Pub Date : 2023-03-25DOI: 10.1177/14648849231165579
Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques, Paulo Ferracioli, Naiza Comel, Andressa Butture Kniess
Despite the growing scholarship concerning mis- and disinformation, research has yet to assess how journalism tackles conspiracy theories in settings where news organizations and media professionals have their authority questioned. Against this background, our article poses two research questions: RQ1) Who are the actors mainstream fact-checkers cover when addressing conspiracy theories? RQ2) To what extent does the focus on such actors delegitimize those who challenge news organizations or compete with them for the audience? Using content analysis as our key methodological strategy, we consider 197 fact-checks published between 2018 and 2021 by the Projeto Comprova, a Brazilian initiative currently comprising professionals from 41 media organizations. We found that the most discussed topics were those mobilizing polarized groups, namely, the Covid-19 pandemic and election fraud allegations. The then-President Bolsonaro and his supporters were often cited as disseminators of such plots. In turn, Facebook is pointed out as a thriving environment for the circulation of conspiratorial narratives. The results also reveal the prominence of mainstream news outlets as sources to ground the “factual” information sustained in the fact-checks. More interestingly, our data suggest that fact-checkers have favored specific news values when addressing conspiracy theories. To strengthen our investigation, we use interviews with four professionals contributing to the Comprova to illustrate how the project has brought together rival companies interested in delegitimizing “alternative” sources of information.
{"title":"Who is who in fact-checked conspiracy theories? Disseminators, sources, and the struggle for authority in polarized environments","authors":"Francisco Paulo Jamil Marques, Paulo Ferracioli, Naiza Comel, Andressa Butture Kniess","doi":"10.1177/14648849231165579","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849231165579","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the growing scholarship concerning mis- and disinformation, research has yet to assess how journalism tackles conspiracy theories in settings where news organizations and media professionals have their authority questioned. Against this background, our article poses two research questions: RQ1) Who are the actors mainstream fact-checkers cover when addressing conspiracy theories? RQ2) To what extent does the focus on such actors delegitimize those who challenge news organizations or compete with them for the audience? Using content analysis as our key methodological strategy, we consider 197 fact-checks published between 2018 and 2021 by the Projeto Comprova, a Brazilian initiative currently comprising professionals from 41 media organizations. We found that the most discussed topics were those mobilizing polarized groups, namely, the Covid-19 pandemic and election fraud allegations. The then-President Bolsonaro and his supporters were often cited as disseminators of such plots. In turn, Facebook is pointed out as a thriving environment for the circulation of conspiratorial narratives. The results also reveal the prominence of mainstream news outlets as sources to ground the “factual” information sustained in the fact-checks. More interestingly, our data suggest that fact-checkers have favored specific news values when addressing conspiracy theories. To strengthen our investigation, we use interviews with four professionals contributing to the Comprova to illustrate how the project has brought together rival companies interested in delegitimizing “alternative” sources of information.","PeriodicalId":74027,"journal":{"name":"Journalism (London, England)","volume":"87 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81371977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-22DOI: 10.1177/14648849231165855
L. Kristensen, Peter Bro
News values and newsworthiness have been central concepts of Journalism Studies since they were first introduced to the public over a hundred years ago. Seminal studies of 20th-century media examining news values and the intricately connected concept of gatekeeping have been cited, added to, and rigorously criticized. In the digital age, news travels effortlessly across the Internet, permeating the once exclusive and closed-off platforms of legacy news organizations. Audiences increasingly rely on alternative platforms for news consumption. This complicates our previous understandings of the flow of news, and it invites new gatekeepers to the table, simultaneously shaping and deciding what is considered newsworthy. This article recontextualizes the classical concept of news values by reviewing news value research of 21st-century digital legacy media resulting in three archetypical platform types through which legacy media news travels: intra-media, inter-media, and extra-media platforms. Inspired by social psychologist Kurt Lewin’s gatekeeping theory and the concept of platformization, this article presents a new conceptual framework that delineates the forces and factors that affect news flow in a digital era.
