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Coverage of artificial intelligence and algorithms has been largely examined by scholars studying countries in the Global North that have historically supported conditions for critical journalism and watchdog journalistic role performances. However, it is unclear if the findings from such work would be applicable to authoritarian contexts that do not share those conditions. This study addresses this gap through a textual analysis of 23 journalistic investigations of AI and algorithmic systems published in Chinese news media between 2019 and 2023. We found that Chinese journalists were critical of multiple aspects of algorithmic systems and called for urgent AI governance at the nation-state level. Despite the technical nature of the issue, those journalists overwhelmingly employed traditional reporting techniques to uncover political and economic intersections—namely those resulting from the rise of tech companies and the algorithms they implement. Chinese journalists simultaneously performed the roles of being watchdogs and loyal facilitators by highlighting the risks posed by private platforms and their algorithms while casting the state as a protector and responsible steward of technological development. The study thus highlights the intricate roles necessary to perform critical journalism in authoritarian contexts, and the possibilities that the case of AI permits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature comparing journalistic roles around the world highlights different ways of understanding journalistic work across countries. One of the main differences in conceptualising concerns the journalist's propensity for intervention: where in some contexts it is common practice for journalists to intervene with commentary and interpretation; while in others there is a tendency to adopt a more neutral reporting style. Through the conceptual lens of journalistic role performance, this study investigates the performance of the interventionist role within its two analytical sub-dimensions (content-driven interventionism and style-driven interventionism), together with the specific indicators related to each of the two (interpretation, journalist point of view, call to action, qualifying adjectives, and use of the first person) across nine Western European countries. Contrary to expectations, our data show a higher level of interventionism—particularly content-driven—in Central and Northern European countries when compared to those belonging to the polarised pluralist model theorised by Hallin, D. C., and P. Mancini. (2004. Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge University Press). Moreover, in almost all the countries considered, when journalists do intervene with their own voice, they predominantly do so through rhetorical devices of interpretation and by expressing their point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The watchdog role is central to the democratic legitimacy of journalism and is also perceived as an essential part of journalists' role performance by the public. So far, the expectations on journalists' watchdog role performance have been studied as a static concept resulting in limited knowledge of the underlying dynamics in audience demand and expectations for this type of journalism. We argue that the demand for watchdog journalism is dynamic and varies according to changes in the broader context and across audience characteristics. We take a multi-method approach to examine the demand for watchdog journalism during the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark. First, we use data from three representative surveys (n≈1.000 in each), including a panel component (n = 336), to demonstrate that the demand for watchdog journalism increased over time, especially among opposition voters, as the political context offered more political conflict and contested policy solutions. Second, a qualitative analysis of answers to an open-ended question in the surveys examines how the audience believes the watchdog role should be performed. We show that the demand for different functions of journalists' critical reporting varies over time and that the form used by journalists when conducting critical reporting is extremely important to the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comparatively investigates variations in journalistic role performances in politicized media systems. Poland and Hungary are included in the quantitative content analysis as illustrative cases of Central and Eastern European countries featuring democratic erosion, political polarization, and media systems with a high level of political parallelism. Our study identifies whether the fall of liberal and deliberative democracy and increasing political pressure on the media have been accompanied by modifications in the manifestation of journalistic roles and, if so, what those changes have been. We employ Mellado's (2015) concept of journalistic roles by focusing on democracy-related domains, namely journalistic voice and power relations, and four roles: interventionist, watchdog, loyal facilitator, and civic. We compare data from national newspapers from two periods, namely 2012 and 2020. Despite experiencing similar changes in political context, journalists in Poland and Hungary have differed in their performance of the watchdog and civic roles. However, they have been alike in relation to the steady rise of journalistic interventionism. Surprisingly, we found no evidence of the elevation of the loyal facilitator model in newspapers. This study indicates that systemic politicization and political pressure on the media go alongside with diminishing objectivity and detachment in professional role performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional retreatism can be seen as a central concept in guiding journalistic role performance. It relates to how journalists distance themselves from the stories they produce by drawing upon professional ideals such as objectivity to produce a non-interventionist detached account of the news. But what happens when this professional retreatism ends up reproducing, rather than challenging, an existing media bias that contributes to the further marginalisation of a minority group? Drawing on 23 qualitative interviews with British press journalists, the article examines the dilemmas they face in their professional roles when it comes to negotiating objectivity in the reporting of stories involving Muslims. The study finds that objectivity as a form of professional retreatism can work in a counter-productive way to limit journalists' abilities to value and act upon their own moral and ethical judgements when producing Muslim-related stories. The article further argues that recent scholarship on journalistic role performance and the tensions between journalistic ideals and practices can provide an important missing insight into why spaces for resistance and contradiction can also coexist alongside the more negative representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand audience-oriented journalistic role performance, one must understand how journalists conceptualize and cater to their audience. Giving the audience what it wants is a complex