It is all too common to think of community journalism as being like all other types of journalism, just on a smaller scale. With the growth of the Internet and virtual community, this form of journalism cannot be distinguished solely by circulation size or geographic delineations.
Within the larger journalism research sphere, community journalism remains underrepresented, even though the majority of publications in the United States can be classified as community journals, and throughout the world, small publications, both in print and online are commanding respect. If community media outlets are defined as having a circulation of lower than 50,000, then there are 7,184 community daily or weekly newspapers in the U.S. compared to only 4 publications with circulations of more than 500,000. Worldwide, data cannot be as easily condensed into percentages, but it is reasonable to think the figures are similar. Yet, media research typically focuses on the work and attitudes of the elites, i.e. the larger and best-known publications.
Existing research on community journalism has identified key distinctions between community journalism and other types. First, community media focus on information connected to everyday life, and second, its media members tend to develop a closer, more intimate connection to the community they serve.
The idea of closeness began with early research into the idea of community itself. Community as a concept revolves around emotional connection and membership. The two necessary elements for community formation are for a group of people to have something in common, and something that differentiates them from other groups.
Community media build upon these concepts to give communities a voice. The audience for community news is often connected by an interest in, and emotional attachment to, a geographic area, which represents one form of community or a specific viewpoint, interest, or way of thinking which often represents virtual community. Both groups need journalists, who provide factual information on the community and enable and support strong community ties. Community journalists can also help build place attachment and create third places for community members to congregate and interact socially in.
Article
Richard Lance Keeble
“Literary journalism” is a highly contested term, its essential elements being a constant source of debate. A range of alternative concepts are promoted: the “New Journalism,” “literary non-fiction,” “creative non-fiction,” “narrative non-fiction,” “the literature of fact,” “lyrics in prose,” “gonzo journalism” and, more recently, “long-form journalism,” “slow journalism,” and “multi-platform immersive journalism.” At root, the addition of “literary” to “journalism” might be seen to be dignifying the latter and giving it a modicum of cultural class. Moreover, while the media exert substantial political, ideological, and cultural power in societies, journalism occupies a precarious position within literary culture and the academy. Journalism and literature are often seen as two separate spheres: the first one “low,” the other “high.” And this attitude is reflected among men and women of letters (who often look down on their journalism) and inside the academy (where the study of the journalism has long been marginalized). The seminal moment for the launching of literary journalism as a subject in higher education was the publication in 1973 of The New Journalism, edited by Tom Wolfe and E. W. Johnson. Bringing together the work of 22 literary journalists, Wolfe pronounced the birth of a distinctly new kind of “powerful” reportage in 1960s America that drew its main techniques from the realist novels of Fielding, Smollett, Balzac, Dickens, and Gogol. By the 1980s and 1990s, the study of literary journalism was growing (mainly in the United States and United Kingdom), with some courses opening at universities. In recent years, literary journalism studies have internationalized revealing their historic roots in many societies while another emphasis has been on the work of women writers. Immersive journalism, in which the reporter is embedded with a particular individual, group, community, military unit (or similar) has long been a feature of literary journalism. In recent years it has been redefined as “slow journalism”: the “slowness” allowing for extra attention to the aesthetic, writerly, and experimental aspects of reportage for the journalist and media consumer. And perhaps paradoxically in this age of Twitter and soundbite trivia, long-form/long-read formats (in print and online) have emerged alongside the slow journalism trend. The future for literary journalism is, then, full of challenges: some critics argue that one solution to the definitional wrangles would be to consider all journalism as worthy of critical attention as literature. Most analysis of literary journalism is keen to stress the quality of the techniques deployed, yet greater stress could be placed on the political economy of the media and a consideration of ideological bias. Indeed, while most of the study of literary journalism to date has focused on the corporate media, the future could see more studies of partisan, progressive, alternative media.
