Search results

Journalists moving into corporate communication have for many years been regarded as a move to the “dark side”. This paper turns the lens to explore how trained journalists working as internal communication practitioners due to their journalistic self-concept and skills can contribute to internal communication.

An interview study was conducted with twelve trained journalists working with internal communication in different types of organizations. Three indicators of professionalism, namely autonomy, altruism and expert knowledge, were used as categories to structure the interviews and analysis.

The respondents perceived that their journalistic self-concept and skills helped them identify the employee perspective, write relevant stories and deliver them quickly. Furthermore, their courage and lack of fear of authorities enabled them to challenge decisions made by their senior managers, especially regarding how, what and when to communicate.

The three indicators of the journalist profession, – autonomy, altruism and journalistic knowledge and skills – may help establish internal communication that is relevant, transparent and trustworthy.

Organizations may benefit from building their internal communication around the three indicators of the journalist profession. They could, for example, host independent internal media that present the employees’ perspective and maintain a critical attitude to the organization in a relevant and compelling manner.

Few studies have explored the role of journalists working as internal communication practitioners and their contributions to internal communication.

Crisis in journalism is a widely discussed and controversial topic in Greece since 2009 when economic recession afflicted the Greek society. However, the last decade of financial hardships and ownership changes in the Greek media sector (2009–2019) gave rise to a widening of perception on the part of journalists of what really crisis stands for when it comes to their profession. Based on 25 in-depth interviews with Greek leading news media professionals from all types of media outlets (press, television, radio and news websites), the present research describes how journalists perceive, assess and manage the crisis of their profession in today's networked media landscape, characterised by unprecedented phenomena such as the rise of churnalism, post truth journalism and fake news in the context of new trends with regard to how the Greek audience is seeking information and consuming news. While existing research on journalism profession has tended to emphasise the conversion of journalist into a multitasked employee towards audience members who treat journalism with suspicion, this chapter focusses on to what extent journalists by themselves are critical of their profession's vulnerabilities such as the lack of genuine investigative journalism, alienation from the actual reporting based on primary material and manipulation of media professionals within an unstable market. The research gives insights into journalists' opinions and attitudes with regard to the symptoms indicating that journalism in Greece is suffering from chronic and acute crises related to the extraction and dissemination of news, the relationship of journalists with media owners as well as the operation of the media market.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what role particular new management devices play in the development of the news profession in an organizational setting shifting to new technologies.

This is studied through of observations of work practices in the newsroom and through documentary research and qualitative interviews with managers, editors, and other professionals.

It is shown that management devices such as the news table and the news concept are central to the reorganization of news work, as they realize managers’ strategies, just like they produce new practices and power relationships. It is shown that the devices produce increased collaboration among journalists and interaction between managers and output journalists, that mundane work and power is delegated to technological devices and that news products are increasingly standardized.

The wider implications of these findings seem to be a change in the journalistic profession: TV news journalism is becoming less individualistic and more collective and professionalism becomes a matter of understanding and realizing the news organization’s strategy, rather than following a more individual agenda.

The paper’s originality lies in showing that profession and management are not opposed to each other, but can be seen as a continuum on which journalistic and managerial tasks become intertwined. This is in contrast to previous research on news work. Furthermore, the paper’s focus on devices opens up for conceptualizing power in the newsroom as distributed across a network of people and things, rather executed by managers alone.

22 July 2011, saw the biggest domestic terror event in Norway since World War II. On this day, a right-wing terrorist placed a bomb in front of the Norwegian government building, where the prime minister had his office at the time. Later, the same perpetrator dressed up as a policeman and tricked his way into a political youth camp, where 69 mostly young people were killed. The present case study involves the leading national online news provider, VG, whose website, VG Nett, was Norway’s most-read online news site at the time of the attack. The study addresses the research gap of how news workers and managers see the potential of the affordances of digital media during crisis events. Furthermore, the study looks at how two different discourses of professionalism, the occupational and the organisational, informed journalists’ use of technological and social media affordances during this terror event, and at how online journalists and management reflect upon and continue to refine these approaches five years later. This study stresses the importance of a clear understanding of the decision-making processes that actually guide the handling of those affordances during a crisis event. Ultimately, this study questions not the perceived tension between the two discourses of professionalism, but their relative impact upon domestic crisis journalism in the technological realm.

