Pub Date : 2023-07-05DOI: 10.1080/1461670x.2023.2232473
Corlia Meyer, François B. Van Schalkwyk
{"title":"Framing Covid-19 in the South African News Media: An Analysis of 22 Months of Reporting","authors":"Corlia Meyer, François B. Van Schalkwyk","doi":"10.1080/1461670x.2023.2232473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670x.2023.2232473","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17541,"journal":{"name":"Journalism Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42731451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2023.2196586
Nina Springer, Gunnar Nygren, Dariya Orlova, Daria Taradai, Andreas Widholm
ABSTRACT Journalists form the middle links of global information chains, playing a decisive role in detecting and dismantling or amplifying problematic information. Information sourcing, verification, and transparency are important tools for journalists when they transmit their sense-making of events, i.e., the journalistic truth, to the audiences. This mixed-methods study of the disinformation-prone conflict between Russia and Ukraine investigates how journalists at different positions on the information chain—i.e., on the ground (Ukraine) and at a distance (Sweden)—source, verify, and narrate their journalistic truth to audiences. We found that, even in high-pressure situations created by hot conflicts, sourcing and verification remain mostly individualized practices that are shaped by internalized unwritten, professional rules of an oral newsroom culture. Verification protocols or specialized tools are largely absent. Sources were sometimes hard to detect in the journalistic content; claims about their verification status even harder. There was a fear that being overtly transparent about sources would jeopardize journalists’ authority. Especially problematic are the precarious working and living conditions for journalists on the ground. These conditions make them vulnerable sources for journalists abroad.
{"title":"Sourcing Dis/Information: How Swedish and Ukrainian Journalists Source, Verify, and Mediate Journalistic Truth During the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict","authors":"Nina Springer, Gunnar Nygren, Dariya Orlova, Daria Taradai, Andreas Widholm","doi":"10.1080/1461670X.2023.2196586","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2023.2196586","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Journalists form the middle links of global information chains, playing a decisive role in detecting and dismantling or amplifying problematic information. Information sourcing, verification, and transparency are important tools for journalists when they transmit their sense-making of events, i.e., the journalistic truth, to the audiences. This mixed-methods study of the disinformation-prone conflict between Russia and Ukraine investigates how journalists at different positions on the information chain—i.e., on the ground (Ukraine) and at a distance (Sweden)—source, verify, and narrate their journalistic truth to audiences. We found that, even in high-pressure situations created by hot conflicts, sourcing and verification remain mostly individualized practices that are shaped by internalized unwritten, professional rules of an oral newsroom culture. Verification protocols or specialized tools are largely absent. Sources were sometimes hard to detect in the journalistic content; claims about their verification status even harder. There was a fear that being overtly transparent about sources would jeopardize journalists’ authority. Especially problematic are the precarious working and living conditions for journalists on the ground. These conditions make them vulnerable sources for journalists abroad.","PeriodicalId":17541,"journal":{"name":"Journalism Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":"1111 - 1130"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48216776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-03DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2023.2230308
Francis L. F. Lee, Gary Tang, C. Chan
ABSTRACT In authoritarian or semi-authoritarian countries where the news media and the society are under tight political control, media self-censorship cannot be understood in isolation from society-wide self-censorship. Based on this premise, this article examines the problematic of media self-censorship by focusing on journalist-source interaction and the media-and-civil-society nexus. The empirical study focuses on Hong Kong after the establishment of the National Security Law in 2020, which ushered in an era of legalization of political and press control. Drawing on 47 in-depth interviews with journalists, this article illustrates how the political environment led to the disappearance of news sources and how media and societal self-censorship were intertwined, creating the friction and frustration that hampered the publication and circulation of critical information and viewpoints. The analysis also noted the unevenness of societal self-censorship and its implications, as well as journalistic responses to the situation. General theoretical implications are discussed.
