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Since 2014, India has experienced a shift towards a new phase of democracy, often described as an “ethnic democracy.” Political theorists argue that this phase promotes a Hindu conception of the nation, contrasting with the secularism embedded in the Indian Constitution, and is marked by attacks on ethnic and religious minorities, particularly Muslims. Some media scholars suggest that controlling mass media has been a crucial strategy in generating public consent for hegemonic Hindu nationalism and contend that the media’s subservience to political elites extends beyond the current government to previous political elites, such as the Gandhi dynasty. They challenge Bourdieu’s idea of a field governed by its own rules, asserting that in India, political and economic forces often align to impose conformity, indicating weak rational-legal authority. However, this paper argues that such views overstate media subservience and homogeneity. Instead, this paper provides evidence of diverse representations within mainstream media, demonstrating that there is scope for ideological contestation and adherence to professional norms. This study employs content analysis to examine media portrayals of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests, using frame analysis as the theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how war correspondents working for U.S.-based news organizations Tweeted about the early stages of the 2022 war in Ukraine, focusing particularly on instances when these war reporters contributed to a distinctly transnational version of what Matt Carlson has termed "metajournalistic discourse" (2016). Defining this concept as the "public expressions evaluating news texts, the practices that produce them, or the conditions of their reception" (Carlson [2016]. "Metajournalistic Discourse and the Meanings of Journalism: Definitional Control, Boundary Work, and Legitimation." Communication Theory 26 (4): 349–368 , 353), we argue that from February to May of 2022, U.S. war correspondents constructed a discourse that situated their own labor within the boundaries of what counts as the most acceptable form of war journalism, representing their reportage as the most independent and transparent form of war reporting. Conversely, they situated the work of Russian and Ukrainian journalists outside this boundary. The paper ultimately argues that journalism scholars should think more transnationally about the discourses that discuss journalistic labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring how young people engage with, share, and are influenced by news has long captivated academic interest. It is crucial for comprehending how young people are informed and develop critical thinking skills amid evolving media landscapes, and for predicting potential impacts on the industry and democracy. Given the increasing complexity of the news field, this paper conducts a systematic literature review from 2010 to 2022, focusing on journals within SCImago's top 100 list for journalism, media, and communication. The review categorises the 232 academic papers based on origin, methods, and types of youth studied. First, this article systematises geographical origin, methods used, ages and types of youth studied in the 232 academic papers comprising the final sample. Second, it summarises key findings concerning how the most cited papers frame "youth" and "news". Last, the article concludes by pointing out research gaps and possible future challenges. The study reveals that user studies are prominent, while production studies on news media reaching young people are scarce. There is a strong Western bias in current research, with a prevalence of U.S. college student survey studies. The terms "youth" and "news" lack in-depth exploration. This article discusses challenges arising from these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western liberal media theories often neglect to recognize “news translation” as one of the journalistic practices. This paper problematizes this dominant understanding of journalistic practice and expands the Bourdieusian media sociology project beyond western media systems by applying it to Indian agency journalism. A case study of the United News of India Urdu (UNIU) serves as the basis for this examination, drawing on an ethnography of news production practices, and supplemented with in-depth interviews conducted with Muslim journalists from 2018 to 2020 across four major Indian cities. Through this investigation, the paper asserts that “news translation” is indeed a vital but contested component of media work within the sphere of Indian-language journalism. The paper uses “media work” as a key concept to demonstrate that UNIU’s journalists are anchored in the field of journalism, as is evidenced by their institutional-cum-organizational location and their application of the elements of journalistic practice to their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fashion journalism remains an under-researched and theorized form of media production; for example, writers still differ on whether there can be objective fashion news. As such, this paper examines the release of "Satan Shoes" by Lil Nas X and U.S.-based art collective MSCHF, using a liquid, critical discourse analysis. Understanding the fashion system is a complex web of intersecting social practices and institutions, this paper argues that fashion news is obscured by hybrid news discourses, which draw on more established framing and genres including celebrity, business, law and religion. While such hybridity may be warranted, it also allows fashion journalism to be minimized in the public sphere. Fundamentally, this paper argues that event demonstrates that objective fashion news does exist, and, in doing so questions the framing that prioritizes business interests and assumed religious narratives at the expense of artistic expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explored how two media aid projects from Sweden were used to intervene in the development of Vietnamese journalism between 1993 and 2007. Vietnamese journalism and media aid are contextualized in this paper by unfolding pedagogical ideology, journalistic culture, and the negotiation of professional ideals. Based on an interview study with Swedish trainers from the media aid projects and informed by document analysis, the main research question concerned the role of the trainers in negotiating journalistic practices during the aid projects and the implications of these. Furthermore, I explored the ways in which the aid influenced journalistic ideology in Vietnam, and how the projects fulfilled their political aim to contribute to the democratic development of media in Vietnam. The paper adds to the growing body of literature seeking to de-colonialize media theory to rethink the development of journalism in the Global South. The key findings demonstrate how social norms disrupted the implementation of the ideology of journalism being conveyed from Sweden, while the transfer of technological equipment and knowledge impacted journalism production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research on journalism in social media is extensive and approaches the topic from different perspectives, the consideration of what contributes