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Arguments have emanated on the roles of conventional media in the strengthening of democracy, good governance, and human development in a democratic society. This study discussed and evaluated the conventional media role as the "fourth estate of the realm" by functioning as defenders, watchdogs and providers of accurate information in a democratic society. Social Responsibility Theory, a version of free press theory, was used to underpin the study by providing examples of how the media's actions can affect a democratic society. The study adopted a meta-analysis approach by reviewing numerous published research studies to clarify the role of conventional media as the fourth estate. The content analysis of the reviewed literature revealed that conventional news media roles as check and balance, watch-dogs and adversary have been jeopardised. New media is now strengthened with the ability to displace conventional media as "the fourth estate".

The present study is an analysis of a sample of reports on China’s handling of COVID-19 by several major US media with a focus on a controversial op-ed by the Wall Street Journal. It is found that instead of covering it objectively as a public health crisis, these media reports tend to adopt the strategy of naming, shaming, blaming, and taming against China. In other words, they seize the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan as an opportunity to serve Trump’s “America First” doctrine by a coordinated attempt to destroy the Chinese dream and arresting China’s ascendency. First, the naming/shaming technique is used to tarnish China’s image as a virus. The op-ed on the Wall Street Journal describes China as “the real sick man of Asia.” In addition, a cluster of ferociously negative names are slung onto China to describe the coronavirus as “the Wuhan virus,” “the Belt & Road Initiative pandemic,” “the China virus,” and so on. Second, the blaming technique is applied. On top of such negative name-calling, these media tend to blame the Chinese leadership, the political system, and finally Chinese food culture for eating pangolins. Finally, the taming technique is used to constrain, isolate, or quarantine China. One goal behind such a China threat strategy is to fan American or foreign businesses to move (back) to the United States out of China. Another goal is to create the public opinion environment that would be conducive to some American groups’ litigations against China. It is concluded that American mainstream media while quarreling with the Trump administration for domestic affairs seem to be colluding with the conservative intellectual base in the United States in supporting Trump’s strategy to knock down and divide China.

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 m...

The electoral process in Nigeria is now more dynamic than in earlier years because of the nature of competitions among politicians. In a bid to sell candidates and woo voters, political parties engage in election campaigns during which statements are made. Campaigns ought to address issues of public importance, but in some instances the comments are mere expressions of personal sentiments. The press is not just the fourth estate of the realm but also the voice of the people to report issues for voters’ enlightenment. This paper examined newspaper coverage of issue-based political statements and campaigns in Nigeria’s 2019 electoral process. Two theoretical frameworks for the study were Agenda Setting Theory and Development Media Theory. The study was both quantitative and qualitative, covering newspaper reports from two national dailies, Vanguard and The Punch. A total of 76 editions were studied using the content analysis research design, with quoted statements buttressing the argument. The data were presented with frequency tables and analysed through simple percentages. There were 116 reports on the subject in the dailies. The paper found out that while there were coverage over some national issues like restructuring, security, corruption, economy, and electricity, the greater volume of political statements were not issue-based. There is the need for the press to pay less attention on matters that would not serve to educate voters adequately. The study recommends that the press use the editorials to canvass for issue-based comments. The study also contributed to knowledge as the seminal analysis of political statements in 2019 general elections.

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...

The process of mass communication is a reality experienced by society so that it will follow the ideology and political system adopted in the country where it lives. Every country has an ideology that is adhered to as values and principles that serve as guidelines in achieving national ideals. The ideology of a country ultimately determines the political system that is practiced in the life of the nation and state. People who live in a country must be guided by the ideology set. The state ideology becomes the values that are practiced and shared together in daily life, including in the process of mass communication. In the current political mass communication system it should have the potential to become the fourth power and pillar of democracy in a country's political system. Namely the mass media that play an important role as the fourth estate. The process of mass communication takes place in the flow of the country's political system, seen from the perspective of the Four Theories of the Pres and Three Models of Media and Politics, democracy can develop according to the theory of libertarian theory and social responsibility in the four theories of the press, as well as liberal and corporate democracy in the three models of media and politics. Which is the important role of the mass media as the fourth estate can be realized. Whereas in a country that adheres to a media and political system according to authoritarian theory, the soviet communist theory and the pluralist pluralist model are not possible. Although the process of mass communication can play its role as the fourth estate in the realm of democracy, but there are serious challenges that must be faced, namely media conglomeration. Keywords: Mass communication, political system, democracy, press.

Analysis of political-propaganda actions of Western media during the Yugoslav crisis with the role in breaking the second Yugoslav state is performed in the paper, on basis of the previously theoretically determined idea of propaganda and political propaganda. By character, it was ?propaganda of war? and in certain intervals it was ?war propaganda?, while the subject of stigmatization were the Serbs, therefore it was decidedly anti-Serbian by the character. Direct occasion for this analysis were scientific researches of Dr. Slobodan Vukovic regarding the Yugoslav crisis, the role of foreign (Austrian, German, British and American) print media in the development of anti-Serbian propaganda as the basis for the breakage of Yugoslavia and the war against the Serbian people and Serbia. In his works (in the period 2000-2018), especially in the last two-volume compound Serbs in the Narrative of the West: ?Humanitarian? NATO Intervention, Vukovic successfully arguments the thesis about the centennial continuous anti-Serbian propaganda and the policy of the West based on it regarding the Serbs, which is the consequence in the greatest extent of the German revanchism for the lost two world wars, but also the result of other interests of the Western forces.

