No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Replacing the Public with Customers: How Emotions Define Today’s Broadcast Journalism Markets. A Comparative Study Between Television Journalists in the UK and India
Abstract
This paper identifies three main aspects of emotional engagement in journalistic news practice and outlines moments of tension between journalistic principles and (imagined) audience expectations. It investigates the relationship between emotionally (dis)engaging elements featured in television news coverage, and the rationale behind their deployment by journalists. In doing this, the article aims to address both journalism content and production dimension. It combines two qualitative approaches. This comprises semi-structured interviews conducted with around 50 journalists across both countries, supported by a close reading of TV news. The study is set within a cross-national comparative framework of two very different television cultures – the United Kingdom and India, where debates about emotional engagement contrasts a strongly regulated public service television market in the UK standing against highly competitive commercial 24-hour news programmes in India. The study presents how journalists imagine news programmes today. By highlighting journalistic practices outside of the normative model of Anglo-American journalism, this paper also seeks to include a de-Westernizing perspective within journalism studies. The paper will show that despite defending “classical” professional principles and news values, journalists across borders consider engagement and emotionalizing elements as indispensable in linking to audiences.
... While objectivity and emotionality continue to be approached hierarchically in the dominant media culture, the hybrid media reality has pushed media scholars to devote more attention to questioning the traditional canons, taking into consideration the "affective turn" (Clough and Halley 2007;Papacharissi 2015; Wahl-Jorgensen 2019; 2020)-not so much as a paradigm shift but as highlighting what has historically been "a blind spot in journalism" (Wahl-Jorgensen 2020, 178). Thus, recent scholarship (Glück 2016;2021;Wahl-Jorgensen 2020) has been calling for reflective consideration and for "normalization" (Beckett and Deuze 2016, 4) of emotions as a dimension of journalism. These works have argued against the simplified dismissal of emotions as trivialization or commercial appropriation of journalistic standards where infotainment and "happy news" suit the logic of the market (Hallin 2015). ...
... So far research on emotionality in the media has analysed emotional media performance in relation to its influences on the public (Grabe et al. 2017;Parrott et al. 2019). Some works on emotionality (Glück 2021;Goutier et al. 2021;Pantti 2010;Rosas 2018) have included journalists' own views and narrations but they have not targeted the professionalization aspect of emotions in journalism, and there is a complete lack of literature on the topic in the context of Central-Eastern Europe. This paper aims to examine journalists' understandings of emotions unravelling their professionalism value in a specific context of post-socialist Slovenia where the media system developed at the crossroads of fierce commercialization on the one hand and attempts at political instrumentalization of the media on the other. ...
... While emotions have always been part of journalism, they have been dismissed by the professional canons and have consequently been pushed aside in media research, which has led some scholars to critically address the canons as Western definitions of journalism and as processes of Westernizing media systems (Curran and Park 2000;Glück 2021). As suggested by Peters (2011), changes over recent decades have not caused the news becoming emotional "as it has always been"; rather, "the diversity of emotional styles, the acceptability of journalistic involvement, and attempts to involve the audience have become more explicit" (ibid., 299). ...
... Margreth Lünenborg/Débora MedeirosBerichterstattung aufgegriffen wird, doch der Umgang mit ihnen ist un terschiedlich: Für viele Journalist*innen gelten Emotionen als wünschens wert, wenn sie das Publikum erfolgreich in die Berichterstattung miteinbe ziehen und komplexe Themen greifbarer und verständlicher machen(vgl. Pantti 2010;Rosas 2018;Glück 2021). Die Affordanzen eines Mediums fließen dabei mit in die Überlegungen von Redaktionsmitgliedern zu Emotionen in der Berichterstattung ein: Einige Fernsehjournalist*innen sind der Meinung, dass Bilder Emotionen besser transportieren können alsTexte (vgl. ...
This volume is an up-to-date assessment of the current state of journalism research. The authors are acknowledged experts in the fields of research whose central questions, theories and results they present in a compact form. They also develop perspectives for future research. In doing so, they keep an eye on the complex changes in journalism in the present and the future. As a proven basic work, the volume is aimed at academics and students as well as practitioners who want to gain insight into research. For the third edition, the latest research approaches and findings have been added. In addition, the volume has been expanded to include essays on current trends in journalism. With contributions by Prof. Dr. Klaus-Dieter Altmeppen, Prof. Dr. Klaus Arnold, Prof. Dr. Thomas Birkner, Prof. Dr. Andrea Czepek, Konstantin Dörr, Dr. Tanja Evers, Prof. Dr. Susanne Fengler, Prof. Dr. Alexander Godulla, Michael Graßl, Dr. Regina Greck, Prof. Dr. Thomas Hanitzsch, Prof. Dr. Ralf Hohlfeld, Korbinian Klinghardt, Maike Körner, Prof. Dr. Wiebke Loosen, Prof. Dr. Margreth Lünenborg, Dr. Débora Medeiros, Prof. Dr. Klaus Meier, Prof. Dr. Christoph Neuberger, Prof. Dr. Armin Scholl, Dr. Jonas Schützeneder, Prof. Dr. Cornelia Wolf and Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Wyss.
