Epp Lauk

Vytautas Magnus University · Departments of Public Communication

After the collapse of Communism, journalists and media professionals in former Communist countries faced the task of re-evaluating and redefining the role of the media and journalists in society. It was largely assumed that the newly free media in democratizing societies would naturally follow the path of the “liberal” model of journalism. There we...

This article presents key results of a comparative journalists’ survey on media accountability, for which 1762 journalists in 14 countries had been interrogated online. The article explores how European journalists perceive the impact of old versus new media accountability instruments on professional journalistic standards – established instruments...

The aim of the second case study is to provide analysis of risks and opportunities concerning the diachronic changes in four domains defined by the project in the 21st century.

In the 21st century, European media, journalism and communication (JMC) research has led to a plethora of studies that address various challenges and developments in contemporary news media. Both these developments and their research bear the traits of the contexts and conditions of the previous periods, mainly of the 20th century. The advancement...

Bibliographical data of media and journalism research in 14 EU countries related to risks and opportunities for deliberative communication (in 2000–2020).

Diese Publikation befasst sich mit der Frage, wie man Risiken und Chancen (R/C) für deliberative Kommunikation in den (Nachrichten-) Medien erkennen kann (Abbildung 1). Sie basiert auf der ersten Forschungsphase eines von der Europäischen Kommission finanzierten Projekts mit dem Titel „Critical Exploration of Media-Related Risks and Opportunities f...

The editorial introduces the topic of this thematic issue, which is the important role of society’s media monitoring capabilities, i.e., to produce information about what media “do” to society, and more precisely for democratic development both the here and the now and in the longer term. The theoretical and methodological aspects of the thematic i...

This book focuses on how to detect risks and opportunities (ROs) for deliberative communication in the news media and produced by the media (Figure 1). It is based on research for the first phase of a European Commission funded project called “Critical exploration of media related risks and opportunities for deliberative communication: Development...

The overall objective of MEDIADELCOM is to develop a diagnostic tool (multiple scenario building model) for policy makers, educators, media critical bodies and institutions, as well as for media experts and journalists, which enables the provision of holistic assessment of risks and opportunities concerning deliberative communication and consequent...

This paper attempts to apply the 'small country' approach to the comparative analysis of journalistic cultures. Previous media research using the small country approach (in turn drawn from political science and international relations studies) has focused on the level of media policy and not paid attention to the fact that market size and size of t...

In Estonia, the key decisions concerning media accountability were made in the 1990s: First, a press council was established in 1991, then a code of ethics was adopted in 1997, and an ombudsperson institution for the public broadcasting was established in 2007. Since then, there has not been any improvement – the accountability system has not been...

The three countries on the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea in northeast Europe – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, known collectively as the Baltic states – had been subject to the empire-building policies of neighboring countries around the Baltic Sea since the thirteenth century before they first achieved independence from 1918 to 1940. In 193...

CS1. Studies on national media research capability as a contextual domain of the sources of ROs The aim of the first case study is to describe and analyse the countries' monitoring capability: the ability and possibilities of various agents to observe the developments of the media and the changes in society emanating from the media transformations,...

This chapter offers an insight into the evolution, value basis, functions, and variations of codes of journalism ethics as media accountability instruments within the Western European context. The chapter also discusses the problematic issues of the implementation of codes of ethics, especially in the current digital media era.

Though the proclivity of sexual-related harassment in African journalism is high, the rates of reporting of these incidences and empirical studies are low. The study employs a gendered approach for an exploratory inquiry into the lived experiences and impressions of Ghanaian female journalists about sexual harassment. The study examines how female...

In Ghana, the feminisation of the journalism profession has become a fact: more girls are entering journalism programmes in the Universities, and the number of women employees are growing in the newsrooms. The problem of balancing work-time arrangements (e.g. irregular and unpredictable work schedules, weekend work and long working hours) with equa...

In Ghana, the feminisation of the journalism profession has become a fact: more girls are entering journalism programmes in the Universities, and the number of women employees are growing in the newsrooms. The problem of balancing work-time arrangements (e.g. irregular and unpredictable work schedules, weekend work and long working hours) with equa...

The purpose of the LUOTSIVA project was to find out how newspapers on their Facebook pages could develop and maintain an audience relationship that would benefit both the papers and their readers. The project involves two regional and two local Finnish newspapers. In the second phase of the project interaction between the newspapers and the audienc...