Article
Unni From
Lifestyle journalism is a significant and very substantial field of journalism. Unlike other fields of journalism, however, it has not been the focus of much scholarly debate. Providing audiences as it does with “news you can use,” it is often considered a supplement to breaking news, political news, and news on social and cultural conflicts. Lifestyle journalism has frequently been defined in opposition to the normative ideal of journalism and therefore in terms of what it is not. This means that it has often been defined from within other journalistic fields, or as a fusion of journalistic elements such as soft news, service journalism, consumer journalism, popular journalism, or even cultural journalism. Lifestyle journalism has also been an umbrella term for more specialized beats of journalism such as travel journalism, fashion journalism, or food journalism. But while lifestyle journalism is partly defined by the topics addressed, it is also characterized by specific genres or modes of addressing the audience (as consumers, for example). Common to a lot of characterizations is a strong connection with advertising and public relations, which means that lifestyle journalists often have been accused of running the errands of the market. For this reason the journalistic role and the self-perceptions of journalists in this field have been a special point of interest in the scholarly debate. In addition to being challenged from within journalism, the legitimacy is also challenged by the many new voices that participate in the field of lifestyle issues in a digital media landscape, a participation that increasingly blurs the boundaries between professionals and non-professionals.
The field of lifestyle journalism is, however, itself characterized by blurred boundaries, both between the various subfields and between soft and hard news. Genres traditionally used in hard news, for example, have been adapted to soft news, and topics such as health can in one context be presented as “soft news” (e.g., “how to improve your health”) but in others as “hard news” (e.g., “smoking causes economic expenses”). The relatively new practice of constructive journalism can serve as a case of how approaches associated with lifestyle and service journalism have migrated to more traditional hard news fields.
Article
Kristy Hess and Lisa Waller
There are more local news outlets operating around the world at any given moment than larger-scale metropolitan newsrooms, and yet it is the latter that have dominated journalism scholarship. As a specific area of inquiry, local journalism—often branded “community journalism” or “hyperlocal journalism”—is a relatively new but rapidly growing field of research in this period of digital disruption. Scholars argue that studying news at the local level can offer rich insights into the role and place of journalism more broadly and reveal much about why people engage with news. Local journalism has been highlighted for its distinct role in reinforcing notions of and building community and the importance of social and public connection among audiences. More recently, attention has shifted to business models sustaining local news given the turbulence facing traditional media and the rapid closure of long-serving local newspapers, especially in the United Kingdom. Scholars have also emphasized the importance of re-conceptualizing local news in a globalized and digital world, highlighting the continued relevance and importance of place to journalists and audiences. Sociology and political science have been the dominant lenses used to examine this sector; however, increasingly scholars are turning to cultural studies to understand the relationship between local news and audiences. Most recent research also indicates there is renewed optimism within the sector, especially among news providers who remain embedded and committed entirely to the local areas they serve.
Article
Oscar Westlund and Stephen Quinn
Journalism and news are so much a part of our lives that most societies take them for granted. To access the news, people have traditionally had to pay for newspapers or acquire television and radio receivers with accompanying licenses or cable subscriptions. To a large extent, accessing the news has been connected to specific physical domains, especially the home. The widespread diffusion of computers, the Web, and news sites that started in the mid-1990s has made news increasingly accessible, and over the past decade, mobile news has fueled this even more. Digital technologies have become an accepted part of our lives. Access to news and information is easier than ever, with an abundance of free news via connected and ubiquitous digital platforms. News is expensive to produce, however, creating concerns about future business models to support journalism. It means we cannot take journalism for granted. News media must produce content that is valuable to society.
Mobile devices and different forms of mobile media and communication have become integral parts of contemporary societies. The nexus of mobile media and reporting has become one of the most important developments for journalism. Research into mobile news production falls into two main strands. On the one hand, we find research taking an organizational approach, with studies of intra-organizational collaborations in developments of mobile services, what mobile platforms to use, business model considerations, and so forth. On the other hand, we encounter research focusing more specifically on news production among mobile journalists (so-called MoJos). For the working journalist, the mobile device has become the key tool for gathering information, images, and video, and for communicating with colleagues and sources.
