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

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

This article explores how being a small island jurisdiction affects actors in the journalism sector. The media is often referred to as the fourth estate, an institution inherently important for democracy. By scrutinizing politicians, journalists have the possibility to reveal transgressions and provide the public insight into how powerholders are performing as state officials. With this knowledge, the public can make informed decisions as to who will earn their vote in coming elections. This article studies the space for manoeuvre of investigative journalism in a small island state where the interconnectedness of people - journalists, sources, and powerholders - is a fact. It does so by studying the case of Cape Verde, a small island nation with 560 000 residents. Interviews with 12 Cape Verdian journalists from a range of the most important media outlets in the country, reveal that although freedom of expression and freedom of the press are constitutionally guaranteed, there are substantial practical limitations of free journalism. Respondents tell of widespread self-censorship, underfunding, and political interference as aspects that limit the possibility of conducting their work in a manner that would make them the watchdog institution that most of them aspire to and wish they could be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This discussion article envisages five different contemporary challenges and pays special attention to the arguments as to why contemporary journalism losses its professional priorities and gets mixed in with other types of mass communication, particularly with public relations (PR) and propaganda. This clarification is of great importance not only for purely professional purposes, but also for broad social priorities. Arguments concerning the role and mission of journalism place it anywhere between watchdog and lapdog which makes the process of studying journalism uncertain and even contradictory as it is caught between the binds of historical values and the traps of contemporary practice.

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

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

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

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

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

The special legal status of journalists in democratic society is determined by the efficiency of the communication mechanics in achievement of political goals. Virtual jurisdiction of state is formed under freedom of expression and universal competition. It should be legally secured on the national level and recognized on the level of international law. This jurisdiction is based on the democratic principals: participation and opposition. State institutions which are endowed with specific broadcasting competence in law are politically responsible for the compliance of democratic principals in virtual informational space.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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