{"title":"Media Self-Censorship in a Self-Censoring Society: Transformation of Journalist-Source Relationships in Hong Kong","authors":"Francis L. F. Lee, Gary Tang, C. Chan","doi":"10.1080/1461670X.2023.2230308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2023.2230308","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In authoritarian or semi-authoritarian countries where the news media and the society are under tight political control, media self-censorship cannot be understood in isolation from society-wide self-censorship. Based on this premise, this article examines the problematic of media self-censorship by focusing on journalist-source interaction and the media-and-civil-society nexus. The empirical study focuses on Hong Kong after the establishment of the National Security Law in 2020, which ushered in an era of legalization of political and press control. Drawing on 47 in-depth interviews with journalists, this article illustrates how the political environment led to the disappearance of news sources and how media and societal self-censorship were intertwined, creating the friction and frustration that hampered the publication and circulation of critical information and viewpoints. The analysis also noted the unevenness of societal self-censorship and its implications, as well as journalistic responses to the situation. General theoretical implications are discussed.","PeriodicalId":17541,"journal":{"name":"Journalism Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":"1539 - 1556"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44151811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-30DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2023.2230316
L. Lincoln
ABSTRACT 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.
{"title":"50 Years of NPR: Collective Memory, Anniversary Journalism & Public Media","authors":"L. Lincoln","doi":"10.1080/1461670X.2023.2230316","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2023.2230316","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT 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.","PeriodicalId":17541,"journal":{"name":"Journalism Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":"1575 - 1593"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44370577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-30DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2023.2230320
Jonathan Stubbs
ABSTRACT The relationship between journalism and the film industry has been widely discussed, but the process of adapting journalism for the screen has not previously been analysed in detail. This article traces the intensification of Hollywood films adapted from longform journalism in US newspapers and magazines between 2010 and 2019 and examines how journalism has come to be traded and processed as a form of intellectual property. The corporatisation of journalism adaptation is investigated through the consideration of two companies which specialise in adapting journalism for film and TV. The article proceeds to analyse two films in detail: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), adapted from Tom Junod’s article “Can You Say … Hero?” and Hustlers (2019), adapted from “The Hustlers at Scores” by Jessica Pressler. The journalists whose work was adapted participated in promotional activities for both films and were represented on-screen, in fictionalised form. As such, this article also considers how journalists may function as authorial presences in the adaptation of their work. Finally, the article considers how Neighbourhood and Hustlers negotiate the relationship between fiction and nonfiction, seeking territory between the truth status and authority asserted in journalism and the dramatic invention of film.
{"title":"Ripped from the Headlines: Contemporary Practices in the Adaptation of Journalism as Screen Fiction","authors":"Jonathan Stubbs","doi":"10.1080/1461670X.2023.2230320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2023.2230320","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The relationship between journalism and the film industry has been widely discussed, but the process of adapting journalism for the screen has not previously been analysed in detail. This article traces the intensification of Hollywood films adapted from longform journalism in US newspapers and magazines between 2010 and 2019 and examines how journalism has come to be traded and processed as a form of intellectual property. The corporatisation of journalism adaptation is investigated through the consideration of two companies which specialise in adapting journalism for film and TV. The article proceeds to analyse two films in detail: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), adapted from Tom Junod’s article “Can You Say … Hero?” and Hustlers (2019), adapted from “The Hustlers at Scores” by Jessica Pressler. The journalists whose work was adapted participated in promotional activities for both films and were represented on-screen, in fictionalised form. As such, this article also considers how journalists may function as authorial presences in the adaptation of their work. Finally, the article considers how Neighbourhood and Hustlers negotiate the relationship between fiction and nonfiction, seeking territory between the truth status and authority asserted in journalism and the dramatic invention of film.","PeriodicalId":17541,"journal":{"name":"Journalism Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":"1594 - 1610"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45149545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-22DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2023.2227287
Gergő Háló, Marcela Campos Rueda, M. Goyanes
ABSTRACT Due to significant transformations in citizens’ news consumption habits and the arrival of on-demand multi-platform services, today’s public service media (PSM) face substantial challenges to endure their core public principles. Moreover, PSMs’ need and legitimacy are being questioned from both a liberal and a populist standpoint, opening up discussions about its sustainability. However, little academic attention has been paid to citizens’ paying intent in the context of PSM. To mend this gap in the literature, this study examines expenditure on news and entertainment services and Spain’s public television (RTVE) service quality as two potential direct predictors of paying intent for public service media, as well as the moderating role of citizens’ age. Findings indicate that higher expenditure on news and entertainment services is associated with lower paying intent for public service media, while higher perceptions of RTVE service quality positively influence paying intent. Finally, challenging prior literature, our findings revealed that the younger generations are the most likely to economically support PSM at all levels of RTVE service quality. This study emphasizes the need for PSMs to reinforce their quality offer and uniqueness and theorizes about different ways to achieve this goal in today’s multi-platform environment.
