Global Journalism Practice and New Media Performance

Kenneth A. Loparo, D. Mould, Kenneth A. Loparo, D. Mould

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137440563
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Journalismus

Global Journalism Practice and New Media Performance provides an overview of new and traditional media in their political, economic and cultural contexts while exploring the role of journalism practice and media education. The authors examine media systems in 16 countries, including China, Russia and the United States.

1

Introduction:Trends in Global Journalism and New Media Performance

Yusuf Kalyango Jr and David H Mould

Journalism across state polities and media convergences is at a crossroads with agents of momentous transformation. The history of media in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries shows that, every two decades or so, media institutions and journalism experience a metamorphosis in communication processes, especially regarding content production. With the increasing proliferation of mass communication alternatives available to information seekers and communicators, traditional journalists are debating how to transform and adapt to the current and evolving media environment.

Some of the key debates concern core journalistic values: how to remain relevant as the main arbiter of reliable, accurate, independently sourced, and verified news and information. Part of the challenge in the proliferation of alternative media—through wireless digital and online outlets—is the journalistic obligation to enable media platforms as a forum for public debates, criticism, and compromise.

In this new media environment, traditional media outlets around the world—television, radio, newspapers, and newsmagazines—are facing credibility issues, declining advertising revenue, and dwindling audience numbers. Whether in Russia, Turkey, Colombia, India, El Salvador, or Palestine, traditional media outlets are now in competition with social media outlets and bloggers, who audit and critique traditional media and journalistic practices. These developments, coupled with the rapid growth of online media platforms, calls into question the basic journalistic principles of accuracy, reliability, sourcing, fairness and responsibility and journalism’s obligation to be the sole utilitarian facilitator of deliberative media discourse.

No longer is the information flow unidirectional, from state and commercial actors to the mass audience. In the new media discourse—be it in China, Armenia, Jordan, or Guyana—the information disseminated for mass consumption is increasingly free of cost and easier to access, while less so from powerful elites. This book highlights the normative premise that journalism practice around the world, and media performance in the Western world and other countries with varying media systems, continue to serve multiple functions in society, using journalism’s core values (Herbert, 2000; Knight, 2013; Ward, 2010). As we navigate other cases around the world, the evaluation of traditional media in the US is used here as the first case study.

Deuze (2005) argues that journalism continues to reinvent itself in response to media ecology as it impacts the character and quality of journalism practice through commercialization, concentration of ownership, audience participation, bureaucratization, and technology. Media ecology brings about more openness to new media players, and mass deliberators, than the core values of journalism ever intended. As Deuze (2005, p.458) rightly stated, “multimedia developments and multiculturalism are indeed similar forces of change when seen through the lens of journalists’ perceptions of themselves.” Thus, there is a growing need to understand how journalism continues to be practiced around the world from those who practice and teach the craft.

Pertinent questions include:

• How do journalism educators from around the world evaluate the performance of Western media?

• What are the expectations for journalists working in traditional and new media?

• What is their role in public discourse within their respective societies?

Journalists who work in traditional, as well as new, media outlets relinquish their influence to critics as credibility issues, coupled with public criticism of journalistic practices, continue to surface (Allan & Thorsen, 2009; Obijiofor & Hanusch, 2011).

This volume is a collection of important national investigations of global journalistic practices, within the context of the new media environment. It is inspired by a growing body of international comparative research, such as the Worlds of Journalism Study’s network (Hanitzsch & Mellado, 2011; Hanitzsch & Berganza, 2012; Plaisance et al., 2012), It complements many recent books and scholarship, which have explored other critical areas pertaining to global journalism. These works include Merrill and de Beer’s (2008) serial chronology of journalism issues in some parts of the world; an important text about the effects of online journalism on ethics by Friend and Singer (2007); Deuze’s (2006) work on global journalism education; and Berglez’s (2008) conceptualization of global journalism and practice. This volume also uses cases from around the world to inductively challenge some theoretical propositions and observations that “the social institution called journalism is hesitant in abandoning its conventions, both at organizational and professional levels, even in the ‘Age of the Net’, when overall communication patterns in society are being re-shaped.” (Sullivan & Heinonen, 2008, p.368)

Contributors to this volume provide a broad-ranging overview of both new and traditional media systems in their respective countries: Russia, Palestine, China, Armenia, Jordan, Turkey, El Salvador, India, Ghana, Colombia, Taiwan, Guyana, Yemen, Suriname, Kyrgyzstan, and the US. The authors attempt to relate new media performance and journalistic output within the framework of journalism’s core values and its obligations for independence, responsibility, accuracy, and truth, as well as its duty to monitor powerful state actors in the sociopolitical and economic arenas. The chapters are divided into the following sections:

• Section I: Journalism Practice in the United States

• Section II: New versus Traditional Media

• Section III: Journalism Practice and Media Performance

The chapters have been developed over the life of the Study of the US Institute (SUSI) on journalism and media from 2010 to 2013 at Ohio University. SUSI is an annual summer institute for journalism and media educators from universities and academic institutions from around the world. The educators live together for six weeks to share knowledge, collaborate on research with their US counterparts, and explore US media performance. Fourteen SUSI participants contributed to the second and third sections. For many, this is the first time their research will be available in English; indeed, their language facility gives them access to primary sources and interviews with prominent media players that are difficult for even Western scholars to obtain.

