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Experimental designs to examine attitudes and behavior are crucial to make causal inferences. However, studies that assess attitudes and behavior of journalists are still dominated by correlational designs, such as used in surveys with journalists. Elaborating on historical and practical reasons for that, we argue in this paper why journalism scholars may benefit from including a certain experimental approach to their toolbox: the factorial survey experiment. Using data from a factorial survey with German newspaper journalists, we illustrate the application of factorial surveys from their conceptualization to the data analysis. Suggestions for further fields of application are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the ways in which we can employ arts-based research methods to unpack and represent the diversity and complexity of journalistic experiences and (self) conceptualisations. We address the need to reconsider the ways in which we theorise and research the field of journalism. We thereby aim to complement the current methodologies, theories, and prisms through which we consider our object of study to depict more comprehensively the diversity of practices in the field. To gather stories about journalism creatively (and ultimately more inclusively and richly), we propose and present the use of arts-based research methods in journalism studies. By employing visual and narrative artistic forms as a research tool, we make room for the senses, emotion and imagination on the part of the respondents, researchers and audiences of the output. We draw on a specific collaboration with artists and journalists that resulted in a research event in which 32 journalists were invited to collaboratively recreate the "richness and complexity" of journalistic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

News making and reporting are caught in a process of rationalisation which can be summarised in the injunction to produce fast, to write short and simple, and to value useful news for audiences only interested by practical matters. This paper would, firstly, suggest that if this new style of journalism has produced interesting innovations, its costs are more worthy of debate than its contributions. It would then argue that mobilising the competitive advantages of a tradition of investigative and narrative journalism may be a reasonable bet to struggle against the news supplied by blogs, aggregators and short-format news sources. A third part suggests how this apparent “back to basics” approach involves nonetheless significant changes in both the training of journalists and the nature of the medium used for the diffusion of this renewed style of reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Because the social sciences have provided much of the intellectual base on which journalism rests, this paper calls for the application of social scientific protocols when journalists interview or interact with children. Working from several Canadian case studies, it argues that media professionals must adopt a systematized and rigorous approach for reporting young people that is akin to the strict guidelines set out by the social sciences to ensure the ethical treatment of human subjects in research situations. If news organizations in general and journalists specifically were to borrow these research protocols and adapt them to their interview situations, news people might better ensure that children's stories are told in a responsible, ethical manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While anthropology and journalism use similar methods and, many times, produce a similar kind of knowledge, the two professions have significantly different views of their sources. Like all social sciences, anthropology is subject to federal regulation for research with human subjects. This regulation requires the assessment of costs and benefits, the informed consent of informants, and, in general, researchers’ protective and responsible attitude towards them. Citing the First Amendment and arguing that news is non-generalizable knowledge, journalism exempts itself from this regulation. This paper shows that both arguments for exemption are unsustainable and analyzes three other possible incompatibilities between journalism and federal regulation: the watchdog role of the press, the apparent conflict between confidentiality and credibility, and journalists’ reluctance to take responsibility for the consequences of what they publish. It concludes that news professionals’ understanding of truth in terms of facticity and of their job as the transmission of such truths impairs their sense of ethical responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As scholars take greater interest in analyzing digital content, they are being presented with novel methodological challenges. Among these challenges are dealing with the volume and mutable nature of digital content and especially online content. The present work discusses a computational approach for "freezing" and analyzing aspects of a large volume of "liquid" content using an accessible combination of free software running on consumer hardware. The strengths and limitations of this approach are illustrated through an examination of the method employed in an analysis of more than 125,000 snapshots of the homepages of 21 news organizations over two months. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The norms of modern journalism were shaped by the development of university-based journalism programs in the United States in the late nineteenth century. In Europe, journalism still struggles with ongoing “academicization”. Academic subjects introduced in j-schools, however, are based on either factual trivia or media studies. Thus, journalism students encounter the social sciences as either a meta-study of their future industry or as a reservoir of factual knowledge useful when covering particular beats. The research methodologies of these sciences—the very production of knowledge—are assumed irrelevant to journalists. This article suggests that one way to bridge the gap between the academy and journalism is to introduce journalism students to social science as a toolbox. Academic methods resembling reportage—like ethnography—may serve as a convenient starting point. Yet, while the practical tasks of the ethnographer and the journalist—interviewing, observing, writing, etc.—are similar, the epistemic and ethical regimes of these two disciplines often collide. In addition to a theoretical outline, this article, therefore, presents an empirical study of ethnography in journalism education. In turn, it argues that, in the new “golden age” of narrative journalism, ethnographic strategies may become essential journalistic skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the debate over the value of communication research in the social sciences. Use and utility of social science research; Impact of communication research; Notes from the media violence wars.