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This case study uses a diversity and critical thinking exercise in a photojournalism class to show how journalism educators can incorporate race and gender conversations about ethics and judgment into traditionally skills-oriented courses. It is crucial that journalism students learn how to apply their skills properly in an era of social unrest, inequality, and dwindling media trust. Democratic citizenship and journalism are intertwined, but often the bigger ethical conversations are left out of skills-oriented courses. This can lead to a disconnect between the skills themselves and the responsibility of practicing the skills, especially when it comes to matters of power and representation. The field of photojournalism remains predominately White and male, which makes it all the more crucial for students to interrogate their own biases to ensure ethical coverage of their communities. The assignment asks students to make 36 portraits of strangers, and the subsequent classroom exercise has them confront their inherent biases by looking at the demographics of the people they photographed compared to the general population. Data for this case study consist of observations of the classroom conversations and a reflexive journalism exercise the students completed afterward. Findings indicate this exercise is a successful way to introduce racial and gender considerations as part of photojournalistic ethics and judgment. Students initially neglected to think about representation and diversity in their selection of people to photograph but afterward said they could effectively incorporate reflexivity into their work in an effort to provide more representative imagery and confront their own biases.

This study examines how solutions journalism education translates to professional practice, through in-depth interviews with current media professionals who encountered solutions journalism when they were in college. Findings suggest that solutions journalism education resonates powerfully with students, and incorporating the practice in J-school curriculum may have the potential to reengage disenchanted students. Whereas there remain significant barriers to practicing the approach in the workplace, participants revealed that their encounters at university with solutions journalism positively affected their reporting style, interview skills, and perspective of journalism's role in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uncovers routine and individual-level influences upon the content of US front-page images. This examination is justified by a news-image environment increasingly dominated by a small number of central agencies and with a lack of photojournalist diversity. At the routine level, differences are assessed based on whether images are taken by an on-staff photojournalist or a wire photographer. At the individual level, differences are assessed based on the photographer's race and gender. The visual content studied includes three general categories: photojournalistic news values (presence of people, activity of persons of people in the image, whether eye contact is portrayed, emotional hierarchy, and topic), representation (race and gender of people or persons in the image), and visual elevation (circulation of the image in which the image appears, image usage, and image topic). Results of the study show a number of significant routine-level differences, but fewer differences based on the individual characteristics of the photojournalist, which primarily pertain to the representation of subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of constructive and solutions journalism has grown in recent years, led by claims of positive audience effects. Our systematic review of 22 effects experiments across 19 studies found that solutions and constructive news stories unequivocally affect audience emotions. Clarity is needed for other dependent variables. Consistency is needed in theoretical constructs and the independent variables used. Focus needs to continue to extend beyond the United States and Western Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic activity surrounding constructive and solutions journalism has surged in recent years; thus, it is important to pause and reflect on this growing body of work in order to understand where the field can and should go in the future. We conducted a systematic review of existing literature on solutions and constructive journalism (N = 94), in an effort to (1) describe the state of this field by identifying the patterns and trends in the methodological and conceptual approaches, topics, institutions, countries and practices involved in this research, and (2) illuminate potentially important gaps in the field and suggest recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solutions journalism is rigorous news reporting about how people are responding to social problems – a definition used by scholars but formulated by the Solutions Journalism Network, an independent organization that promotes the practice. The approach has a growing appeal in the professional world, but what little exists in academic research fails to offer thorough theoretical and conceptual definitions or a concrete operationalization of the practice. Through in-depth interviews, journalists familiar with solutions journalism offered insights about how to define and measure the practice. Specifically, journalists said solution-oriented news stories contribute to more accurate and balanced news coverage, they are sophisticated and rigorous, and they intend to motivate readers to contribute to societal change. Further findings help distinguish the Solutions Journalism Network's conceptualization of the concept from how working journalists practice it, particularly in regard to the extent that