With the upswing of populist, right-wing, and EU-skeptical parties and politicians in Europe, as well as the success of Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential elections, the media and its role in democracies are, once again, under scrutiny. To investigate whether the media fulfill its role as the fourth estate, i.e. providing another level of control for government, or whether there is evidence of media capture, first, we introduce the Political Coverage Index (PCI), a new measure of the relative positioning of media within the political spectrum. In contrast to existing measures of political positioning (e.g., language similarities, explicit endorsements, mentions of ideological references), we utilize the tonality of articles and newscasts on political parties and politicians. Then, we apply the PCI to 35 opinion-leading media in Germany, on the basis of more than 10 million news items on political parties and politicians between 1998 and 2012. Lastly, we use the PCI to investigate whether the media fulfil its fourth estate role. Our findings show that the media outlets in our sample report more negatively on governing parties, which we interpret as suggestive evidence that media is fulfilling its role as fourth estate in democracies.

Government perpetrated attacks against independent media, ranging from journalists’ imprisonment to verbal attacks against outlets, carry an adverse effect for freedoms in democracies. Verbal attac...

Over the last several years, numerous journalists and news organizations have reported incidents in which their communications have been hacked, intercepted, or retrieved. In 2014, Google security ...

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.

Investigative journalism across national borders is well known for the large projects, initiated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), with hundreds of reporters in many countries who collaborate to produce coverage such as the Panama Papers. However, there are also many examples in the field of global investigative journalism that are microcosms of their larger counterparts. These smaller or ‘microcosm’ cross-border collaborations are instigated and carried out by a small group of reporters, possibly including freelance reporters. Like their larger counterparts, ‘microcosm investigations’ can also lead to sociopolitical change and thus are deservedly classified as investigative journalism. Microcosm investigations can therefore be viewed as part of a suggested global fourth estate that is calling power to account. The purpose of the article is to examine the characteristics of ‘microcosm’-oriented global investigative journalism and to demonstrate the similarities and differences compared with its larger and more visible counterpart. The empirical material consists of interviews with Australian journalists who were shortlisted as finalists and who won national journalism awards, sponsored by the Walkley Foundation. The findings indicate that new technologies that enable cross-border collaboration are enabling the emergence of a global fourth estate. In the concluding discussion it is argued that for the expansion and mainstreaming of global investigative journalism, the multiple small-scale projects undertaken should collectively be viewed as equally important, if not more important, than the fewer but larger and better-known collaborations. Microcosm collaborations offer opportunities for the proliferation of cross-border media coverage that can be accomplished even by relatively small media outlets.

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 ...

In all civilized societies, the media stand as an independent institution that checks the activities of the people and the government. In Nigeria, apart from the executive, the judiciary and the legislature, the media are regarded as the Fourth Estate of the Realm. From the Universal Declaration of Human Right, Article 19 provides freedom of expression as part of fundamental human rights. At the level of AU in Africa, the right to freedom of information and freedom of expression was also given due consideration especially in Article nine. The Nigerian Constitution of 1999 also guarantees the freedom of expression, specifically Section 39 of the Constitution which assigns a constitutional right, power, role, obligation and duty to the press. Nigerian Constitutions since then have upheld this role. Section 22 of the same Constitution recognises the media as the “Fourth Estate of the Realm”. It therefore means the media are seen as an oversight of the government and its agencies. The Freedom of Information Act establishes that information should be made available and that the citizens should feel free to express their personal views. Thus, in order to achieve the objectives of this paper, the following serve as the basic tools of inquiry: do Nigerian media have the teeth to bite as far as freedom of expression is concerned? Or the proceeding provisions are just give-and-take documents? These questions are the main focus of this paper. The paper employs a multidisciplinary research methodology using a combination of socio-legal methods to obtain the contextual data. In addition, selected pertinent judicial decisions in law reports and journals were reviewed to examine the freedom of expression. The paper also critically examined non-legal sources for investigative or supporting information. Among the technical documents reviewed are: The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999; Freedom of Information Act among others., Em todas as sociedades civilizadas, a mídia é uma instituição independente que controla as atividades do povo e do governo. Na Nigéria, além do Executivo, Judiciário e Legislativo, a mídia é considerada o Quarto Poder da Nação. Da Declaração Universal dos Direitos Humanos, o Artigo 19 prevê a liberdade de expressão como parte dos direitos humanos fundamentais.Ao nível da UA em África, o direito à liberdade de informação e de expressão também foi devidamente considerado, especialmente no Artigo nove. A Constituição da Nigéria de 1999 também garante a liberdade de expressão, especificamente na Seção 39 da Constituição que atribui um direito constitucional, poder, função, obrigação e dever à imprensa. As constituições nigerianas desde então têm mantido esse papel. A seção 22 da mesma Constituição reconhece a mídia como o “Quarto Poder da Nação”. Portanto, significa que a mídia é vista como um órgão fiscalizador do governo e de suas agências. A Lei de Liberdade de Informação estabelece que a informação deve ser disponibilizada e que os cidadãos devem se sentir livres para expressar suas opiniões pessoais. Assim, para atingir os objetivos deste artigo, as seguintes perguntas servem como ferramentas básicas de investigação: a mídia nigeriana tem dentes para morder no que diz respeito à liberdade de expressão? Ou as disposições do processo são apenas documentos de troca? Essas questões são o foco principal deste artigo. O artigo emprega uma metodologia de pesquisa multidisciplinar usando uma combinação de métodos sócio-jurídicos para obter os dados contextuais. Além disso, decisões judiciais pertinentes selecionadas em relatórios jurídicos e periódicos foram revisadas para examinar a liberdade de expressão. O artigo também examinou criticamente fontes não legais de informações investigativas ou de apoio. Entre os documentos técnicos revisados estão: A Constituição da República Federal da Nigéria, 1999; Lei de Liberdade de Informação, entre outros.