endeavor, with varying goals and hybridized end results, in newsrooms with fewer resources serving increasingly polarized audiences. Through a triangulation of data—content analysis at the subdimension level to examine the range and hybridity of audience-oriented journalistic product presenting the civic, service and infotainment roles; a survey to identify journalists' attitudes toward the use of audience data and social media in their work; and interviews with journalists that revealed how their journalistic practice and audience perceptions were impacted by quantitative (metrics and analytics) and qualitative data (comments/social media interactions)—this research fills a gap in understanding about the connection between journalists, their audiences, and audience data when it comes to journalistic role performance. Findings show that in Canada the infotainment role is a significant part of reporting, but entertaining often comes with a goal of educating, as does service journalism. There are no "bad" journalistic roles, but there are a lot of journalists trying to figure out which ones might best catch, engage, and retain an ever-shrinking news audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

News satire has proliferated worldwide and has emerged as a valid site for public discourse. What we see today is a spectrum of news satire formats ranging from the predominantly absurd and comedic to more overtly journalistic satirical deconstructions of current affairs. This maturation of news satire as an alternative form of journalism thus underlines the necessity for further research into the journalistic roles that certain news satire formats carry out. This study assesses the journalistic roles in three international news satire formats i.e., the United States' Last Week Tonight, the Swedish Svenska Nyheter, and the Dutch Zondag met Lubach and presents the findings of a content analysis of 150 satirical segments having aired from October 2020 to April 2023. We conclude that Western news satire displays a fairly united execution of journalistic role performances with high scores for the Advocate, Watchdog and Civic Educator roles, yet low scores for Reporter and Loyalist roles. Furthermore, we present the Comedic Interlocutor role, and discuss its place in alternative conceptions of professional journalism today. This study empirically validates that humor and entertainment are not irreconcilable with a factual, civically engaged, critical kind of journalistic coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of journalistic roles has become a staple in journalism research. The concrete link between role perceptions and role performance, however, remains in a "black box". This article introduces reconstruction interviews as a holistic approach that blends perceptual and performative approaches to the study of journalistic roles. It discusses the method's specific benefits and weaknesses, when applied to explore the relationship between role ideals and practice and demonstrates how the method can tease out different levels of influence on journalistic roles. This is done by showcasing reconstruction interviews with European journalists (n = 15) who routinely cover large technology corporations. Notably, the method provides tangible reference points for anchoring journalistic roles in their performance and establishes an empirical connection between ideals and practice, all while maintaining a crucial conceptual distinction between roles emerging as ideals and practices. The reconstruction of journalistic roles promotes critical reflection, and facilitates a holistic analysis of journalism practice across micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the practices of investigative journalism in China in changing times. It does so by focusing on the case study of Southern Metropolitan Daily (SMD), a well-known newspaper in China which built its name on investigative journalism. The aim is to understand how the changing social conditions have shaped investigative journalism and transformed the role performance of investigative journalists. Drawing on data from multiple sources, including archival research, in-depth interviews, and news content analysis, the study found that under a trio of pressures: technological disruption, economic downturn and most importantly tightened political control, the media have been repositioning and reorienting themselves in relation to power. Investigative journalism, although it still retains the name, has shifted to trumpeting the value of constructiveness rather than criticism. This study contributes to the ongoing debates on journalistic role performance by showing how the watchdog and facilitator roles are combined in the practice of Chinese investigative journalists in changing times. It reaffirms the complex cooccurrence of journalistic roles and adds insights into the possibility of roles overlapping, not only across different dimensions but within the same dimension of power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to strengthen the theoretical edifice of role performance theory through appeal to recent advances in cultural theory. Role performance studies often assert that journalistic roles are fluid, contingent, situational and hybridic. Yet, In the large-scale surveys and content-analyses that dominate the literature, roles become more fixed than fluid, more over-determined than contingent. This disjuncture is caused, I argue, by under-theorization. Borrowing from contemporary cultural theory, I cast journalistic roles as schematic associations between cultural elements embedded in the field of journalism. Journalists internalize these elements via two distinct cognitive processes, one I label declarative and the other nondeclarative, and they do so from distinct positions within the field. This conception of role performance moves the field away from questions of beliefs and gaps between thinking and doing and toward those of perceptions, interpretations, motivations, and positionality. In so doing it offers a powerful explanation for how and why role-taking may be situational and dynamic and at the same time organized and patterned. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, I end the essay with a consideration of one of the literature's most compelling empirical findings: that a persistent gap exists between role conception and role performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the rapidly evolving media ecosystem, the need for excellence in visual storytelling and high-performance among those doing that work has never been more critical. Similarly, practitioners maintain that innovation, entrepreneurial thinking, and novel solutions have never been more needed in media organizations. To help identify best practices, competency modeling is useful to optimize and understand the performance of visual editors. Subject matter interviews with 29 experts in a wide variety of media organizations reveal five competencies: professional, management, leadership, communication, and entrepreneurial. Visual editors noted that experience, technology training, media ethics, socially-supportive communication, and advocating for visual work across departments were key components of their work. Implications