Article
Rodrigo Zamith
Algorithms today influence, to some extent, nearly every aspect of journalism, from the initial stages of news production to the latter stages of news consumption. While they may be seen as technical objects with certain material characteristics, algorithms are also social constructions that carry multiple meanings. Algorithms are neither valueless nor do they exist in isolation; they are part of algorithmic assemblages that include myriad actors, actants, activities, and audiences. As such, they are imbued with logics that are only sometimes reflective of journalism’s.
Algorithms have played an active role in a broader quantitative turn within journalism that began in the 1970s but rapidly accelerated after the turn of the century. They are already used to produce hundreds of thousands of articles per year through automated journalism and are employed throughout the many stages of human-driven newswork. Additionally, algorithms enable audience analytics, which are used to quantify audiences into measures that are increasingly influencing news production through the abstractions they promote. Traditional theoretical models of newswork like gatekeeping are thus being challenged by the proliferation of algorithms.
A trend toward algorithmically enabled personalization is also leading to the development of responsive distribution and curated flows. This is resulting in a marked shift from journalism’s traditional focus on shared importance and toward highly individualized experiences, which has implications for the formation of publics and media effects. In particular, the proliferation of algorithms has been linked to the development of filter bubbles and evolution of algorithmic reality construction that can be gamed to spread misinformation and disinformation.
Scholars have also observed important challenges associated with the study of algorithms and in particular the opaque nature of key algorithms that govern a range of news-related processes. The combination of a lack of transparency with the complexity and adaptability of algorithmic mechanisms and systems makes it difficult to promote algorithmic accountability and to evaluate them vis-à-vis ethical models. There is, currently, no widely accepted code of ethics for the use of algorithms in journalism.
Finally, while the body of literature at the intersection of algorithms and journalism has grown rapidly in recent years, it is still in its infancy. As such, there are still ample opportunities for typologizing algorithmic phenomena, tracing the lineage of algorithmic processes and the roles of digital intermediaries within systems, and empirically evaluating the prevalence of particular kinds of algorithms in journalistic spaces and the effects they exert on newswork.
Article
Rodrigo Zamith and Oscar Westlund
News is the result of news production, a set of epistemic processes for developing knowledge about current events or issues that draw upon a range of newsgathering techniques and formatting choices with the objective of yielding a publishable and distributable product designed to inform others. That process, however, has changed considerably over time and in parallel to broader economic, political, professional, social, and technological changes. For example, during the past two decades alone, there has been greater audience fragmentation and an emphasis on audience measurement, new forms of strategic exploitation of information channels and digital surveillance of journalists, greater aggregation of news and more avenues for professional convergence, a media environment awash in user-generated content and challenges to traditional outlets’ epistemic authority, and more opportunities for interactivity and miniaturized mobilities. In concert, these and other forces have transformed news production processes that have become increasingly digital—from who the actors are to the actants that are available to them, the activities they may engage in, and the audiences they can interact with.
Such impacts have required scholars to revisit different theories that help explain how news is produced and with what consequences. Whereas the field of journalism studies draws on a rich history of multidisciplinary theorizing, epistemologies of journalism have received increased attention in recent years. There is a close link between news production and epistemology because the production of news inherently involves developing news information into one form of knowledge. As such, an epistemological lens allows scholars to examine the production, articulation, justification, and use of knowledge within the social context of digital journalism. An analytic matrix of 10 dimensions—the epistemologies of journalism matrix—helps scholars examine different forms of journalism through an epistemological lens. The matrix focuses on identifying the key (a) social actors, (b) technological actants, and (c) audiences within a space of journalism; examining their articulation or justification of (d) knowledge claims and their distinct (e) practices, norms, routines, and roles; differentiating between the (f) forms of knowledge they typically convey; and evaluating the similarities and dissimilarities in their typical (g) narrative structure, (h) temporality, (i) authorial stance, and (j) status of text.