to quality journalism in social media is underdeveloped. Our paper addresses this by providing a comprehensive literature review of journalism research relating to aspects of quality in social media. Based on a systematic Scopus search, 54 peer-reviewed, English-language papers published between 2015 and 2022 were selected for in-depth textual analysis using MAXQDA. Two important takeaways emerge from the analysis. First, the literature suggests that journalists and media organizations adapt work routines, norms, and values in a context-sensitive manner when producing content for social media. By enabling many-to-many communication, social media platforms force journalists and media outlets to reflect on audience demands and to develop audience engagement strategies. Second, the findings underscore that journalistic social media activities diverge depending on how individual journalists and organizations approach journalistic quality in social media. As these findings are only pieces to the puzzle of what quality journalism in social media entails, we hope to encourage further research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the (in)direct tools of governmental bureaucracy used to control journalistic work in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). It calls for understanding media capture not only through structural-level consequences, but also through the methods used to create an environment of instability and unsafety. To make sense of these processes, and how they are experienced and negotiated by journalists, this paper combines scholarship on the emotional labor of journalism with scholarship on processes of media capture in deeply restrictive environments. The mixed-methods approach aims first to uncover structural conditions of media capture in the KRI through a document analysis of 21 public reports published by the Kurdistan Journalists' Syndicate (KJS) and the Metro Center for Journalists' Rights and Advocacy (MC) between 2014 and 2020. Second, it aims to reveal how journalists and editors-in-chief from diverse media organizations manage and negotiate these chronic conditions of precarity and instability, through 15 semi-structured in-depth interviews. The results show multiple strategies that have been developed by journalists and editors to mitigate or acclimate direct and indirect bureaucratic violence (e.g., editorial support, socialization skills and networks, understanding of unspoken and unwritten rules, etc.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can constructive journalism subscribe to established standards of journalism and still offer something new to the field? This paper explores the possibility that constructive journalism looks for better ways to implement the standards in a changing media environment. A case in point is the partial loss of the gatekeeper role in digital journalism. Here, journalism tries to show that it is still relevant by always finding something to criticize. But this may cause readers to turn away because, even though the news informs them about important points of disagreement, it does not outline how the debate might move on. Constructive journalism can be taken to suggest that journalists should evaluate the merits of the arguments involved so that readers can better assess the situation. This would not require journalists to give up on a negative focus in news, but to broaden their view: They should not confine their reporting to those in power but reflect the productive discourse which is often hidden in digital media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the content features of intentional deceptive information in the news (i.e., fake news) and on social media. Based on an extensive review of relevant literature (i.e., political journalism and communication, computational linguistics), we take stock of existing knowledge and present an overview of the structural characteristics that are indicative of intentionally deceptive information. We discuss the strength of underlying empirical evidence and identify underdeveloped areas of research. With this paper, we aim to contribute to the systematic study of intentional deception in the news and on social media and to help setting up new lines of research in which intentionally deceptive news items can be operationalized in consistent ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the proximity of local media to audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on a case study of Italian daily L'Eco di Bergamo combining two sets of data: a list of initiatives the newspaper took in 2019 and 2020 to be closer to audiences, and interviews shedding light on how staff viewed the paper's relationship with audiences during that time. An analysis of these two datasets shows that the pandemic increased the newspaper's proximity to audiences but did not fundamentally change the way in which it related with audiences, despite significant changes in journalists' work routines. Based on these findings, the paper proposes a conceptualization of proximity as a dynamic balance between three structuring dimensions (gatekeeping, social and commercial), with a focus on audiences as a plural figure determined by news organizations' strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents four specific news frames concerning the environment (eco-frames) applied to the media coverage of the energy issue. These stem from transnationally available cultural frameworks that serve as interpretative patterns. It examines how three Spanish newspapers (El País, ABC and Público) use the eco-indifferent, eco-efficient, eco-sustainable and eco-radical frames in the reporting of energy issue over ten years (2009–2019). Thus, this study aims to determine the extent to which sources and editorial lines influence frame building. The results of analysing 1095 news items confirm the relationship between the papers' editorial lines and eco-frames, though what stands out in all the papers is economics-based eco-indifference. In the economy section, neither the main sources (industry) nor the journalists consider the environmental angle while reporting on the energy sector. Energy as an issue is, above all, an economic topic, even in the global context of the fight against climate change. A correlation between a particular type of source and frame was found, thus expanding the understanding of the role sources play as framing devices in journalistic texts. From a constructionist perspective, this work contributes to framing research by linking news frames construction to a repertoire of global cultural echoes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study presents the results of a standardized content analysis comparing the use of Twitter as an information source on the websites of five news media types (quality newspapers, a tabloid newspaper, weekly magazines, broadcasters, and internet only). The theoretical assumption behind the study is that the adoption of Twitter as a source follows the established practices of a particular media type. All articles published online by ten German news media in a period of one month were collected (n = 21,823). A subset of articles containing Twitter-related keywords (n = 496) and 375 tweets cited in these articles was explored in detail. Our focal analysis of n = 287 articles using Twitter as an