Against the background of the 2019 anti-extradition bill protests, this paper aims to examine the legal-political negotiations over equal press rights in Hong Kong, focusing specifically on “the rights to newsgathering” – the rights of all journalistic actors to get access to certain places and events to collect first-hand news information, such as on the streets, during protests and in government events.

This paper adopts a comparative approach to the question of equal press rights by comparing Hong Kong’s situations with those of Taiwan and Malaysia. Drawing upon secondary sources such as existing studies and news archives, this paper attempts to delineate the legal-political negotiations over equal press rights in the three places in the past two decades.

This paper finds that in Hong Kong, there are signs of increasing suppression of press rights amidst the city’s authoritarian backlash in recent years. While the Hong Kong Government was willing to broaden the rights of online independent media a few years back, it has started to tighten its control over them after the 2019 anti-extradition bill protests. Without a constitutional guarantee of equal press rights, it remains to be seen how the online independent media would fare in the future, especially after the introduction of the national security law.

While Hong Kong is home to a variety of non-mainstream media, the issue of their press status has remained largely unrecognized by the public. This paper pays attention to this understudied yet important issue.

This paper seeks to examine the intriguing juxtaposition of a bona fide independent union for journalists in the UK, which is vocal about editorial standards and interference, yet has seldom taken collective action to respond to such instances.

A grounded approach to this phenomenon is used by way of examining the intersection of the nature and influence of journalistic professionalism, the journalists' material and economic interests and the particular approach of the union to both these matters. The data are based on qualitative fieldworks supplemented by secondary sources.

The journalists and their union have yet to identify and articulate the conditions, which give rise to this situation and a strategy for defending their professional interests which is compatible with and supportive of strategies for defending their material interests.

There is a need to develop a strategy by which journalists can collectively exert more influence over editorial content.

The quality of content of newspapers could be enhanced by the greater influence of journalists as a collective body.

This paper explicates news making process of social risks in the midst of inconclusive social facts and contested interpretation of social consequences. Specifically, the author aims to investigate how journalists perform the normative role of “Burglar Alarms” – raising social concern to risks and problems amid uncertainties stemming from risk society. Shedding light on the controversies of “tourism capacity” in Hong Kong, this study unravels how news discourses represented the social risks of “outnumbered” Chinese tourists amid ambiguous facts and questionable credibility of news sources. Content analysis of news discourses and interviews with journalists showed that there are emerging journalistic practices – namely, witnessing performativity and opinionated objectivity – to construct social risks in view of less credible news sources, volatile public opinion and highly speculative news events.

Content analysis of news discourses was represented in the press and in-depth interviews with journalists.

Content analysis of news discourses and interviews with journalists showed that there are emerging journalistic practices – namely, witnessing performativity and opinionated objectivity – to construct social risks in view of less credible news sources, volatile public opinion and highly speculative news events.

Informed by the theory of risk society, this paper explores how journalists set out the “Burglar Alarms” of social risks by constructing social facts in the midst of questionable authorities and limited expert advice. Instead of relying on authoritative interpretation of social risks, journalists performed as the witnesses to the “reality” of social risks and problems, however selective and interpretative, to the audience. They also articulated to the general will of the people and selective representation of everyday life experience so as to justify their opinionated news angle and the pledge to news objectivity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the situated understandings that higher education students can offer on their employability, and to make sense of “employability” in industry and career context‐specific ways. The paper further seeks to explore potential critical reflections on emerging professional practice and future employment conditions.

Drawing on interviews and focus groups conducted with students located within a university‐operated industry‐facing media production studio, this paper focuses on how students articulate their career development and aspirations.

Discussing their studio experience and forms of “identity work”, students would nuance “employability” in terms of media industry‐specific concepts of creativity and professionalism. Anxieties around future professional practice were also voiced, signaling the potential value of a Career Studies approach that creates a space for explicitly exploring employment conditions as personally meaningful concerns.

Noting how employability is articulated in terms of industry professionalism, this paper encourages analysis that is attentive to situated understandings and identity work. Given the studio and media focus, application of findings may be limited.

Relevant for industry employers is how students make sense of their future career aspirations and undertake “work on the self” that is bound up with but also potentially critical of professional norms, quality of life and work conditions.

Recognising how employment can be understood in terms of “professionalism”, this paper suggests how an exploration of discourses and practices of professionalism can be part of a wider examination of employability. This paper explores the value of the Career Studies approach for integrating questions of student identity with subject‐specific accounts critical to employment conditions and practices.