This chapter explores how, as the traditional media has become weaker due to digital disruption, falling profitability, and audience fragmentation, the political ecosystem in Australia has also eroded. Significant job losses have reduced the scale of public interest journalism, and the frantic attention-seeking of the 24-hour news cycle has contributed to a perception of chaos in politics. This is manifest in frequent changes of prime minister outside the electoral cycle, and in polarization of opinion and comment online and in traditional media designed to increase impact. Commercial media has long embraced a quasi-institutional role and been happy to use this stature, but has resisted external regulation. Self-regulation of the press and institutional oversight of broadcasting self-regulation are relatively weak; social media and online platforms are not regulated; and the implied right to freedom of political speech, the bedrock of the media’s unique political role, was only ‘found’ by the High Court in 1997. This chapter argues that effective regulation, which addresses the needs of citizens as well as consumers, and other interventions including strengthening public broadcasting and securing legislative (even constitutional) recognition of the democratic value of media freedom are required to invigorate a robust political ecosystem.

We know of the key cases of media corruption and generally of corruption referred to in this book, because they were first exposed and reported through the media, and specifically investigative journalists working in conjunction with whistleblowers and citizen journalists. Using the metaphorical analogy of Socrates as the first investigative journalist, the chapter will demonstrate the crucial importance that investigative journalism still plays in exposing and reporting worldwide corruption as illustrated by the Panama Papers case and the Cambridge Analytica controversy, analyzed in this chapter. The chapter will also examine how the symbiotic relationship between the fourth and fifth Estates working together in conjunction, help expose and report on global corruption. This is a welcome and major development and paradigm shift on how this symbiotic relationship between the corporate investigative journalists of the fourth Estate and the citizen journalists of the fifth Estate, as well as whistleblowers, such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, and before them many others such as Daniel Ellsberg, Frank Serpico and Katharine Dunn, and the collective voices of social media in their role of bearing witness, valiantly expose major and worldwide instances of corruption, including media corruption.

This article examines the origins and current operation of the EU’s lobbying transparency register and offers a critical review of the drivers and politics associated with lobbying reform in Brussels. The analysis considers the dynamics of political communication in EU institutions and draws on concepts of the fourth estate, the public sphere and monitory democracy to illustrate the particular challenges around lobbying transparency and opening up governance processes to wider scrutiny, and wider participation, at the EU level. This article draws upon interviews, official data and participant observation of some of the deliberations on lobbying transparency dating back to the 2005 ETI. The analysis is brought up to date by examining the data within the Transparency Register itself, both substantively in terms of the kinds of information disclosed and in relation to trends around disclosures and registration, since the register was launched over a decade ago. The article concludes with a critical appraisal of the evolving issue culture relating to lobbying transparency in Brussels as well as recommendations for the development of the Transparency Register itself.

The Capitol Insurrection of January 6, 2021 has renewed discussions about ways our institutions can curb the spread of disinformation. One of these institutions being re-examined is the Fourth Estate, the press. Freedom of the Press was written into the Constitution because our framers understood that a well-informed electorate was imperative to the functioning of a democratic society, where the government is accountable to the people. But what happens to a democracy when the electorate doesn’t trust the press? When the electorate can no longer differentiate between fact and opinion? When news is labeled as “fake”? This Note sets out to analyze ways in which the FCC has in the past assisted the public in sifting through the deluge of information that flows from television screens. While the print media is largely free from regulation, the history of telecommunications media tells a different story. From its inception, the broadcast industry has always been tightly regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This is likely because of broadcasters’ ability to reach the most people and because the barriers to entry into the broadcast industry are high. One way the FCC has historically regulated broadcast media is through licensing. Licensing allows broadcasters to operate a radio or television station should there be availability on the broadcast spectrum, and should they show that their programming was in the public interest, convenience, or necessity. This note does not suggest that a government commission such as the FCC should implement news reporting content standards for television news, but it does explore the government’s capabilities and the shortcomings when it comes to the regulation of television news. This note suggests that moving forward, the answer to the proliferation of opinion-based T.V. news both relies on principles from the Fairness Doctrine, yet also might lie outside the bounds of FCC regulation.