By applying that matrix to four emerging forms of journalism (participatory journalism, live blogging, data journalism, and automated journalism), it can be seen that digital journalism and news production are becoming even more heterogeneous in terms of their implicated entities, cultures and methods, and positionality in relation to matters of knowledge and authority. First, contemporary news production is deeply influenced by myriad technological actants, which are reshaping how knowledge about current events is being created, evaluated, and disseminated. Second, professional journalists are losing epistemic authority over the news as key activities are delegated to algorithms created by non-journalists and to citizens who have become more present in news production. Third, the outputs of news production are becoming more diverse both in form and in content, further challenging long-standing norms about what is and is not “journalism.” In short, history has shown that news production will continue to evolve, and an epistemological lens affords scholars a useful and adaptable approach for understanding the implications of those changes to the production of knowledge about news.
Article
Allison J. Steinke and Valerie Belair-Gagnon
In the early 2000s, along with the emergence of social media in journalism, mobile chat applications began to gain significant footing in journalistic work. Interdisciplinary research, particularly in journalism studies, has started to look at apps in journalistic work from producer and user perspectives. Still in its infancy, scholarly research on apps and journalistic work reflects larger trends explored in digital journalism studies, while expanding the understanding of mobile news.
Article
Serena Miller
The emergence of citizen journalism has prompted the journalism field and scholars to readdress what constitutes journalism and who is a journalist. Citizen journalists have disrupted news-media ecosystems by challenging the veracity and representativeness of information flowing from mainstream news-media newsrooms. However, the controversy related to the desired level of citizen involvement in the news process is a historical debate that began before the citizen-journalism phenomenon. As early as the 1920s, journalist and political commentator Walter Lippman and American philosopher John Dewey debated the role of journalism in democracy, including the extent that the public should participate in the news-gathering and production processes.
This questioning of citizen involvement in news reemerged as an issue with the citizen journalism phenomenon around the late 1990s. People with no news-media organizational ties have taken advantage of the convenience and low cost of social computing technologies by publishing their own stories and content. These people are referred to as citizen journalists. Scholars have assessed the quality and credibility of citizen-journalism content, finding that citizen journalists have performed well on several standards of traditional news-content quality. Levels of quality differ dependent upon citizen journalists’ goals and motivations, such as serving the public interest, increasing self-status, or expressing their creative selves.
As it is an emerging area of study, unarticulated theoretical boundaries of citizen journalism exist. Citizen-journalism publications emphasize community over conflict, advocacy over objectivity, and interpretation over fact-based reporting. In general, citizen journalists have historically acted when existing news-media journalists were not fully meeting their community’s informational needs. Scholars, however, vary in how they label citizen journalists and how they conceptually and empirically define citizen journalism. For example, researchers have shifted their definitional focus on citizen journalists from one of active agents of democratic change to people who create a piece of news content. The mapping of the citizen-journalism literature revealed four types of citizen journalists based on their levels of editorial control and contribution type: (1) participatory, (2) para, (3) news-media watchdog, and (4) community. Taken together, these concepts describe the breadth of citizen-journalist types. For those of us interested in journalism studies, a more targeted approach in the field of citizen journalism can help us build community around scholarship, understand citizen journalists’ contributions to society and practice, and create a more a stable foundation of knowledge concerning people who create and comment on news content.
Article
Tanja Aitamurto
Advances in digital technologies and participatory culture have enabled the efficient use of crowdsourcing in a broad range of contexts, including journalism. Journalism is increasingly deploying crowdsourcing as a knowledge-search method and a means of engaging readers. Through crowdsourcing, journalists can tap into the collective intelligence of large online crowds. The knowledge-search mechanism is based on access to the information held by the crowd.