information source revealed systematic differences between both media types and article topics regarding the number and style of Twitter references as well as the types of accounts cited. We found that the tabloid paper incorporated the highest number of tweets per article, incorporated tweets primarily in articles on human interest and gossip and cited non-elite sources more often than other media types. Quality papers, weekly magazines, and broadcasters used tweets as sources primarily in articles on politics and economy and cited public actors, such as politicians or officials, more frequently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of social media has spawned private news organizations in China that are encountering problems regarding how to gain public and journalistic acceptance and recognition as newcomers and how to survive without a news license. Drawing on organizational legitimacy theory, this paper investigates the strategies employed by private news organizations to construct multiple layers of legitimacy including regulatory, normative and cognitive legitimacy in China's unique context and the social media era. Based on in-depth interviews with 20 practitioners of private news organizations and participant observation in one private news agency, findings showed that private news organizations (1) gain regulatory legitimacy through news production methods including "misplacing registration", "playing with official hats" and "depoliticization"; (2) establish normative legitimacy by emphasizing their adherence to traditional journalistic values, norms, and routines, and their similarities to state-owned media; (3) obtain cognitive legitimacy through the creation of "hot news" with reliance on professional reputation. This study thereby explores these strategies to reflect the path of "dependent autonomy" of private news organizations and provides an institutional and organizational perspective to understand the constraints and characteristics of social media journalism in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now over a decade since the influential paper Understanding Social Media Logic by van Dijck and Poell was published, the total number, sheer variety and penetration of social media apps in everyday media consumption and production behaviour has exploded. This poses risks and opportunities for legacy media corporations as well as scholars attempting to make sense of the various affordances each individual social media platform offers to facilitate the production, dissemination and consumption of novel types of news content. Drawing on insights from the articles published in this special issue on the characteristics, constraints and contingencies of social media journalism, we seek to advance scholarship by challenging and expanding existing frameworks. We synthesise the current state of research and propose a research agenda for peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic was a major challenge for journalism. In the case of Germany, critics very early on voiced concerns over the quality of mainstream media coverage. Mainstream media were attacked for the intensity of their coverage, for reporting too much and unnecessarily frightening audiences, for not presenting a diversity of viewpoints on the pandemic and the measures taken to mitigate it, and for being one-sided and too close to the government. Against this background, this paper examines the intensity and viewpoint diversity of the coverage of 13 mainstream and two alternative media in Germany in 2020 and 2021. Based on a comprehensive manual content analysis of almost 9000 news stories, we conclude that the mainstream media did not cover the pandemic in a fundamentally exaggerated or one-sided way. However, they did not always report intensively when the pandemic was particularly severe, and they tended to warn against the pandemic rather than criticize the measures taken. In contrast, alternative media coverage tended to be more one-sided and generally biased against government measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates how newspaper editorials address the "fake news" phenomenon concerning (1) the damages that mis- and disinformation pose to society and journalism; (2) the roles news organizations claim for themselves; (3) the communication agents mentioned; and (4) how media companies defend the field. We use content analysis to study 375 editorials published between 2017 and 2020 in three Brazilian quality-papers. Brazil is a relevant case since its media system and political institutions differ from those in the United States and Western Europe, leading us to understand metajournalistic discourses not necessarily seen in more stable environments. The results indicate that key political events (e.g., social security reform and presidential elections) became occasions for media organizations to publish more editorials discussing "fake news." Harming democracy was the main problem caused by mis- and disinformation. The newspapers regularly identified themselves as victims of attacks from political authorities. The editorial texts reinforced journalism's expertise in crafting and providing credible information, but, at the same time, such newspapers avoided responding to external criticisms. More interestingly, the outlets used terms associated with mis- and disinformation to attack rival groups. Lastly, our codebook provides an original contribution to the field as it considers a wide range of variables, encouraging comparative studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using digital ethnography and in-depth interviews, this study offers a comprehensive understanding of how diaspora journalists maintain connections with their conflict-torn homeland and advocate for transnational human rights and political reforms after fleeing its repressive political sphere. To this end, the paper examines how Syrian diaspora journalists engage in transnational advocacy practices through building digital networks that blur boundaries between journalism, activism, human rights advocacy, social movements, and civil society work. The paper further investigates how these advocacy practices shape the diaspora journalists' perceptions of their roles as well as their understanding of the different political, economic, procedural, organizational, and professional factors that influence how they perform them. Findings demonstrate that diaspora advocacy journalism poses various challenges to traditional journalism paradigms as journalists' roles go beyond news gathering and publishing to include petitioning, creating transnational solidarity, collaborating with civil society organizations, and carrying out various institutional work. In so doing, the paper rethinks hybridity in journalistic role perceptions proposing two unique approaches for serving democracy from exile. A novel definition of diaspora advocacy journalism and comprehensive discussion of the various sources of influence on news reporting and advocacy networking in the unique transnational conflict context are further proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the historic role of Britain's major public service broadcaster, the BBC, in reporting the European Union. To do this it combines a content analysis of two datasets of BBC broadcast and online coverage from 2007 and 