Chapter 2: Media Educators Evaluate US Journalism Practice, based on focus groups with 51 of these educators, suggests that the notion of universal professional standards remains elusive, and that journalism practice is shaped by social, cultural, and political factors. It assesses their attitudes and opinions toward international news coverage and journalism practice in the US. It contributes to key debates concerning core journalistic values such as how traditional media in the US can remain relevant as the main arbiter of reliable, accurate, and independently sourced and verified news and information. This chapter sets the stage for the remainder of the volume and demonstrates how traditional values in the practice of professional journalism in other parts of the world may no longer mirror, or consider, the Western practice of journalism and its core values or obligations as the standard universal model for replication (Cropp, Frisby, & Mills, 2003).

The Second Section, New versus Traditional Media, with case studies from eight countries, highlights key challenges facing journalism and media in the digital era as vertical information hierarchies are disrupted by horizontal, user-generated, participatory communication patterns. From the former Soviet Union to the Middle East, the question persists: although new media may be participatory, even empowering, can they challenge the reach and credibility of traditional media? The seven case studies in the third section, Journalism Practice and Media Performance, situate journalism practice and media performance, including journalism education, within specific national contexts, where a range of factors—from government pressures and the political and business alliances of media owners to audience needs—shape the news, those who report it, and those who prepare students from the profession it.

Section II: New versus Traditional Media In Case 1: Russia, Alexander Kazakov argues that agenda-setting studies have focused on traditional media, often neglecting the social and political role of new media which can generate and coalesce around certain issues as well as “lift” problems from the bottom to the top of social and political discourse. Using data from national surveys and sketching the growth of social networks and the Russian blogosphere, this study shows that while TV, newspapers, and radio are still more trusted than the Internet, its credibility has been rising, and it is increasingly being used as a tool for social mobilization.

In Case 2: Palestine, Mohammed Abualrob and Diana Alkhayyat investigate whether new media are changing public discourse through a comparative content analysis of Alquds, a widely distributed newspaper, and the online news site Ma’an. Media agendas in Palestine have long been dominated by international and regional issues, as well as internal political conflicts, with less attention given to issues that concern citizens in their daily lives. As more people gain access to the Internet and social networks, this study investigates whether new media are changing media discourse by covering a broader range of topics.

In Case 3: China, Ke Wang and Guoping He conclude that new media have become the primary form of expressive media, by broadening the public sphere and those who participate in it, and by changing the ways in which communication flows. Media, old and new, have played an important role in economic, social, political, and cultural transformations in China over the past two decades. Economically, they have helped the government meet its development goals by boosting business; however, new media have also contributed to social, cultural, and political consequences that the government neither anticipated nor welcomed.

In Case 4: Armenia, Suren Deheryan examines how the recent rapid expansion of Internet access has had a profound impact on many areas of society. In the political sphere, the Internet has increased pressure for transparency in government and elections, and promoted freedom of speech. Political parties, individual politicians, and other activists began to use the Internet in the 2008 presidential election. By the 2012 parliamentary elections, new media were firmly established not only as a political campaign tool, but as an alternative platform for those outside the political establishment to express their political views.

In Case 5: Jordan, Aysha Abughazzi shows that online news sites play a pivotal role in providing access to information and offering alternative platforms for journalists and readers to express opinions on issues that may not find their way into mainstream newspapers. Despite press and publication laws that have, over the last two decades, shaped journalistic practice, the variety and volume of online news sites have enhanced the quality of journalism in general, and created an atmosphere of dialogue and plurality.

In Case 6: Turkey, Nezih Orhon and Alper Altunay show how social media have become crucial to citizen action in a country where political and business pressures on mainstream media often stifle opposition voices. These pressures have led to self-censorship, with editors and journalists reluctant to cover controversial issues, and media owners preferring entertainment programming and tabloid stories that attract viewers and readers. Using the case study of the 2013 occupation of Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park and the nationwide protests that followed it, the authors show that social media play a crucial role in distributing information and images, and that traditional media are losing their monopoly on information, a trend that could have profound political consequences.

In Case 7: El Salvador, Silvia Callejas Contreras argues that scholars of digital communication have recognized multiple ways in which knowledge is created and shared, and attitudes and behaviors potentially changed, by user-generated content and horizontal networking. The chapter documents the experiences of a university, upper-level communication class in developing and designing a digital campaign to promote Movimiento Libro Libre, the Latin-American version of the United States-based Bookcrossing movement. In an increasingly urbanized society where many young people have not developed a reading habit, Movimiento Libro Libre promotes reading by encouraging people to drop off books in public places for others to pick up.

In Case 8: India, Peddiboyina Vijaya Lakshmi shows that information and communications technology (ICT) applications are making information accessible to marginalized groups, especially poor rural women. The historical gender gap in ICT access disadvantages not only women, but their families and communities as well, because women play a pivotal role in achieving development goals, such as reduced child malnutrition and mortality and economic enterprise. In India, this has resulted in experimentation by government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with ICT applications in areas such as agriculture, health, governance, financial services, education, and employment. This study explores the impact of ICT projects on gender inequality, healthcare, education, and economic issues for poor women.

Section III: Journali...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributor
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• 1  Introduction: Trends in Global Journalism and New Media Performance
• Section I  Journalism Practice in the United States
• Section II  New versus Traditional Media
• Section III  Journalism Practice and Media Performance
• Master Bibliography
• Index