... Margreth Lünenborg/Débora MedeirosBerichterstattung aufgegriffen wird, doch der Umgang mit ihnen ist un terschiedlich: Für viele Journalist*innen gelten Emotionen als wünschens wert, wenn sie das Publikum erfolgreich in die Berichterstattung miteinbe ziehen und komplexe Themen greifbarer und verständlicher machen(vgl. Pantti 2010;Rosas 2018;Glück 2021). Die Affordanzen eines Mediums fließen dabei mit in die Überlegungen von Redaktionsmitgliedern zu Emotionen in der Berichterstattung ein: Einige Fernsehjournalist*innen sind der Meinung, dass Bilder Emotionen besser transportieren können alsTexte (vgl. ...
This volume is an up-to-date assessment of the current state of journalism research. The authors are acknowledged experts in the fields of research whose central questions, theories and results they present in a compact form. They also develop perspectives for future research. In doing so, they keep an eye on the complex changes in journalism in the present and the future. As a proven basic work, the volume is aimed at academics and students as well as practitioners who want to gain insight into research. For the third edition, the latest research approaches and findings have been added. In addition, the volume has been expanded to include essays on current trends in journalism. With contributions by Prof. Dr. Klaus-Dieter Altmeppen, Prof. Dr. Klaus Arnold, Prof. Dr. Thomas Birkner, Prof. Dr. Andrea Czepek, Konstantin Dörr, Dr. Tanja Evers, Prof. Dr. Susanne Fengler, Prof. Dr. Alexander Godulla, Michael Graßl, Dr. Regina Greck, Prof. Dr. Thomas Hanitzsch, Prof. Dr. Ralf Hohlfeld, Korbinian Klinghardt, Maike Körner, Prof. Dr. Wiebke Loosen, Prof. Dr. Margreth Lünenborg, Dr. Débora Medeiros, Prof. Dr. Klaus Meier, Prof. Dr. Christoph Neuberger, Prof. Dr. Armin Scholl, Dr. Jonas Schützeneder, Prof. Dr. Cornelia Wolf and Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Wyss.
... For instance, a century ago, Lippman (1922) (himself a former US journalist) regarded news stories as lacking 'truth' because they are dominated by the emotions and hopes of those working in the news organisation. A hundred years later, Glück's (2021) interviews with Indian and British broadcast journalists within commercial networks and public service broadcasters find that they consider emotionalising elements as indispensable to engaging audiences: Indian producers appear particularly open to interventionist (rather than detached) roles, combining ideas of national development with motivating citizens and government-critical journalistic elements. ...
This chapter accounts for the energising role of affect, emotions and moods in circulating false information throughout the civic body . It starts by charting the trajectory of the role of feelings in understanding citizen-political communications. Their persuasive importance was recognised millennia ago and have been recognised anew in recent decades with the advent of neuroscience and the understanding that emotions are important for decisions and judgements. The chapter highlights three main mechanisms through which governments can try to manage public feeling and hence behaviour: discursive, decision-making based and datafied. It then considers the prevalent claim that we live in a post-truth condition (where appeals to emotion and personal belief are more influential in shaping public opinion than objective facts). While the relative importance of emotion and facts in everyday life is difficult to ascertain, the chapter demonstrates that the media from which people would normally derive their facts (namely, news media and social media) have become more emotionalised and affective, and suggests that we live in an informational environment that is sub-optimal for a healthy civic body . Finally, the chapter examines the challenges faced by governments in managing their population’s feelings during the COVID-19 pandemic where uncertainty, anxiety and false information proliferate.
... For instance, a century ago, Lippman (1922) (himself a former US journalist) regarded news stories as lacking 'truth' because they are dominated by the emotions and hopes of those working in the news organisation. A hundred years later, Glück's (2021) interviews with Indian and British broadcast journalists within commercial networks and public service broadcasters find that they consider emotionalising elements as indispensable to engaging audiences: Indian producers appear particularly open to interventionist (rather than detached) roles, combining ideas of national development with motivating citizens and government-critical journalistic elements. ...
... As a result of the "turn to affect" (Gregg & Seigworth, 2010) in the humanities and social sciences, journalism studies have experienced a surge of research exploring the role of affect and emotion in journalists' reporting practices (Glück, 2021;Stupart, 2021), professional norms (Schmidt, 2021), and media production (McConville et al., 2017;Wahl-Jorgensen, 2018). This constitutes an "emotional turn" in journalism studies, which has occurred in parallel to the consolidation of digital technologies and social media platforms in journalists' and audiences' everyday lives (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2020). ...