Using crowdsourcing, journalists can find otherwise inaccessible information that contributes to their investigations. In several countries, crowdsourced investigations have uncovered important news, including lawbreaking and corruption. Crowdsourcing can also unveil a broader range of perspectives about a story topic, leading to more inclusive and objective journalism. As a result, crowdsourcing can support the journalistic norms of accurate, objective, and transparent reporting. Moreover, it engages participants and fosters a stronger relationship between readers and journalists. Finally, in its use of crowdsourcing journalism can enact more efficiently in its monitorial role in society.
At the same time, however, crowdsourcing may compromise the journalistic goals of accuracy and objectivity. A crowd is a self-selected group, so its input reflects a participant bias. If this fact is overlooked, crowdsourcing can lead to biased reporting. Moreover, a direct connection with the crowd can increase pressure on journalists to conform to the crowd’s wishes instead of pursuing journalistic norms and news values. This pressure can be especially strong in crowdfunding, a subtype of crowdsourcing.
Article
Steen Steensen
Feature journalism has developed from being a marginal and subordinate supplement to (hard) news in newspapers to becoming a significant part of journalism on all platforms. It emerged as a key force driving the popularization and tabloidization of the press.
Feature journalism can be defined as a family of genres that share a common exigence, understood as a publicly recognized need to be entertained and connected with other people on a mainly emotional level by accounts of personal experiences that are related to contemporary events of perceived public interest. This exigence is articulated through three characteristics that have dominated feature journalism from the very beginning: It is intimate, in the sense that it portrays people and milieus in close detail and that it allows the journalist to be subjective and therefore intimate with his or her audience; it is literary in the sense that it is closely connected with the art of writing, narrativity, storytelling, and worlds of fiction; and it is adventurous, in the sense that it takes the audiences on journeys to meet people and places that are interesting.
Traditional and well-established genres of feature journalism include the human-interest story, feature reportage, and the profile, which all promote subjectivity and emotions as key ingredients in feature journalism in contrast to the norm of objectivity found in professional news journalism. Feature journalism therefore establishes a conflict of norms that has existed throughout the history of journalism.
Feature journalism has become an increasingly popular part of digital news outlets. Online newspapers have experimented with digital formats for feature journalism since the late 1990s, first with technology-driven multimedia feature journalism and later with story-driven long-form feature journalism. Since 2010, podcasts and online templates for long-form journalism have increased the popularity of digital feature journalism.
Article
Paolo Mancini
In the early days of media studies researchers essentially devoted their attention to the effects of the media message. This has led to a major focus on the choices of single individuals while the analysis of more complex entities and phenomena has often been given secondary importance. This has created a delay in dealing with the aggregate level of system that had already been at the core of sister scientific fields such as political science. From these fields, communication studies has derived many possible directions for a systems approach, in particular a focus on the complex framework of interactions with other systems and their reciprocal influences. Comparative research in particular has gained from the adoption of a systems approach. Nevertheless criticism has not been lacking and has pointed out some major weakness in the systems approach: the difficulty in setting the borders of a system and the risk of underestimating the processes of globalization that makes the identification of media systems with the nation state difficult.
Article
Fay Anderson
The 20th century was defined by violent conflict: war, genocide, and military occupation. World War I left approximately 10 million dead and World War II had a death toll estimated at 55 million. It has been conservatively calculated that the total number of dead killed in wars during the century was 108 million, as the casualties shifted from armed combatants to victims of mass extermination in civil wars and wars of colonization. Civilian collateral damage and the targeting of civilians by ethnicity and religion became tragically common.
Journalists have witnessed and chronicled the seismic military, social, cultural, and political transformations, as well as providing a vital democratic function. Paralleling this age of devastation was the ascendant power of legacy media and its golden age in the West. The combination of technological advancement, the professionalization of the industry, greater literacy and expanded newspaper readerships, and mass culture brought the press to the frontline in unprecedented numbers and in a new and intimate relationship. Journalists functioned and continue to operate as witnesses, communicators, recorders, and interpreters, on both the battlefield and the home front, as well as negotiating the competing demands of their media organizations, the public, political, and military elites, and their professional lives.
