Claudia Mellado

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso | PUCV · School of Journalism

Se analiza el ejercicio periodístico, específicamente el rol del perro guardián y el rol intervencionista, en Argentina durante el primer año de la pandemia del Covid-19. Se conforma un universo de 5367 noticias, producidas por los diez medios de comunicación con mayor alcance del país. Para lograr una muestra representativa y completa del sistema...

Research in the field often reflects the serious, labor-intensive nature of journalism; findings that would seem to reflect the understandable exodus from the profession. Equally profound however is that so many journalists stay. Building on Parks (2021) concept of joy as a news value, this study seeks to explore the ways that joy manifests in narr...

This study examines the perceived relevance and implementation of competing normative ideals in journalism in times of increasing use of digital technology in newsrooms. Based on survey and content analysis data from 37 countries, we found a small positive relationship between the use of digital research tools and “watchdog” performance. However, a...

The impact of socio-political variables on journalism is an ongoing concern of comparative research on media systems and professional cultures. However, they have rarely been studied systematically across diverse cases, particularly outside Western democracies, and existing studies that compare western and non-western contexts have mainly focused o...

This paper examines journalistic role performance in coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a content analysis of newspaper, television, radio and online news in 37 countries. We test a set of hypotheses derived from two perspectives on the role of journalism in health crises. Mediatization theories assume that news media tend to sensationaliz...

p>Studies suggest that, at the routine level, news beats function as unique “micro-cultures.” Exploring this “particularist” approach in news content, we compare how the interventionist, watchdog, loyal, service, infotainment, and civic roles materialize across 11 thematic news beats and analyze the moderating effect of platforms, ownership, and le...

p>Studies suggest that, at the routine level, news beats function as unique “micro-cultures.” Exploring this “particularist” approach in news content, we compare how the interventionist, watchdog, loyal, service, infotainment, and civic roles materialize across 11 thematic news beats and analyze the moderating effect of platforms, ownership, and le...

Studies suggest that, at the routine level, news beats function as unique “micro-cultures.” Exploring this “particularist” approach in news content, we compare how the interventionist, watchdog, loyal, service, infotainment, and civic roles materialize across 11 thematic news beats and analyze the moderating effect of platforms, ownership, and leve...

The shifting role of journalism in a digital age has affected long-standing journalistic norms across media platforms. This has reinvigorated discussion on how work in online newsrooms compares to other platforms that differ in media affordances and forms. Still, more studies are needed on whether those differences translate into distinct practices...

Partiendo del argumento que sustenta que las plataformas mediáticas generan microculturas periodísticas y que la naturaleza de los roles periodísticos es contextual, se aborda la posible existencia de un modelo periodístico de los medios nativos digitales coherente con una cultura profesional propia. A través de un análisis de contenido de una mues...

How a health emergency is defined and presented through the news media matters for public understanding and health outcomes. Previous studies have endeavored to identify the patterns of news sourcing in crisis coverage, specifically the interplay between political sources and health expert sources, but yielded inconclusive results. This study analy...

This study takes an empirical approach to analyze how journalists perform the roles of promoter, celebrity, and joker on social media. These roles already play out in print and broadcast, but much less is known about how they are performed outside of traditional media contexts. This study addresses this gap in the literature through a content analy...

On the basis of the argument that media platforms generate journalistic micro-cultures and that the nature of journalistic roles is contextual, the possible existence of a journalistic model of digital native media coherent with its own professional culture is addressed. Through a content analysis of a sample of 2,729 news items published in four S...

In periods of political unrest, media habits change significantly, allowing for new patterns of selectivity. This study's main contribution lies in its application of selective exposure theory and its comparison of people's media uses in five Global South polities that witnessed widespread protests in 2019: Chile, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon...

This article aims to introduce Galileo, a platform for extracting and organizing news media data on social networks. Galileo integrates publications made on the main social networks used in the information ecosystem, namely Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Currently, the system includes 97 media outlets from nine countries: Brazil, Chile, Germany,...

On the basis of a digital ethnography and in-depth interviews with Chilean journalists, this study analyzes how news professionals reinterpret and redefine their professional roles on Twitter and Instagram through their practices and discourse, building different digital identities. The results of our analyses show that Twitter and Instagram streng...