Drawing on theories of affect, emotion, and new institutionalism, we analyze discourse around the right-wing terrorist attack in Hanau, Germany, to identify the different ways in which emotions and affect circulate on legacy media and Twitter and how they help establish varying emotional communities. Building upon an understanding of journalism as an affective institution, our article takes a close look at how journalism attempts to assert its role in public spheres not only by circulating information but also by providing emotional interpretations of events. Journalism’s emotional interpretations, however, do not remain unchallenged. With the emergence of the hybrid media system, users engage in various forms of interaction on social media platforms, forming “affective publics” by connecting through their affective reactions to current issues and events. In these interactions, distinct emotional communities may emerge, built around performative, political emotions. Our data comprises various news shows aired on the German public service broadcaster ARD as well as a dataset of tweets about #Hanau that were collected in the immediate aftermath of the attack. The results of our mixed-methods analysis reveal that different performances of grief played a central role both on TV news and on social media. On TV, grief was nationally connotated and aimed at uniting Germany’s population. On social media, it fueled anti-racist activism, as seen on the hashtag #SayTheirNames, honoring the victims of the attack.
The journalism-audience relationship is a key research topic within communication and journalism studies. Digitalization, which has transformed the relationship, has made it even more relevant to both journalism practice and research. There is a large body of literature that examines how the relationship between journalism and its audience has changed, what the mutual expectations are, and how the audience can actively participate in journalism. However, profound theoretical conceptualizations of the journalism-audience relationship are scarce, especially in relation to a digital media environment. Based on a systematic theoretical review, we compare different theoretical conceptualizations of the journalism-audience relationship in the digital age that are currently in use, and how they can be characterized and classified. Our analysis identifies six main theoretical approaches: (1) discursive, (2) expectation-based, (3) network-oriented, (4) technological, (5) parasocial, and (6) strategic-organizational conceptualizations. The literature review provides insights into how the multifaceted relationship between journalism and its audience is captured and described, and raises important questions for future research.
In public communication, in the absence of a clear sense of one’s actual audience, a communicator relies on a mental image of an imagined audience. But where does one’s image of the audience come from, and how might that matter for how people evaluate their audience? The case of journalists and their perceptions offers an instructive lens for examining this question, particularly given the digitally mediated changes in the way news audiences are known (e.g., via digital metrics and encounters on social media). Through a survey of U.S. journalists (N = 544), we find that journalists’ views of their audience spring from a complex variety of sources, including interactions via email, social media, and comment sections, as well as relationships with family, friends, and colleagues. These sources carry differing consequences for the evaluations of those audiences—namely, regarding whether journalists perceive their audience as smart (rational) and/or similar to them (homophilous). Results suggest that the origins of journalists’ imagined audiences are a significant factor in shaping journalists’ perception of the people with whom they are communicating, with the concomitant potential to influence the communication itself.
This paper examines the normative role of constructive journalism—also called “solutions journalism”—by analyzing metajournalistic discourse about solutions-focused journalism. The findings show that constructive and solutions journalism are defined similarly: they profess traditional Anglo-Saxon journalistic norms and practices, even as they shift focus from problems to solutions. The metajournalistic discourse indicates a tension over the normative roles of journalism. Constructive journalism justifies its existence by the intensified need to solve vexing social issues. At the same time, proponents of constructive journalism regularly distance themselves from advocating for social good and claim to objectively cover solutions without endorsing them. This strategic rhetoric signals an attempt to draw a sharp line between constructive journalism and advocacy, and to situate constructive journalism within the boundaries of a traditional monitorial role of journalism. Metadiscourse about constructive journalism reveals reluctance to acknowledge and articulate its normative constructive role that seeks to help society.
In this essay, we contextualize journalism in an emotionally charged networked environment. As journalism and society change, emotion is becoming a much more important dynamic in how news is produced and consumed. Highlighting how quality reporting and editing has always had emotion at its core, we move on to articulate ways to do “affective” news well and advocate promising avenues to study and theorize it. In this context, we suggest that more research and knowledge is needed regarding the ontology of data, the political economy of identity when privacy goes public, and on the sociology of influence when power is redistributed emotionally.
Emotions are an elemental part of life - they imbue our existence with meaning and purpose, and influence how we engage with the world around us. But we do not just feel our own emotions; we typically express them in the presence of other people. How do our emotional expressions affect others? Moving beyond the traditional intrapersonal perspective, this is the first book dedicated to exploring the pervasive interpersonal dynamics of emotions. Integrating existing theory and research, van Kleef develops the Emotions as Social Information (EASI) theory, a ground-breaking comprehensive framework that explains how emotional expressions influence observers across all domains of life, from close relationships to group settings, conflict and negotiation, customer service, and leader–follower relations. His deeply social perspective sheds new light on the fundamental question of why we have emotions in the first place - the social influence emotions engender may very well constitute their raison d’être.
More information can be found here: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/psychology/social-psychology/interpersonal-dynamics-emotion-toward-integrative-theory-emotions-social-information?format=HB
Breaking down the walls of the traditional newsroom, Rebuilding the News traces the evolution of news reporting as it moves from print to online. As the business models of newspapers have collapsed, author C. W. Anderson chronicles how bloggers, citizen journalists, and social networks are implicated in the massive changes confronting journalism. Through a combination of local newsroom fieldwork, social-network analysis, and online archival research, Rebuilding the News places the current shifts in news production in socio-historical context. Focusing on the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, Anderson presents a gripping case study of how these papers have struggled to adapt to emerging economic, social, and technological realities. As he explores the organizational, networked culture of journalism, Anderson lays bare questions about the future of news-oriented media and its evolving relationship with "the public" in the digital age.