Basic food must be guaranteed by States as a fundamental right of all people. In this article we defend the hypothesis that the path of justiciability is insufficient to achieve full recognition of the right to food as a fundamental social right. A strong and active public sphere is needed to address the obstacles to this recognition today. Some of them are actually related to the inherited legal culture. And, on the other hand, that promotes the creation of new institutions to guarantee social rights. The constitutional State needs a "fourth estate" that guarantees fundamental rights and protects the common good from private powers.

This is a chapter that examines the arena of internet regulation in Malaysia between the years 2008 and 2018, two decades following the promise not to censor the internet. It positions the issue of internet governance in a regional context where the internet’s ubiquity in Southeast Asia and its users’ greater sophistication have also led to its abuse as a medium of communication. In Malaysia, unchecked by a complicit fourth estate, internet regulation in the name of cybersecurity was used to broaden the scope of extant Acts to include digital media, enact new laws and curtail political satire and informal sharing of news. Malaysia is, for example, the first country within ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) to enact an anti-fake news law, which has opened the door for other countries in the region to further tighten regulation of the internet. The influence of Malaysian reform of internet regulation on global internet governance is yet to be determined. However, when viewed from the major impact that digital media liberation has brought to the nation, it suggests there to be many lessons on internet governance that can be derived from the Malaysian experience.

The deliberate publication of fake news by any media organisation or online network is an aberration in journalism practice. And such sophist intentions and dissemination of falsehood to the people through the virtual media, social media and old media is a depravity against humanity to spread mischief, acrimony, crises, disease, corruption, and squalor. It is total negation of journalism values and news values. Thus, this chapter seeks to examine the concept of newsworthiness in the wake of resurrection of the ghost of fake news in this digital age, which was the practice in the age of ignorance when unlettered men abound as journalists. It investigates the ideological constructs of news because it is a violation of journalism practice for any organisation to base its ideology on the publication of fake news. This study highlights news production process in tandem with the socio-cultural interests, political philosophy, and economic interests of the sponsors, financiers, and owners of the media. The chapter critically examines factors of news or factors of newsworthiness in relation to the concept of fake news. If the twelve factors of news are frequency, threshold, unambiguity, meaningfulness, consonance, unexpectedness, continuity, composition, reference to elite nations, reference to elite people, reference to elite persons, and reference to something negative, should there be anything fake called News? In narrative and argumentative form, the study concludes that anything fake or any information that is based on falsehood cannot be regarded as News. If it is news, it must be based on Truth and Facts. If it is news, it must be new. If it is news, it must be based on actualities. If it is news, it must be based on evidences. If it is news, it must be fair. If it is news, it must be based on realities. If it is news, it must not be based on vendetta. If it is news, it must not be hoax. If it is news, it must not be fallacy. If it is news, it must not be innuendoes.

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 inspire...

The article presents the genesis, evolution, current political position and the subjec­tive and objective scope of the Supreme Audit Office of the Czech Republic. Its origins date back to the times of Czechoslovakia after the First World War. In later years, he was replaced by the Ministry of Control. The laxity of the current constitutional regulation of this body does not allow to precise determination of its political position, and although it cannot be considered as the fourth estate it is undoubtedly specific. The subjective and subjective scope of the control exercised by this body also raises doubts. W artykule ukazana jest geneza, ewolucja, obecna pozycja ustrojowa oraz za­kres podmiotowy i przedmiotowy Najwyższego Urzędu Kontroli Republiki Czeskiej. Jego początki sięgają czasów powstania Czechosłowacji po I wojnie światowej. W późniejszych latach był on za­stępowany przez ministerstwo kontroli. Lakoniczność obowiązującej konstytucyjnej regulacji tego organu nie pozwala na precyzyjne określenie jego pozycji ustrojowej i chociaż nie można uznać go za czwarty segment władzy, niewątpliwie jest ona specyficzna. Wątpliwości budzi również zakres przedmiotowy i podmiotowy sprawowanej przez niego kontroli.

The article analyzes the newspapers endorsements in the US in the 2016 presidential election and, in particular, the massive rejection of the Republican nominee Donald Trump. It is argued that it was due to Trump’s non-belonging to mainstream politics and the press tendency to centrism.