for best practices, selection, and training of these specialists are discussed, as well as the entrepreneurial nature of their pivotal role. A key insight for media organizations in need of innovative and entrepreneurial activity is that the change agents they need might be found in-house: among the ranks of visual editors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local news organizations are currently redefining how they tell stories, and one tool they are utilizing to reconnect with members of their communities is solutions journalism. This solutions-oriented approach to storytelling includes voices who have the tools to combat local, national, and international problems as well as those who have been directly impacted by issues. This back-and-forth narrative gives deeper insight into issues pervading society (and what can be done about them) than a traditional news story might. However, much is still unknown about how journalists and their media organizations are defining and practicing solutions journalism, especially from the context of local media. This study sought to give foundational understanding to how media practitioners in the southeastern United States who recognize and utilize solutions journalism are pioneering this subsection of the journalism landscape. Insights mined from semi-structured interviews indicate that the definition and practice of solutions journalism is evolving, and that symbiotic relationships formed through the practice of solutions journalism can aid in building credibility, creating stronger bonds within communities, and positively impacting underrepresented communities through tangible change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of hyperlinks in news were prevalent in the onset of digital news publishing in the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, the rise of social media platforms redirected researchers' attention away from the open web, where hyperlinks played an essential role, to other corners of the digital ecosystem. As a result, research on the use of hyperlinks in news has waned in recent years, despite the continuing and frequent use of hyperlinks in digital news, and their role as connectors between social media and news media. We aim to fill that gap in the recent research literature on hyperlinks' use in news through a multinational computational analysis. Analyzing 1,481,969 hyperlinks from 579,294 stories in 869 sources across seven countries in five continents, we found that, despite significant variations across countries, hyperlinking is quite prevalent in digital news, that external links are more prevalent than previously found, and that US sites and social media platforms are frequent targets of hyperlinks across the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As newsrooms begin to produce more immersive stories to better engage audiences, little is known about how immersive journalism compares with traditional journalism as we know it. Defined as news that is created with virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, and 360° video technologies, research has tended to focus on ways to define it, and its effects on audiences and journalists. Understanding the extent to which immersive journalism adheres to long-held news values, norms, roles, and routines in journalism is essential as part of "boundary work", where boundaries that form the essence of journalism legitimize the profession and help journalists understand their work. This study examines 200 immersive stories from five prominent news organizations leading in their production of immersive stories, The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, BBC and The Washington Post. Results indicate that immersive stories remain timely and tend to focus on what is unusual or of human interest. When it comes to sources, there is a shift away from government voices towards civil society. Notably, however, while high on displaying objectivity, there is a lack of source and process transparency in immersive stories, and the infotainment role ranks high, presenting some concerns for journalistic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to examine the depiction of digital journalists in popular culture. Researchers conducted a textual analysis of the films Contagion (2011) and State of Play (2009) and the television series House of Cards (2013-2018) and Veep (2012-2019). They found that digital journalists are not depicted as "real" journalists, digital journalists typically are bad when they attempt to do "real" journalism, digital journalists sometimes do "real" journalism, and digital journalists are unethical. These findings are then discussed in terms of boundary work and the impact of popular culture mythmaking on real-world digital journalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the highly contested professional discourse around journalistic notetaking through 125 years of U.S. reporting textbooks, exploring how professional practices have been presented, rationalized, and justified in succeeding eras of modern journalism. Analyzing through a cultural lens and material theories of "objects of journalism," the study offers insight into developing perceptions of journalists' ethical obligations to accuracy, presumed audience expectations for journalistic content, and the capacities of human memory. Analysis suggests that rather than resolving questions of whether and how journalists should take notes, reporting textbooks offered ambivalent, unrealistic, and contradictory advice through much of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study articulates the motives, craft, practice, and urgent needs of creative independent investigative documentary as a distinct field of practice that utilizes both the subjective expression of artistic cinema with the objectivity-based legacy practices of watchdog journalism. Leveraging community of practice theory, based on in-depth interviews and a two-year investigation of ten of the inaugural films supported by the International Documentary Association (IDA) Enterprise Documentary Fund award—launched in 2016 as the first contemporary institutional recognition of creative investigative documentary as a distinct sub-genre—this study demonstrates how recognizing the unique experiences of this distinct dual journalistic and artistic practice is vital in order for scholars to more widely appreciate the potentiality and significance of this journalistic practice, and to more widely engage with the unique security challenges and needs that it faces, largely overlooked in prevailing conversations in journalism today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In collaboration with professional science journalists, we conducted a national online survey (N = 2,088) to explore facets of awe as potential response states to science journalism and how audiences' dispositional science curiosity may influence these response states. Our science journalist collaborators identified several "awe-inducing" articles as well as a "business-as-usual" article to use in the survey, and we measured participants' experiences of awe using the Awe Experience Scale (AWE-S). We replicated the factor structure of the AWE-S and found that participants' generally