In this timely and important study Martin Montgomery unpicks the inside workings of what must still be considered the dominant news medium: broadcast news. Drawing principally on linguistics, but multidisciplinary in its scope, The Discourse of Broadcast News demonstrates that news programmes are as much about showing as telling, as much about ordinary bystanders as about experts, and as much about personal testimony as calling politicians to account. Using close analysis of the discourse of television and radio news, the book reveals how important conventions for presenting news are changing, with significant consequences for the ways audiences understand its truthfulness. Fully illustrated with examples and including detailed examination of the high profile case of ex-BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan, The Discourse of Broadcast News provides a comprehensive study which will challenge our current assumptions about the news. The Discourse of Broadcast News will be a key resource for anyone researching the news, whether they be students of language and linguistics, media studies or communication studies.
The last two decades in India have seen an enormous growth of satellite television. News has established itself in the meanwhile not merely as a source of information but also of entertainment. Available in all regional languages through several competing channels, and presented elaborately, television news has come to establish a mode of address, which defines one’s sense of time and space, and configures one’s sense of the dramatic situated in others’ stories. This article engages with the implications of “liveness”—as material and as affect—toward convergence of news narratives. Discussing two of the most widely covered recent stories—Aarushi Talwar’s murder and Baby Falak—the article foregrounds the class antagonism and scandalous anxieties of Indian televisual publics, and argues that news television invites us to trade liveness for news. Thus, news media not only liberates itself of the rigor of news production but also entertains us by reaffirming our deepest anxieties and competing with other modes of intertextual entertainment available on rival channels.
Emotion is often treated as unconducive to rationality and informed citizenship. For this reason, journalistic styles that personalize issues and elicit emotion are typically not taken seriously as information sources. The experimental study reported here tested these sentiments through the knowledge gap hypothesis. Eight investigative news stories, arguably important to informed citizenship (e.g., child labor, corruption in public housing administration, lethality of legal drugs), were each presented in two versions. One featured emotional testimony of ordinary people who experienced the issue, and the other did not—resembling the traditional view of news as cold hard facts. Emotional versions were associated with smaller knowledge gaps between higher and lower education groups. Moreover, the size of knowledge gaps varied across three memory measures: free recall, cued recall, and recognition. Contrary to the inimical role that is traditionally assigned to emotion, these findings suggest a facilitative role for emotion in informing citizens.
This dissertation explores the 'blurring' of news styles and emergence of new forms within American television journalism over the past 25 years. It considers how the roles of emotion and 'objectivity' have been reconfigured in a climate of unprecedented technological and commercial shifts. It is unique as it investigates two innovative forms of broadcast journalism, satirical news and cable magazines, not just in terms of content, but instead drawing on the sociology of emotions to conceptualize and examine how these shows attempt to craft an 'experience of involvement'. I perform a textual analysis that considers the presentational style and branding of The O'Reilly Factor, Lou Dobbs Tonight, The Daily Show, and Colbert Report. Findings are based on a lengthy observation of each program and an in-depth examination from 2007. These analyses are situated against an examination of the CBS Evening News from 1979 and 2007. Secondary material in which key players from these programs explain the rationales behind how they craft the news is also integrated. This study finds that cable and satirical news differentiate themselves by attempting to craft a more 'involved' presentational style than network newscasts, but simultaneously adhere to many conventional journalistic 'rules of truth'. There are also indications that network news, though maintaining a fairly consistent tone, is beginning to address this issue of involvement. Emerging news products often adopt a style that satirist Stephen Colbert terms 'truthiness', wherein tone and style become more central in attempting to generate certainty, fidelity, and trust. I argue that rather than lament the 'loss' of a supposed halcyon age of serious journalism, it is fruitful to take a closer look at how such products engage a progressively fragmented and time-strapped public, who are losing trust in traditional news. In academia, such 'infotainment' is regularly ignored, often considered as unworthy of meticulous contemplation despite its reach and influence. This dissertation can be situated instead in an emerging stream of research that stresses the sociological and cultural importance of non-valorized news forms. I locate these emerging forms as part of a broader shift described by others towards conversationalisation, personalisation and informalisation.
This article reports key findings from a comparative survey of the role perceptions, epistemological orientations and ethical views of 1800 journalists from 18 countries. The results show that detachment, non-involvement, providing political information and monitoring the government are considered essential journalistic functions around the globe. Impartiality, the reliability and factualness of information, as well as adherence to universal ethical principles are also valued worldwide, though their perceived importance varies across countries. Various aspects of interventionism, objectivism and the importance of separating facts from opinion, on the other hand, seem to play out differently around the globe. Western journalists are generally less supportive of any active promotion of particular values, ideas and social change, and they adhere more to universal principles in their ethical decisions. Journalists from non-western contexts, on the other hand, tend to be more interventionist in their role perceptions and more flexible in their ethical views.