This article offers a comparative study of three media scandals arising from two types of leaks: official ones (the Monedero Case and the Pujol Case) and those originating from citizens (the Falciani List). Official leaks are carried out by elites and respond to private/partisan interests. Citizens’ leaks come from anonymous individuals who deliver huge databases to the media for journalistic treatment. Our objective is to analyse the coverage received by both types of leaks in the Spanish press. The results show the use of official leaks as a political weapon in Polarized Pluralism media systems. Scandals based on citizens’ leaks, which refer to transnational problems with greater ramifications, receive less attention. We discuss the extent to which the polarization of conventional political communication has increased and the future of new formats of information based on citizens’ digital participation in an emerging Networked Fourth Estate.

This article addresses power, ideology and media context generally. .In democratic countries, the free media is regarded as the “fourth estate” besides the legislative, executive and judiciary branches. It can be said that political power has a significant role in shaping media discourse. The newspapers as the most efficient print media elements have an effective role in media discourse. Besides determining political agenda, the newspapers function as the instrument of hegemony of the political authority. The objective of this article is two-fold. The first is to analyze the role of the media discourse in the (re)production of ideologies. Within this framework, the role of the media in democratic countries will also be under scrutiny. Second,a historical overview of Turkish print media in general and the Hürriyet newspaper in particular will be provided. Bourdieu argues that, the power of the words lies not in their intrinsic qualities but in the belief that they are uttered by authorized spokespersons (Bourdieu, 1991: p.170). In this context, one of the main arguments of this article is that the Hurriyet newspaper as one of the leading voices of the mainstream media is efficient in determining the political and social agenda. The qualitative research method is used in the article.

Este artículo analiza el modelo organizativo y de negocio de El Salto, un medio alternativo surgido de la refundación de Diagonal como proyecto colaborativo y descentralizado territorialmente. A partir de una revisión documental y de entrevistas en profundidad con miembros del proyecto, abordamos su experiencia con el fin de presentar sus potencialidades, límites, contradicciones y retos en el actual contexto de hibridismo mediático. Nos encontramos ante un medio que ha estado vinculado a los movimientos sociales desde finales del siglo XX –primero como Molotov (1986-2003), después como Diagonal (2005-2016) y actualmente como El Salto. En estos años ha pasado de ser un medio antagonista y contra-informativo a convertirse en un medio alternativo –en lo discursivo y en lo organizativo– con vocación transversal. En las conclusiones debatimos sobre el futuro de un modelo periodístico colaborativo basado en los principios del cuarto poder en red. This paper analyzes the organizational and business model of El Salto, an alternative media which arises from the refoundation of Diagonal as a collaborative and territorially decentralized project. We conduct a documentary revision and deep interviews with some members of the project in order to expose the potentialities, limits, contradictions and challenges of alternative media in the current hybrid media systems. We are dealing with a media linked to social movements since the late twentieth century –first as Molotov (1986-2003), later as Diagonal (2005-2016) and now as El Salto. In their path it has been transformed from an antagonistic and counter-informative media to an alternative media –both, discursive and organizational– with a transversal perspective. In the conclusions, we discuss the future of a collaborative journalistic model based on the principles networked Fourth Estate.

With the advent of the internet it had appeared to many that the traditional, normative, pro-democratic functions of journalism as critical scrutineer, Fourth Estate and source of common knowledge for the public sphere would be strengthened. Today, however, digital platforms are being utilized with great effect by the opponents of liberal democracy, whether extreme factions within Islam, reactionaries and populists within the democratic countries, or in authoritarian polities such as Russia and China. This article considers if cultural chaos and the digital tools which fuel it have now emerged as drivers of ideological conflict in addition, or opposition, to cultural democratization.

We live in a world dominated by communicative technologies. Internet used daily is a habit for millions of people. Due to this large number of users the internet is described as the fifth power after the press and the classical state powers. But what kind of power is the internet? According to some scholars, the internet and web.2.0 are just another form of state or commercial surveillance for social safety or power maintenance or economic growth. For others, the internet is just a new form of the fourth estate- the press. The internet, especially the social media is seen as a tool for revolutions in authoritarian regimes and democratization. Nevertheless, the internet may be seen as a new form of technology of the self as seen by Michel Foucault and used by the political or economic power for different ends. How to cite: Turculet, I.M., Achiricesei, R. & Mutu, M. (2017). Meanings of the Expression Internet as Fifth Estate”. Logos Universality Mentality Education Novelty, Section: Social Sciences, VI(1), 7-19. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18662/lumenss.2017.0601.01

Politics and Journalism are two major fields on which society has shown an interesting interconnection, over the years. Journalism is sometimes referred to as the ”fourth estate”, and is seen by some as being crucial to the functioning of a healthy and fair society. The role of politicians is supposed to be the representation of those who elected them and to ensure that the concerns of that electorate are listened to, considered, and acted upon. Nowadays, politicians are often not comfortable with the media, and at the same time, the media look at the government with disrespect whenever its freedom is tampered with. The governing powers are frequently in war with reporters and the reason for this is the suspicion that a free press could influence citizens to an extent of causing changes in that political sphere. This supposition is not accepted in journalism. The link between journalism and politics is therefore divergent, uneasy and sometimes troublesome.