This study joins the emerging de-Westernization discourse within communication studies and empirically compares the diversity of Ibero-American, Western, and regional journals at three different levels: authorship, editorial board membership, and citations. Our findings show that through low geopolitical diversity and high regional shares in author...

This paper considers the use of the concept of hybridity in journalism studies, arguing that the concept of hybridity has served an important role in reorienting the field in the face of important processes of social change, but that as a “sensitizing concept” in the sense that Herbert Blumer used the term, it requires critical reflection and more...

Based on a content analysis of 33,640 news stories from the Journalistic Role Performance project, this paper analyzes how civic, service and infotainment roles connect with thematic beats and vary across media organizations and cultures. We examine differences in role performance across politics, economics, crime, social affairs, court, and miscel...

This article explores the uses of sources in coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in social media posts of mainstream news organizations in Brazil, Chile, Germany, Mexico, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. Based on computational content analysis, our study analyzes the sources and actors present in more than 940,000 posts on COVID-19 published in the 227...

This study analyzes the use of social media sources by nine news outlets in Chile in regard to Covid-19. We identified the most frequently used types of sources, their evolution over time, and the differences between the various social media platforms used by the Chilean media during the pandemic. Specifically, we extracted 838,618 messages publish...

Based on the content analysis of 1,400 Twitter and Instagram accounts, this study identified the social media profiles of 792 Chilean journalists from national media outlets to describe their visibility and activity levels and how they construct their identities. Our results show that although Chilean journalists have a solid digital presence, they...

In traditional news media, professional journalists are expected to follow the norms and practices created and perpetuated in the field to maintain autonomy and authority. Social media spaces lay outside these institutional boundaries, serving as public, semi-public, and private spaces for connection, interaction, publication, and amplification, as...

One of the main challenges of studying journalistic roles in social media practice is that the profession’s conceptual boundaries have become increasingly blurred. Social media has developed as a space used by audiences to consume, share, and discuss news and information, offering novel locations for journalists to intervene at professional and per...

Beyond Journalistic Norms contests and challenges pre-established assumptions about a dominant type of journalism prevailing in different political, economic, and geographical contexts, to posit the hybrid, fluid and dynamic nature of journalistic roles. The book brings together scholars from Western and Eastern Europe, North America, Latin Americ...

Based on face-to-face, in-depth interviews with 31 Chilean journalists from national TV, radio, print, and online media, this study explores how news professionals negotiate their identities and media use on Twitter and Instagram. The results suggest that, overall, they use Twitter and Instagram to stay informed, report the news, engage in branding...

More than a decade of research in journalism studies on social media has examined how journalists and news organizations have adopted and/or adapted to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more, surfacing tensions over professional control and normalization. This article advances a conceptual framework for analyzing forms of journalistic norms and pra...

The present chapter aims to give a comprehensive answer to the long-standing question of whether normative journalistic ideals translate into journalistic action, and how adequately journalists perceive discrepancies and interdependencies between professional norms and media practice. To this end, we would like to propose a theoretical framework th...

Previous research has analyzed the extent to which the structural characteristics of news organizations and the outlets where journalists operate explain differences in media diversity. Based on a content analysis of 16,281 news stories from Chilean television, radio, print, online media and Twitter, this study examines whether differences in sourc...

Based on a standardized operationalization of the watchdog, civic, interventionist, loyal-facilitator, infotainment, and service roles, this study combines survey ( N = 643) and content analysis data ( N = 19,908) to explain gaps between newspaper journalists’ role conceptions and the performance of their press organizations in nine countries from...

This study proposes the interventionist and the detached orientations to watchdog journalism through the conceptual lens of journalistic role performance. Based on a content analysis of 33,640 news stories from sixty-four media outlets in eighteen countries, we measure and compare both orientations across different countries using three performativ...

The article analyzes the role of Chilean political-economic journalism during the crisis of trust in 2015 when cases of corruption emerged, affecting important corporate groups and politicians. By analyzing the implementation of different professional roles in a multiplatform context, traits of a dynamic hybrid media system were found in the relati...