2012 with a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with former and current senior BBC editors and journalists. The research finds that BBC coverage in the pre-referendum period was closely tied to major events – such as summits – and elite party conflict. These patterns in coverage were primarily a consequence of the lack of traditional news values inherent in most EU stories and the impact of the wider political and media landscape. The consequence of these patterns in coverage was to present audiences with a restricted, negative and largely conflictual picture of Britain's relationship with the EU which is likely to have fuelled rather than inhibited the growth of Euroscepticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional journalism's relationship with democracy has been tested in recent years. A so-called crisis of journalism has shaken several of the bedrocks upon which both journalism and liberal democracy are based. One response has been to try and rediscover and strengthen these foundations, and in the process for journalism to reaffirm its central place within democratic societies. In this paper, I theorise what might happen if we were to understand journalism in relation to a different form of democracy, a radical democracy. How might our understandings (public and academic) of journalism change, and how might journalism itself transform if it were to comprehend its vital public role in relation to a set of values, practices and systems radically different to those of dominant models of rational consensus? The article presents three main arguments. (1) The current crisis of journalism is predominantly built upon journalistic values associated with liberal and deliberative democracy. (2) This particular construction of crisis ignores the exclusions and inequalities of its rationalist foundations. (3) A radical democratic perspective provides a model through which to understand the crisis of journalism in a way that may address such exclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Journalists are increasingly attacked in response to their work yet they often lack the necessary support and training to protect themselves, their sources, and their communications. Despite this, there has been limited scholarly attention that addresses how journalism schools approach digital security education. This paper draws from an analysis of 106 US programs and 23 semi-structured interviews with journalism students and professors to examine how the next generation of journalists learn about digital security practices. Our findings show that most programs (88.7%) don't offer formal digital security programming and that digital security skills are often deprioritized in favor of skills seen as more significant contributors to post-graduate hiring—a key priority of journalism programs. Additional barriers include a lack of space and time in existing curricula for added digital security coursework, a perception that students are not interested, and few professors with related knowledge. When security education is introduced, it's done so in often informal and ad-hoc ways, largely led by "security champions," both within and outside of journalism, who advocate for its legitimacy. These findings have important implications for journalism education and journalists' capacity to carry out their work amidst a deteriorating safety environment in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory paper will (a) review the intersection between science, journalism and development from a historical perspective, (b) propose normative directions for science journalism of the Global South, (c) contrast that normative framework with the rather weak state of science journalism across the South, (d) identify potential solutions to current problems, and (e) propose a research agenda for the future. Throughout, I will advance a framework of theoretical and practical principles to transform the science–journalism–development relationship in the Global South, which entails four normative dimensions: glocalisation, decolonisation, indigenisation and dewesternisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The algorithmic turn has fundamentally transformed journalistic work. Academic interest in the implication of automated algorithms for journalism has grown hand-in-hand with their everyday use. This paper presents a literature review of peer-reviewed research reports (N = 62) on automated algorithms in the context of journalistic work. Our review focuses on the first decade (2010–2019) during which automated journalism gained traction. The study identifies the most prominent perspectives or themes that studies in automated journalism have explored and the future directions for research that researchers have proposed. Based on the analysis, the dominant themes that studies in automated journalism have covered include (1) testing and developing algorithmic tools, (2) developing practices and policies for journalistic work, (3) attitudes and technology acceptance, and (4) societal and macro-level discourses concerning AI and journalism. The new directions for research that studies on automated algorithms have recognized relate to (1) target groups and stakeholders—that is, who to study in the future; (2) emergent themes and phenomena—that is, what to study in the future; and (3) approaches and methodologies—that is, how to study these topics in the future. These findings help create a holistic picture of possible future directions for the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the post-award implications of international prize culture within the journalism profession. Through qualitative interviews with winners of CNN competitions, this paper specifically investigates how news professionals discursively construct the notion of excellence within the space of international award practice, and then how they subsequently perceive their roles in the post-award dispensation. The key findings show that journalists' understanding of excellence through awards is fluid and based on individual, institutional as well as professional notions of what constitutes par/sub-par journalism. These "bearers of excellence" perceive themselves as promoters of high standards of journalistic practice and champions of normative roles, such as the watchdog role, which fits into the broader mission of the specific institution sponsoring the awards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical review of scholarly research on fixers, the local collaborators of foreign correspondents, in conflict reporting. Based on a thematic analysis of work that addresses news fixing, we summarize what we know about fixers in conflict zones while using postcolonial lens to further develop some critical arguments that are already present in the body of research. Existing studies well describe what fixers do, who they are, and the inequalities in safety, in authority over the content of reporting, and in the distribution of money that haunt conflict reporting. However, we argue that most of the research too readily accepts as a starting point the division between West and non-West, which assumes that fixers are fundamentally different from and unequal to Western correspondents and emphasizes these disparate identities without questioning them, thus reproducing fixers' otherness and