solutions journalism overlaps with advocacy journalism. Finally, this study offers guidelines for measuring a solutions news story in an effort to spur consistent future research on the effects of the solutions journalism approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study promotes how discussions during photojournalism award judging can be used as metajournalistic discourse to gain insight about the definition, boundaries, and legitimization of the field. Journalism awards signal value, but the deliberation process offers richer insight via the judges' comments. This study explores that process in two stages through discourse analysis of publicly-available video of judging rounds from two photojournalism competitions, Best of Photojournalism (BOP) and Pictures of the Year International (POYi). The first stage explores the ways in which judges talk about the photos and develops a framework for future analysis of contest judging. The second stage analyzes this discourse. Findings indicate that storytelling and emotion are key defining and legitimizing aspects of photojournalism, photojournalist's actions and gear serve as boundary devices and the ongoing conversation about problematic misrepresentation in photojournalism is recognized but needs more emphasis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study adds visual analysis to the body of work on solutions journalism. Guided by visual theory focusing on the dominating nature of messages included in visual content versus text, we use content analysis to explore the use of photos in solutions-oriented news stories, specifically to see whether the photos published alongside solutions-based news stories also represent solutions or whether they portray an incongruent message. Among our results, we found photos reflect the solution depicted in the story only 63.5 percent of the time. Photos taken by an internal source (e.g. staff photographer) are more likely to depict the solution than if obtained by an external source (e.g. wire service). In addition, the higher the emotional appeal and positive emotion found in the photo, the higher the likelihood that the photo reflects a solution. A contradictory visual may complicate the message of the solutions in the story. Our findings suggest more emphasis must be placed on the study of visuals as they relate to solutions journalism, and on the selection of photos to accompany solutions-oriented stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how gatekeeping aspects of photography, particularly embodied gatekeeping, interact with a subset of photojournalism that faces numerous barriers to access—music photography. Through in-depth interviews with concert photographers in a large metropolitan city, this study expands upon what is known about gatekeeping when it comes to visual media. While much has been studied on photojournalists as a whole, little is known about particular subgroups, such as music photographers. As a part of lifestyle journalism, concert photography contributes to the interaction of popular culture and society, showing us visual evidence of the spectacle of musical performance. Gatekeeping practices are found not only in the managers who issue credentials for access and control where photographers can shoot from but also in the community of photographers themselves. This is extended into embodied gatekeeping in how they jostle for access to space in the pit and enforce the rules with their bodies, such as physically pushing a camera out of the way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As journalists continue integrating social media into their professional work, they wrestle with ways to best represent themselves, their organizations, and their profession. Several recent studies have examined this trend in terms of branding, raising important questions about the changing ways in which journalists present themselves and how these changes may indicate shifts in their personal and professional identities. This study combines a visual content analysis of the images journalists use in their Twitter profiles with analyses of their profile text and tweets to examine how journalists present themselves online with an eye toward individual and organizational branding. Findings indicate journalists choose a branding approach and apply it consistently across their profiles, with most profiles consisting of a professional headshot while notably lacking organizational identifiers such as logos. Journalists also tend to lean toward professional rather than personal images in their profile and header photographs, indicating a possible predilection for professional identity over personal on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses in-depth interviews with 14 journalists to better understand the position of solutions journalism--rigorous reporting on how people are responding to social problems--in the field and in journalistic habits. We found that journalists familiar with solutions journalism accept and align it with investigative reporting, but with the extra step toward social response. They think it's broadly topical, but has the same objectivity concerns journalism is facing. When taking a solutions approach, journalists shift their thought processes but largely maintain the same reporting habits. Finally, they perceive management to be the greatest facilitator or impediment to their ability to adopt solutions journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restricting Los Angeles Paparazzi: California's Legal Efforts Impacting Free Press Rights. I enjoyed the field observation chapter, where Azriel spent a week in the field embedded with other paparazzi and working as a freelancer himself, but wish that it contained more than a brief summary of the various activities of a paparazzi. [Extracted from the article]