The audience has always been an important reference for journalism although, under mass media conditions, it remained an “operative fiction” for its practitioners, reflecting a clear distinction between sender and recipients. Recent shifts in mediated communication towards networked public spheres and the increasing implementation of participatory features force media organizations, journalists and scholars alike to rethink the journalism–audience relationship. We introduce the concept of audience inclusion in journalism, to provide an analytical framework to investigate the relationship between journalists and (their) audience. The article presents the results of a multi-method case study of the German television newscast “Tagesschau” and its online platform tagesschau.de, and compares the attitudes of journalists and audience members towards the role of journalists, the relevance of participatory functions, the motivations for participation, and their general assessment of audience participation. By and large we find congruence between journalists' and users' expectations towards audience participation in news journalism. However, there is notable disagreement regarding the (assumed) motivations of users for participating at “Tagesschau”.
In news broadcasts, there is a growing tendency to rely on the voices of ordinary people in comparison with offi cial voices, such as media professionals and experts. In our study, which is based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis and interviews with journalists, we look at the vox pops on the Dutch public service newscast, NOS News. This article addresses questions of how ordinary people take part in public discussion - what kind of views and emotions they express – and how journalists assess the quality of the vox pops and the emotional expression they include. Our study is discussed in the context of citizen participation in public life through the mass media, the emotionalising of news journalism and the crisis of public service broadcasting. We suggest that the emotional dimension of news, exemplified in the vox pops interviews, should be examined in terms of its potential to foster passions and identities that connect people with public life and with each other.
In relation to journalism, the concept of ‘emotion’ is consistently undertheorized. Employed with commonsensical discernment, it is conflated with tabloid practices, sensationalism, bias, commercialization, and the like. Consequently, when discussed, emotion is often treated dismissively; a marker of unprincipled and flawed journalism. Yet hard, self-styled objective, ‘just the facts’ journalism is not unemotional, just as soft, so-called tabloid news is not irrational. For authors who study the sociology of emotions note, emotion has a social component and can more broadly be conceptualized as the experience of involvement. This article utilizes this understanding to interrogate traditional news dichotomies before applying this perspective to consider non-valorized news alternatives. One significant change over the past few decades is not that the news has become emotional (indeed, it has always been); rather, the diversity of emotional styles, the acceptability of journalistic involvement, and attempts to involve the audience have become more explicit.
Paradigms serve as metaphysical frameworks that guide researchers in the identification and clarification of their beliefs with regard to ethics, reality, knowledge, and methodology. The transformative paradigm is explained and illustrated as a framework for researchers who place a priority on social justice and the furtherance of human rights. The basic belief systems associated with this paradigm are explained and illustrated by examples of research that is commensurate with the transformative paradigm.
This article engages with current discussions about public emotions by examining journalists’ perceptions of the value of emotional expression in broadcast news. First, the study provides insight into how journalists assess the place and role of emotion in news reporting and the perceived emotionalizing of news. Second, it examines how the journalists’ discourse about emotion is linked to their ideas of ‘good journalism’, as well as to their professional self-image. The data consist of in-depth interviews with television journalists working for both public service and commercial news programmes in Finland and in the Netherlands.
Is television journalism as a sub-field becoming more or less autonomous? And, paraphrasing a recent question posed by Michael Schudson, in relation to what other institutions in society could journalism be considered autonomous? On the one hand, a common apprehension is that there has been a change in the relation between journalism and politics, where politicians have lost some of their power to influence for example political debates. On the other hand, journalism is said to be subsumed an economic logic, privileging entertainment before serious journalistic practices. Most often this is framed as if entertainment is eating its way into serious journalism, affecting it negatively and thus being detrimental for the political public sphere and political reasoning. Speaking from a Swedish position, where this commercial logic is quite recent due the long-time dominance of public service media (a feature Sweden shares with many other European countries), this specific kind of 'commercialisation process' can actually be observed years ahead of the moment when the public service broadcast media met with commercial competition. Given this fact it is quite possible to argue, as I will do in this paper, that it is not entertainment that is eating its way into journalism, but the other way around: Rather than having been absorbed by entertainment, journalism has differentiated, become more autonomous as a sub-field of cultural production, and has gradually come to dominate not only factual, but also entertainment television. In the presentation I will draw on examples from Swedish television, focussing on the historic relations between journalists and politicians. However, I will also discuss to what extent the argument is valid also for other national contexts.
Noch-Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder prÄsentiert sich am Wahlabend nicht nur als Elefant im sprichwörtlichen Porzellanladen, sondern bietet mit seinem „Krawallauftritt“ in der Elefanten-Runde auch einen Unterhaltungswert, der die zahlreichen, bemüht ausgewogenen GesprÄchsrunden des Wahlkampfs grau, zÄh und langweilig aussehen lÄsst. Entgleiste Eigen-PR offenbart den Charakter eines Mannes schonungslos und lÄsst uns als Publikum teilhaben an dem unterhaltsamen Regieverlust von Journalismus.