{"title":"Consumers’ Paying Intent for Public Service Media in Spain: The Effect of RTVE Service Quality, Citizens’ Expenditure, and the Moderating Role of Age","authors":"Gergő Háló, Marcela Campos Rueda, M. Goyanes","doi":"10.1080/1461670X.2023.2227287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2023.2227287","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Due to significant transformations in citizens’ news consumption habits and the arrival of on-demand multi-platform services, today’s public service media (PSM) face substantial challenges to endure their core public principles. Moreover, PSMs’ need and legitimacy are being questioned from both a liberal and a populist standpoint, opening up discussions about its sustainability. However, little academic attention has been paid to citizens’ paying intent in the context of PSM. To mend this gap in the literature, this study examines expenditure on news and entertainment services and Spain’s public television (RTVE) service quality as two potential direct predictors of paying intent for public service media, as well as the moderating role of citizens’ age. Findings indicate that higher expenditure on news and entertainment services is associated with lower paying intent for public service media, while higher perceptions of RTVE service quality positively influence paying intent. Finally, challenging prior literature, our findings revealed that the younger generations are the most likely to economically support PSM at all levels of RTVE service quality. This study emphasizes the need for PSMs to reinforce their quality offer and uniqueness and theorizes about different ways to achieve this goal in today’s multi-platform environment.","PeriodicalId":17541,"journal":{"name":"Journalism Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":"1476 - 1495"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49421299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-21DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2023.2227283
Lynge Asbjørn Møller
ABSTRACT 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.
{"title":"Bridging the Tech-Editorial Gap: Lessons from Two Case Studies of the Development and Integration of Algorithmic Curation in Journalism","authors":"Lynge Asbjørn Møller","doi":"10.1080/1461670X.2023.2227283","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2023.2227283","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT 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.","PeriodicalId":17541,"journal":{"name":"Journalism Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":"1458 - 1475"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44326890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-04DOI: 10.1080/1461670x.2023.2216810
Morten Fischer Sivertsen
{"title":"Stratified Public Connections—Beyond the Taste for News?","authors":"Morten Fischer Sivertsen","doi":"10.1080/1461670x.2023.2216810","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670x.2023.2216810","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17541,"journal":{"name":"Journalism Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42197499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-26DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2023.2216789
Yang Hu
ABSTRACT 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.
{"title":"How Media Resources and Power Relations Define Critical Reporting in China: A Longitudinal Analysis of The Beijing News’ Corruption Coverage Between 2004 and 2018","authors":"Yang Hu","doi":"10.1080/1461670X.2023.2216789","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2023.2216789","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT\u0000 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.","PeriodicalId":17541,"journal":{"name":"Journalism Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":"1377 - 1397"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45320572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-26DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2023.2214941
Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques, E. Miola, Tim P. Vos, Giulia Sbaraini Fontes, Deivison Henrique de Freitas Santos
ABSTRACT 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.
{"title":"“Fake News” and Journalistic Authority in Newspaper Editorials","authors":"Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques, E. Miola, Tim P. Vos, Giulia Sbaraini Fontes, Deivison Henrique de Freitas Santos","doi":"10.1080/1461670X.2023.2214941","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2023.2214941","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT 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.","PeriodicalId":17541,"journal":{"name":"Journalism Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":"1087 - 1110"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44723267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}