{"title":"News values in a digital age- Intra-media, inter-media, and extra-media platforms","authors":"L. Kristensen, Peter Bro","doi":"10.1177/14648849231165855","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849231165855","url":null,"abstract":"News values and newsworthiness have been central concepts of Journalism Studies since they were first introduced to the public over a hundred years ago. Seminal studies of 20th-century media examining news values and the intricately connected concept of gatekeeping have been cited, added to, and rigorously criticized. In the digital age, news travels effortlessly across the Internet, permeating the once exclusive and closed-off platforms of legacy news organizations. Audiences increasingly rely on alternative platforms for news consumption. This complicates our previous understandings of the flow of news, and it invites new gatekeepers to the table, simultaneously shaping and deciding what is considered newsworthy. This article recontextualizes the classical concept of news values by reviewing news value research of 21st-century digital legacy media resulting in three archetypical platform types through which legacy media news travels: intra-media, inter-media, and extra-media platforms. Inspired by social psychologist Kurt Lewin’s gatekeeping theory and the concept of platformization, this article presents a new conceptual framework that delineates the forces and factors that affect news flow in a digital era.","PeriodicalId":74027,"journal":{"name":"Journalism (London, England)","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76565923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-22DOI: 10.1177/14648849231166508
Michael Buozis
Drawing on archival sources, this study explores how tobacco companies and their representatives targeted journalism trade publications, professional and press associations, and journalism schools in a decades-long effort to map and shape metajournalistic discourses to their advantage. By contributing to media-to-media publications, funding and participating in conferences, and engaging in journalism “education” initiatives the industry sought to influence journalistic practices. These journalism-adjacent actors and sites are particularly vulnerable to infiltration from corporate actors and deserve more scrutiny.
{"title":"Targeting the trades, press associations, and J-schools: Tobacco industry mapping and shaping of metajournalistic discourses","authors":"Michael Buozis","doi":"10.1177/14648849231166508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849231166508","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on archival sources, this study explores how tobacco companies and their representatives targeted journalism trade publications, professional and press associations, and journalism schools in a decades-long effort to map and shape metajournalistic discourses to their advantage. By contributing to media-to-media publications, funding and participating in conferences, and engaging in journalism “education” initiatives the industry sought to influence journalistic practices. These journalism-adjacent actors and sites are particularly vulnerable to infiltration from corporate actors and deserve more scrutiny.","PeriodicalId":74027,"journal":{"name":"Journalism (London, England)","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83553548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-19DOI: 10.1177/14648849231162724
Roxane Coche, Travis R. Bell
The FIFA Women’s World Cup was a steeple of professional sport in the summers of 2015 and 2019. Did newspapers deem the story newsworthy enough to reach the front page? This content analysis of over 900 U.S. newspapers’ front pages published on July 6, 2015 (the day after the 2015 WWC final) or July 8, 2019 (the day after the 2019 WWC final) indicates that, for 1 day, newspapers avoided the trap of gendered, trivialized sport representation. Also, content changes highlight the potential impact from newspaper ownership consolidation on layout design that can have long-term implications for agenda-setting research.
{"title":"Front-page prominence and newspaper ownership: Examining US women’s national team coverage after 2015 and 2019 World Cup victories","authors":"Roxane Coche, Travis R. Bell","doi":"10.1177/14648849231162724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849231162724","url":null,"abstract":"The FIFA Women’s World Cup was a steeple of professional sport in the summers of 2015 and 2019. Did newspapers deem the story newsworthy enough to reach the front page? This content analysis of over 900 U.S. newspapers’ front pages published on July 6, 2015 (the day after the 2015 WWC final) or July 8, 2019 (the day after the 2019 WWC final) indicates that, for 1 day, newspapers avoided the trap of gendered, trivialized sport representation. Also, content changes highlight the potential impact from newspaper ownership consolidation on layout design that can have long-term implications for agenda-setting research.","PeriodicalId":74027,"journal":{"name":"Journalism (London, England)","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82861358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-09DOI: 10.1177/14648849231161150
Danielle Yusufov, Oren Meyers
This study examined how commemorative journalism shapes collective memory by exploring 18 supplements and special projects commemorating Israel’s 70th anniversary. The research questions focused on three central narrative characteristics of journalism: protagonists, plots, and narrators. Our examination revealed the ways in which those located at the fringes of the ethnic-national community were excluded from these journalistic narratives, conveying mostly a tale of Israeli strength, narrated mostly by Jewish men. We maintain that the current dominant memory version narrated by the supplements reflects a withdrawal from and rejection of recent, more critical journalistic readings of the Israeli past. This conscious return to older, hegemonic patterns of narration of the national past could be understood within the context of two central conditions, shaping the construction of Israeli reality over the past two decades: the growing dominance of the political Right and changes in Israel’s media map.