The rise of the internet has precipitated the birth and downfall of numerous industries, but perhaps no industry has been transformed to the same degree as news production. Journalism has seen the rise of content aggregation, the proliferation of fake news through social media, and the decimation of local reporting capacity, all of which have served to hollow the newspaper industry. In this work, we examine the downstream effects of this decline industry on an outcome of significant theoretical and practical significance: political corruption. As newspapers are an important investigative arm of local communities, it is possible that the closure of community media will embolden corrupt actors who believe they are less likely to be detected following the closure of a local newspaper. To estimate any effect, we employ a difference in difference approach, exploiting the phased closure of major daily newspapers across the country. Results indicate a significant increase in federal corruption charges in federal districts following closure. Further, we observe no evidence that the rise in online newsvendors and the democratization of the press ameliorates this effect. This highlights the important role of the “fourth estate” in inhibiting corruption in governance and the need to conceptualize the punitive societal effects of the internet more expansively.

Media as the fourth estate, along with the Civil Society Think Tanks that operates as non-government organizations (NGOs), plays a strategic role in advising government for improving governance issues for overall development of the society. Throughout the human history, ‘governance’ has been an essential element for the advancement of the people of any country.

In 2013, following the leaks by Edward Snowden, The Guardian published a number of classified NSA documents. Both leaking and publishing leaks violate the law prohibiting unauthorized disclosures. Accordingly, there are two potential targets for prosecution: the leakers and the press. In practice, however, only the leakers are prosecuted: Snowden is facing a threat of 30 years’ imprisonment; no charges have been made against The Guardian. If both leaking and publishing leaks violate the law, why prosecute only the leakers and not the press? I consider and reject two arguments. The first claims that the press has special moral claims by virtue of its rights (press freedom) or its role (the Fourth Estate; conduit for information). The second argument states that the leakers commit a greater wrong than the press. I conclude that the current prosecution practice is inconsistent: prosecutors should either prosecute both or neither.

In the fake news era, a combination of politics, big technology, and fear and animosity are blamed for the media mistrust and filter bubbles that are entrenching fragmentation in the public sphere. A partisan divide in the media and extreme political disagreements are nothing new, but new technology, such as social media and mobile push notifications, influences these years-old phenomena and plays an important role in current concerns. This paper explores how stories are represented differently by topic and across platforms, examining representation, polarization, and objectivity. Specifically, this paper looks at those issues from a novel perspective: through sentiment analysis of push notifications generated and archived from the Breaking News App on disasters, gun violence, and terrorism. Results indicate that partisan news organizations (1) emphasize different stories; (2) label the same events as categorically different; (3) hyperbolize and emotionalize different types of stories; and, (4) represent different categories of breaking news stories to different degrees of subjectivity.

Mediatization has become more relevant in exploring relations between media and politics in post-Suharto Indonesia. However, the media's roles as the fourth estate of democracy has been hijacked by wealthy politicians and political parties. As a result, most mainstream media have failed to enhance public dabates democratically. Based on existing mediatization literature, politico-economy analysis, and data collected through extensive in-depth interviews and relevant documents in the 2013-2015 period, this article theoretically aims to develop the mediatization concept and explore the degree of mediatization of politics in contemporary Indonesia.

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.

There is an issue that most scholars would reach consensus on: the significance of the media for democracy and good governance. This paper’s point of departure is that the media provides the basis for popular participation in democratic politics, and that democracy loses its essence without a vibrant and independent media. Unarguably, the media provides access to information in a democracy, and provides a check on elected state/public officials. Without an independent and robust media, democracy would be an endangered project. In Nigeria, the media is the watchdog on both the government and the society. Section 22 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) details the responsibility of the media to hold the government accountable to the citizens of Nigeria. The media is generally considered the fourth estate of the realm, imbued with omnibus responsibilities to inform and educate citizens with a view to engendering democratic inclusion and accountability of the government to the people. Therefore, a free and incorruptible media would enable informed citizenship and engender good governance. However, this paper contends that the environment in which the Nigerian media operates circumscribes it from delivering its optimal responsibilities to the society and the government. The paper further identifies the factors that constrain and incapacitate the media from being an efficient and effective watchdog on both the government and society. The paper posits that despite the fact that the return to civil rule in 1999 was expected to facilitate the independence of the media and a greater freedom of expression than Nigerians had experienced under military rule, the reality is that the media was more effective during military rule in its watchdog functions on both the government and the society. Thus, the paper contends that the media have performed less creditably under a civil rule than it did under a military regime that had governed Nigeria, prior to 1999. Conclusively, the paper argues that without a strong and independent media, good governance and an inclusive society would remain elusive.