experienced greater awe from reading the "awe-inducing" science articles compared to the "business-as-usual" one. Only partial support for the Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects model was found. Although we found that greater science curiosity predicted greater awe reactions to science journalism, science curiosity did not moderate the relationship between type of article read and experiences of awe. Together, these results demonstrate that audiences can experience awe from reading science journalism and the AWE-S is a good way to capture this emotion for media psychology research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unprecedented rise of misinformation and its sociopolitical consequences are increasingly setting the research agenda for social science scholarship. Through examining the effectiveness of data journalism in debunking misinformation, the present study engages with the burgeoning discussions on how to develop countermeasures to mitigate the negative influences of misleading information dissemination. By selecting a widely held political misinformation case from the Chinese context—the "Military World Games and the origin of Covid-19"—and conducting online experiment (N = 317) the results of this study prove the perceived objectivity and credibility of data journalism, and its persuasive power to rebut misinformation, particularly for those with moderate-level prior misinformation beliefs. Building on these insights, this study contributes to an investigation of data journalism's democratic potential to correct problematic information—an urgent task in the face of the "infodemic" threat worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aggressive reporting practices involving deception or intrusion have long been controversial, yet little is known about how often journalists use them, and why. This study of New Zealand journalists is the first since 2005 that has asked a representative national sample of journalists about their experience of these practices. Some practices were commonly used despite being highly controversial amongst journalists. The main predictors of use of these aggressive practices were a journalist's role orientation, or goal in journalism, being influenced by journalism ethical norms and social influences, and to a lesser extent gender, attitude, and organisational factors such as working on a daily newspaper. The profile of a journalist who would use these practices is one with a clear belief in their journalism goal who is more influenced by journalism ethical norms and friends and family than media regulation, authority figures or organisational pressures such as editorial policy. This study gives further support to a risk model as an explanation for journalists' use of these practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic research on whether and how innovation during crises results in durable changes in practice remains scant. The Covid-19 pandemic brought with it new opportunities to look at both innovation and transformations in news work during coverage of the breaking news or monster stories related to it. Through semi-structured qualitative interviews at three different times during the pandemic lock down year of 2021, we engaged with a core group (or "heavyweight team") of editorial managers, digital managers, and an editor-in-chief to generate unique data on this topic. For this inquiry, we enjoyed unique access to the Schibsted-owned VG newsroom in Norway, which was already known for its innovative means of handling disruptive changes and improving practices and routines. Our findings related to VG's Covid-19 Live Tracker initiative in particular suggest that occupational and organizational discourses of professionalism work together to produce altered roles and tasks, empowered interdepartmental teams, and ultimately the trust of both the audience and the authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to explore the motivations and labor of lifestyle, or "soft news," journalists. Rooted in the lens of discursive institutionalism and through 30 interviews with lifestyle journalists in the United States, this study reflects on the aspirational labor—the opportunity to "do what you love"—that motivates entry into journalism but also can encourage disengagement. This study finds that while lifestyle journalists are motivated to enter the profession because of their own personal connection to the topic, their desire to be embedded in the topic and their love for the people in the genre, they also have to negotiate institutional expectations. Furthermore, lifestyle journalists seemed to reflect a sort of cognitive dissonance in their practices—while drawn to the idea they would never actually work, since they were embedded in their passion—in reality what many journalists described reflected that they had difficulty leaving work, given that even their passion had become work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although journalists' social media sourcing can empower non-elite sources and diversify public discussions, counterarguments maintain that social media sourcing relies on a small group of elites and reinforces social division. To contribute to that debate, we examined how health journalists from the mainstream news organizations in the U.S. used Twitter's @mention for sourcing during the first three months of the COVID-19 outbreak. Using a sample of public Twitter posts published by the journalists, we formed co-@mentioned networks (i.e., two sources were connected if @mentioned in the same post) to examine the structure of the networks and identify important sourcing informants. Among the results, elite sources (e.g., health journalists and health experts in the public sector) and influential users (i.e., verified users with a large number of followers and who post frequently) dominated the sourcing repertoire. Moreover, the networks were fragmented because the sources were clustered into several close-knit subgroups. Analyzing exponential random graph models to examine the formation mechanism of the networks revealed that, as the pandemic's severity increased, influential users played a more salient role in the sourcing repertoire, and a homogeneous cluster consisting of journalists and news organizations emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Location data is used in many aspects of journalism today. For example, journalists can identify the number of COVID-19 cases by neighborhood, map those, and then share hot spots with their audiences. They can break down political allegiances, block by block, and predict elections. They can tag location data on reported events and filter those to provide a neighborhood-specific newsletter, and so on. But how is this location data acquired and attended to? This study examines how location data is being used by journalists and the ethical concerns that can arise with such data. Recent location data breaches with third-party technology companies have raised questions about how this kind of data is collected, stored, maintained, and shared on a wider scale. This study used the Delphi method of progressive interviews with a panel of subject matter experts and consisted of three rounds of discussions