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This paper analyzes the information that was disseminated in the Netherlands and Spain—and other territories connected to the latter such as Portugal and Flanders under Habsburg rule—about the taking by the Dutch of the city of San Salvador de Bahia in Brazil, and his subsequent recovery by a Spanish-Portuguese expedition (1624–1625). Despite the different communicative structures, these national journalisms shared professional strategies to inform about the conflicts that occurred in the distant Brazilian lands. Given the difficulty of informing promptly and truthfully, the discourse of the Dutch and Spanish newspapers about their colonies alternates between the information explosion and silence, depending on the alternation between victories and defeats in American territory. News was as connected as were the empires that controlled vast territories in Europe and America, despite the ideological and religious differences of the era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional model of journalism in western societies, dominated by legacy media outlets such as newspapers and television, has undergone fundamental change in the twenty-first century. One consequence has been significant job losses within these newsrooms. As journalists negotiate new employment post-job loss in Australia, this paper asks, how has this impacted on their professional identity? Drawing on varying conceptualisations of professional identity as a set of values and as a set of work practices, this paper presents data from a survey of 225 journalists who had been laid off between 2012 and 2014 in Australia, to explore whether and how journalists' professional identity changed after redundancy. The results indicated that professional identity was likely to fade post-job loss, which indicates that identity may be more closely linked to a journalism work context. In addition, the paper found that the loss of institutional legitimacy may also be affecting the respondents' current journalism practice. Conversely, not all participants who noted their identity was intact still worked as journalists or in journalism. This research has implications for the changing media workforce, as it indicates that notions of journalistic professional identity are still contested and complicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The path between journalism and parliamentary media advising is well trodden. However, there has been little examination of the impact becoming a media adviser has on a reporter's conception of journalism values and practice. This paper reports on a selection of findings from broader inductive qualitative research into the under-explored career transition from journalism to parliamentary media advising and back. Semi-structured interviews with 21 journalists who had moved between the two roles revealed the shift to political public relations (PR) led several of the journalists to reassess their commitment to the fundamental journalism principle of the “public's right to know”. Once working as parliamentary media advisers, the transcripts showed a growing sense of caution around the release information by the former journalists, in response to the confidential nature of politics, and being on the receiving end of unethical journalism practice. Central to this change was an erosion of trust in particular reporters due to perceptions of unethical practice. Based on these findings this paper argues it is important for both journalists and political media advisers to reflect on the way in which their own actions might be perceived by the other, and consider whether their practices are helping to facilitate or restrict the free flow of information to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates journalistic social media use from the perspective of the media organization. Specifically, we examine how media professionals working within Norwegian news organizations perceive social media guidelines by focusing on three empirical areas-assessing perceptions of scope, form and content. Data are collected and analyzed by means of a mixed-method approach. First, we provide results from a large-scale survey of Norwegian editors and journalists. Second, the article details insights from 14 qualitative elite interviews with editors-in-chief, working in leading news organizations in the context studied. The study shows that while the use of social media presents new dilemmas for the organizations, the main goal is to allow journalists to utilize them rather than to restrict their use. While guidelines are mostly present, they appear as subordinate to other, more informal methods of control. The relaxed approach identified leads to experimenting when new technology is introduced, and seems sensible in a rapidly changing technological environment. At the same time, pressure increases on the individual journalists who have to find their way in a field of work that grows ever more complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the influence of news agency Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANP) on the coverage and diversity of political news in Dutch national newspapers. Using computational text analysis, we analyzed the influence on print newspapers across three years (1996, 2008, and 2013) and compared influence on print and online newspapers in 2013. Results indicate that the influence of ANP on print newspapers only increased slightly. Online newspapers, however, depend heavily on ANP and are highly similar as a result of such dependence. We draw conclusions relating to the gatekeeping role of news agencies in the digital age in general, and in the context of the Netherlands in particular. Additionally, we demonstrate that techniques from the field of information retrieval can be used to perform these analyses on a large scale. Our scripts and instructions are published open-source to stimulate the use of these techniques in communication studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of indigenous and ethnic minority news media tend to emphasise their political advocacy role, their role in providing a voice to communities overlooked by mainstream media and increasingly, the cultural forces at work in these media. By considering ethnic media in terms of how ethnic minority audiences understand what they do with these media, this study provides a different perspective. Focus groups held with Pacific audiences at several urban centres in New Zealand found participants routinely use the idea of journalism in evaluating Pacific media--and journalism for them was a term defined to a significant extent by