El artículo analiza el papel del periodismo político-económico chileno en el contexto de la crisis de confianza que se vivió el año 2015, con el surgimiento de casos de corrupción que afectaron a importantes grupos empresariales y políticos. Mediante el análisis de la puesta en práctica de diferentes roles profesionales en un contexto multiplatafor...

Tradicionalmente se ha cuestionado el periodismo deportivo, acusándolo de falta de rigor, escasa capacidad crítica con las fuentes y de ignorar los conflictos sociales. Este artículo busca establecer si existen diferencias en las características de la cobertura noticiosa que realizan las secciones de deportes y la que efectúan otras secciones de lo...

This article goes in depth into the key mechanisms that enable a digital interaction between journalists and expert sources in political journalism, developing a scale that articulates these interaction mechanisms on Twitter. On the basis of this analytical proposal, this study tries to reflect the potential professional consequences which are gene...

This article goes in depth into the key mechanisms that enable a digital interaction between journalists and expert sources in political journalism, developing a scale that articulates these interaction mechanisms on Twitter. On the basis of this analytical proposal, this study tries to reflect the potential professional consequences which are gene...

Previous research has largely explored the differences and similarities between print and digital media in terms of news cycles and specific content characteristics. However, fewer studies have addressed the extent to which the media platform accounts for differences in the performance of key journalistic roles. Based on a content analysis of 1519...

Fecha de recepción: 11 de abril de 2018 Fecha de aceptación y versión final: 7 de agosto de 2018 RESUMEN: Este artículo analiza el encuadre noticioso dado a la crisis ambiental y social vincula-da a la marea roja ocurrida en Chiloé, durante año 2016, a partir de la teoría del framing, y su tensión con la forma en que el movimiento produce su propio...

This paper analyzes how the presence of different journalistic roles in the news content changed or remained stable after the implementation of the Organic Law of Communication in Ecuador. The results show a significant correlation between the performance of different professional roles in news and the implementation of the above-mentioned law. The...

Through an analysis of news content about culture and shows in television news, print newspapers, digital newspapers and radio newscasts in Chile with higher audience or readership levels, this paper compares the presence of civic, service and infotainment roles in both information fronts between the different analyzed platforms. The results of the...

Important political, social and technological transformations during the last decades have affected both media systems and the journalistic profession in Latin America. Based on a crosslongitudinal content analysis (N = 2,431) of news published in the printed national Chilean press between 1990 and 2010, this study analyzes the evolution of the pre...

Influential research on comparative media systems identifies distinctive models according to which certain countries—particularly advanced democracies— share key features in their journalistic cultures. Revisionist literature has not only emphasized the limitations of such models, but also highlighted the hybridization of journalistic cultures else...

Print journalism has long been seen as a key institution of democratic politics, serving to enhance transparency, provide a forum for debate, and facilitate public participation. Instead, television journalism, particularly in its commercial form, has often been seen more negatively, as a form of infotainment that contributes little to the function...

This chapter draws on survey data collected in the international Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS)1, with probabilistic samples of journalists in seven Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Mexico. Through descriptive and multivariate tests, we present the most complete panorama to date of contemporar...

El periodismo iberoamericano a lo largo de las últimas cinco décadas ha afianzado su marco identitario, claramente diferenciado de un tipo de periodismo estándar procedente del hemisferio norte, fundamentalmente de Europa y Estados Unidos, asimilado hasta hoy día como modelo o prototipo ideal. Este giro paradójico, afianzador de la conciencia de un...

En España, recientes estudios han demostrado que el consumo de información política se ajusta al argumento de la exposición selectiva orientada por las predisposiciones ideológicas y políticas (Berganza y Martín LLaguno, 2001; Humanes, 2014; 2016). No obstante, estos trabajos no han tomado en cuenta otras variables –como el interés político- que pu...

Through a content analysis of headlines and central news of the main Chilean printed and online newspapers, as well as radio and television newscasts, the study describes the degree of homogeneity/diversity of the thematic agenda and the use of sources in different news media platforms. The results reveal a high level of homogeneity, both in the th...

