Steen Steensen

Oslo Metropolitan University · Department of Journalism and Media Studies

“Mainstream media” and “mainstream journalism” have become significant concepts in political, popular, and academic discourse in recent years. They are key in how media, communication, and journalism scholars have been, and continue to be, concerned with relational dimensions in their work. However, the meaning of the word “mainstream” is often tak...

This article presents a hermeneutical epistemology for the assessment and production of truth-claims in journalism. This epistemology is based on Gadamer’s functional hermeneutics, and it advances the concept of source criticism as an alternative to other practices and understandings of information verification in journalism. The article argues tha...

This introduction to the special issue “Fighting Fakes: News publishers, fact-checkers, platform companies, and policymaking” argues that the institutionalization of interactions related to misinformation is central to scholarly understandings of the visibility and structural inequalities of institutionalized efforts to fighting fakes. We look at t...

The authors of Journalistikkens filosofi discuss how seemingly contradictory ideals live side by side in Norwegian journalism. By developing a pragmatic philosophy for journalism, they show that it is possible to rethink journalistic ideals so that journalism can continue to play a significant role in society. The book is written in Norwegian.

Audience engagement has become a key concept in contemporary discussions on how news companies relate to the public and create sustainable business models. These discussions are irrevocably tied to practices of monitoring, harvesting and analyzing audience behaviours with metrics, which is increasingly becoming the new currency of the media economy...

Sammendrag Denne artikkelen presenterer en analyse av stillingsannonser i fagbladet Journalisten fra 1987 til 2017. 1628 stillingsannonser i årene 1987, 1997, 2007 og 2017 er analysert for å undersøke hvordan arbeidsmarkedet for journalister, slik det framkommer av stillingsannonser i fagbladet, har utviklet seg. Funnene viser blant annet at antall...

This article analyses the characteristics of digital journalism studies through an empirical investigation of all articles published in the journal Digital Journalism, from its launch in 2013 to issue 6, 2018. The aim of the analysis is to identify dominant themes and degrees of diversity and interdisciplinary in digital journalism studies, and to...

This article analyzes how inter-media connections and news flows can establish societal resilience in times of crisis. The article is framed by understandings of the discursive practice of news as polyvocal and networked, and that social media as much as legacy media are important to a society’s resilience to crisis situations. Based on an analysis...

This book is about how different communicators - whether crisis managers, first responders, journalists, or private citizens and disaster victims - have used social media to communicate about risks and crises. It is also about how these very different actors can play a crucial role in mitigating or preventing crises. How can they use social media t...

This chapter summarises the findings of a case study on social media activity during the 22 July 2011 terrorist attacks in Norway. Based on these findings and on theories and previous research on the role of social media in situation awareness (SA) configuration during crisis situations, the chapter offers seven recommendations for key communicator...

The use of social media to communicate in cases of emergencies has gained more and more importance in recent years. Studying such web and social media data is not only a methodological challenge, but ethical questions also arise. In this article we describe some of those ethical issues and our reflections with a focus on dissemination of results ba...

Putting a Face on It analyses and discusses how subjectivity and exposure of individuals now affect most journalistic topics and genres: from politics to sports journalism, from science journalism to journalism about terrorism. Individual exposure and subjectivity affect news and features, photos and front pages, and are at the core of an increasin...

This chapter discusses different notions of subjectivity as an ideal in journalism and relates them to epistemological philosophy from Descartes to Foucault. The chapter argues that subjectivity – once a dominant ideal in journalism – again is rising in significance, and that there therefore exists a need to better understand what subjectivity as a...

Given the interdisciplinary nature of digital journalism studies and the increasingly blurred boundaries of journalism, there is a need within the field of journalism studies to widen the scope of theoretical perspectives and approaches. Theories of Journalism in a Digital Age discusses new avenues in theorising journalism, and reassesses establish...

This article presents a study of what affects professional knowledge creation when journalism students have their periods of internship in legacy, yet highly digitized newsrooms. A total of 16 Norwegian j-students are interviewed and 30 internship reports analysed in order to detect the different actors – both humans and non-humans – that matter wh...

This special issue introductory article investigates contemporary notions of theory in journalism studies. Many scholars have argued that we need better ways of conceptualising what journalism is and how it develops in a digital age. There is, however, a lack of knowledge regarding what the theoretical trends within the interdisciplinary domain of...

Discussions and practices related to participatory and interactive journalism emphasize the dialogical aspects of journalism. However, throughout history, the idea of dialogue in journalism has taken a variety of forms. This paper places dialogue as a journalistic ideal under scrutiny. Our aim is twofold: first, we map out the development and diffe...

This special issue introductory article investigates contemporary notions of theory in journalism studies. Many scholars have argued that we need better ways of conceptualising what journalism is and how it develops in a digital age. There is, however, a lack of knowledge regarding what the theoretical trends within the interdisciplinary domain of...

This paper argues that conversation analysis (CA) has much to offer studies of online interactions and, particularly, online interactive journalism. CA provides a methodological opportunity to closely investigate the structure of public discourse in new media platforms, and power relations between journalists and audiences in instances of interacti...

Innovation is about change, and media products and services are changing. The processes of production and distribution of media are changing. The ownership and financing of media are changing. The roles of users are changing. And our ideas about media are changing. This book argues that innovation theory provides better tools for media researchers...

This chapter takes a critical look at the innovation discourse and argues that media innovation research should be balanced with two counter-discourses – the discourses of transformation and of practice. The chapter argues that a transformation discourse balances the emphasis on newness in innovation discourse by highlighting the importance of genr...

In recent years applications like CoveritLive have diffused with great speed throughout online newsrooms. Such technologies create an interface where audience participation and journalistic reporting potentially merge into a text-production system marked by a high degree of immediacy and interactivity. This paper investigates the consequences of su...

Feature journalism has developed from being an insignificant supplement to news journal-ism to a family of genres that today dominates newspapers. The present article explores the growing importance of feature journalism and attempts to understand its social function, how it has changed and why it has become so important. Based on an analysis of in...

Research about online journalism has been dominated by a discourse of technological innovation. The “success” of online journalism is often measured by the extent to which it utilizes technological assets like interactivity, multimedia and hypertext. This paper critically examines the technologically oriented research about online journalism in the...

Findings in recent research suggest that online journalism is much less innovative than many researchers and scholars predicted a decade ago. Research into online journalism has, however, been biased towards a focus on online news journalism, thereby neglecting the magnitude of new styles and genres that are currently emerging online. In this paper...

This article explores the professional role and normative demands of online feature journalists. Through a longitudinal ethnographic case study of the work practices of feature journalists in the Norwegian online newspaper dagbladet.no, the article uncovers how the normative demands of a new professional role are negotiated within the online newsro...

Although online journalism is still dominated by breaking news coverage, new genres are emerging that differentiate it more and more from old media journalism. This article explores the emergence of feature journalism in online newspapers. Through comparative qualitative text analysis of feature journalism in the US online newspaper palmbeachpost.c...

H vordan formes egentlig sjangre? Spørsmålet blir stadig mer relevant, fordi vi lever i en tid der kommunikasjonsformene er mer mangfoldige og kompliserte enn noen gang. Nye, digital medier skaper for eksempel nye sjangre i grenselandet mellom privat og offentlig kommunikasjon. Nettavisene utfordrer massemedienes tradisjonelle kommunikasjonsform ve...

Findings in recent research suggest that online journalism is much less innovative than many researchers and scholars predicted a decade ago. Research into online journalism has, however, been biased towards a focus on online news journalism, thereby neglecting the magnitude of new styles and genres that are currently emerging online. In this paper...