wider societal expectations around journalism and not by their ethnic difference. Through examining the intersection of media practices with the ideals and expectations of journalism, this paper questions how far we should foreground the specifics of culture in interpreting people's media use and advocates a commitment to more empirical research to reorient the study of ethnic media away from a fixation on difference and towards people's media practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines journalism’s values and ethical principles by analysing how participation is becoming a part of the journalism culture in Finnish news media. The focus is on journalists’ perceptions of the roles and practices of professional journalists and the audience in journalism practice. Of special interest is how the modern ideals of journalism affect its reinvention. The conceptual framework relies on theorizing journalistic ideals and critical discourse analysis. The data consist of in-depth interviews with journalists conducted from 2010 to 2011 and 2013 to 2015 in Finnish media. The data are approached using analysis of the discourses as a method. The discourses of professional news production, citizen debate and interactive news “produsing” are analysed. In the first discourse, professional skill is valued highly and connected to the experience of pursuing journalism, which follows the modern ideal of “good” journalism. A demarcation is constructed between professionals and amateurs, and between journalism and “non-journalism”. In the second discourse, the participation of the audience is associated with discussion forums and is represented as a needed but problematic conversational recourse. Within the third discourse, journalism’s ideals are reinvented. Emerging news media is portrayed as semi-social media with changing ethical principles. News making is portrayed as a collaborative practice between the newsroom and a community of local reporters and volunteers. Discursive boundaries between “user comment” and “editorial material” are fading. The evolution of the discourses indicates a nascent re-articulation of journalism’s values, including the logic of control, in Finnish journalism practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The period between 1880 and 1900 was rich with discussions of the role of both journalists and journalism in Britain. Not only did the period witness the intensification and systematization of technologies associated with the gathering and dissemination of news but it was also a time when journalists were beginning to identify themselves collectively and professionally. The technological developments and corresponding professional reassessment provided the periodicals of the time with a rich source of debate, disagreement and delineation regarding the function of journalism. While considering contemporary discussions of the social and political purposes of journalism, we should be aware that definitional problems have beset the practice for well over a hundred years and across very different technological and cultural regimes. This paper explores a range of periodical discussion with the intention of highlighting key points in the debate from the late nineteenth century and asserts the continuing relevance of defining the roles of journalism in the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an analysis of news conventions used by 19th-century American newspapers, I show that the news of this time period took much the same form. Across geography, size of paper, and kind of paper (associational, commercial, partisan), newspapers shared the same conventions. I explain this uniformity in terms of James Carey's notion that the news expresses a form of public life. In this case, I argue that 19th-century news expressed a form of public life that was deeply imbued with values of association, affiliation, and partisanship. As newspapers expressed these values, they ritually reinforced a particular image of public life. I argue that this cultural approach to news conventions accounts for the available evidence in ways that may help the field move beyond functionalist explanations of news. In so doing, it opens new directions for understanding the relationship between news generally, and the public life in which it is situated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article seeks the roots of the journalistic concept of objectivity in various theoretical schools. It argues that the concept of objectivity in journalism originates in the positivistic tradition and, furthermore, that it is strongly related to tan earlier theoretical school within historiography. Journalism has made several attempts have been made by journalism to break free of the positivistic objectivity paradigm, none of them very successful, however. The paper discusses each of these attempts. Finally, using the concept of objectivity as a prism, the paper sketches out what might be termed a landscape of journalism theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent contributions to knowledge about early journalism developed in different parts of Europe-Italy, France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain ... -have made it possible to trace a fairly precise map for the historical origin of this phenomenon. However, the scope of work carried out with a view to developing frameworks of interpretation to explain the reasons for this appearance is not as far-reaching. This paper reviews the recurring theoretical models found to date in the specific bibliography and proposes a new framework of interpretation, capable of encompassing the complexity and pan-European nature of early journalism in history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although negative perceptions of the character of African Americans were at the center of the British press debate over the merits of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, it was the way that his character was portrayed that gave it potency and direction. Editors who opposed the Proclamation besmirched him in a way that enabled them to argue that they were not defending slavery but keeping their commentary within Britain's popular anti-slavery traditions. In contrast, those papers which supported the Proclamation believed he was a liberal statesman who shared the core moral values of the British. Because the debate occurred when newspapers were undergoing profound and innovative changes, this helped shape the character of the debate, increased its intensity, and provided a commentary on the evolving nature of British newspaper journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]