with U.S. journalists and journalism ethicists. The findings identify several themes of how location data poses new storytelling opportunities and significant ethical issues related to privacy, transparency, and validity. Implications for future uses of location data in journalism are discussed, including placing such data into contexts both in the profession and in the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using two recent controversies involving campus social justice protests and student news organizations, this study uses an interdisciplinary lens to examine free expression and normative journalism ethics discourse. It explores themes related to First Amendment rights and values, journalism ethics, and racial justice, asking which are evident and absent in opinion journalism focused on the cases. It examines universities' dual missions of supporting free expression and advancing the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research updates the study of media of proximity in Spain, addressing the in-depth study of hyperlocal digital media. The main objectives are to determine the motivations for their growth, the models they establish and the factors that condition their stability in the post-pandemic context. After mapping hyperlocal media in 2018 (n = 62), a survey was conducted among their directors to discover the motivations for their creation, the characteristics of their professional teams and business models, the conditions of news production and their relationship with the audience. The map was updated in December 2021 and a new questionnaire was provided to directors to discover its adaptation to the post-pandemic context. The results show that hyperlocal media in Spain have established their own organizational, productive and economic model. The commitment of the directors to providing the community with the information they need from their own neighborhoods is evident, as well as the human and economic resource limitations they must face. The pandemic has strengthened the relationship with the audience, the news service mission, and the search for new financing models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reporters, in order to enact their role as watchdogs and to their commitment to uncover corporate or governmental wrongdoing, often must rely on individuals willing to risk their careers and reputations, at times their lives, to expose their employers' malfeasance. Some whistleblowers turn to the news media to get their messages and stories out. This is often a leap of faith that implies a level of trust in journalists and in their outlet's adherence to their normative roles. This study explores whistleblowers' perceptions of the news media as they recall crossing over from the employer's institutional logic to journalism's institutional logic. In-depth interviews conducted with 16 U.S. whistleblowers who contacted journalists from the 1970s through the 2010s, find that trust in individual journalists is a consistent theme. Of all norms, participants most valued source protection and accuracy, followed by a reporter's expertise and willingness to listen. Almost all interviewees lack faith in the impact of today's press. As austerity measures take hold in newsrooms across the country, this study shines a light, from the source's perspective, on what will likely be lost if newsrooms neglect beat reporting and overlook the specter of government surveillance and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The harassment of journalists is nothing new; however, much of the harassment literature has focused on the abuse of journalists online, while neglecting encounters that occur offline. As such, this study explores the experiences and effects of in-the-field harassment that occurs as journalists cover protests in the U.S., and how harassment experiences at protests vary for men and women journalists. Using a survey of 339 journalists and in-depth interviews with 20 journalists, findings indicate that women journalists had more negative experiences at protests than their men counterparts and were more likely to alter their situations as a result. Moreover, newsroom support was relatively common while journalists were actively reporting on protests but ended once journalists completed their coverage. This oversight leaves many journalists—particularly women—with increasing mental and emotional struggles they are left to deal with alone. Implications for practitioners and future directions for studying offline harassment of journalists are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship is recognising that news diversity is jeopardised by heightened media ownership consolidation and a lack of appropriate regulatory frameworks. Using an automated quantitative content analysis of 658,493 articles published between 2018 and 2021 by two newspapers of the same recently emerged Belgian corporation that had to comply with stipulations to safeguard diversity for five years, we find that while overall content has actually not grown more homogenous, tabloid articles risk crowding out broadsheet news. We ultimately position and contextualise our study and its findings within news diversity and democratic theory and offer suggestions for additional research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

News values is a research topic that has received extensive attention in the scholarship. However, previous studies have not widely examined news values in the context of Citizen Journalism. Drawing on Harcup and O'Neill's (2017. "What is News?: News Values Revisited (Again)." Journalism Studies 18 (12): 1470–1488) contemporary news values model, this study employs a content analysis of 420 Citizen Journalism and mainstream news lead articles in Hong Kong media, collected respectively from the local outlets StandNews and MingPao. The results show that Citizen Journalism publication StandNews tends to adopt and make similar use of news values to the mainstream MingPao in publishing its articles, which suggests that in Hong Kong, Citizen Journalism is increasingly closing the gap with mainstream media in terms of the editorial decisions that lead to the publication of news stories and, more in general, in terms of newsworthiness. This study intends to contribute to the comprehension of how news values compare between Citizen Journalism and mainstream news outlets, and therefore whether Citizen Journalism presents traits of newsworthiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern journalism practices rely heavily on the use of sources. Traditionally, white, male officials are journalists' primary sources. This silences underrepresented voices, leading to symbolic annihilation of minority communities in media coverage. Journalists often cite their inability to reach communities outside of their own perspective as a primary reason for this symbolic annihilation, but what happens when reporters' networks of power are widened through digital connections? Previous research has explored the role of social media as a tool for newsgathering, and some studies suggest social media can provide the opportunity for journalists to reach previously inaccessible communities. Yet, the network theory of power suggests some nodes of