exoticism. To gain a better position for promoting creative justice, we suggest that future research practices and questions could be recalibrated in line with the postcolonial move and the current reconfiguration of the political and epistemic relations between the world's regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines journalistic role performance in coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a content analysis of newspaper, television, radio and online news in 37 countries. We test a set of hypotheses derived from two perspectives on the role of journalism in health crises. Mediatization theories assume that news media tend to sensationalize or to politicize health crises. A contrasting perspective holds that journalists shift toward more deferential and cooperative stances toward health and political authorities in a health crisis, attempting to mobilize the public to act according to the best science. Hypotheses derived from these perspectives are tested using the standard measures of journalistic roles developed by the Journalistic Role Performance Project. Results show that the deference/cooperation/consensus perspective is better supported, with media moving away from the Watchdog and Infotainment, and toward performance of the Service and Civic roles. We also explore differences in the pattern by country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primarily due to an influx of market models, the journalism industry recently experienced a fragmentation of professional culture and, therefore, professionalism. This theoretical essay proposes a new focus for understanding influence on journalistic practice. Studying influence in the twenty-first century requires a model that does not include a hierarchy and therefore does not implicitly validate a universal journalism culture. The theoretical article first explains the hierarchy of influences model, argues for its alteration, and then resituates that model's levels of analysis into a new model that more appropriately accounts for the growing agency of individual organizations. Finally, the paper envisions avenues for future research utilizing the new model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peace journalism has enjoyed increased attention in recent decades, though this interest does not necessarily correspond to less polarized conflict coverage or more peaceful societies around the world. Although these realities cannot be attributed to peace journalism alone, such disconnects invite a clearer conceptualization of peace journalism and its scholarly development. Analyzing more than 100 studies, this theoretical exploration reviews three primary domains of peace journalism research—as a concept, as a practice and, by extension, as media content and effects—to illustrate the relatively disparate goals and evaluation metrics put forward by each area. The paper offers a conceptual model that bridges levels of analysis and institutional efforts to advance a better understanding of the normative value of peace journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For journalism research rooted in a sociological framework, gaining access to journalists is crucial for data collection. However, journalists are documentably difficult to recruit as participants, frequently due to limited time and resources in shrinking newsrooms, sometimes because of roadblocks put up by leery newsroom management. As part of the data collection process for the Canadian branch of the international Journalistic Role Performance project, researchers tracked issues raised by journalists that may have impacted survey recruitment and completion. These issues were frequently grounded in the context of survey questions designed to be operationalizable in vastly different cultures, and were also documented by other researchers in both the Global North and South who were cooperating in this comparative study. Despite first refusing or completely refusing survey participation, though, some Canadian journalists were willing to be interviewed, giving researchers the opportunity to explore how to best engage journalists in the research process, and design research tools to be shared in different media systems. Using a lens of social exchange, this paper provides unique insight, from the perspective of researchers and participants, on the importance of relationship-building as a focal point in order to adequately contextualize findings within a sociology of news framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital communication technologies have upended the business models and work practices of professional journalists. Moreover, these technologies have altered the relationship between journalists and the public, resulting in blurred boundaries between the two and more avenues for interactions and relationship-building. In this theoretical paper, we argue that scholarship on the sociology of news has to be broadened to include the concept of relational work, which aims to create relational trust between journalists and their audiences. Specifically, we argue that previous sociological and professional conceptualizations of trust in journalism rest on normative values such as accurate, objective and reliable reporting, presuppose cognitive evaluations of journalistic content and minimize the role of journalist-audience interactions. These conceptualizations frequently neglect emotional and social factors alongside the power structures of news production that impact relationships between journalists and their audience and consequently the evaluation of news. We posit that the relational trust that can arise from these relationships may be critical in the overall development of trust in the journalistic institution, particularly in the current post-truth era of heightened political polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The morphology of journalism culture comprises three factors, namely, micro-, meso-, and macrofactors. Politics and economics are among the many macro factors. However, this study focuses on how the morphology of journalism culture is formed by local culture. This study is important in the theory of de-Westernization because local culture could be a differentiator among journalism cultures. Such efforts will enable the diversity of journalism cultures that differ from those in the West. This research was conducted on journalists working in Yogyakarta, a region in Indonesia. This study shows that local culture, in this case, the Javanese culture, contributes to creating the journalism culture among journalists in Yogyakarta either in their journalism values or practices. This influence is evident in their politeness, language propriety, and criticism style. Several informants stated that they choose a criticism style that is not vulgar. They believe that there is no need for vulgar criticism because their style of criticism is effective because both the journalists and their subjects of criticism are from the same cultural environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the origins of the term of the green shift, which gained increased cultural, social and political traction in Norway after it was introduced in 2015 by journalist Anders Bjartnes, editor of Energi og klima (2011-). By looking at this outlet as well as two other contemporary niche media, Harvest (2013-) and Naturpress (2016-), we show how this term provided a way of working with frequency, one of the 12 news values outlined in Galtung and Ruge's seminal study from 1965. Inspired by discourse-historical analysis, we base our article on interviews with the editors of the three outlets, their journalistic output as well as on contextual material in order to show how the slow, uneven, global and partially invisible process of climate change was given a different temporal frame through the notion of the green shift. By addressing notions of frequency in relation to a specific time and context, we speak, on the one hand, to discussions about how an event-driven journalism struggles with the complex temporalities of climate change and, on the other, to recurrent calls for providing a more "context-driven reflection on the value and legacy of Galtung and Ruge" [Joye, Stijn, Ansgard Heinrich, and Romy Wöhler. 