaging with communities of practice, it explores how communities understand journalism from both top-down (journalism) and bottom-up (citizen) perspectives. This research considers citizen expectations of journalism and journalists, and evaluates perceptions of journalistic values from the ground up. By employing a community facilitation model, it offers an opportunity for participants from across the community to reassess their own conceptions of the role of journalism. This establishes a better basis to approach the journalism–public relationship that does not advantage historic, normative, or traditional legacies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines how the fundamental right of freedom of expression for news media in Pakistan continues to be threatened both by the government and conflicting parties, an issue that is compounded by the threat to the journalists' safety and survival. Giving examples of three Pakistani journalists who lost their lives after their investigations during the America's so called 'War on Terror', the article gives an account of the nature of the dangers and threats that are faced by the journalists in Pakistan who report on armed political conflicts. Drawing on the experiences of five other journalists, who were interviewed during research visits to Pakistan in 2012 and 2014, the author also reflects on the role of journalists in the light of the social responsibility theory and explores some of the factors that contribute towards making conflict reporting a dangerous business in Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article author has taken into consideration the potential meanings of power which media seem to possess. Understanding the notion of the fourth estate (as media used to be named) has been connected with distinguished typology of media power (in a proposal form): power as a mediatisation; power as an impact; power as a function; and, last but not least, power as a control. First type of power (mediatisation) concerns the essence of media - process of getting to know surrounding world via media by mass audience. From this perspective, media become our window on the world and their power consists in creating frames of our perception. Second type of power (impact/influence) is based on an expected relation between media and their recipients. This relation assumes that media with their facts, opinions and entertainment can in some cases possibly change mass audience's definite point of view. However, we have to bear in mind that this type of media power depends on intentional, not accidental influence of mass media. Third type of power (function) seems to be the most obvious one. Every object - according to philosophical logic - which is attributed to a specific function acquires definite power as a part of this function. Finally, fourth type of power concerns the control idea of media, or the so-called: watchdog. This is a crucial aspect of media power, i.e. media as a great controller of governments. Media as a Fourth Estate ought to control political elite, judge them for their promises. That is a source of media's power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Alceu: Revista de Comunicação, Cultura e Política is the property of Faculdades Catolicas, Associacao sem fins lucrativos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It was once thought a multimedia journalist or MMJ was fantasy, as seen in the television series Max Headroom. The hero of the show was a journalist who videotaped his own stories, reported live from anywhere but was also seen as a stalwart of the fourth estate, a 'hero' of society. Today, it is possible for a journalist to technologically assert themselves as a Max Headroom reporter, yet what are missing from the fictional television series are the economical and social considerations put in place to make such a character viable. This article critically reviews the significance of the MMJ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fourth Estate role of the media in a democracy is to inform its citizens and to be a forum for debate about political issues so that the citizenry is able to make informed decisions about the role its government plays. New Zealand portrays itself as a leading democracy in the Pacific, but how much do New Zealanders know about what is happening among the country's neighbours? This article is an exploratory study on media coverage of four countries in Melanesia which have experienced conflict, to assess the degree to which a peace/conflict journalism approach as opposed to a war/ violence journalism approach is used. A content analysis of Radio New Zealand's Morning Report programme was conducted between June and July 2012 to assess the reporting on the four Melanesian countries: Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. According to Pilger (2011) war journalism is reporting on what those in power say they do, whereas peace journalism is what those in power actually do. Lynch and McGoldrick (2005) state that peace journalism 'is when editors and reporters make choices--of what stories to report and how to report them--that create opportunities for society at large to consider and value non-violent responses to conflict' (p. 5). The framing of New Zealand media reporting as either war journalism or peace journalism will be an indication of how information about conflict in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu is presented to a New Zealand audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media freedom and the capacity for investigative journalism have been steadily eroded in the South Pacific in the past five years in the wake of an entrenched coup and censorship in Fiji. The muzzling of the Fiji press, for decades one of the Pacific's media trendsetters, has led to the emergence of a culture of selfcensorship and a trend in some Pacific countries to harness New Zealand's regulatory and self-regulatory media mechanisms to stifle unflattering reportage. The regulatory Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) and the self-regulatory NZ Press Council have made a total of four adjudications on complaints by both the Fiji military-backed regime and the Samoan government and in one case a NZ cabinet minister. The complaints have been twice against Fairfax New Zealand media-targeting a prominent regional print journalist with the first complaint in March 2008-and twice against television journalists, one of them against the highly rated current affairs programme Campbell Live. One complaint, over the reporting of Fiji, was made by NZ's Rugby World Cup Minister. All but one of the complaints have been upheld by the regulatory/self-regulatory bodies. The one unsuccessful complaint is currently the subject of a High Court appeal by the Samoan Attorney-General's Office and is over a television report that won the journalists concerned an investigative journalism award. This article examines case studies around this growing trend and explores the strategic impact on regional media and investigative journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a case study of the changing patterns of news production and consumption in the UK that are being shaped by the Internet and related social media. Theoretically, this focus addresses concern over whether the Internet is undermining the Fourth Estate role of the press in liberal democratic societies. The case study draws from multiple methods, including survey research of individuals in Britain from 2003-2011, analysis of log files of journalistic sites, and interviews with journalists. Survey research shows a step-jump