these digital networks can create elite sources like officials or influencers that may uphold traditional sourcing practices and hegemonic power structures. Utilizing qualitative interviews with professional journalists, this study seeks to understand whether tapping into broader networks of power through social media helps journalists combat symbolic annihilation of sources or whether hegemonic structures continue. It also offers insight into influences on journalists' use of social media for multiperspectival sourcing and suggestions for reliance on certain networks for diversification of sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How food is produced and consumed matters for both our health and our societies' ecological footprint. Yet, food practices are a topic at the margins of news coverage and journalism studies. We narrow this research gap by exploring the framing of food in the news. Combining automated and manual content analysis, we study 10,022 articles published in elite newspapers from Germany, the United States (U.S.) and India (2016–2018). Food-related terms are frequently mentioned, but rarely become the main topic of an article. We identified 23 topics associated with five broader frames. The frames Pleasure and Art of Eating and Drinking and Body and Health are most prominent, while other aspects as articulated in the frames Sustainable Living, and Rituals and Traditions as well as Convenience and Price are neglected. U.S. newspapers tend to focus on recipes and restaurant reviews. Indian newspapers highlight health issues and weight loss. In Germany, there was less coverage focusing on food, but with a more even attention to different frames. Food reporting remains to be apolitical, a diversity of food choices is covered – with subtle disregard for questions of sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study applies a typology of public data transparency infrastructure and the contextualism framework for analysing journalism practice to examine patterns in data journalism production. The goal was to identify differences in approaches to acquiring and reporting on data around the world based on comparisons of public data transparency infrastructure. Data journalists from 34 countries were interviewed to understand challenges in data access, strategies used to overcome obstacles, innovation in collaboration, and attitudes about open-data advocacy. Analysis reveals themes of different approaches to journalistic interventionism by overcoming structural obstacles and inventive techniques journalists use to acquire and build their own data sets even in the most restrictive government contexts. Data journalists are increasingly connected with colleagues, third parties, and the public in using data, eschewing notions of competition for collaboration, and using crowdsourcing to address gaps in data. Patterns of direct and indirect activism are highlighted. Results contribute to a better understanding of global data journalism practice by revealing the influence of public data transparency infrastructure as a major factor that constrains or creates opportunities for data journalism practice as a subfield. Findings also broaden the cross-national base of empirical evidence on the developing practices and attitudes of data journalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigative journalism, like other sectors of social life, has undergone significant changes due to globalization, technological progress, and the Western world's turn to neoliberalism. This context has facilitated the emergence of new practices within the profession, particularly new modes of communication between journalists and their confidential sources. This qualitative study focuses on the meaning journalists attribute to the use of these technologies in their relationships with their sources. Anonymity tools are being used to build the professional identity of investigative journalism (both collectively and individually) and therefore constitute a resource in the power relationship between journalists and their sources, a relationship that is not fundamentally changed by their use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on how journalists carry out their work. This study investigates how the pandemic has affected the psychological well-being of journalists in Finland and Norway. The prevalence of six types of psychological distress symptoms is measured, as well as the impact of three work-related risk factors on distress severity. The risk factors were range of potential virus exposure in line of work, negative experiences due to working remotely, and lack of workplace social support. Study results are based on three separate online surveys, two collected in Norway (June 2020, N = 2115; December 2020, N = 1799), and one in Finland (January–February 2021, N = 552). Between 74 and 77% of journalists had experienced some form of distress to at least some degree, and 28–47% had severe problems related to one or more distress subtype. Feeling isolated, anxious, or worn out were most frequent. Distress of all six subtypes was significantly more common among females. Two risk factors (negative experiences due to remote work; lack of social support) predicted more distress in all three datasets and one (virus exposure during work) in two samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data journalists have become established in online newsrooms. Previously considered tech-savvy journalistic outsiders, they have repeatedly been described as their own closed community which has only recently gained severe attention and importance due to heavy data-driven reporting (e.g., COVID-19, investigative journalism, climate crisis). This is particularly true for data journalists in Germany who have repeatedly received worldwide attention (e.g., cum ex, Panama papers). Taking on a perspective of re-negotiated journalistic boundaries, this study sets out to describe this influential journalistic sub group and presents a most-representative quantitative survey among N = 102 data journalists in Germany. Results indicate that data journalists in Germany are everything but journalistic outsiders in that they share strong journalistic backgrounds, high formal education, and long-lasting journalistic employment. Daily routines less often include large projects but regular translations of ready-made data into journalistic value. Thereby, data journalists in Germany enjoy large degrees of autonomy and perceive themselves as scrutinizers and adversaries of political leaders by means of factual information and analyses. Conclusions are drawn for journalistic curricula and the urgent need for a negotiation around quality norms and standards in a rapidly institutionalizing field that is data journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses investigative journalism as an ecosystem. It aims to reconstruct the "food chains" of investigative journalism by identifying the origin of investigative stories. Based on a triangulated analysis of a nine-month sample of news content in French-speaking Switzerland, systematic research in news databases, and 23 in-depth interviews with Swiss investigative journalists, it proposes three main characteristics of the Swiss investigative