Journal Description
Journalism is a major international, peer-reviewed journal that provides a dedicated forum for articles from the growing community of academic researchers and critical practitioners with an interest in journalism. The journal is interdisciplinary and publishes both theoretical and empirical work and contributes to the social, economic, political, cultural and practical understanding of journalism. It includes contributions on current developments and historical changes within journalism.
The journal publishes both theoretical and empirical work and contributes to the social, economic, political, cultural and practical understanding of journalism. It includes contributions on current developments and historical changes within journalism.
Journalism adheres to a rigorous double-blind reviewing policy in which the identity of both the reviewer and author are always concealed from both parties.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Journal Feed
- by Min DongJournalism, Ahead of Print. Pursuing new ways of understanding the norm of objectivity and journalistic authority in the analysis of contemporary journalistic discourse has been a focal point of interest. Latest developments in the study of journalistic discourse have extended beyond the more traditional critical discourse analysis to methodologies that involve large corpora of texts and in-depth linguistic analysis to capture attitudinal expressions. We aim to study epistemological positions and power relations in journalistic stance taking focused on noun + that-complement clause constructions based on a comparable corpus of British and Chinese media discourse and the application of a functionally […]
- by Johana KotišováJournalism, Ahead of Print. This study, based on in-depth interviews with 22 reporters, stringers, and photojournalists working in Small Conflict Reporting Ecosystems (SE) looks into the ambivalent and ambiguous work of conflict reporters who find themselves in the middle of the conflict reporting hierarchy. It seeks to diversify the understanding of global conflict reporters’ positionalities, broaden the understanding of their precarity and the overall “crisis” of global conflict reporting, and draw inspiration from the diversity of actors and practices creating the current global conflict reporting ecosystems. I address the following questions: What makes the work of SE conflict reporters “bad”? […]
- by Jinghong XuJournalism, Ahead of Print. In the era of digital news, news overload and news avoidance represent novel crises confronting the field of journalism. However, most relevant studies are limited to case studies, and a clear understanding of the relationship between news overload and news avoidance has yet to be established. To address this gap, a meta-analysis of 17 papers (with 13,143 participants) was conducted. The results suggest that news avoidance is positively linked to news overload. Compared to developing countries (r = 0.282), the correlation between news overload and news avoidance is more significant in developed countries (r = 0.330). […]
- by Patrick Lee PlaisanceJournalism, Ahead of Print. This study extends the media sociology literature on moral judgment by comparing moral orientations among journalists and non-journalistic media professionals as well as attitudinal differences regarding branded content and related perceptions of transparency, disclosure standards, and perceived job autonomy. Based on a survey sample of the Online News Association membership (n = 226), journalists placed greater emphasis on organizational disclosure standards than non-journalist counterparts, and branded-content producers had less favorable attitudes toward disclosure. Also, perceived disclosure standards of their organizations negatively predicted individuals’ disclosure attitude. Regression modeling showed morally related variables accounted for a small but […]
- by Benno ViererblJournalism, Ahead of Print. Brand journalism is a strategic communication approach where organizations create and distribute content that resembles journalistic media. Positioned between journalism and PR, it faces the challenge of reconciling three conflicting expectations: organizations strive for favorable coverage aligned with their strategic interests, the audience expects journalistic standards of unbiased, balanced, and independent reporting, and brand journalists adhere to their own professional values and principles. This collision of conflicting expectations creates a breeding ground for role conflicts, wherein the perceived autonomy of brand journalists emerges as a pivotal factor influencing their occurrence. This study explores the role of […]
- by Jason StammJournalism, Ahead of Print. Even as local news organizations and their sports sections dwindle, Rivals.com, a subscription-based recruiting news site within the local sports news ecosystem is thriving. This study takes the intersection of Rivals’ success and the struggles of local sports journalism as its starting point. Using in-depth, long interviews with 21 Rivals subscribers, this research focuses on understanding the motivations behind users’ engagement (uses and gratifications) with the site, and, importantly, their willingness to contribute to the sustainability of the site through their paid subscription. The authors draw from the concept of engaged journalism to contextualize Rivals’ practices, […]
- by Glenda CooperJournalism, Volume 25, Issue 12, Page 2723-2725, December 2024.