This century had barely dawned when armies and a largely jingoistic press were marshalled in Afghanistan and Iraq after the attacks in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. The nature of warfare had evolved—from limited wars with clearly identified armies on demarcated fronts to non-conventional wars and wars of insurgency—and, with it, changes in the relations between the state, military, and media. The conflicts in this millennium provoked both long-standing and new debates surrounding the role of the press and how it actively mediates conflict, censorship, and patriotism in a hostile media environment.
Journalism also experienced profound change technologically and industrially. With the fragmentation of the media business model and editorial gatekeeping, and liberated by new media, the legacy media’s relationship with conflict has changed. New voices have gained prominence. Non-Western journalists have been accorded greater recognition when reporting invasion and conflict from a local perspective. Civilians also became both an important conduit and problematic source of news, there has been an upsurge of government and military propaganda, and terrorists have become chilling media producers. For other state media organizations in the East, their global footprint has expanded rather than diminished. Nevertheless, the debates about the image and role of journalism during armed conflict; censorship; media power, technology, and mediatization; and the physical and psychological dangers experienced by journalists when witnessing and reporting conflict, prevail.
Article
Henrik Örnebring
What skills do journalists need? Why do they need them? What do we even mean by “skill” in the first place? In journalism research, the issue of skill has mainly been studied as an applied issue closely linked to journalism education. The main concern has been whether journalism education equips students with the skills they need to succeed in the job market, as well as with the skills they need to fulfill journalism’s democratic function. There is a long-standing conflict between these two “skill goals” of journalism education, where vocational or practical skills are often viewed as (at least potentially) in opposition to academic or theoretical skills. Journalism students need vocational skills in order to satisfy employer needs, and academic skills in order to satisfy wider societal needs.
Another key research concern in this area has been the issue of de-skilling: the idea that journalistic work gradually becomes less and less skilled as employers mainly demand quicker outputs across different media platforms, rather than the production of quality content. Another element of the deskilling idea is that experienced (older) journalists are phased out and/or replaced with less experienced (younger) and therefore cheaper journalists who do not necessarily possess specific or very in-depth training in journalism. This process is mainly linked to the ongoing commercialization and digitalization of journalism. Empirically, however, many research results point instead either to a general upskilling of journalism (a higher and higher share of the workforce have a university degree, for example) or to the fact that deskilling may occur in parts of the occupation, whereas other parts may experience upskilling.
All of this research has in common that skill is rarely defined and that analyses of skill rarely reference the wider sociological and psychological literature on skill, expertise, and competence. A few scholars have analyzed skill among journalists at a higher level of abstraction, attempting to define what the core expertise or skill of journalism actually is. This research direction is key to the future development of research on journalism and skill.
Article
Michael Karlsson and Kristoffer Holt
In the early 21st century, almost everyone takes journalism on the web for granted. However, it was not many years ago that journalism moved online and a distinct form of journalism began to develop. Ranging from online doubles of the paper editions to publications exclusively produced for the web, the evolvement of web journalism has entailed both dramatic and not-so-dramatic changes in the way that journalistic products are produced, disseminated, and received. Online journalism has usually been demarcated from traditional journalism by four traits: interactivity, immediacy, hypertextuality, and multimodality. These characteristics are generally identified by scholars as points where journalism on the web brings added value in comparison to the old print newspapers. Interactivity involves various aspects of user activity and participation in the processes of consuming, contributing to, and disseminating news afforded by the web. Immediacy refers to the nature and consequences of the faster pace of publication in web news. Hypertextuality has to do with the possibilities of linking journalistic texts to other texts, which makes the text more transparent and open. Multimodality denotes the telling of news with the use of many different modes at the same time. When studying research about these aspects of web journalism, three general observations can be made. First, researchers have approached these characteristics unevenly in terms of scope and interest. The interactive aspects of web journalism are by far the most investigated. Second, the four characteristics have been studied through the lenses of different theoretical frameworks. Third, empirical research shows that change in journalism is slow and not always as radical as many predicted when journalism on the web was in its infancy.
