In this response to the article by Matt Carlson and Chris Peters, we consider the challenge that the authors deem key for journalism studies and their answer to this challenge: “realist journalism studies.” We explore what the authors mean by decentring journalism studies, by “realism,” and the reason for wanting to keep journalism studies. We conclude by exploring what we consider the main challenge for journalism studies: to untangle what journalism does in society and how it can serve people and communities better, and what methodologies and theories we would need to do so from a place of curiosity, not opposition.
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In this paper, we explore the ways in which we can employ arts-based research methods to unpack and represent the diversity and complexity of journalistic experiences and (self) conceptualisations. We address the need to reconsider the ways in which we theorise and research the field of journalism. We thereby aim to complement the current methodologies, theories, and prisms through which we consider our object of study to depict more comprehensively the diversity of practices in the field. To gather stories about journalism creatively (and ultimately more inclusively and richly), we propose and present the use of arts-based research methods in journalism studies. By employing visual and narrative artistic forms as a research tool, we make room for the senses, emotion and imagination on the part of the respondents, researchers and audiences of the output. We draw on a specific collaboration with artists and journalists that resulted in a research event in which 32 journalists were invited to collaboratively recreate the “richness and complexity” of journalistic practices.
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In this article, the main question is whether and, if so, to what extent online journalism raises new moral issues and, if any, what kind of answers are preferable. Or do questions merely appear new, since they are really old ones in an electronic wrapping, old wine in new bottles? And how does journalism deal with the moral aspects of online journalism? The phenomenon of the Internet emerged in our society a few years ago. Since then, a large number of Dutch people have gone online, and the World Wide Web is now an integral part of our range of means of communication. Dutch journalism is online too, although certainly not in the lead. More and more journalists use the Internet as a source, especially for background information. Newspapers have their web sites, where the online version of the printed paper can be read. And that is it for the time being. There are no more far-reaching developments at present, certainly not on a large scale. Real online journalism is rather scarce in the Netherlands. The debate concerning the moral aspects of online journalism is mainly being conducted in the United States. First of all, by way of introduction, I will present an outline of online journalism. The first instance is the online version of the newspaper. Here, only to a certain degree new issues come up for discussion, since the reputation of reliability and accuracy of the papers, in spite of all criticism, also applies to their online versions. Besides, especially in the United States and increasingly in European countries as well, there is the so-called dotcom journalism, the e-zines, the online news sites without any relationship with printed newspapers. This may be the reason why these sites do not have a strong commitment to moral standards, at least as they have developed in the journalistic culture of the newspapers. After having outlined the moral issues arising in online journalism, the question will be addressed whether and, if so, to what extent it is meaningful and desirable to develop instruments of self-regulation for this new phenomenon of journalism.
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Journalists in the 21st century are expected to work for different platforms, gather online information, become multi‐media professionals, and learn how to deal with amateur contributions. The business model of gathering, producing and distributing news changed rapidly. Producing content is not enough; moderation and curation are at least as important when it comes to working for digital platforms. There is a growing pressure on news organizations to produce more inexpensive content for digital platforms, resulting in new models of low‐cost or even free content production. Aggregation, either by humans or machines ‘finding’ news and re‐publishing it, is gaining importance. At so‐called ‘content farms’ freelancers, part‐timers and amateurs produce articles that are expected to end up high in web searches. Apart from this low‐pay model a no‐pay model emerged were bloggers write for no compensation at all. At the Huffington Post thousands of bloggers actually work for free. Other websites use similar models, sometimes offering writers a fixed price depending on the number of clicks a page gets. We analyse the background, the consequences for journalists and journalism and the implications for online news organizations. We investigate aggregation services and content farms and no‐pay or low‐pay news websites that mainly use bloggers for input.