2016. "50 Years of Galtung and Ruge: Reflections on Their Model of News Values and its Relevance for the Study of Journalism and Communication Today." CM Komunikacija i Mmediji 36: 5–28]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding journalistic truth has always been important in Journalism Studies, but it is increasingly significant in a society influenced by constantly evolving digital technologies and information disorder. This article explores the potential of "actor-network theory" to enhance the understanding of journalistic truth, surpassing the limitations of existing perspectives that categorise it as objective, subjective, or a combination of the two. Alternatively, through the utilisation of a plausibility probe case study in investigative journalism, the article suggests examining news-making as black-boxing and conceptualises journalistic truth as arising from the skilful construction of journalistic chains comprising heterogeneous actors. We discuss these as pivotal steps toward gaining a deeper understanding of journalistic truth that paves the way for constructing an alternative but empirical account of journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As "the first draft of history," journalism is an essential agent of memory work. Although the relationship between the fields of memory studies and journalism studies has historically been underdeveloped, scholars in both disciplines have established productive and necessary connections between the two. One such connection is the area of anniversary journalism, or current news coverage of anniversaries of past events. Anniversary journalism is also a means by which journalism commemorates itself, particularly through the celebration of institutional anniversaries, and an opportunity for journalism organizations to summarize the past. Using a corpus of nearly 80 articles reflecting on the 50th anniversary of National Public Radio (NPR), the present study employs thematic analysis to examine how NPR engaged with its organizational past and American collective memory more broadly. This study identifies four themes throughout the network's commemorative coverage: the archive, nostalgia, democracy, and the public. I argue that the series should be understood as an organizational branding initiative that uses collective memory and anniversary journalism as a response to larger transformative change in the journalism industry, and thus, as a strategy to assert the continued cultural relevance of public service media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies exploring the sociology of news have identified and established a range of factors that influence journalism and shape media narratives. However, little has been known regarding the narrative construction in the English language broadcast media in India. Therefore, this study investigated the relationship between (re)emerging right-wing nationalism and English language television journalism in India. A qualitative thematic discourse analysis was conducted on the monologues on Republic TV and Times Now's primetime debates during the India–China border conflict, 2020. The study reports a major shift in the nature of TV journalism in India: far from being passive observers of right-wing nationalist ideology in the 1990s, TV journalists in contemporary India are acting as active participants in propagating them. The study complements existing works on sociology of news by demonstrating how journalism is shaped by dominant political sentiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recommender systems are increasingly applied by traditional news organisations to structure and personalise their websites according to a set of predefined principles. But we have little insight into the people and processes involved in defining these principles and transforming them into code, despite their direct impact on online news selection and distribution. This article contributes to filling this research gap by investigating recommender system development and implementation at two Scandinavian news organisations. Drawing on field theory, the study explores the powerful position of developers and data scientists within news organisations and their working relationships around algorithmic curation. These new entrants into the field bring new forms of cultural capital and a performance-oriented doxa that clashes with the journalistic doxa, causing delays in the integration of the technology. The article highlights the important role of steering groups and bridging employees in balancing technical, commercial, and editorial concerns but also illuminates the lack of sustained collaboration between journalists and data scientists. Such overlapping and non-siloed collaboration can help build common ground and inter-field understanding and ease technology integration. To this end, the article suggests that long-term business objectives bridge the tech-editorial gap by bringing these different stakeholders together around a common goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical reporting (piping-baodao) has long been considered one of the most important journalistic tools in China, exhibiting great democratic potential. However, the media environment for such reporting has become precarious over the past decade, raising the questions of how much space is left for critical reporting and how it is related to the media–state dynamics. Drawing on a 15-year longitudinal content analysis of how The Beijing News—an outspoken newspaper—reported corruption, this study explored the evolution of critical reporting in China. The results revealed that critical reporting is still a small-scale, non-routine journalistic practice. A detailed analysis was conducted to determine how media resources and power relations shaped critical reporting. The results showed that critical reporting has tended to take a resource-intense format and require non-official sources. Furthermore, critical reporting was more pronounced with respect to the coverage of low-ranking officials and officials outside the newspaper's parent region. Broader implications of these findings have been discussed. Overall, the present study advances the understanding of critical journalism in an authoritarian context and explores its relations with the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If there are authoritarian, transitional, and democratic political and media