Article
Bruce Mutsvairo
With international awards celebrating outstanding work, courses appearing in universities, regular sections dedicated to it in major publications, and financial packages awarded to help journalists develop interactive digital storytelling skills, “data journalism” has, over the last decade, gained worldwide recognition. Questions still open for exploration include how sustainable is it and how is it manifesting in different parts of the world, with different government policies about making data available. Even so, assumptions that data journalism is a “new” phenomenon have been challenged as researchers continue to dig deeper into its past.
Very few will doubt the opportunities and innovations it presents especially insofar as rethinking professional practice and retooling investigative techniques are concerned. But data journalism also presents empirical, ethical and professional challenges especially in regions of the world, where it either hasn’t taken off or it’s struggling to gain ground. While access to groundbreaking statistics and ability to adopt storytelling techniques such as computer graphics and visualizations could trigger others to seek sensational success, data journalism’s first priority is to inform adequately and accurately. Failure to do so leaves journalism, already facing intensified international scrutiny as a result of numerous challenges ranging from lack of public trust to “problems associated with normative values and democracy; the political economy of the news media; the relevance of audiences and public trust; definitions of journalism itself; and the salience of old and new forms of professional ideology,” vulnerable.
Article
The association between audience fragmentation and journalism is an intricate one. On the one hand, the word “audience” refers to an assembly of a group of consumers, such as book or magazine readers, moviegoers, radio or podcast listeners, television viewers, and website visitors, and they are primarily distinguished by the particular media product, genre, or outlet that they choose to consume. Webster stated in 2016 that oftentimes the purpose and consequence of audience research are financial—i.e., book publishers tend to break down their market by readers of different genres, which allows them to better tailor their content and promotions to relevant audiences in order to maximize book sales—and thus the goal of audience research in such contexts lies in finding the balance between capturing the largest number of media users who share similar consumption patterns and the narrowest content clusters—i.e., those separated by topic or genres.
On the other hand, whereas the purpose of audience conceptualization fundamentally revolves around fragmentation, the motivation for journalism in democratic societies is arguably the opposite. That is, if one were to believe, as Kovach and Rosenstiel posited in 2007, that the purpose of journalism is to inform and educate the people so they can self-govern and make better civil decisions in democratic societies, then it follows that the primary objective of journalism lies in serving as many citizens with the same information as possible. In short, the purpose of audience fragmentation and journalism is—in many ways—ontologically contradictory, with the former being more pluralistic in nature.
The topic of audience fragmentation is approached primarily from a commercial perspective, and in the context of the US market. It should be acknowledged, however, that this topic can and has been approached differently, via critical studies and across other markets. The end of this article offers a cursory comparative analysis between the USA and other Western countries to help contextualize findings from the USA in a global context. For those with deeper interest in such other inquiries, the recommended readings provided at the end of this article may offer a good starting point.
It should be noted that one of the biggest obstacles in the study of audience fragmentation, at least in the USA, lies in the fact that large-scale media reports of such data (e.g., those published by the Pew Research Center) often compare apples and oranges (e.g., either using survey questions with different operationalizations as the basis for comparison or reporting on different facets of audience fragmentation in its longitudinal studies, as this article will explain). To this end, this article is a first step in offering a baseline cross-sectional overview of how American audiences are consuming the news in 2018 via analysis of select Pew data files with comparable sampling method and survey instruments.
