Journalism Studies

The growing shift of many countries toward authoritarianism has led to an increase in exiled media communities. This study examines the dual identity of exiled journalists: as new immigrants who must adapt to their host countries, and as media professionals who must maintain ties with their estranged homeland. Drawing on extensive empirical data from interviews with Russian exiled journalists and fieldwork done in 2023, it develops an analytical approach to understanding exiled media as a constellation of connections to, and disconnections from, both home and host spaces. On the one hand, Russian exiled journalists strive to navigate and reproduce a digitised reality of the home country, transcending the physical boundaries and restrictions imposed by nation-states. On the other, their lack of physical presence in Russia fosters a fear of losing their intimate understanding of the homeland and, consequently, their professional authority. Paradoxically, their efforts to stay connected to Russia and keep journalistic doxa deepen their disconnection from their host country and hinder their personal and professional integration. As such, their occupation, “Russian journalist”, becomes a symbolic shelter to maintain the professional status quo. To mitigate isolation in the host society, journalists cultivate alternative connections with exiled journalists from other countries.

This study systematically analyzes and compares verification strategies employed by fact-checking organizations across various contexts. Utilizing a dataset of 3,154 verification articles from 23 organizations in eight countries across Europe and Latin America, the study identifies 17 distinct debunking techniques through both inductive and deductive approaches. The primary objectives are to uncover common and divergent practices in factual correction, assess how techniques vary by verification target (e.g., online rumors versus statements by public figures), and examine variations at organizational and national levels. The findings reveal that while methods such as providing documents and tracing misinformation origins are prevalent, significant variation exists depending on the target. For online rumors, common practices include tracing misinformation origins, forensic analysis, and visual indicators of image manipulation. Conversely, verification of public figure statements frequently involves expert arbitration and direct contact with misinformation sources. Additionally, the study highlights substantial differences in fact-checking strategies across countries and organizations, influenced by their focus and institutional contexts. This research addresses a notable gap in the literature by offering a comparative analysis of verification strategies, providing a framework for future experimental research, and offering guidance for fact-checkers and scholars to refine their approaches to combating misinformation. ARTICLE HISTORY

Translation has rarely been the analytical focus in communication and journalism studies, which might be ascribed to an outdated understanding of the term "translation." This study highlighted the crucial role of the translation gate in curating news narratives. It adopts an extended conceptualization of journalistic translation, which considers translation in news production as a two-level gatekeeping practice. Specifically, this study aimed to investigate translation's gatekeeping function at the macro level. To this end, popular translated news reports covering the United States posted in 2020 on the WeChat account of an official Chinese media outlet, Reference News (RN), were collected. By employing content analysis, this study scrutinized the sources used, topics covered, and story tones of the collected reports. The findings indicate that RN exhibited a preference for established and pro-China media sources in covering the United States. The topics in the examined reports were mostly hard news with a few instances of soft news. While the majority of news reports were negative, positive stories were also identified, demonstrating RN's efforts to disseminate constructive journalism.

In the adaptation of innovations, journalists often reflect on areas of concern that can lead to subsequent selection, a strategic process of diminishing the practice of a routine. Through the lens of normalization process theory and structuration theory, this article explores how journalists reflexively monitor innovations. The article also elaborates on the ways journalists evaluate disruptive circumstances that can lead them to select routines for denormalization. Using 44 interviews with journalists from the United States, this study argues that reflexive monitoring occurs through collaborations with audiences: a key to helping re-center journalists on the viability of a routine with existing commitments.

As the climate crisis deepens, journalistic interventions aimed at engaging citizens with news that raises public awareness and promotes climate solutions are gaining significance throughout the globe. Drawing on the conceptual framework of transformative journalisms, this study focuses on professional discourses, practices, emotions, and challenges of climate journalists in Turkey to improve our understanding of their operations in a highly polarized and oppressive political atmosphere. The research is based on qualitative, in-depth interviews with 21 journalists from different regions of Turkey who identified as climate journalists or environmental journalists prioritizing the climate crisis. The findings suggest that journalists go beyond solely reporting on climate science and undertake the mission of advocacy for the transformation toward ecological sustainability despite constant political oppression, financial restraints, and polarization traps. Although inspiring hardly any policy change under the circumstances demotivates the journalists, niche outlets invest in raising community-level awareness of climate change and forging broad alliances with local journalists, actors of environmental movements, and civil society, keeping hopes alive for bottom-up transformation. The most urgent needs are dedicated training programs for emergent journalists, generating sustainable income models, and challenging the discourse of pro-government media through local stories with a climate angle.