Thematic analysis is a poorly demarcated, rarely acknowledged, yet widely used qualitative analytic method within psychology. In this paper, we argue that it offers an accessible and theoretically flexible approach to analysing qualitative data. We outline what thematic analysis is, locating it in relation to other qualitative analytic methods that search for themes or patterns, and in relation to different epistemological and ontological positions. We then provide clear guidelines to those wanting to start thematic analysis, or conduct it in a more deliberate and rigorous way, and consider potential pitfalls in conducting thematic analysis. Finally, we outline the disadvantages and advantages of thematic analysis. We conclude by advocating thematic analysis as a useful and flexible method for qualitative research in and beyond psychology.
'Imagined Communities' examines the creation & function of the 'imagined communities' of nationality & the way these communities were in part created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism & printing & the birth of vernacular languages in early modern Europe.
Comparative studies of journalism have become immensely popular in recent times, yet a range of methodological and logistical challenges persist in existing work. This introduction to the special issue on “Comparing Journalistic Cultures” provides a brief overview of these challenges, before providing an overview of the genesis of the Worlds of Journalism Study, an unprecedented, global and collaborative undertaking to examine journalistic culture in 66 countries. In particular, we reflect on how the study approached and aimed to solve methodological challenges, providing some ideas that may aid future studies in this field.
The collision of news and entertainment cultures in the United States was neatly encapsulated by a 2015 dust-up between rival pundits on Fox News and its allegedly progressive rival MSNBC over the relationship between truth-telling and ratings-grubbing. The exchange revolved around the revelation that high-profile Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly had apparently stretched the truth about his experiences in conflict zones — a discovery that followed on the heels of a similar revelation about NBC celebrity news anchor Brian Williams. Whereas Williams promptly apologized and stepped down so that the circumstances could be investigated, O’Reilly, backed up by his network, stood his ground, conceding only that some of the violent and tragic events that he claimed to have witnessed firsthand in Northern Ireland and El Salvador he had actually seen only in photographs (Dearden, 2015). Picking up on the apparent hypocrisy of O’Reilly, who had publicly criticized Williams with the observation that, ‘If you can’t trust a news anchor or commentator, then you’re not going to watch that person,’ MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow enumerated O’Reilly’s exaggerations and falsehoods (Corn & Schulman, 2015).
Der (deutschsprachigen) Journalismusforschung wird seit einiger Zeit vorgeworfen, sie sei nicht nur geschlechterblind, sondern auch unterhaltungsblind — wobei offenbar ein direkter Zusammenhang zwischen beidem gesehen wird. Aus diesem Vorwurf wird der Aufruf zu einem Paradigmenwechsel abgeleitet und dabei die Aufgabe der systemtheoretischen zu Gunsten einer kulturtheoretischen Perspektive angeregt (vgl. Klaus 1996; Klaus/Lünenborg 2000; Lünenborg 2005). Dies scheint angesichts der aktuellen, Wirklichkeit des Journalismus’ insofern plausibel zu sein, als Entgrenzungsprozesse ablaufen, welche die seit Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts beschreibbare IdentitÄt der Aussagenentstehung von Massenmedien zur Disposition stellen. Journalistische Nachrichten tauchen inzwischen immer hÄufiger an Orten und insbesondere in (TV-)Programmen auf, wo man sie nicht erwartet, und verschwinden dort, wo man mit ihnen rechnet (vgl. Zelizer 2004: 203).
Empathy performs a central role in regulating social relations. This applies equally to journalistic work routines. To explore the concept of empathy in the understanding of journalists, 46 interviews were conducted using a cross-cultural approach between the United Kingdom and India. It became clear that empathy occupies a central place in news production, fulfilling multiple roles. It serves to achieve a comprehensive access to information and to news protagonists at the interpersonal level. Without this “invisible” mode of communication, qualitative and ethical news journalism cannot be achieved; and the authenticity and emotionality of news packages would be diminished. Empathy varies on the individual level, but especially in sensitive journalistic work fields it represents a “naturally present” core skill for journalists. A final empathic dimension is found in the imaginary empathy towards the audience which provides essential guidance for journalistic news products. Cultural differences between India and the United Kingdom are apparent in this study, but results also indicate considerable similarities in the role of empathy in different journalism cultures.
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 analyses with three samples of Chilean news (N = 1,988; N = 795; N = 812) support the hypothesis that audience approaches in journalism are best represented by a three-factor solution: the infotainment, the service, and the civic models. The data also show that approaching the audience as consumer or as citizen are not two poles of one continuum, and that approaching the audience under a consumer-orientation consists of two approaches: providing service and providing entertainment.
Traditional news values no longer hold: infotainment has the day. Journalism is in a terminal state of decline. Or so some contemporary commentators would argue. Although there has been a great diversity in format and ownership over time, Conboy demonstrates the surprising continuity of concerns in the history of journalism. Questions of political influence, the impact of advertising, the sensationalisation of news coverage, the 'dumbing down' of the press, the economic motives of newspaper owners - these are themes that emerge repeatedly over time and again today. In this book, Martin Conboy provides a history of the development of newspapers, periodicals and broadcast journalism which· enables readers to engage critically with contemporary issues within the news media· outlines the connections, as well as the distinctions, across historical periods · spans the introduction of printed news to the arrival of the 'new' news media· demonstrates how journalism has always been informed by a cultural practices broader and more dynamic than the simple provision of newsBy situating journalism in its historical context, this book enables students to more fully understand the wide range of practices which constitute contemporary journalism. As such it will be an essential text for students of journalism and the media.
