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This study examines three significant collaborative journalism projects in the Americas: The Panama Papers, from the United States-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ); “América Latina, Región de Carteles,” by Colombian-based Connectas; and the first phase of the Brazilian-based project, Comprova, supported by Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalists (Abraji) and First Draft. The work investigates what encompasses collaborative journalism; and explores whether it is a recent phenomenon of the news ecosystem, a consequence of the institutional crisis of journalism, and if it is influenced by a network-based and platformed society. A mixed-method approach is applied in a three-stage analysis: (1) desk research; (2) quantitative content analysis; and (3) qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews. To gain a broader picture of the organizations and their respective projects, documental and bibliographical research was carried out with a focus on data from press releases, corporate reports, and articles published on the websites of the organizations coordinating the projects. Furthermore, a quantitative content analysis of 10 news articles published by each of these collaboration partnerships was completed. Finally, qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with the directors, managers, and professional journalists’ part of the organizations and project. This study emphasizes the importance of collaborative practices, demonstrates how collaborative practices contribute to a new modus operandi of the news ecosystem; and considers why journalists and media organizations have turned to collaborative journalism as a model of production, circulation, and distribution of journalistic investigations.

Hit by an unprecedented financial crisis, the Greek society has been also swept away by an acute political crisis, rising political polarisation and social unrest. At the same time, over the last decade, Greece has faced an unparalleled state of emergency, with thousands of refugees and immigrants entering every year and remaining in the country, often in extremely difficult living conditions leading to ‘an exceptional crisis within the crisis’. In fact, during the recent years, immigration and the ‘refugee crisis’ have been among the most controversial topics on the Greek policy agenda and one of the principal issues that shapes public discourse and raises the most questions about social cohesion and the fundamental values of the Greek society. Media representations of the refugee and migrant ‘crisis’ have played a significant role in how this controversial issue is presented in the Greek public discourse as well as in how people perceive and respond to it. Within this context and having as a starting point the theoretical approach of peace journalism, this chapter explores the ways in which four national Greek newspapers portrayed immigration within different periods of the Greek crisis between January 2011 and September 2015. Research results reveal two different periods in the analysed news stories, one between 2011 and 2014, when immigration was portrayed as a ‘domestic problem’ and the other, in 2015, when the situation was designated as a ‘European refugee crisis’. In both cases, however, it was evident that immigration was positioned high on the agenda of the Greek newspapers, despite major political events taking place within the same periods. Findings were presented and discussed on four different but interrelated levels: immigration (1) as a source of conflict and polarisation, (2) as a political issue, (3) through securitisation and victimhood and, ultimately, (4) through a ‘journalism of conventions’ lens, with very important consequences on the quality of information (extensive lack of solutions related to immigration and asylum issues, absence of refugees' voice, insufficient context, among others).

The role of everyday citizens in the production of knowledge has become central to the study of media sociology. This interest is fueled by the growth of information communication technologies that have made it easier for amateurs to produce and disseminate content. The world of book reviewing – an exemplar of a field transformed by digitalization – concerns about the rise of amateurs manifests in the grievance that, “Nowadays, everyone’s a critic.” This chapter empirically investigates this idea by asking: Who is qualified to be a reviewer? The chapter draws on in-depth interviews with review editors, critics, and bloggers who have successfully crossed over to publish in some of the most important outlets in the English-publishing field. Analysis reveals that openness is central to ideas of what qualifies someone to be a book reviewer and how reviewers subsequently get work. Openness, however, is an example of noncertifiable skills, which are ascertained primarily through informal methods such as turning toward one’s personal and professional networks for recommendations from peers or relying on personal face-to-face encounters. A practical consequence of this selection criterion is that only reviewers who are known to book review editors in this specific way (i.e., their tastes and esthetic openness) are eligible candidates for professional review assignments. In this way, the commitment to openness as a professional value among book reviewers actually operates as a mechanism of closing their occupational boundaries.

With 43.2 million coronavirus cases and 525,000 deaths in 2022, India ranked second worldwide, after the United States (84.6 million cases and 1 million deaths), according to the latest available June 2022 COVID-19 impact data.

Amid people’s growing mistrust in the government, India’s news media enhanced the nation’s distinguished designation as the world’s largest and most populous democracy. India’s news media inform, educate, empower, and entertain a surging population of 1.4 billion people, which is roughly one-sixth of the world’s people.

Drawing upon the media agendamelding theoretical framework, we conducted a case study research into interplay between two prominent democratic institutions, the media and the government, to analyze the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in redefining India’s networked society.

India’s COVID-19 pandemic aggravated internecine tensions between media and government relating to four key freedom issues: (1) world’s largest COVID-19 lockdown affecting 1.3 billion Indians from March 25, 2020 to August 2020 with extensions and five-phased re-openings, to restrict the spread of COVID-19; (2) Internet shutdowns; (3) media censorship during the 1975–1977 “Emergency”; and (4) unabated murders of journalists in India.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic caused deleterious problems debilitating the tensions between the media and the government, India’s journalists thrived by speaking truth to power. This study delineates key aspects of India’s media agendamelding that explicates how the people of India form their media agendas. India’s news audiences meld media messages from newspapers, television, and social media to form a picture of the issues, insights, and ideas that define their lives and times in the 21st century digital age.

The current environment of misinformation is causing expensive and negative consequences for society. Fake news is affecting democracy and its foundations, as well as newspapers and media companies that aim to combat this “pandemic.” In order to effectively provide accurate information, these companies are in need of a workforce with specific attitudes, skills, and knowledge (ASK). However, several studies show that students either do not have those ASK or have poorly developed them, indicating the need for better media literacy skills. Given that such skills are often not taught in school, nor is there a way for students to efficiently obtain them and tangibly show them to future employers, we propose a model ¹ that enhances the way students learn and how we measure such learning. Journalism students – enrolled in liberal arts, general studies, and humanities – have the potential to be upskilled and become the new critical thinking and fact-checking force needed to neutralize misinformation and foster a healthy society. Our model applies learning science and behavioral research on feedback and intrinsic motivation to foster students' ASK through a digital apprenticeship model that uses structured activities together with mentorship and feedback. Students participate in the creation of digital products for the journalism and news media industry. This prepares them for the types of tasks they will be required to perform in the job market. The digital apprenticeship matches students with the proper mentor, peer, and professional network. Students' work is compared against professional news media production to generate feedback, improve quality, and track progress. During the digital apprenticeship, students receive the ASK-SkillsCredit, a digital badge, which serves as a “nutritional” fact label that displays how students created the media content, the level of efficacy of the apprenticeship, and the standard of journalism quality of the piece. Lastly, we propose to enhance existing learning management systems to capture and promote a learner's profile data and expose aligned opportunities in news media outlets.

This chapter assesses the trauma that media professionals experience as eye-witnesses of the disturbing and intense events associated with their everyday working routine. In particular, this chapter examines recent profession-based reports on journalistic trauma to explore affective labour in media ecosystems of crisis-ridden countries and the impact of covering traumatic events on media professionals. Based on qualitative research, this chapter aims to reconceptualise journalism as a primarily affective profession in the crisis-ridden countries of SE Europe.