Most comparative research on journalistic objectivity, and particularly the relation between objectivity and professional roles, has been carried out in the context of Western media systems and from the perspective of journalists’ role conceptions. However, the relation between role performance and the implementation of the objectivity norm remains...

El artículo analiza la presencia de las características del método objetivo en las noticias publicadas en diarios de Chile, México y España. El método objetivo predomina en los tres países; sin embargo, en los diarios latinoamericanos se concreta sobre todo en el uso de citas, mientras que sus colegas españoles manifiestan el empleo de la objetivid...

This paper analyzes the presence of the objective method in the news published in the Chilean, Mexican and Spanish press. The reporting strategies linked to journalistic objectivity predominate in the three countries. While in the Chilean and Mexican press the objective method is more present through the use of quotes, their Spanish colleagues expr...

Through a crosslongitudinal news content analysis (N = 2.431) of social affairs coverage by the national press in Chile between 1990 and 2010, this article characterizes the use of sources and actors, as well as the presence of the "infotainment" and "civic" journalistic models. The results show significant differences in the use of actors and sour...

Los estudios sobre los roles profesionales en el periodismo tradicionalmente se han enfocado en la con-cepción o percepción que los periodistas tienen de sus funciones en la sociedad (Mellado et al., 2017), especialmente en países particulares. Recién en las dos últimas décadas se comenzó a indagar sobre los roles profesionales desde un punto de vi...

La descripción del perfil laboral y los roles profesionales de los periodistas de Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Co-lombia, Ecuador, El Salvador y México aporta evidencias de ciertas tendencias que ayudan a entender en qué consiste ser periodista en América Latina. Dentro del marco del proyecto Worlds of Journalism Studies (WJS). Este estudio de la situ...

Este artículo analiza la forma en que el periodismo politico chileno aborda a su audiencia a traves de distintos estilos de reporteo, así como su evolución en las últimas décadas. La digitalización de la industria de medios, in-cluida la prensa tradicional, ha generado importantes transformaciones en su organización profesional, así como en la form...

Although the democratic role of journalism in new democracies is heavily debated, systematic empirical analysis is scarce. This paper studies how the performance of the watchdog and civic journalism role in Chilean newspapers develops during 22 years of democratic transition. We challenge the homogenization-thesis, which has often characterized thi...

Democracies with sharp violence and public insecurity have proliferated in recent decades, with many also featuring extreme economic inequality. These conditions have not been explicitly considered in comparative research on journalists’ work environments, an omission that may obscure important realities of contemporary journalism. We address this...

Through a cross-longitudinal news content analysis of 6.567 news articles published in two of the main national newspapers in Chile, this article addresses the evolution of the thematic agenda of both the elite and popular press -La Tercera y Las Últimas Noticias- between 1990 and 2015, specifically, at the level of the homogeneity and plurality in...

Based on a survey conducted in Chile with 1,985 journalism students from 14 public and private universities, this article analyzes the students' job expectations as well as the main factors that explain their career aspirations. The results show that 66% want to work in journalism, 15% in public relations (PR), 8% in teaching and research, and 11%...

Este estudio examina los dos modelos periodísticos dominantes en Estados Unidos, el perro guardián y el desempeño profesional orientado a la ciuda - dana, después de las crisis económicas. El estudio, basado en un análisis de contenido de 1,421 noticias publicadas por cinco diarios nacionales de Es - tados Unidos, mide la concepción del papel de lo...

https://www.amazon.com/Journalistic-Role-Performance-Routledge-Journalism/dp/1138783013

Comparative research across the world has shown that nation-level variables are strong predictors of professional roles in journalism. There is, however, still insufficient comparative research about three key issues: cross-national comparison of journalistic role performance, exploration of how – or whether – organizational variables account for v...

Cross-national comparative studies of journalists generally focus on the demographic characteristics and/or the values and role-perception of journalists. Systematic studies of journalistic skills have been rare, however. This article reports the findings from a comparative study of journalists from Britain, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Swe...

Transformations in media and society have forced journalists to reconsider their relation to the audience. In this article, we argue that due to these changes, a new conceptualization is needed of the way journalism addresses the audience, which goes beyond the traditional consumer–citizen dichotomy. Results of exploratory and confirmatory factor a...