{"title":"“Despite everything, love”: Commemorative journalism and the rereading of the critical rereading of the Israeli past","authors":"Danielle Yusufov, Oren Meyers","doi":"10.1177/14648849231161150","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849231161150","url":null,"abstract":"This study examined how commemorative journalism shapes collective memory by exploring 18 supplements and special projects commemorating Israel’s 70th anniversary. The research questions focused on three central narrative characteristics of journalism: protagonists, plots, and narrators. Our examination revealed the ways in which those located at the fringes of the ethnic-national community were excluded from these journalistic narratives, conveying mostly a tale of Israeli strength, narrated mostly by Jewish men. We maintain that the current dominant memory version narrated by the supplements reflects a withdrawal from and rejection of recent, more critical journalistic readings of the Israeli past. This conscious return to older, hegemonic patterns of narration of the national past could be understood within the context of two central conditions, shaping the construction of Israeli reality over the past two decades: the growing dominance of the political Right and changes in Israel’s media map.","PeriodicalId":74027,"journal":{"name":"Journalism (London, England)","volume":"144 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77868095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-02DOI: 10.1177/14648849231159957
K. Assmann, Stine Eckert
Using standpoint epistemology and critical mass theory this study analyzes the potential impact on work culture and conditions in German newsrooms following a call for voluntary gender quotas in newsroom leadership. In-depth interviews with 53 journalists in 21 leading newsrooms in Germany find positive changes in work culture and conditions for all journalists in all newsrooms that reached or approached critical mass of women in leadership. Through the eyes of women and men working in these national newsrooms, an increase in women in newsrooms that came near or superseded the voluntary quota in leadership positions helped boost ongoing institutional support regarding paid parental leave and childcare options and augmented transparency around opportunities for mentoring, coaching, and hiring through more institutionalized processes. We recommend a continued implementation of voluntary quotas and further research to document and analyze long-term structural and systemic changes that more women in newsroom leadership could bring.
{"title":"Are women journalists in leadership changing work conditions and newsroom culture?","authors":"K. Assmann, Stine Eckert","doi":"10.1177/14648849231159957","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849231159957","url":null,"abstract":"Using standpoint epistemology and critical mass theory this study analyzes the potential impact on work culture and conditions in German newsrooms following a call for voluntary gender quotas in newsroom leadership. In-depth interviews with 53 journalists in 21 leading newsrooms in Germany find positive changes in work culture and conditions for all journalists in all newsrooms that reached or approached critical mass of women in leadership. Through the eyes of women and men working in these national newsrooms, an increase in women in newsrooms that came near or superseded the voluntary quota in leadership positions helped boost ongoing institutional support regarding paid parental leave and childcare options and augmented transparency around opportunities for mentoring, coaching, and hiring through more institutionalized processes. We recommend a continued implementation of voluntary quotas and further research to document and analyze long-term structural and systemic changes that more women in newsroom leadership could bring.","PeriodicalId":74027,"journal":{"name":"Journalism (London, England)","volume":"103 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86657936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1177/14648849211048961
Rachel E. Moran, Efrat Nechushtai
Given the necessity of trust to the fulfillment of the news media’s democratic and civic roles, the decline of trust in the news has become a major theme in journalism and communication studies, with researchers typically focusing on news audiences and measuring attitudes toward news products. Alongside the importance of reception, this paper advocates for conceptualizing trust not solely as a response to news, but as a key component in the infrastructure that makes news possible. Through an exploration of the role of trust at every stage of the newsmaking process, we argue that trust structures and underpins news funding, production, circulation, and audience measurement. Expanding the conceptual framework through which trust is assessed to consider its infrastructural role affords greater clarity on the consequences of distrust in news. We highlight future research directions and areas of inquiry made possible by theorizing trust in news in this way.