A system of censorship is vital element of the power mechanisms of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. This chapter deals with the various forms and practices of censorship of communist governments in former Eastern Bloc countries (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the GDR, Hungary, Poland and Romania) and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia....

Broad press freedom was a major outcome of Estonia’s liberation from the Soviet regime. Among CEE countries, Estonia was the first to inaugurate the ideas of media accountability, self-regulation, and a Press Council. The tradition of the Estonian language press acting as an agent of 19th-century nation-building and 20th-century national survival a...

This article attempts to explain the relationships between journalists, politics and the state from the perspective of collective autonomy, that of the professional organization of journalists. The case of Estonian Journalists’ Union demonstrates the complexity and historical contingency of professional autonomy of journalism. The development of th...

This editorial provides the overall context for the five cases—three national and two international—covered in this thematic issue. While the cases are from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), they highlight fundamental questions of journalism everywhere, including contradictions between freedom and control, professionalism and politics, individual a...

ABSTRACT Covering crises presents some of the biggest challenges in news reporting. Taking good images or videos during conflicts or remote areas is an especially hazardous business. In 2012–2014, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (2015), over 70 journalists and photographers were killed in conflict zones. In this chapter, we will...

Ad hoc groups (sporadically formed on social network sites for achieving particular common objectives) have been seen as a public space for citizen participation and debate. This study focuses on Facebook’s ad hoc groups in Finland. The aim is to detect the potential of these groups to enhance networked citizens’ communicative power for raising soc...

Ad hoc groups (sporadically formed on social network sites for achieving particular common objectives) have been seen as a public space for citizen participation and debate. This study focuses on Facebook’s ad hoc groups in Finland. The aim is to detect the potential of these groups to enhance networked citizens’ communicative power for raising soc...

The Editorial raises some challenging ethical and methodological aspects of Internet based research (such as protection of informational privacy, informed consent, general ethical guidelines vs case-based approach), which are further discussed in the five articles of this special issue.

This article analyzes the ethical discussion focusing on the Facebook emotional contagion experiment published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014. The massive-scale experiment manipulated the News Feeds of a large amount of Facebook users and was successful in proving that emotional contagion happens also in online envir...

The current combination of economic recession and info-technological revolution is drastically affecting the working environment of journalists and challenging their autonomy more than ever. This article focuses on how journalists in specific European countries perceive professional autonomy and analyzes the various factors that affect such autonom...

We argue using unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), popularly known as camera drones, for journalistic purposes is the newest test for press freedom globally. The technological development of camera drones is rapid and their sale is growing exponentially worldwide. Enabling video shooting in dangerous or otherwise inaccessible places, as well as immedi...

In his essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism Oscar Wilde wrote: ‘In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press’. His words reflect the noticeable power the press had acquired in society already by the end of the 19th century. Journalism began to obtain characteristics of a profession, developing from craft towards an occupation demanding ce...

This study presents a general history of how journalism as an emerging profession became internationally organized over the past one hundred and twenty years, seen mainly through the associations founded to promote the interests of journalists around the world.

This is a preprint version of our chapter in Nordenstreng, K., Björk, U.J., Beyersdorf, F., Hoyer, S., Lauk, E. A History of the International Movement of Journalists. Professionalism Versus Politics. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. The preprint version may differ in some details from the published version.

The Editorial outlines some characteristics of the development of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) media and communication scholarship during the past 25 years. In the majority of CEE countries, the media and communication research was re-established after the collapse of communism. Since then, a critical mass of active scholars has appeared...

The paper explores research ethics in the era of social media and big data by discussing a debated Facebook experiment about emotional contagion.

Digital and social media and large available data-sets generate various new possibilities and challenges for conducting research focused on perpetually developing online news ecosystems. This paper presents a novel computational technique for gathering and processing large quantities of data from Facebook. We demonstrate how to use this technique f...

The article focuses on the role of Russian-speaking journalists and the potential of Russianlanguage media in advancing societal integration in Estonia. As a consequence of socialist colonization during the Soviet regime a quarter of Estonian population today is Russian-speaking. The two main language communities have different informational spaces...

