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The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted an important paradox: it has reminded us of the importance of the news media and the central place it occupies in the public space in times of crisis. At the s...

The dynamics of digital news production and distribution challenge the definitions of what is news and who is supposed to produce it. Actors producing relevant information for the debates in the public sphere multiply and the relationships they establish in online spaces such as social media, among them and with journalists and the public, shape what is considered to be news and journalism in any given moment. This article traces the positions in the field of journalism in the city of Brussels, putting professional journalists in the context of the broader community, in order to identify the diversity of actors active in the production of information. A controversy concerning multiculturalism in Brussels serves as a case study. Discourse analysis of the news about the topic and interviews with professional journalists were used to trace the diversity of actors involved in producing narratives about that specific event. Journalists in mainstream media defend a hegemonic position in the construction of the news narrative of the event by dismissing alternative voices to the trusted institutional ones and not recognising the role of community media.

This paper analyzes the strategies of the Canadian corporation Quebecor, a conglomerate regarded as the prototypical media company and a veteran in the process of gradual media convergence. This case study is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 1999 and 2005, and on a review of the corporation’s activities five years later, in 2010. Synergistically integrating cross–promoting media, strategic partnerships with other media, and structural innovation, Quebecor is the most strongly committed actor in multiplatform production in Quebec – and beyond in English Canada. It has also become an increasingly avid proponent of the concept of the multitasking journalist. The analysis proposed here illustrates not only the transformation of the work of Quebecor employees but also the strategies deployed by a conglomerate to control financial and business opportunities anticipated through media convergence., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This paper explores how the study of objects of journalism, retraced through the material traces left in metajournalistic discourses, might constitute a robust basis to investigate change and permanence in contemporary journalism. We delineate a research program focusing on materiality that requires foremost that objects should not be taken for granted and, therefore, that each object’s social history be minutely retraced. Stemming from two specific objects (the blog and the hyperlink), the paper argues that beyond their idiosyncrasies, both follow a similar rationale that could be extrapolated to other objects and lead to a materially focused social history of journalism in a digital age. The paper first clarifies how we approached the notion of “objects of journalism” and which objects we chose to study. Then, we show how different theoretical frameworks led us to adopt a similar research stance and a shared hypothetico-inductive path: determining how objects are parts of a series and analyzing metajour...

International audience; Data journalism has emerged as a trend worthy of attention in newsrooms the world over. Previous research has highlighted how elite media, journalism education institutions, and other interest groups take part in the emergence and evolution of data journalism. But has it equally gained momentum in smaller, less-scrutinized media markets? This paper looks at the ascent of data journalism in the French-speaking part of Belgium. It argues that journalism, and hence data journalism, can be understood as a socio-discursive practice: it is not only the production of (data-driven) journalistic artefacts that shapes the notion of (data) journalism, but also the discursive efforts of all the actors involved, in and out of the newsrooms. A set of qualitative inquiries allowed us to examine the phenomenon by first establishing a cartography of who and what counts as data journalism. It uncovers an overall reliance on a handful of passionate individuals, only partly backed up institutionally, and a limited amount of consensual references that could foster a shared interpretive community. A closer examination of the definitions reveal a sharp polyphony that is particularly polarized around the duality of the term itself, divided between a focus on data and a focus on journalism, and torn between the co-existing notions of “ordinary” and “thorough” data journalism. We also describe what is perceived as obstacles, which mostly pertain to broader traits that shape contemporary newsmaking; and explain why, if data journalism clearly exists as a matter of concern, it has not transformed in concrete undertakings.

O artigo analisa as interações entre jornalistas e públicos de redações on-line no Brasil e na França. Discute as novas modalidades de participação das audiências no jornalismo. Nesse sentido, busca-se entender as possíveis mudanças nessa relação, mas também o papel dos contextos nacionais na estruturação das práticas de jornalistas e públicos nos dois países. Esta pesquisa comparativa e qualitativa utilizou entrevistas em profundidade com dez jornalistas brasileiros e dez franceses a partir de um roteiro padrão. Os resultados revelaram similitudes na forma como os jornalistas enunciaram suas interações com os públicos dos dois países: as representações são geralmente estereotipadas e as audiências são apreendidas a partir de uma visão quantitativa. Essas constatações se juntam a outros estudos sobre o tema e que relativizam a capacidade de integração dos leitores nas redações on-line. Do ponto de vista dos estudos comparativos, elas permitem reforçar a nossa hipótese de uma identidade transnacional dos jornalista on-line, baseadas sobretudo na circulação de discursos estruturantes em relação a essas prática. This paper analyses the interactions between journalists and the public in Brazilian and French online newsrooms. It discusses the new modalities of audience participation in journalism. Thus, it aims to understand the possible changes in this relation. The role of national contexts on structuring the practices of journalism and the public is also considered. This comparative and qualitative research is focused on in-depth interviews with ten journalists from each country and used a common guide. The results reveal resemblances on how journalists enunciate their interactions with public from both countries: their representations are stereotyped and audiences are perceived through a quantitative bias. These findings reinforce other studies that minimize the ability of online newsrooms to integrate the public. From the viewpoint of comparative studies, our hypothesis of a transnational identity of online journalists is strengthened. This hypothesis is mainly based on the circulation of structured discourses related to this practice.