In contemporary times, democracy has become the political buzzword and, indeed, the basic acceptable form of government with the emergence of liberalism which links democracy with freedom, consent, and political and legal equality. The mass media – which include newspapers, radio and television – play a prominent role in governance and democratic sustainability of any state. In fact, it is a truism that the media serve as the watchdog of governmental activities, ensuring that quality information with which the governed can hold their leaders accountable is made available. The mass media were actively involved in the struggles against colonialism and military rule, as well as the eventual restoration of democratic government in Nigeria. However, in Nigeria, the mass media are fast becoming a pawn in the hands of the government and party in power in particular, and are found in conspiracy with the political elite class in general. This article takes on the contributions of the mass media to effectual democracy in Nigeria. Using agenda setting theoretical framework, it x-rays the effectiveness and shortcomings of the media in delivering on its mandate as the fourth estate of the realm towards ensuring that democratic practices in Nigeria produce the intended result of promoting good and inclusive governance. The paper adopts qualitative research design with data drawn from secondary sources only. It equally uses descriptive and content data analysis. It is found that the mass media have indeed been the middlemen in entrenching democracy in Nigeria but these efforts are being undermined by pecuniary, ownership, political and structural-institutional influences. It is concluded that while the mass media strive to ensure the general inclusion of the populace in the process of governing which fulfills a core democratic tenet, they can do more to overcome the challenges. Among other things, this paper recommends that the government should be deliberate in guaranteeing the freedom of the press to allow for free transmission of information between the government and the people without fear or favour, and likewise, the press should be professional, objective, critical and independent in their reportage, embracing the virtue of investigative journalism.

"Whoever controls the media controls the mind." Said Jim Morrison, the famous singer, songwriter, and poet. Media, the fourth estate of democracy affects in various manners on the other three pillars of the democracy. Various Media theories reflect the importance of an informed society where media plays a pivotal role in agenda setting and public opinion creating process. Indian constitution provides the freedom of expressions to its citizen under which all media falls. It creates an informed society by sharing the information, educating the masses. As the largest democracy country in the world, India has hundreds of Mainstream media, established or dominant media now witnessing the rise of alternative media. Since the adoption of Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization policies and later on FDI in economics, the Indian media industry has shifted its ownership pattern under the big corporate and private organizations.

Received 28 July 2019. Accepted 13 September 2019. Published online 5 October 2019. Since 2014, there has been a very concerted campaign launched by the neo-liberal Western mainstream mass media against Russia. The format and content suggest that this is an attempt to induce a moral panic among the Western publics. It seems to be intended to create a sense of fear and to switch the logic to a series of emotionallybased reactions to assertion propaganda. Russia has been variously blamed for many different events and trends around the world, such as the “destroying” of Western “democracy”, and democratic values. In many regards, Russia is projected as being an existential threat in both the physical and intangible realms. This paper traces the strategic messages and narratives of the “Russia threat” as it is presented in Western mainstream media. Russia is connoted as a scapegoat for the failings of the neo-liberal democratic political order to maintain its global hegemony; therefore, Russia is viewed as the “menacing” other and a desperate measure to halt this gradual decline and loss of power and influence. This ultimately means that this type of journalism fails in its supposed fourth estate role, by directly aiding the hegemonic political power.

This paper presents the results of a research project which analyzed the commitments made by prime minister of Poland - Donald Tusk and his government in 2007 and 2008, and compares them with the content of articles published in “Rzeczpospolita” and “Gazeta Wyborcza” (the most opinion-forming newspapers in Poland) during the first 100 days as well as the first year of government. The author confronts two perspectives - classical, Schmittian sense of politics and the new one - post-politics (according to Z. Bauman, S. Žižek and J. Baudrillard). He proposes an aspectual definition of political communication which harmonizes with the idea of the Fourth Estate. Finally author assumes that the key term in the present era of post-politics is an image. What counts are the visions, hopes, dreams, desires, just the image (picture perfect, masking defects, emphazing the benefits), rather than facts, figures, statements and an electoral programmes. This seems to be one of the most important communication barriers in politics - in the present era of post-politics.

The popular concept that journalism is a moderating check on an aggressive state – one that operates in a world dictated by Realism’s demands for power and survival – is solace both for society and individual journalists who believe in the peaceful calling of the profession and the power of the Fourth Estate. But what happens when data and a discursive analysis of news organizations indicates that rather than favoring diplomatic solutions and peaceful resolutions, journalism is both fueling the flames of fear and fostering aggressive military postures that may favor confrontational nationalist rather that peaceful internationalist outcomes? This paper analyzes news and opinion production in both the Chinese and American press to conclude that in the case of the on-going conflict in Syria, the states themselves, while in conflict on the promotion of policies that reflect either the “Responsibility to Protect” (United States) or that of “Sovereignty” (China), are more aligned with diplomatic resolution than the press.