This study employed qualitative content analysis to explore data-driven journalistic practices employed by mainstream and citizen journalists on X (formerly known as Twitter) and how these practices foster civic engagement among Ghanaian X users. The study was grounded in the materiality, performativity, and reflexivity framework of data journalism and the civic engagement model. The findings were that the main themes of data-driven narratives on X were politics, socioeconomic discourse, and particularly economic metrics. Materiality and performativity showed up in the human agency of journalists and in the skills and expertise of those who contextualise and interpret the data. Data journalists liaise with allied data production specialists to convert raw data into data artifacts to tell stories. Ghanaian X users actively used the offered data stories to participate in civic arguments and discussions on social media. They back data stories with personal anecdotes. Through the proactive deployment of surveys, the creation of X polls, and other cooperative efforts, the examined narratives illustrated the performativity of data journalism as a technique that subverts power structures. The study provides evidence for the important role of peripheral actors in data journalism and how their efforts drive civic discourse to potentially drive tangible societal transformations.

The effective adoption of responsible AI practices in journalism requires a concerted effort to bridge different perspectives, including technological, editorial, and managerial. Among the many challenges that could impact information sharing around responsible AI inside news organisations are knowledge silos, where information is isolated within one part of the organisation and not easily shared with others. This study aims to study how knowledge silos might affect the adoption of responsible AI practices in journalism through a cross-case study of four Dutch media outlets. We examine individual and organisational barriers to AI knowledge sharing and the extent to which knowledge silos could impede the operationalisation of responsible AI initiatives inside these newsrooms. To address this question, we conducted 14 semi-structured interviews with a strategic sample of editors, managers, and journalists at de Telegraaf, de Volkskrant, NOS, and RTL Nederland. The interviews aimed to uncover insights into the existence of knowledge silos, their effects on responsible AI practice adoption, and the organisational practices influencing these dynamics. Our results emphasise the importance of creating better structures for sharing information on AI across all layers of news organisations and highlight the need for research on knowledge silos as an impediment to responsible AI production.

Immigration news coverage is often characterized by negativity, marked by a lack of representation of immigration stakeholders, and frequent instances of terminology misuse. Such depictions of immigration risk to perpetuate stereotypes and distort public perceptions concerning immigration. Although prior research has scrutinized the content of immigration news, how journalists give rise to the framing and voice of asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrants remains underexplored so far. Since press agency content often serves as a starting point for other newsrooms, we conducted three focus groups with 21 journalists from Belgium's largest press agency, Belga. Our findings show that journalists recognize the negativity bias in immigration coverage, which may be influenced by external actors such as politicians or NGOs. Journalists attribute the lack of a voice for immigration stakeholders to language barriers, organizational limitations, and the time pressures of 24/7 news reporting. Additionally, terminological complexities regarding asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrants hinder accurate representation. When reporting on international news, journalists frequently resort to external sources, given the limited opportunities for fact-checking. Our study implies that journalists do not operate in isolation and journalistic routines, organizational roles, and external actors, such as NGOs or political parties, shape immigration coverage. ARTICLE HISTORY

This article investigates how journalists perceive the role of inclusion and objectivity in their coverage of social justice topics. Theoretically, this article engages with the concept of objectivity through the feminist lens of standpoint theory. Seventeen semi-structured interviews were conducted with journalists covering LGBTI topics, nine of whom identified as non-heterosexual, from five prominent Flemish newspapers. The findings reveal three distinct approaches to covering social justice issues, based on how journalists conceptualize objectivity and inclusion in their work: the objectivity model, the inclusivity model, and the advocacy model. Additionally, this article identifies three key challenges to achieving more inclusive coverage that go beyond the traditional notion of objectivity: implementing clear guidelines, fostering reflexivity, and addressing intersectional shortcomings. Newsrooms can tackle these challenges by creating opportunities for reflection, both in terms of time and physical space, and by openly communicating their value frameworks to both audiences and staff. This is particularly crucial in an era marked by deliberate provocations against LGBTI rights.

his article illustrates the application of Manuel Chaves Nogales’ journalistic techniques within the context of fictional narratives based on actual historical events. It offers a comprehensive and insightful framework for understanding his accounts of the Spanish Civil War. In his book, Heroes and Beasts of Spain, Chaves Nogales presents accounts written during his exile in Paris and first published in Chile in 1937, at the height of the war. Though written as fiction, the stories are based on real events, and the author himself claimed that they constitute accounts of his own experiences that ended up being more faithful to the truth than he would have liked them to be. The stories have the significant merit of taking a detached view of the political conflict and recounting the excesses and atrocities committed by both sides.