Digital and social media and large available data-sets generate various new possibilities and challenges for conducting research focused on perpetually developing online news ecosystems. This paper presents a novel computational technique for gathering and processing large quantities of data from Facebook. We demonstrate how to use this technique f...

The following chapter compares journalism cultures in three Central and Eastern European countries – Poland, Romania and Moldova – in five aspects: professional education, gender, income, organizational affiliation and professional role-perceptions. The study is based on the results of six quantitative and qualitative research projects completed in...

Rapid advancement of online communication and publishing poses new challenges to media policy-makers and regulators for both statutory regulation and self-regulation. For journalists, ‘the Internet shapes and redefines a number of moral and ethical issues … when operating online or making use of online resources’ (Deuze and Yeshua, 2001: 276).

Finland, along with the other Nordic countries, provides one of the world’s freest environments regarding press freedom, political rights, and civic liberties, as proved by the Reporters without Borders and Freedom House rankings for many years. The World Democracy Audit ranks Finland in 2010 as the first in democracy and press freedom, and the fou...

While press councils face tough challenges across Europe, and media reporting has almost vanished from the mass media in many countries in a time of media crisis, new forms of media accountability have emerged in the Internet: readers and viewers twitter about the media’s mistakes, online ombudsmen follow up on e-mail complaints, and journalists bl...

A paradigm shift in the European media and communications policy from public service orientation towards market liberalization raises the question of effective mechanisms for safeguarding public interest and counterbalancing the commercial objectives of the media industry. This article discusses the efficiency of one of particular mechanism, self-r...

Tiiu.Kreegipuu@ut.ee This paper focuses on the journalistic strategies and practices that Estonian journalists and editors used for expressing both their dissent with the restrictions of the freedom of the press and opposition to the Soviet regime. As no underground dissident press existed in Estonia in the Soviet period (1940–1941 and 1944–1991),...

A consequence of globalization of media economy and technology for journalism lies in the unification of the production processes of media content. Differences between journalistic production routines and applied principles are diminishing towards more popularized, more commercialized production of content (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). Furthermore, jou...

Taking the concept of professionalisation as a theoretical framework, this article demonstrates how journalism in Estonia historically developed into an independent occupation with well-defined role perceptions, occupational standards and values, and how this development was interrupted by the Soviet authorities in 1940. The article is largely base...

Šiame straipsnyje nagrinėjama pokomunistinių šalių spaudos laisvė, laisvoji rinka ir egzistuojantys žurnalistų etikos kodeksai, kurių nepakanka garbingos ir etiškos žurnalistikos, prižiūrimos savireguliacinių institucijų, plėtrai. Estijos pavyzdys, kaip demokratijos ir laisvos rinkos ekonomikos modelis, atskleidžia, jog vienoje iš “laisviausių” šal...

ABSTRACT: The system and practices of both German censorship in Norway in 1940–1945 and of Soviet censorship in Estonia in 1944–1990 were, because of their totalitarian nature, very similar. Some aspects of the reorganisation of the press in Norway and Estonia after the shift to freedom of expression are compared. In both countries freedom of the p...

Since historical memory is a vital element of national unity and identity in oppressed nations that challenges the legitimacy of an occupying power, an important goal of the oppressors becomes the distortion of this memory. The Soviet authorities put a massive effort into the legitimization of their power by creating official versions of histories...

The principal goal of this article is to assess the implications of crucial changes that have recently affected media landscapes in Lithuania and Estonia. In providing a descriptive analysis of what has actually changed since the 1990s the article seeks to demonstrate that the arrival of “economic logic” has affected both news production and its pr...

During the period of Soviet Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, the political regime created a rather primitive language that served only one purpose: to be a vehicle for ideology – a Soviet “newspeak”. This was perpetuated as the only political and ideological discourse that was officially accepted. A substantial alteration of politic...

Estonia, at Independence in 1991, was a digital desert compared to Western European countries. The digital revolution that was encircling the globe coincided with a major societal transition - the change from communism to democracy and a free market economy - in Estonia. The experience of the digital revolution in the West was a 'natural evolution'...

th century the literary system was rather undifferentiated in many European countries. Authors of fiction and 'men of letters' in general served the same printers. It was sometimes difficult to distinguish between the kind of contributions that were printed in newspapers and those printed in other publications: book, journals etc. 1 In the last dec...