ecosystem: (1) it is mainly reactive; (2) it functions at two speeds; and (3) it is self-feeding. It also shows that investigative journalists view the reactiveness of the ecosystem as a lesser evil that allows them to cope with the pressures constraining their daily practice. Furthermore, while investigative journalists devalue ordinary journalism in general, they see it as a rich source of story leads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of its common use, professionalism is not a self-explanatory concept in the field of journalism studies. Even though there is an already extensive literature on this issue, what its basic elements are and how they can be assessed are still subject of debate. In order to contribute to this discussion, the article proposes a conceptual model that integrates four categories: routines, orientation, autonomy, and training. The proposal made here builds on previous knowledge, and attempts to strengthen the problematisation of this topic. For the purpose of testing how applicable this approach is on the field and, hence, empirically refine the proposed concept, the inquiry draws on 21 semi-structured interviews with Mexican journalists who work for quality news organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past ten years, various newsroom innovation labs have emerged to modernize journalistic workflows. These labs have started to alter the news ecosystem, and we therefore focus on the organization, the roles, and the projects of innovation labs. This exploratory study conducted interviews with members of labs of The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, Der Spiegel, and BR. Results on the organizational level show that there are three types: static, dynamic and a hybrid form. With respect to the roles, we conclude that members of innovation labs see themselves as "service providers". Reviewing the projects of these labs, we see a decline of innovation projects during the first wave of COVID-19, and an urge for tools in news production during the second wave of infections. Overall, this study enhances our understanding of these labs as a rather novel entity that poses opportunities and challenges for news outlets worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how domestic alternative media reported the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. It pays special attention to whether the Conversation Canada, as an emerging not-for-profit journalism organization founded on the premise of "explanatory journalism", has taken a different approach to COVID-19 reporting than three long-standing Canadian alternative media: Canada's National Observer, Rabble, and Tyee. A combination of quantitative content analysis and qualitative discourse analysis found that the pandemic's far-reaching impacts gained the main emphasis in the surveyed media. These media also provided slightly divergent accounts of what precipitated the pandemic's disastrous results. Additionally, the way the Conversation Canada framed COVID-19 expressed a close resemblance to academic writing, especially in terms of the strategic use of in-text citations for making compelling arguments. These findings highlight the indispensable role that progressive alternative media play in the effective public communication of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fact-checking has been granted a pivotal role in mitigating the effects of online disinformation, but its effectiveness has nonetheless been questioned (Lee and Shin 2019). Like any persuasive communication, fact checkers depend on their recipients perceiving both their messages and them as credible (Lombardi, Seyranian, and Sinatra 2014; Lombardi, Nussbaum, and Sinatra 2016). This study investigates the role of the perceived credibility of the fact checker as possible detriment to the effectiveness of fact-checking efforts by means of an online survey-embedded experiment. Results show that the perceived credibility of the fact checker and fact-checking messages is best explained by normative expectations of the roles of fact checkers and trust in traditional media. Some users perceive fact checkers as elite power structures in journalism or, in other words, as collaborative-facilitators for state propaganda (Hanitzsch and Vos 2018; see also Fawzi 2020). Further, low trust in media and politics predicts perceived credibility of disinformation better than political partisanship. The findings suggest that fact checkers should be more transparent and proactive in communicating their motives and identities. Further implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local journalism is a pillar of democratic societies, and its role becomes more critical during crises. But despite its critical importance, local news has faced immense challenges that jeopardize its sustainability in the U.S. This study examines the Colorado media ecology by comparing local news sources across four different counties during Summer 2020 and exploring the factors behind similarities and differences in coverage. Building on Napoli et al.'s (2017) framework to assessing the health of local news, the study uses content analysis to examine original, local reporting and coverage of critical information needs as well as type of framing in over 600 online stories appearing on the home pages of all news sources in the four counties. The findings reveal that the Colorado journalism ecosystem post-Covid outpaces U.S. local news in quality in the pre-Covid era yet aligns with disturbing trends pointing to inequities and disparities. In other words, rural, poorer, and more racially and ethnically diverse Colorado communities tend to have weaker news ecosystems and are more likely to become news deserts. The study also introduces thematic coverage as a necessary dimension to add to journalism quality assessment frameworks and discusses several approaches to salvage local news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of 201 academic sexual misconduct cases between 2017 and 2019 in which a United States university employee was named as alleged perpetrator showed that 80% were publicly broken by a legacy journalistic news outlet. The analysis demonstrates that journalism, especially local and student journalism, remains a successful method for exposing sexual misconduct of university employees. In 97 cases, news stories did not mention the #MeToo movement, indicating that cases were treated as a single person's "bad behavior" rather than as a systemic societal problem linked to rape culture. Student journalists' reporting, however, regularly linked individual cases to broader systemic issues in society, thus recognizing and contributing to a shift in public discourse on sexual misconduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the combination of the public health crisis and the authoritarian government of Janez Janša's Slovenian Democratic Party, along with its tendency to politically instrumentalize and economically devastate the media, impacted journalism during the Covid-19 pandemic. Of central concern are how journalists understand their roles in communication relating to Covid-19 and how these roles are shaped when the pandemic and trends towards democratic backsliding coincide in time. The