in the use of online news since 2003 but a levelling off since 2009. However, the apparent stability in news consumption masks the growing role of social network sites. The analyses show that the Fourth Estate - the institutional news media - is using social media to enhance their role in news production and dissemination. However, networked individuals have used social media to source and distribute their own information in ways that achieve a growing independence from the Fourth Estate journalism. As more information moves online and individuals become routinely linked to the Internet, an emerging Fifth Estate, built on the activities of networked individuals sourcing and distributing their own information, is developing a synergy with the Fourth Estate as each builds on and responds to the other in this new news ecology. Comparative data suggests that this phenomenon is likely to characterize the developing news ecology in other liberal democratic societies as well, but more comparative research is required to establish the validity of this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the evolving practices of science journalism and public debate in the digital age. The vehicle for this study is the release of digitally stored email correspondence, data and documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK in the weeks immediately prior to the United Nations Copenhagen Summit (COP-15) in December 2009. Described using the journalistic shorthand of ‘climategate’, and initially promoted through socio-technical networks of bloggers, this episode became a global news story and the subject of several formal reviews. ‘Climategate’ illustrates that media-literate critics of anthropogenic explanations of climate change used digital tools to support their cause, making visible selected, newsworthy aspects of scientific information and the practices of scientists. In conclusion, I argue that ‘climategate’ may have profound implications for the production and distribution of science news, and how climate science is represented and debated in the digitally mediated public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Aimed at reinforcing the democratic values of freedom of speech and increased diversity in civic access to the means of communication, this paper examines the concept of democracy within an information and communication technology-mediated context. Discussion proceeds with an analysis of orthodox views adopted by Jefferson and the architects of the American Constitution. Building on the Jeffersonian tradition, a critique is presented of present-day, non-transparent constraints on the democratic values of freedom of speech, information access and the structural constrains mitigating unfettered public access to critical information and debate on fundamental social and political issues of the day. The proposed 'custodiary' model for the new Democratic Project is premised on the development of a constitutional framework which encourages information diversity and freedom of access and expression as a way of bringing back 'discourse' into democratic praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interviewing as part of broadcast news includes a wide range of practices that go beyond calling public figures to account in ways that have received so much attention and analysis in the research literature. This article examines a major strand of news interviewing which it identifies as ‘experiential’ and argues, on the basis of close discourse analysis of interviews drawn from coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2005 London bombings, that the focus on personal experience and emotion in them is managed in ways quite distinct from accountability interviewing. Indeed, the apparently formulaic quality of the verbal performance in these interviews gives shape to experience in a fashion close to ritual but demands a quite different kind of alignment from the audience than that implicated by accountability interviewing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Publizistik: Vierteljahreshefte für Kommunikationsforschung is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The rise of the press, radio, television and other mass media enabled the development of an independent institution: the 'Fourth Estate', central to pluralist democratic processes. The growing use of the Internet and related digital technologies is creating a space for networking individuals in ways that enable a new source of accountability in government, politics and other sectors. This paper explains how this emerging 'Fifth Estate' is being established and why this could challenge the influence of other more established bases of institutional authority. It discusses approaches to the governance of this new social and political phenomenon that could nurture the Fifth Estate's potential for supporting the vitality of liberal democratic societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Rupert Murdoch announced in April 2004 that he intended to see his company, News Corporation, reincorporated in the United States, two competing representations of the 'media mogul' came to dominate the press's interpretation of this event. The first of these 'Murdoch representations' was the most common, and painted an image of a successful entrepreneur, a 'celebrity CEO'. Yet, the second 'Murdoch representation' painted a different image, a more detailed portrait, with critical attention paid to the modus operandi of the world's most notorious media proprietor. This article deconstructs these representations of Murdoch, a mythic fracturing of image resulting from the political economy of the Australian press. In essence, the article explores issues of media diversity, myth and ideology, and the propensity of the press for critical, impartial, journalism. The empirical data are drawn from an analysis of two of Australia's pre-eminent newspapers: The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative research is uniquely able to address theoretical questions about the relationship between journalism and political and cultural contexts. This study takes the reporting of political scandal as the entry-point to an analysis of the practice of investigative reporting in Britain and Spain in the 1990s and its status as a litmus test for a Fourth Estate understanding of the press' role. Using interview and documentary data, the research explores journalists' backgrounds, their assumptions about methods, relationships to sources and their perception of the public, political and peer response to their work. Journalists' views of the rationale for reporting political scandal are also explored. The analysis shows that there are a number of differences between the two groups of journalists but also that they are bound far more by common assumptions about the practices and purposes of reporting political scandal, which, taken together, provide a challenge to certain aspects of the production study research tradition and also evidence for the enduring influence of Fourth Estate understandings of the role of journalism across national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In more ways than one, the political events in Fiji since that fateful day have had a profound effect on political journalism in the Pacific. Many contemporaries, who worked as journalists in Fiji at the time, paid dearly for defending the Fourth Estate. They were unified in their views and they vehemently defended the right to call things as they saw them—a spade was a spade, black was black and white was white. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]