systems, are there associated authoritarian, transitional, and democratic role profiles for journalists? The relation between countries' degree of democracy and the importance of journalistic role conceptions among journalists in a country is analyzed based on the World Journalism Study (Wave 2). I find that journalists in democratic political systems generally subscribe to fewer role conceptions than journalists in authoritarian political systems; Journalism-for-Democracy is more defined by what it is not (i.e., journalists reject the typical role conceptions of Journalism-for-Authoritarianism and Journalism-in-Transition) than by what it is. Journalism in transitional political systems (i.e., hybrid regimes and deficient democracies) is characterized by a specific set of role conceptions that are linked to political activism, which journalists in full democracies tend to reject. The study reassesses which role conceptions might be typical for which kind of political systems leading to revised hypotheses regarding the link between democracy and journalistic role conceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalists and news media in Western democracies appear to be under increasing fire for having an alleged partisan bias. This study joins the increasing number of studies on partisan news slant, and focuses on the central actors in the news-making process, namely journalists themselves. Drawing on unique survey evidence on 233 Belgian and Dutch journalists in 2018, this study explores whether and which journalists perceive their news outlets to be biased. Despite their aim to produce impartial coverage, we find that most journalists believe that their news outlet favors some parties over others. In particular, journalists feel that center parties are favored, while parties on the fringes, and especially extreme-right parties, are somewhat disadvantaged. Also, it shows that journalists working for the public broadcaster perceive their outlet to be more impartial than their colleagues working for commercial outlets. Journalists' political leaning does not seem to influence their perceptions of partisan bias, but journalists do feel that their outlet is biased to accommodate its "imagined audience". For instance, those who perceive their audience as more right-wing than the general public, feel that their medium advantages right-wing parties too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when local journalism is under threat, regional newsrooms can play a crucial role in working with communities to confront shameful truths and profound failures. The regional city of Ballarat emerged as an "epicentre" of clergy sexual abuse through Australia's landmark Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013–2017). This article examines how the regional city's newspaper, The Courier, bore witness to these crimes and their impacts within its local community. A content and thematic analysis of coverage of child sexual abuse from 2010 to 2019 documents how The Courier's locally produced journalism revealed to its audience the extent of abuse, helping to acknowledge and face crimes that had occurred in Ballarat's local institutions. The interlinked themes of revelation, reckoning and recovery demonstrate how local journalism can work with its community to address traumatic events that occur within its geosocial space. Local media bore witness on multiple levels, as both the amplifier of stories told by survivors and the facilitator of community processes of reckoning and recovery. We refer to this special form of local journalism as "proximal" media witnessing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

News organizations and journalists around the world have seen an increase in threats and attacks against themselves and their work. In Latin America, this is heightened by the ongoing state of violence. To continue producing quality investigative journalism, professionals must find ways to deal with the situation. This study analyzes how journalists from small- and medium-sized outlets can perform their duties with greater security. Through 15 in-depth interviews with Latin American practitioners, this study aims to understand which safety measures are being adopted and their implications for the boundaries of journalism. Results illustrate that these professionals are assuming new roles by incorporating security measures into their daily routines. Consequently, these security procedures are merged with journalistic activity, invading other fields. Our interviewees highlighted that their news organizations are embracing collaboration and other sorts of collective actions such as advocacy to promote greater security. This study offers a new perspective on the boundaries of journalism that takes into consideration a set of tasks absorbed by journalists and news organizations that are often invisible and expands the literature on news safety in Latin America. We conclude with an agenda for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalists confront terror and war to report and document what is happening. Covering traumatic events is dangerous for the reporters on the scene and may leave them with distress responses. The aim of this study is to investigate the coping strategies journalists use to deal with danger and traumatic stress and to build resilience. Through in-depth interviews with journalists covering crisis and violent events, the article looks at the physical, practical and trauma aspects of crisis journalism, and contributes to the complex understanding of risk and resilience for journalists. The study is based on interviews with nine reporters from five countries. Between them, they have covered several conflicts, terror attacks and wars. The study shows that they use a variety of strategies. Memories from unpredictable assignments stick with them. However, eight would cover traumatic events again, and the majority have experienced post-traumatic growth. My results show that informal peer support is crucial, but media organizations have a long way to go to ensure adequate support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mexico and Honduras, journalists face violence from state and non-state actors and almost complete impunity. Given a lack of effective state protection, some resort to alternative means of (self-)protection and justice-seeking. Via analysis of 67 interviews with journalists and protection actors, this article shows how many reporters use journalistic and profession-specific forms of self-protection and analyses their benefits and challenges. It adopts a novel analytical approach building on insights from diverse areas of research on people's responses to violence and insecurity. Scholarship on civilian responses to armed conflict offers a relevant framework for understanding self-protection measures. Although measures such as "avoidance" and "accommodation" of violent actors are a means of survival and short-term physical protection, they bring significant new risks. Above all, they can undermine trust from the public and within the profession and the usefulness of journalism for society. Drawing on literature on the protection of human rights defenders, the analytical framework is extended to show how some journalists also engage in broader self-protection strategies around transforming their work. These