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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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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