- by Sina Thäsler-KordonouriJournalism, Ahead of Print. The production of data-driven journalism is becoming increasingly automated, impacting its composition and comprehensibility. Given the importance of data-driven reporting for democratic participation, this study investigates, firstly, how readers evaluate the composition of data-driven articles produced with and without the help of automation and, secondly, how these evaluations affect readers’ perceptions of the articles’ comprehensibility. In an online survey experiment, 3135 online news consumers evaluated 24 articles produced with or without automation using criteria developed in prior research. Our factor analysis reduced those criteria to five categories that matter in readers’ evaluations of the articles’ composition: […]
- by Sofya GlazunovaJournalism, Ahead of Print. In February 2024, Russian opposition activist Alexey Navalny died in a Western Siberian prison aged just 47. Known as a vocal opposition leader in Russia in the 2010s, he was regularly trying to be elected but also organised the largest mass anti-establishment and anti-corruption protests in Russia before his untimely death. Deprived of access and coverage in the Russian mainstream media, Navalny and his associates established their own media channels, including personal YouTube channels and online media outlets such as Navalny LIVE to avoid censorship and expose the corruption and abuses of power of high-ranking officials […]
- by Jill A EdyJournalism, Ahead of Print. Distinguishing two types of epistemic authority, narrative and eyewitness, illuminates their distinct contributions to journalistic authority and reveals how journalism constructs an order of authorized knowers in local television news. Quantitative content analysis of local television news shows how different sources, such as public officials, civil authorities and citizens, are assigned epistemic authority both in terms of how frequently they appear in news and what journalists empower them to say. The basis of sources’ epistemic authority and the type of story they appear in shapes the knowledge about social reality they are discursively permitted to create. […]
- by Cory W MacNeilJournalism, Ahead of Print. This discourse analysis examined texts produced by citizens, journalists, and politicians in response to a television station news director’s ban on American flag lapel pins for on-air journalists following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The lapel pin ban sparked a national debate involving citizen outrage, journalistic reasoning, and legislative backlash. Taking advantage of this well-preserved historical context to use as a case study, the research question explored the competing discursive threads on journalism’s normative practices and roles in democracy. Literal and latent meanings embedded in discourses that invoked journalism ethics, symbolic patriotism, and the First […]
- by Laurence DierickxJournalism, Ahead of Print. Transparency is more than a motto for professional fact-checkers; it is a professional requirement that permeates their daily practice. Although transparency has been theorised and critiqued extensively in journalism studies, there has been less research on its practical implications for news workers. This paper aims to fill this gap by focusing on fact-checking practices in the Nordic countries. The paper highlights the double-edged sword of transparency by drawing on 14 semistructured interviews with fact-checkers and newsroom managers from the four independent fact-checking organisations in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Transparency is seen as a means to […]
- by Robin LeuppertJournalism, Ahead of Print. News recipients evaluate the quality of journalistic news articles based on the article’s journalistic quality and its media brand. We argue that differentiating a news media’s brand identity from recipients’ cognitive associations with the brand offers a valuable perspective to understand quality evaluations in a more detailed way. We, therefore, specify the effect of media brands on the quality evaluation by including consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) as a mediator and investigate this mediation effect for five quality dimensions and a global quality measure. Based on a two (high vs low quality) x three (quality brand vs […]
- by Diego GarusiJournalism, Ahead of Print. Trust in news media is a hot topic in media research, and although several attempts have been made to explore it, the concept has commonly been viewed as a matter of audiences’ reception of news products. In contrast, we conceptualize trust as an integral part of all stages of the news production process and focus on the journalists’ perspective. Based on semi-structured interviews with Austrian constructive journalists, we investigate which strategies they use to improve the perception of their trustworthiness among audiences and what they want to achieve by being trusted. Trust-building strategies are identified across […]
- by Kirsi CheasJournalism, Ahead of Print. This article builds on a field theoretical analysis of collaborative investigative journalism across the U.S-Mexico (Global North-South) border. The article examines contents produced in investigative collaboration between Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Mexican, and U.S. journalists, exposing human rights violations, crime, and corruption. The article elaborates on the concept of psychological capital and argues for its relevance in the study of cross-border collaborative investigative journalism. A key finding resulting from this research is that in most collaborative projects, psychological and other capital of the Central American and Mexican journalists was outweighed by the capital of the U.S. journalists. The […]
- by Jee Young LeeJournalism, Ahead of Print. Research suggests that the relationship between journalism and its audience is changing. As online platforms and various organisations participate in the production of information content audience expectations of what constitute news and who produces it is changing. They often seek various resources to meet their information needs, widening the gap between audiences’ and journalists’ perceptions about the role of news. This paper presents findings from a survey of n = 2266 multicultural audiences and n = 196 journalists in Australia to explore this gap. While audiences and journalists were similar in their views about traditional news […]
- by Laura AhvaJournalism, Ahead of Print. One sign of datafication in journalism is that newsrooms utilise insights from audience data and related metrics in their decision-making. In professional discourse, this often alludes to the notion of ‘data-informed newsrooms’ in which organisations are managed with the help of data. This article focuses on the managerial role of audience data in such organisations: What types of audience data inform newsrooms, which domains of newsroom management are being informed by data, and what kinds of visions motivate the future of data use in news organisations? These questions are answered based on empirical material from three […]
- by Robert E GutscheJournalism, Ahead of Print. This article seeks to complicate notions of metajournalistic discourse by building on research on journalistic evidence and news narratives to argue for concepts of both manifest and latent forms of discourse. Through a textual analysis of news narratives, article thrust, and style in UK and French digital news coverage of Naomi Osaka’s decision to withdraw from press conferences at the cusp of the 2021 French Open, we argue that journalists interviewed each other or commented themselves on her reasons for not participating in press conferences in what we refer to as manifest metajournalistic discourse. However, our […]
- by Mirjam GollmitzerJournalism, Ahead of Print. This article explores journalism cooperatives, a sub-field of journalism practice and a type of news organization that is becoming more popular as an organizational option in journalism internationally. While other non-traditional ways of funding and producing news – such as non-profit media or crowdfunding initiatives – receive growing attention from journalism researchers, cooperative enterprises remain largely neglected. This study develops an inventory of 29 such news outlets in Europe, North America, and South America. It presents a portrait of the cooperative field in journalism in terms of founding year, geographic location, linguistic tendencies, and cooperative sub-types. […]
- by Shujun LiuJournalism, Ahead of Print. Climate change is often used as a bargaining chip for global powers to achieve political goals. Strategy framing, particularly within international political contexts, can serve as a lens to unpack the relationship between countries’ substantial climate policy and underlying political appeals in news coverage. A survey experiment (n = 331) was conducted to investigate the effects of strategy framing in international politics on trust in government, nationalist sentiments, and climate action intentions against the backdrop of China-U.S. climate relationship. Results showed that perceived strategy framing had a direct, positive association and an indirect, negative association with […]