Richly detailed and empirically grounded, this first book-length study of infotainment and its globalization by a leading scholar of global communication, offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of this emerging phenomenon. Going beyond - both geographically and theoretically - the ‘dumbing down’ discourse, largely confined to the Anglo-American media, the book argues that infotainment may have an important ideological role, a diversion in which ‘soft news’ masks the hard realities of neo-liberal imperialism.
Post-liberalisation India has witnessed a dramatic growth of the television industry as well as on-screen images of the glitz and glamour of a vibrant, ‘shining’ India. Through a detailed ethnographic study of Star News and Star Ananda involving interviews, observations and content analysis, this book explores the milieu of 24-hour private news channels in India today. It offers insightful glimpses into the workings of one of the mightiest news corporations in the world and its ability to manufacture everyday reality for its audiences.
The study of international ethics is marked by an overwhelming bias towards reasoned reflection at the expense of emotionally driven moral deliberation. For rationalist cosmopolitans in particular, reason alone provides the means by which we can arrive at the truly impartial moral judgments a cosmopolitan ethic demands. However, are the emotions as irrational, selfish and partial as most rationalist cosmopolitans would have us believe? By re-examining the central claims of the eighteenth-century moral sentiment theorists in light of cutting-edge discoveries in the fields of neuroscience and psychology, Renée Jeffery argues that the dominance of rationalism and marginalisation of emotions from theories of global ethics cannot be justified. In its place she develops a sentimentalist cosmopolitan ethic that does not simply provide a framework for identifying injustices and prescribing how we ought to respond to them, but which actually motivates action in response to international injustices such as global poverty.
'I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell', writes Michael Polanyi, whose work paved the way for the likes of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper. "The Tacit Dimension", originally published in 1967, argues that such tacit knowledge - tradition, inherited practices, implied values, and prejudgments - is a crucial part of scientific knowledge. Back in print for a new generation of students and scholars, this volume challenges the assumption that skepticism, rather than established belief, lies at the heart of scientific discovery.
Introduction A New Map for Media and Communication Studies Global Circulation of Indian Popular Culture Growth of Media and Communication Studies in India India and International Media Studies Remapping Media Theory Looking Ahead Note References
For ten years, Herbert J. Gans spent considerable time in four major television and magazine newsrooms, observing and talking to the journalists who choose the national news stories that inform America about itself. Writing during the golden age of journalism, Gans included such headline events as the War on Poverty, the Vietnam War and the protests against it, urban ghetto disorders, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and Watergate. He was interested in the values, professional standards, and the external pressures that shaped journalists' judgments. Deciding What's News has become a classic. A new preface outlines the major changes that have taken place in the news media since Gans first wrote the book, but it also suggests that the basics of news judgment and the structures of news organizations have changed little. Gans's book is still the most comprehensive sociological account of some of the country's most prominent national news media. The book received the 1979 Theatre Library Association Award and the 1980 Book Award of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters. This is the first work to be published under the Medill School of Journalism's "Visions of the American Press" imprint, a new journalism history series featuring both original volumes and reprints of important classics.
The paper examines news agency journalists' stance on Affect, in view of the journalistic ideals of factuality and objectivity. News journalists resort to Affect values quite frequently; in hard news reports, however, journalists' own emotions have to be excluded. Recently, Peter White and other scholars have introduced the term ‘observed’ Affect as opposed to ‘authorial’ Affect, to distinguish between Affect which is attributed to some third party and Affect which is the journalist's. I find that term too broad, and suggest the following, more sophisticated taxonomy: Affect is first divided into two subtypes, attributed and non-attributed. Both attributed and non-attributed Affect have three subcategories: observed, interpreted and constructed. Attributed Affect includes a fourth subcategory: experienced Affect. To demonstrate how these new tools can be applied to the analysis of news discourse, examples from Associated Press and Reuters news agency dispatches are explored.
This article revisits the controversial relationship of entertainment and political communication. On the basis of a theoretical integration of entertainment theory with theories of motivated information processing, we suggest that entertainment consumption can either be driven by hedonic, escapist motivations that are associated with a superficial mode of information processing, or by eudaimonic, truth-seeking motivations that prompt more elaborate forms of information processing. Results of two experiments indicate that eudaimonic forms of emotional involvement (characterized by negative valence, moderate arousal, and feeling moved) stimulated reflective thoughts about politically relevant content, issue interest, and information seeking. This pattern was consistent across two types of entertainment stimuli (fictional films and soft news) and two types of affect manipulations (moving film music and moving exemplars).