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This article attempts to broaden the theoretical boundaries of journalism studies by re-examining journalism practices in the context of divisions between Western and Eastern philosophies. It looks at journalistic techniques of truth-seeking with particular emphasis on i) the ability to pick up a ‘scoop’, that is an original story; ii) interviewing as an art of inquiry, and iii) the use of statistics in supporting evidence. By so doing, the authors want not only to problematise the debates between epistemology and ontology within the boundaries of journalism studies, but also see how Eastern philosophies can help to allocate this debate in a more globalised context that can overcome the limitations set by the Enlightenment as a political project.
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Although basic features of journalism have remained the same over the last decades, the tasks journalists perform, the skills they need and the position they have within news organizations have changed dramatically. Usually the focus in the discourse on changes in journalism is on skills, especially on technical multi-media skills or research skills. In this paper we focus on changes in professional roles of journalists, arguing that these roles have changed fundamentally, leading to a new generation of journalists. We distinguish between different trends in journalism. Journalism has become more technical, ranging from editing video to programming. At the same time, many journalists are now more ‘harvesters’ and ‘managers’ of information and news instead of producers of news. Thirdly, journalists are expected to gather information from citizens and social media, and edit and moderate user-contributions as well. Lastly, many journalists are no longer employed by media but work as freelancers or independent entrepreneurs. We track these trends and provide a detailed description of developments with examples from job descriptions in the Netherlands.
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Over the past years, innovative technologies (such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR)) have become more common within news organizations. These technologies allow users to immerse themselves in a virtual world. With these types of productions, the journalist tries to engage and involve the user by introducing emotional styles, often to create empathy. This does not only demand new technological skills, but also challenges the way journalist allow emotions in journalistic productions, and what role they take in relation to the story and the user. Through fifteen in-depth interviews with immersive producers and experts in renowned news organizations across the globe, this paper examines both the motivations of journalists who produce immersive stories, and how they seek to balance traditional journalistic norms and emotionality in them. The results show that journalists believe that emotions and facts can be compatible with journalistic production. Yet, they struggle with their role in relation to the user. Immersive journalism obliges journalists to carefully reconsider their relationship with their public. In sum, this study illuminates an ongoing professional debate on the role of emotionality, user agency, and journalistic control and autonomy.
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Designing for interactivity for audience engagement in journalistic narratives is a new practice that emerged after The New York Times’ success with Snow Fall in 2012. Journalists have begun collaborating with designers in interdisciplinary teams to design these interactive narratives. Few studies describe the new practice that is the result of this collaboration. In this study, we examine the production processes of three journalistic interactive narratives and their design for audience engagement by focusing on the imagined user as part of the production process. Our analysis shows how producers develop the role of users by considering the narrative’s experience and accessibility. Together, these two concepts underpin the practice of designing for audience engagement and subsequent entextualisation. Our findings show that, although producers claim that they approach users differently when designing texts for interactive audience engagement, their concepts of the interactive user are grounded in more traditional notions of authorship and audience in journalistic practices.
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Innovations in digital storytelling techniques have spurred on the development of new journalistic and audience practices. The production processes of interactive and immersive journalistic narratives are highly technological and require specialist knowledge of both journalism and design, and require producers to consider how audience engagement and user activity both fit into their story. The resulting narratives redefine the boundaries of what is considered a journalistic production, often requiring users to act within the story, thereby challenging the existing author-user relationship. In this chapter we discuss how the boundaries of journalism are redefined or blurred during both the production and reception processes of interactive, immersive journalism.
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Over the past decade, journalists have created in-depth interactive narratives to provide an alternative to the relentless 24-hour news cycle. Combining different media forms, such as text, audio, video, and data visualisation with the interactive possibilities of digital media, these narratives involve users in the narrative in new ways. In journalism studies, the convergence of different media forms in this manner has gained significant attention. However, interactivity as part of this form has been left underappreciated. In this study, we scrutinise how navigational structure, expressed as navigational cues, shapes user agency in their individual explorations of the narrative. By approaching interactive narratives as story spaces with unique interactive architectures, in this article, we reconstruct the architecture of five Dutch interactive narratives using the walkthrough method. We find that the extensiveness of the interactive architectures can be described on a continuum between closed and open navigational structures that predetermine and thus shape users’ trajectories in diverse ways.
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