analysis is conducted in the theoretical frameworks of crisis communication, authoritarian influences on the media, and journalistic roles, while methodologically it is based on individual interviews in which journalists reflect on their professionalism amidst the pandemic and rising authoritarian control over media. The findings show that the facilitative role revealed in existing research of media functioning during a public health crisis may be interwoven with a watchdog role challenged by authoritarian tendencies. Indeed, interviews suggested the coexistence of general journalistic roles at a time of dual crisis, when the sense of responsibility to facilitate measures to confine the spread of the disease is coupled with critical monitoring, (self)reflection, and attempts to restore professional standards in both public and private media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a systematic literature review on slow journalism, whose aim is to analyse and understand all previously done research on the subject. The review focused on four databases—Web of Science Core Collection, SCOPUS, B-ON and Communication Abstracts—and, after applying the protocol and the analysis model, a corpus of 37 papers was obtained. Data collection ended on 31 January 2022 and no starting date was defined. This analysis shows that, although the concept designation is somewhat recent it is deeply rooted in journalism, it places itself between tradition and innovation. Among other considerations, one should stress the strengthening of the connection with the audience and the idea of being an alternative way of doing, recognising, still, the need for other processes and temporalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalists who cover rural areas in the United States say they are afraid to report on hate groups, and this fear is exacerbated by close community ties and limited resources among rural journalists. We examine the concept of "hate speech" as a boundary object, analyzing in-depth interviews with U.S. journalists reporting in rural communities (n = 33) to better understand how rural journalists report on hate. We find that rural journalists articulate a clear definition for hate speech but struggle to apply that definition to events within their communities, even as they articulate numerous forms of hate. Journalists often dismissed acts of hate using the residual category of "not hate, but ... " to signal something that they felt was out of place or unsuitable but did not rise to the legal definition of hate speech and thus was not worth reporting on. This approach ends up challenging journalists' normative commitments to their communities and exemplifies their desire to avoid an objectivity trap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study identifies the journalistic features of four Israeli science-news websites and suggests a conceptual framework for describing and analyzing different channels of science communication. Findings show how these websites, while employing scientists as reporters, adopt journalistic practices in producing, presenting, and disseminating science news on various topics. Based on these findings, it is suggested to add to the traditional dichotomic classification of direct and mediated channels of science communication, a third entity we name "Peripheral science-journalism." Another insight that comes out of the findings is that amateur journalists' contribution to journalism and society should be evaluated by addressing the practices they employ and the product they provide rather than their personal, professional, or institutional affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Survey results from news consumers around the world suggest that specialist or niche websites covering climate change are now one of the most important sources of climate information. However, there is very little detailed scholarship about these sites. We carried out semi-structured interviews with senior representatives of 14 online information sites, based in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries, which prioritize the provision of climate information following journalistic values. Through qualitative analysis of the interviews, we show how the sites carve out their niche authority and distinctive nature by emphasizing (to different degrees) their scientific expertise, relevance for policy communication, and their complementary contribution to the work of mainstream journalism. They offer a multiplicity of specialized content, broadly divided into certain, often discrete, aspects of climate change. The self-declared role perceptions of the interviewees suggest that traditional, professional journalistic values eschewing overt advocacy still predominate, although some of the practices, norms and priorities associated with these values have shifted, particularly in their roles as effective and authoritative mediators of climate science. At the theoretical level, the findings highlight the need to study "the niche" at the intersection of broader dimensions of authority, power and knowledge in changing media ecologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project analyzed the impact of a 2.5-day science training boot camp for political reporters on their use of scientific sources in published reporting. Results showed that immediately following the boot camp, most survey respondents indicated they would try to incorporate more scientific material into future stories. We used both automated text analysis and human-coded analysis to examine if actual changes in reporting behavior occurred. Automated text analysis revealed that while journalists did not use more explanatory language overall in the 6 months following the training, they wrote with greater certainty and less tentativeness in their published articles compared to before the training. The more targeted content analysis of articles revealed that journalists had modest increases for including scientific material overall, and peer-reviewed studies and scientists' quotes in particular. We discuss the implications of these findings for science training, journalism, and reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This bilingual, cross-national study analyzes stories about the Colombian peace process that were engaged with on social media to understand the use of peace and war framing in news reporting. Using content analysis as a method, this paper operationalized Galtung's classification of peace journalism and follows framing methodological adjustments and improvements suggested by previous peace journalism scholars. Results show that, even during peace talks, media use war narratives more often than peace frames, and social media users amplify more war than peace-oriented content. Proximity to conflict also was shown to be an important factor, as Colombian media used more war frames than foreign media. These findings are relevant for their implications about how national media consistently emphasized a war frame that social media users amplified, which we argue has implications for how citizens viewed the Colombian peace process, ultimately potentially influencing the decision to vote down the referendum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]