strategies combine protection and professionalisation and aim to boost journalists' internal and external support and credibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While loyalty has become increasingly relevant for journalism, it has rarely been examined as a single phenomenon and even less from an audience perspective. The empirical knowledge surrounding loyalty has centred on its role in trust, news choice, and the sustainability of the profession. Nonetheless, we still do not know how a relationship with journalism unfolds and becomes meaningful for news users. This research aims to advance an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of loyalty with journalism. To this end, we conducted 35 semi-structured in-depth interviews with regular news users (18–65 years old). By exploring the language, feelings, emotions, and stories that people use to describe their relationship with journalism, this article offers a holistic and comprehensive examination of what loyalty means as part of audiences' everyday news consumption. In doing so, we aim to expand journalism's vocabulary about loyalty, adding width and depth to our understanding of the potential benefits and implications that loyalty entails for the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article empirically identifies and conceptualises listener expectations of podcast hosts based on a general and open research question concerning which expectations podcast listeners have for podcast hosts. From an explorative empirical study of 20 online focus group interviews with Danish radio- and podcast listeners, the article concludes that the expectations of podcast hosts are grouped into three categories: knowledge, storytelling, and parasocial relationship. The three categories have underlying themes: some are distinct expectations for podcast hosts; others are of a more general character. Additionally, the study contributes to a better understanding of the inherent qualities of podcasts as a medium and provides useful knowledge for podcast producers about user preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalism innovation, according to service innovation theory, is about providing new journalistic services that create value for audiences, society, and the news organisation itself. This study explores how local news media responded to the Coronavirus crisis in terms of service innovation. Based on interviews with editors and top management representatives at two local newspaper groups in Norway (N = 20), we show how local newspapers developed new digital services in response to audiences' need for guidance, overview, and a sense of togetherness, and how the media operations generated revenues in the process. Theoretically, the study identifies two key innovation dynamics in local journalism during a crisis: A social-economic value creation dynamic which captures how local newspapers appropriate their business model to accommodate new service offerings and balance social and economic value creation considerations; and a service system-audience experience dynamic which captures how innovation in journalistic offerings are linked to concurrent innovations in journalistic production processes. This research enhances the understanding of journalism innovation as a value-creating phenomenon and the factors that stimulate such value creation during crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs positioning theory to examine the discursive power struggle and negotiation over the rights and duties of the news media in the United States and illustrates how journalists discursively construct their professional identity within a specific situational interaction. The examination of 480 editorials by 570 news organizations—which were published in response to President Trump's the news media "is the enemy of the people" accusation—reveals that news organizations around the country attempted to discursively re-position themselves and thus alter the local moral order defined by President Trump. Findings show that news organizations used three positioning practices (self-positioning, second-order or other positioning and third-order positioning) to not only reclaim professional, institutional and societal legitimacy respectively, but also undermine Trump's legitimacy as an attacker and change the anti-press narrative he promoted. In this process journalists dynamically construct their professional identity by altering their position within different storylines, which also created inconsistencies in their claims to their professional legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As digital technologies have made their way into news production, allowing news organizations to measure audience behaviors and engagement in real-time, click-based and editorial goals have become increasingly intertwined. Ongoing developments in algorithmic technologies allow editors to bring their audience into the newsroom using specialized tools such as Chartbeat or Google Analytics. This article examines how these technologies have affected the composition of the audience and their power to influence news-making processes inside two Chilean newsrooms. Drawing on several months of newsroom ethnography, we identify how the pursuit of "clickable news" impacts editorial processes and journalistic priorities by changing the datafied audience opinion power behind news production. Shifts in opinion power, loss of control, and increased platform dependency may contribute to a concentrated media landscape. Our findings show that opinion power has shifted to a datafied version of the audience, raising new questions about platform dependency and editorial autonomy in media organizations. These results carry significant implications for understanding the chase for traffic in current multiplatform newsrooms and how this phenomenon impacts news production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growth in immersive journalism, involving virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies and 360° videos, has increased debate on whether such technologies can significantly transform the journalistic field. Technological firms and their agents, the technologists, who produce these digital offerings can be seen as new entrants capable of imposing their own logics to the field, but no research has focused on their voices yet to assess this impact, even as they are key drivers of this trend. This study uses Bourdieu's field theory and in-depth interviews with 12 technologists from the world's most prominent firms producing such technologies to examine potential influences on the principles, work experiences and skillsets of journalists. Findings indicate increasing focus on innovation and user experience, new journalistic tasks involving the conception and capturing of content to create immersive experiences and environments, and the need to acquire skills tied to story visualization and game mechanics. Significant transformation of the field however may be hindered by high costs, time constraints, and seemingly low returns on investment, but there is strong belief that increasing familiarity with augmented reality on smartphones will present a tipping point for immersive journalism, enhancing audience expectations towards agency in news consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]