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This essay argues that there are overlooked yet important journalistic beliefs, norms, rules and practices regarding, aesthetics, automation, distribution, engagement, identity, and proximity that could be a part of formalized codes of ethics. There are four reasons why these should be formalized. First, making the implicit normative dimensions explicit allow for a shared understanding of journalism, cutting across institutional borders. Second, it promotes a more unified and homogenized understanding of journalism across the institution based on those shared explicit norms (normative isomorphism). Third, it reduces the fuzziness of these codes and sharpens their functions as boundary objects, simplifying the negotiation between journalists and audiences. Fourth, and finally, these implicit codes might be an untapped resource that could make journalism better connect with citizens and increase its legitimacy. The paper offers two main contributions to journalism studies. First, it shows that elements of journalistic practice and culture that seem disparate in fact play similar institutional roles, forming boundary objects as sites of tension where codes are negotiated by different actors. Second, systematizing these informal codes into the style of traditional codes of ethics renders them more visible and could help journalism scholars understand the uneven formation and evolution of journalistic norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change communication spans multiple disciplines which in many cases have insufficient understanding of each other's research traditions and, therefore, there has not been a solid interdisciplinary debate. This makes it hard not only to survey the field at large but also to pinpoint further studies which are needed to bridge these knowledge divides. The aim of this systematic literature review is to shed a broader light on the field of environmental and climate change communication and to make possible research gaps more apparent. Through an extensive quantitative content analysis of journal articles (N = 407), this study provides an understanding of the methodological, theoretical, and geographical approaches within the field. The findings show that a typical study within the field is a quantitative content analysis of traditional news media in the West. We have also uncovered some important insufficiencies of the search engines commonly used when carrying out literature reviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the kinds of transparency that appeal to different parts of the public and the extent to which transparency can be a remedy for declining trust in journalism. It uses a representative survey of Swedes, and the results show that there are three distinct forms of transparency, including the previously unreported ambient transparency, and that they appeal to different people. News consumption or social media use has little or no effect on transparency. The strongest positive effect on transparency comes from appreciation of the current quality of journalistic performance, high trust in journalists and media, and having news media and authorities as the preferred channels of information. Those most skeptical about journalism are also least positive about transparency. The results suggest that transparency has very limited reach as a cure for declining trust in, and the trustworthiness of, journalism, possibly since the acts of transparency themselves remain non-transparent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalism's appeal to the public is in decline and the causes and remedies for this are debated in society and academia. One dimension that has garnered attention is that of journalistic norms and how they are performed; it has been proposed that a journalism based on a different, more transparent, normative base can better connect with citizens, compared with the current prevailing norm of journalistic objectivity. However, the opinions of citizens themselves have been remarkably absent and, in order to inform the debate, this study inductively investigates how citizens view and relate to the notion of good journalism. Drawing upon a theoretical framework of Bourdieu's concept of doxa, journalistic role performance, and social contract theory, this study is based on the results of 13 focus groups. The findings suggest that the respondents' views about good journalism are quite in accordance with the traditional norms of the journalistic field; however, there is more emphasis on stylistic and linguistic qualities. Few calls are made for transparency. The results suggest that a remedy to the decreasing trust in news may not lay in the changing of norms, but rather in how already established norms and values of the journalistic field are performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transparency has emerged as an ethical principle in contemporary journalism and is contended to improve accountability and credibility by journalists and scholars alike. However, to date, few attempts have been made to record the public's views on transparency. This study enriches current knowledge by using data from an experiment, survey and focus groups in Sweden collected between 2013 and 2015. Overall, the results suggest that the respondents are not particularly moved by transparency in any form; it does not produce much effect in the experiments and is not brought up in the focus groups. While that is the key finding of this study, it should also be noted that various forms of user participation are evaluated negatively, while providing hyperlinks, explaining news selection and framing, and correcting errors are viewed positively. Implications for journalism practice and research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that the future of journalism resides within a global media ethics. Accordingly, journalism must renew itself by becoming less parochial and connect “citizens of the world” to a “global public sphere”. In drawing upon a panel study with Swedish journalists, this paper shows that journalists do not define their everyday work according to the principles of global journalism. Most of them do, however, agree with such principles in normative visions of their profession. The paper furthermore illustrates the importance of taking into account various positions in the journalistic field when trying to identify global journalism. A small minority producing “hard news” for media organizations with national or international reach comes somewhat close to embodying the ideals of global journalism. For most journalists, however, everyday work consists of covering domestic issues for domestic audiences. As such, the study pinpoints a domestically biased doxa in the field of journalism that is unlikely to be overthrown in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hyperlinks are considered vital to both the Web and to digital journalism. This study utilizes a longitudinal content analysis of hyperlinking practices in Swedish online news from 2007 to 2013 to see how hyperlinking evolves over time. It also compares if and to what extent publishing tradition shapes journalistic practice. The findings primarily show that the overall impact of hyperlinks remains largely unchanged over time but that internal links, while still being most common, decrease in relative importance while external links increase. The general conclusion is that hyperlinks, so far, are not an important aspect of online journalism practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been suggested that transparency will change the way journalism is being produced as well as increase its credibility. However, little research has been conducted to assess the connection between transparency and credibility. This study utilizes an experimental setting with 1320 respondents to measure what impact transparency has on source and message credibility from a user perspective. The results reveal an almost total absence of any transparency effect on either source or message credibility, although some small significant effects could be observed primarily regarding internal hyperlinks, comments and contextual information. Although further research is needed in this area, the study suggests that transparency does not affect the credibility of journalism in the eyes of the contemporary audience and thus has limited appeal as a new norm in journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, situated in Sweden, citizen community journalism in 290 