{"title":"Before reception: Trust in the news as infrastructure","authors":"Rachel E. Moran, Efrat Nechushtai","doi":"10.1177/14648849211048961","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849211048961","url":null,"abstract":"Given the necessity of trust to the fulfillment of the news media’s democratic and civic roles, the decline of trust in the news has become a major theme in journalism and communication studies, with researchers typically focusing on news audiences and measuring attitudes toward news products. Alongside the importance of reception, this paper advocates for conceptualizing trust not solely as a response to news, but as a key component in the infrastructure that makes news possible. Through an exploration of the role of trust at every stage of the newsmaking process, we argue that trust structures and underpins news funding, production, circulation, and audience measurement. Expanding the conceptual framework through which trust is assessed to consider its infrastructural role affords greater clarity on the consequences of distrust in news. We highlight future research directions and areas of inquiry made possible by theorizing trust in news in this way.","PeriodicalId":74027,"journal":{"name":"Journalism (London, England)","volume":"32 1","pages":"457 - 474"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85101707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1177/14648849231161158
Maud Peeters, Pieter Maeseele
This paper assesses if and how alternative news media manifest their counter-hegemonic potential within the current conjuncture of populist politics in Western liberal democracies. Based on the method of critical discourse analysis, it compares the ways in which the yellow vests movement is discursively (re)constructed by two Flemish legacy newspapers and five alternative news media. Analytically, it engages with an agonistic pluralist perspective. Findings show how both newspapers and alternative media reproduce the same discursive constructions that legitimize the yellow vests’ socio-economic and political grievances. What distinguishes alternative from traditional media is not so much their counter-hegemonic potential but their ideological crystallization, as they reproduce only one discursive construction each. With legacy media now also operating as sites of contestation, this paper makes the importance of the role of political context all the clearer in the assessment of the counter-hegemonic potential of alternative news media.
{"title":"Ideological crystallization: rethinking the alternative-mainstream binary in times of populist politics","authors":"Maud Peeters, Pieter Maeseele","doi":"10.1177/14648849231161158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849231161158","url":null,"abstract":"This paper assesses if and how alternative news media manifest their counter-hegemonic potential within the current conjuncture of populist politics in Western liberal democracies. Based on the method of critical discourse analysis, it compares the ways in which the yellow vests movement is discursively (re)constructed by two Flemish legacy newspapers and five alternative news media. Analytically, it engages with an agonistic pluralist perspective. Findings show how both newspapers and alternative media reproduce the same discursive constructions that legitimize the yellow vests’ socio-economic and political grievances. What distinguishes alternative from traditional media is not so much their counter-hegemonic potential but their ideological crystallization, as they reproduce only one discursive construction each. With legacy media now also operating as sites of contestation, this paper makes the importance of the role of political context all the clearer in the assessment of the counter-hegemonic potential of alternative news media.","PeriodicalId":74027,"journal":{"name":"Journalism (London, England)","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87071629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-02-28DOI: 10.1177/14648849231151798
A. Krstić
The aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and journalism in the context of Serbia, a European country which has undergone politically turbulent transition from authoritarian to democratic rule over the past 20 years. Despite the long process of the EU integration, the country has been recently downgraded to a partly free hybrid regime with rapid decline of press freedom, high political and media polarization and raising political and economic instrumentalization of media. Against this background, the paper problematizes how the main structural transformations of the media environment, such as the transition from state to public broadcasting, the introduction of new media laws and the lengthy process of media privatization intersected and influenced different phases and outcomes of the digital transformation of journalism and news media in the country. Unlike the digital journalism development in established democracies of the West, the real systemic change and adaptation of Serbia’s media market to easy-to-use technologies, newsrooms convergence, profitable content and participatory journalism has been largely limited and overpowered by the interplay between the state and the media over the past two decades.
{"title":"Digital transformation of journalism and media in Serbia: What has gone wrong?","authors":"A. Krstić","doi":"10.1177/14648849231151798","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849231151798","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and journalism in the context of Serbia, a European country which has undergone politically turbulent transition from authoritarian to democratic rule over the past 20 years. Despite the long process of the EU integration, the country has been recently downgraded to a partly free hybrid regime with rapid decline of press freedom, high political and media polarization and raising political and economic instrumentalization of media. Against this background, the paper problematizes how the main structural transformations of the media environment, such as the transition from state to public broadcasting, the introduction of new media laws and the lengthy process of media privatization intersected and influenced different phases and outcomes of the digital transformation of journalism and news media in the country. Unlike the digital journalism development in established democracies of the West, the real systemic change and adaptation of Serbia’s media market to easy-to-use technologies, newsrooms convergence, profitable content and participatory journalism has been largely limited and overpowered by the interplay between the state and the media over the past two decades.","PeriodicalId":74027,"journal":{"name":"Journalism (London, England)","volume":"360 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84483338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}