Karen McIntyre’s research while affiliated with Virginia Commonwealth University and other places

Scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the ways in which the public trusts an array of media content, outlets, and platforms. However, the bulk of this work has focused on audience research in Western democracies. This study uses surveys of journalists in Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya in 2019 to examine the metajournalistic discourse surrounding how press freedom levels, technological advancements, and various sociopolitical factors impact public trust in the news media. Findings indicate that Kenyan journalists believe that public trust in the media is high, while Rwandan journalists perceive the lowest levels of public trust in the press. Findings also suggest that journalists in these three East African nations believe the public is more likely to trust the press when journalists are committed to advocating for the public and maintaining peace in the country. This study also highlights the importance of understanding journalists’ perceptions about their audiences when examining journalism practice around the world.

This study evaluates which type of news outlets—independent or government aligned—produce higher quality stories in the East African country of Rwanda. A number of quality indicators are discussed in context, and hypotheses are proposed based largely on Scott, Gobetz, and Chanslor’s (2008) investment model. The data come from a global project —the Journalistic Role Performance Project— and specifically from a content analysis of 2,644 news stories published by Rwandan media in 2020. Findings reveal that independent news outlets outperform government-aligned outlets on the majority of quality indicators included in the study, especially in regard to story sourcing.

In an evolving media landscape, the prominence and influence of citizen journalism has grown markedly, challenging historical norms and providing alternative narratives. While traditional journalism has been guided by objectivity, autonomy, and ethics, its repre- sentation has been questioned, especially in marginalised communities like Kibera, a neighbourhood in Nairobi, Kenya. Scholars have shed light on the transformational role of journalism and the ensuing need for democratisation in its practice, acknowledging the challenge it faces in representing diverse sections of the population. Using Kibera News Network (KNN) as a case study, this mixed methods study looks at the extent to which citizen journalists, despite lacking formal training, uphold and perhaps even redefine traditional journalistic principles. Utilising a qualitative content analysis of KNN videos and in-depth interviews with citizen journalists in Kibera, findings suggest that these citizen journalists exhibit a solid commitment to ethical reporting, emphasising accuracy and fairness, perhaps due to these journalists being citizens in their community—a community that has been marginalised and misrepresented—and thus experience a heightened sense of belonging. KNN citizen journalists also demonstrate high levels of autonomy and journalism ethics and are unburdened by the political and financial pressures that shape some mainstream media narratives. Taken together, findings suggest that the citizen journalist work of KNN contributes to multiple civic outcomes, including neighbourhood belonging and collective efficacy, which leads to civic participation. Keywords Kenya, Kibera, citizen journalism, media ownership, democratic-participant media theory

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 stronger and negative relationship emerged between the use of digital audience analytics and the performance of “watchdog” and “civic” roles, leading to an overall increase in conception–performance gaps on both roles. Moreover, journalists’ use of digital community tools was more strongly and positively associated with “infotainment” and “interventionism.”

This study examines how solutions journalism education translates to professional practice, through in-depth interviews with current media professionals who encountered solutions journalism when they were in college. Findings suggest that solutions journalism education resonates powerfully with students, and incorporating the practice in J-school curriculum may have the potential to reengage disenchanted students. Whereas there remain significant barriers to practicing the approach in the workplace, participants revealed that their encounters at university with solutions journalism positively affected their reporting style, interview skills, and perspective of journalism’s role in society.

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 on journalistic role conceptions rather than actual journalistic practice. Using journalistic role performance as a theoretical and methodological framework, this paper overcomes these shortcomings through a content analysis of 148,474 news stories from 365 print, online, TV, and radio outlets in 37 countries. We consider two fundamental system-level variables—liberal democracy and market orientation—testing a series of hypotheses concerning their influence on the interventionist, watchdog, loyal-facilitator, service, infotainment, and civic roles in the news globally. Findings confirm the widely asserted hypothesis that liberal democracy is associated with the performance of public-service oriented roles. Claims that market orientation reinforces critical and civic-oriented journalism show more mixed results and give some support to the argument that there are forms of “market authoritarianism” associated with loyalist journalism. The findings also show that the interventionist and infotainment roles are not significantly associated with the standard measures of political and economic structure, suggesting the need for more research on their varying forms across societies and the kinds of system-level factors that might explain them.

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 sensationalize or to politicize health crises. A contrasting perspective holds that journalists shift toward more deferential and cooperative stances toward health and political authorities in a health crisis, attempting to mobilize the public to act according to the best science. Hypotheses derived from these perspectives are tested using the standard measures of journalistic roles developed by the Journalistic Role Performance Project. Results show that the deference/cooperation/consensus perspective is better supported, with media moving away from the Watchdog and Infotainment, and toward performance of the Service and Civic roles. We also explore differences in the pattern by country.

The study of constructive and solutions journalism has grown in recent years, led by claims of positive audience effects. Our systematic review of 22 effects experiments across 19 studies found that solutions and constructive news stories unequivocally affect audience emotions. Clarity is needed for other dependent variables. Consistency is needed in theoretical constructs and the independent variables used. Focus needs to continue to extend beyond the United States and Western Europe.