Article
Helle Sjøvaag
Journalism’s “social contract” refers to journalism’s role in democracy, primarily its obligations to inform the public and scrutinize government. The notion of a contract, however, entails the exchange of rights and obligations for mutual benefit. In this exchange, journalism enjoys the rights to free expression and publication, and it is obliged to cover the world fairly and accurately, providing citizens with the information they need to perform their roles as citizens. The notion of a social contract of the press is primarily rooted in liberal philosophy, though there is also a moral side to the contract that can be traced to republican theories of democracy. The question of reciprocity is central to the research on journalism’s social contract, primarily on the relationship between journalists and audiences, an area of research that is gaining traction as networked public spheres grow in importance as new venues of audience participation. Although the notion of a social contract is most visible in discussions of journalism ethics and professional practice, democratic media models also assume that journalism’s social contract constitutes an important conduit of democratic processes. As such, journalism’s social contract largely describes normative dimensions of journalism’s role in society, primarily embedded in notions related to the quality of information and an informed citizenry.
Article
Stephen J. A. Ward
Journalism objectivity or news objectivity had its origins in Western media cultures, especially in the United States, in the early 20th century. The principle, however, has found its way into codes of ethics and journalism education in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
In 2018, objectivity is a controversial norm. Within the field of journalism ethics, the issue is whether objectivity as traditionally understood—a neutral reporting of “just the facts”—remains a valid ideal. In society, the debate swirls around the future of democratic public spheres and the need for reliable news sources. Misinformation and partisan voices threaten to swamp public channels of information. How can citizens distinguish truth from falsity in journalism? Objective from subjective reports? Informed analysis from biased opinion?
The prehistory of objectivity is, in large part, the history of objectivity, truth, and fact in the culture. This is because journalists defined their notion of objectivity by adapting notions from philosophy, science, and the ambient culture.
The central notion of news objectivity is that reporters should be neutral stenographers of fact, eliminating their opinions and interpretations from their reports. By the middle of the 1900s onward, this idea of objectivity as just the facts was subjected to a withering critique by journalists who sought a more engaged journalism and academics who rejected the idea of neutral facts. Also, the early 21st-century digital revolution created online communication that favored an interpretive journalism skeptical of neutrality and objectivity.
The study and advancement of truth and objectivity in journalism is thus left in a difficult position. Should journalists go back to a 19th-century libertarian view of truth and democracy as requiring only a free clash of opinion? Should they revive or redefine news objectivity? Or should they rethink journalism ethics from the ground up, leaving news objectivity behind?
Article
Melanie Magin and Peter Maurer
Beat reporting refers to thematic specialization and routines (places to go, people to see) in journalism. The term reflects the distinction between general assignment reporters and specialized (beat) reporters covering a specific area (beat) as well as the subject-matter or geographic divisions between areas of reporting by which media organizations seek to structure the social environment they cover. Beat reporting marks the beginning of modern journalism. It was invented at the end of the 19th century in the United States with the aim to increase the efficiency of journalistic work. Thus it relates to the professionalization and rationalization of newspaper journalism and the transformation of newspapers into a mass product. In everyday work, beat reporting has undeniable advantages. It saves resources since beat reporters are very experienced on their beat and know well where and how to get exactly the information they need. Due to their long-term relationship of trust with relevant sources, beat reporters obtain exclusive, trustworthy, and newsworthy information. Along with this specialization come, however, several challenges; for example, the diversity of views represented in a beat might be limited, which can also affect the diversity of news coverage. At the extreme, this can even lead to pack journalism as a form of groupthink. Concerning the reporter–source relationship, there are three risks of losing professional distance: (a) If beat reporters become too loyal toward their sources, they can be instrumentalized; (b) being too adversarial toward their sources might entail a loss of trust and an increasing cynicism of the audience; (c) if beat reporters start feeling like advocates of their own interests, they might behave as activists rather than detached observers. Most recently, online journalism has changed the understanding of beat journalism (e.g., data journalism, local online beat) compared to the traditional understanding. Research on beat journalism has so far focused on stable, high-income democracies and on the political beat as the most fundamental and prominent beat.