This article reports on a study which aimed to assess how much attention journalism training and practice currently pay to the idea of emotional literacy, to explore what need news journalists and current affairs filmmakers see for closer evaluation of the emotional dimensions of their work, and to outline a strategy for enhancing emotional literacy in journalism training. While focused on encounters with traumatic situations, the research also addressed emotional aspects of more mundane reporting. This wider agenda links to political and theoretical questions about the contributions of news to the ‘emotional public sphere’, and more broadly to the diverse collection of cultural trends and phenomena concerned with acknowledging, understanding and managing emotions in diverse spheres of life — the ‘affective turn’. The findings of this interview-based study are discussed under the headings of journalists’ relations with sources, colleagues and audiences. They indicate a broad and fundamental ambivalence in the professional discourse of journalism between objectivity and emotional engagement, and a striking inattention to questions about the emotional impact of journalists’ work upon audiences. The article concludes with an assessment of the scope for a more emotionally literate approach to establish itself more firmly in journalistic practice.
Taking as its vantage point Gaye Tuchman’s (1972) notion of the strategic ritual of objectivity, this article argues that there is also a strategic ritual of emotionality in journalism – an institutionalized and systematic practice of journalists infusing their reporting with emotion. To examine the strategic ritual of emotionality, the article considers Pulitzer Prize-winning articles between 1995 and 2011, taking the prize as a marker of cultural capital in the journalistic field. A coding scheme for a basic content analysis was developed on the basis of scholarly insights into journalistic narratives, as well as discourse analytic approaches associated with appraisal theory. The analysis indicates that the analyzed stories rely heavily on emotional story-telling. The strategic ritual of emotionality manifests itself in the overwhelming use of anecdotal leads, personalized story-telling and expressions of affect. Journalists ‘outsource’ emotional labor by describing the emotions of others, and drawing on sources to discuss their emotions.
This article identifies key changes in society and the media that have shaped political communication in many democracies over the postwar period. Three distinct ages are described. In the first, much political communication was subordinate to relatively strong and stable political institutions and beliefs. In the second, faced with a more mobile electorate, the parties increasingly "professionalized" and adapted their communications to the news values and formats of limited-channel television. In the third (still emerging) age of media abundance, political communication may be reshaped by five trends: intensified professionalizing imperatives, increased competitive pressures, anti-elitist populism, a process of "centrifugal diversification," and changes in how people receive politics. This system is full of tensions, sets new research priorities, and reopens long-standing issues of democratic theory.
Across America, newspapers that have defined their cities for over a century are rapidly failing, their circulations plummeting even as opinion-soaked Web outlets like the Huffington Post thrive. Meanwhile, nightly news programs shock viewers with stories of horrific crime and celebrity scandal, while the smug sarcasm and shouting of pundits like Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann dominate cable television. Is it any wonder that young people are turning away from the news entirely, trusting comedians like Jon Stewart as their primary source of information on current events? In the face of all the problems plaguing serious news, What Is Happening to News explores the crucial question of how journalism lost its wayâand who is responsible for the ragged retreat from its great traditions. Veteran editor and newspaperman Jack Fuller locates the surprising sources of change where no one has thought to look before: in the collision between a revolutionary new information age and a human brain that is still wired for the threats faced by our prehistoric ancestors. Drawing on the dramatic recent discoveries of neuroscience, Fuller explains why the information overload of contemporary life makes us dramatically more receptive to sensational news, while rendering the staid, objective voice of standard journalism ineffective. Throw in a growing distrust of experts and authority, ably capitalized on by blogs and other interactive media, and the result is a toxic mix that threatens to prove fatal to journalism as we know it. For every reader troubled by what has become of newsâand worried about what the future may holdâWhat Is Happening to News not only offers unprecedented insight into the causes of change but also clear guidance, strongly rooted in the precepts of ethical journalism, on how journalists can adapt to this new environment while still providing the information necessary to a functioning democracy.
He leaped from his chair, ripped off his microphone, and lunged at his ex-wife. Security guards rushed to intercept him. The audience screamed, then cheered. Were producers concerned? Not at all. They were getting what they wanted: the money shot. From "classy" shows like Oprah to "trashy" shows like Jerry Springer, the key to a talk show's success is what Laura Grindstaff calls the money shotâmoments when guests lose control and express joy, sorrow, rage, or remorse on camera. In this new work, Grindstaff takes us behind the scenes of daytime television talk shows, a genre focused on "real" stories told by "ordinary" people. Drawing on extensive interviews with producers and guests, her own attendance of dozens of live tapings around the country, and more than a year's experience working on two nationally televised shows, Grindstaff shows us how producers elicit dramatic performances from guests, why guests agree to participate, and the supporting roles played by studio audiences and experts. Grindstaff traces the career of the money shot, examining how producers make stars and experts out of ordinary people, in the process reproducing old forms of cultural hierarchy and class inequality even while seeming to challenge them. She argues that the daytime talk show does give voice to people normally excluded from the media spotlight, but it lets them speak only in certain ways and under certain rules and conditions. Working to understand the genre from the inside rather than pass judgment on it from the outside, Grindstaff asks not just what talk shows can tell us about mass media, but also what they reveal about American culture more generally.