municipalities is evaluated. The results reveal that there are very few cases of citizen journalism at a community level, and that the existing citizen journalists focus on business news, entertainment and sports. When sources are used, they are few and originate from social institutions such as business, media, authorities and politics rather than citizens. Furthermore, there are only a few occasions when local authorities are included at all, even less so scrutinised, in the news stories. All in all, the study indicates that Swedish citizen community journalism has trouble either providing information that maintains the community or being the watchdog of that community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This explorative case study investigates how the continuous publication cycle and the immediacy of online news affected the Swedish news media framing of the swine flu epidemic between April and May 2009. The findings suggest that media framing changes continuously, several times a day, effectively painting different frames of the crisis. Consequently, an organization involved in this crisis may face stakeholders that have encountered contrasting frames depending on when they accessed the latest news. Furthermore, the results show that the speed of modifications seems to be highest in the initial stages of reporting when the flu was perceived as more dangerous. Because the crisis frames change constantly, this provides both a challenging crisis communication environment and an opportunity to influence and shape the frames by organizations that are aware of them and act swiftly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is a large body of research on news values and news selection, most research does not clearly distinguish between the concept of news and news selection, on the one hand, and news values and criteria of newsworthiness on the other. These concepts are often treated as synonymous. This is problematic, as there may be many other factors aside from news values or criteria of newsworthiness that determine what becomes news, and as there may be differences between what journalists think should be, and actually is, important when deciding what's news. Against this background, this study investigates what Swedish journalists think is, and should be, important event properties when deciding what's news, and whether there are differences across journalists working for different kinds of media and depending on whether they work with online publishing. The results show that there are significant differences between the perceived normative and actual importance of investigated event properties when deciding what's news. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This longitudinal study compares the development and implementation of multimedia on Swedish broadsheet and tabloid online news sites between 2005 and 2010. It also seeks the reasons behind these developments by interviewing journalists working on the sites. The results show that the initial implementation of multimedia was slow but increased sharply in pace between 2007 and 2008. By 2010, on average, one in four news items had some element of multimedia attached to them. Furthermore, results show that it was the quality papers that were the quickest off the mark rather than tabloids. The antecedents for this advance seem to be a mix of technological capacities, professional norms and economic needs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the last decades, media environments have become radically transformed. Among the most significant changes is the rise of interactive media technologies, which raise new questions about how influence over media content has changed. At the same time, changes in media technologies and how they may change the influence over the news should not be understood in isolation from other changes in media environments. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how much influence journalists ascribe to different sets of actors; how they perceive changes over time; and whether journalists working with online publishing differ in these respects from other journalists. Among other things, the study shows that the most influential group is perceived to be journalists, followed by the audience and media owners. The group that is perceived to have increased their influence the most is media owners. All investigated groups—except journalists—are perceived to have increased their influence at least somewhat. The results are discussed in the light of research on how interactive media technologies may reshape the influence over the news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although participatory journalism involves publishing content created by users, editorial influence is an important aspect of participatory online media. Editors shape the conditions under which user generated content is produced, the context of publication and the perceived prominence of the content. It is still unclear how this influence manifests itself, and how it can be related to the discussion about participatory media's potential for revitalising democracy. In this paper, three online news media in Sweden are analysed comparatively: Sourze -- the first Swedish participatory newspaper; Newsmill -- a social media focusing on news and debate; and DN -- the online version of the largest Swedish morning paper Dagens Nyheter. The question is how participation is affected by editorial influence. The findings suggest that participatory arenas are constrained by the logic of their context of production. People from different categories in society participate on different terms. Furthermore, editors influence the agenda by suggesting topics, and by rewarding articles that follow their suggestions. These findings do not challenge assumptions about participatory newspapers as more accessible channels for citizens and therefore interesting as possible means of allowing a more democratically involved citizenry, but it challenges assumptions about freedom from constraints related to traditional mass media, such as agenda setting, gate-keeping and media logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research concerning user participation in online news has demonstrated that news websites offer a wide range of participatory features, but largely permit users only to comment on already-published material. This longitudinal analysis of Sweden's four major mainstream national news websites focuses on front-page news items to investigate to what extent user participation has increased over time and whether the participatory features present allow users to exert control over key journalistic processes. Its findings indicate that user participation has increased rapidly in regard to processes peripheral to news journalism, but also that users have to a minor extent begun over time to perform work previously reserved for professional journalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transparency has been suggested as a new norm in journalism. However, few studies have investigated how the overarching notion of transparency is utilized in everyday news. The purpose of this study is to identify and compare how leading mainstream online news media in the United States, United Kingdom and Sweden make use of transparency techniques in news items. The results show that transparency has begun to affect online news but that current journalism practice is a long way from a fully fledged transparency norm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to previous research, two characteristics of online news as opposed to traditional news are interactivity and immediacy. However, most research in this area has focused on the news site-level of analysis, and there are only a few studies on how interactivity and immediacy affect online news on the news story-level of analysis. The main reason for this appears to be that the very nature of online news makes observation by traditional research methods, such as quantitative content analysis, problematic. Against this background, the overall purpose of this paper is to explore methodological approaches for the study of interactivity and immediacy on the news story-level of online news. The paper develops a three-pronged strategy for freezing the flow of online news to enable systematic content analyses of interactivity and immediacy, and tests this strategy in a comparative analysis of the online news sites Guardian.co.uk in Britain and Aftonbladet.se in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]