This paper uses a new set of online research tools to develop a detailed study of the public debate over proposed legislation in the United States designed to give prosecutors and copyright holders new tools to pursue suspected online copyright violations. For this study, we compiled, mapped, and analyzed a set of 9,757 stories relevant to the COICA-SOPA-PIPA debate from September 2010 through the end of January 2012 using Media Cloud, an open source tool created at the Berkman Center to allow quantitative analysis of a large number of online media sources. This study applies a mixed-methods approach by combining text and link analysis with human coding and informal interviews to map the evolution of the controversy over time and to analyze the mobilization, roles, and interactions of various actors.This novel, data-driven perspective on the dynamics of the networked public sphere supports an optimistic view of the potential for networked democratic participation, and offers a view of a vibrant, diverse, and decentralized networked public sphere that exhibited broad participation, leveraged topical expertise, and focused public sentiment to shape national public policy. We find that the fourth estate function was fulfilled by a network of small-scale commercial tech media, standing non-media NGOs, and individuals, whose work was then amplified by traditional media. Mobilization was effective, and involved substantial experimentation and rapid development. We observe the rise to public awareness of an agenda originating in the networked public sphere and its framing in the teeth of substantial sums of money spent to shape the mass media narrative in favor of the legislation. Moreover, we witness what we call an attention backbone, in which more trafficked sites amplify less-visible individual voices on specific subjects. Some aspects of the events suggest that they may be particularly susceptible to these kinds of democratic features, and may not be generalizable. Nonetheless, the data suggest that, at least in this case, the networked public sphere enabled a dynamic public discourse that involved both individual and organizational participants and offered substantive discussion of complex issues contributing to affirmative political action.Find more information about the paper, including raw data available for download and an interactive visualization of the maps included in this paper, on the Berkman Center website.

This chapter addresses the relationship between press freedom and freedom of expression. It makes the case that press freedom matters as a right in itself due to its government oversight capacity, and that the right to freedom of expression is in fact meaningless without a free press, or the Fourth Estate. Since the free press fulfills several vital political and social functions, while also having access to a mass audience, it has a powerful influence on the government–citizen relationship. The chapter also highlights the importance of press freedom for promoting and protecting human rights.

The chapter sets the context for the research and argues that there is a need for the introduction of an intranational framework for comparative media research in Africa, using the reporting of corruption scandals. It provides a detailed discussion about the definition of corruption from different disciplines and defines what a scandal is and how media exposure to stories of wrongdoing constitute what is known as scandal. Other issues discussed in the chapter include the fourth estate role of the media, the need for investigative journalism and its various definitions and how it should be applied. The chapter then concluded by reviewing seminal works on comparative media research, such as the Four Theories of the Press by Siebert, Peterson and Schramm (University of Illinois Press, Urbana/Chicago, 1956), The Crisis of Public Communication by Blumler and Gurevitch (Routledge, London/New York, 1995), and discusses how Hallin and Mancini (Comparing media systems: three models of media and politics. Cambridge University Press, 2004) reviewed their frameworks, and then suggests a new paradigm for comparative media research. The chapter argues that the Hallin and Mancini models have a more Western background; therefore, they need to be modified before they can be applied in an African context. The chapter therefore proposes a modification of the framework suggested by Hallin and Mancini from political parallelism to regional parallelism. The book will test the application of this framework within the Nigerian press, and by extension in Kenya and South Africa.

Journalists see the First Amendment as an amulet, and with good reason. It has long protected the Fourth Estate—an independent institutional press—in its exercise of editorial discretion to check government power. This protection helped the Fourth Estate flourish in the second half of the twentieth century and ably perform its constitutional watchdog role. But in the last two decades, the media ecology has changed. The Fourth Estate has been subsumed by a Networked Press in which journalists are joined by engineers, algorithms, audience, and other human and non-human actors in creating and distributing news. The Networked Press’s most powerful members are platforms. These platforms—companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter—shun the media label even as they function as information gatekeepers and news editors. Their norms and values, including personalization and speed, stymie watchdog reporting. The Networked Press regime significantly threatens watchdog journalism, speech that is at the core of the press’s constitutional role. Yet, limited by the state action doctrine, the First Amendment cannot shield this speech from a threat by private actors like platforms. Today, the First Amendment is insufficient to protect a free press that can serve as a check on government tyranny. This article argues that we must look beyond the First Amendment to protect watchdog journalism from the corrosive power of platforms. It describes the limits of the First Amendment and precisely how platforms threaten watchdog journalism. It also proposes a menu of extra-constitutional options for bolstering this essential brand of speech.

In this chapter the results of the interviews conducted with journalists in Nigeria will be presented. A total of twenty-four interviews were conducted with journalists for this book. The journalists cut across the northern and southern newspapers, and others from South Africa and Kenya (see Chaps. 4 and 5) because this book is comparing how newspapers from the two regions of Nigeria cover the cases of corruption scandal. The discussion is grouped into five themes, corruption/scandal, journalism and political culture, fourth estate role of the media, investigative journalism and suggestions and recommendations. The analysis has shown the complexity of the media in Nigeria. The respondents provided different views that sometimes converge, and sometimes disagree with each other. But what is clear is that the press in Nigeria is alive and the journalists have realised this, but there are challenges that must be addressed in order to strengthen the media and the journalists in their political communication role. Evidence of regional and ethnic bias in reporting was provided by the journalists in order to explain the character of the Nigerian media.