Category: Paper | Page 3 | Journalism Research

Edition 2/2024, Paper

Violence against women – A constructive approach How constructive journalism can be used to achieve responsible reporting on violence against women

By Christina Fleischanderl | The data published in Germany’s annual police criminal statistics for 2022 leaves no room for doubt: In 80.3% of all cases of domestic violence, the victim was a woman. Intimate partner violence increased – it is clear who is the perpetrator and who the victim. But how should this violence against women be reported? This paper uses an analysis of national German and Austrian newspapers to determine the status quo of reporting on violence against women. Expert interviews provide insight into deficits and opportunities for improvement. Starting from the concept of constructive journalism and a frame analysis of selected articles, the paper goes on to develop recommendations for holistic reporting on violence against women, both in breaking news and in background reporting.

Edition 2/2024, Paper

Combative and controversial Remembering Karl Kraus

By Walter Hömberg | In early April 1899, a new magazine appears in Vienna. Its bright red cover shows an enormous torch in front of a silhouette of the city. In the introductory article, the editor underscores its combative approach: »The political manifesto of this newspaper thus appears sparse; it has chosen as its theme not a sounding ›what we feature‹ but an honest ›what we kill off.‹« The editor of Die Fackel, Karl Kraus, is well known to press history experts to this day. Some revere him as the greatest satirist of the 20th century, a brilliant diagnostician of the time, a sensitive poet and clear-sighted playwright. For others, he is a merciless polemicist, a ruthless scorner, hopelessly egocentric, a know-it-all, a querulant and nest fouler. The Vienna literary man Hans Weigel gave this assessment: »His criticism was sacrosanct – criticism of him was lèse majesté.«

Edition 1/2024, Paper

Reaching for reconciliation Reader responses to seven newspapers’ apologies for histories of racist coverage

By Anna E. Lindner, Michael Fuhlhage, Keena Shante Neal, and Kirby Phillips | In the wake of the 2020 »racial reckoning,« many institutions issued apologies for complicity in systemic racism – and the news industry was no exception. This paper surveys the apologies issued by one news publication, the Montgomery Advertiser, that apologized two years before the 2020 reckoning, and six other newspapers that issued apologies between 2020 and the present day: the Los Angeles Times; Kansas City Star; Baltimore Sun; Philadelphia Inquirer; Seattle Times; and Oregonian. The present study investigates these publications’ apologies for racist and other problematic coverage through the lens of the Christian principles of sacramental reconciliation, which are designed to address past wrongs and repair relationships between transgressors and those who have been harmed. In addition, this paper assesses public responses to each of the new organizations’ expositions of and apologies for racist coverage, focusing on opinions published in public forums, particularly by people of color who belong to communities that have been harmed by these publications; journalists of color; editors and others involved in news making processes; and other prominent thought leaders in issues of race. Examining the wide range of responses to such apologies provides insight into public opinion about news institutions’ current standing with racialized communities and possible future steps toward more equitable and fair coverage of those who have historically been mistreated by news organizations.

Edition 1/2024, Paper

How journalism advances surveillant technology through weightless criticism Understanding one way consumers are nudged toward a state of total surveillance

By Robert W. McMahon | The growth of consumer products with surveillant capabilities, in conjunction with the economic pressure journalism is under, has created fertile ground for surveillance capitalism to thrive and journalism to become complicit in that growth. An examination of a corpus of texts containing the products of journalism suggests this complicity can be seen through a style of reporting conceptualized as weightless criticism.

Edition 1/2024, Paper

Women faculty in journalism and mass communication How do early-career scholars fare in the U.S. academy?

By Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver, Dorothy Bland and Lillian Abreu | Women make up more than half the U.S. population and comprise two-thirds of the graduates of college and university communications schools today (York 2017), but they are often not represented in the same proportions in faculty and leadership roles in those colleges and universities across the country. To address gender disparity and leadership pipeline issues among faculty in journalism and mass communication programs in higher education, the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication at Florida International University conducted its first national study of participants in its Women Faculty Moving Forward (WFMF) program in 2019 to examine how effective the WFMF program has been in helping women advance in the field of journalism and mass communication in higher education. While respondents said they appreciated the mentoring program, they cited the need to address work/family/life tensions, more research time, more mentoring opportunities, as well as more transparency on salary/pay equity issues as primary concerns.

Edition 3-4/2023, Paper

How do journalists view the world? A comparative empirical analysis of personality traits and political views, based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

By Katja Schmidt, Tanjev Schultz, and Gert G. Wagner | How different are the characteristics and views of journalists from those of the population on which they report? What are the predominant political opinions among these professionals? Which political features do they share? Which personality traits, such as a willingness to take risks, do they display? In this paper, we examine these questions based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), using this large representative sample to identify the journalists it contains based on the information they provide on their work (while still preserving their anonymity). Multivariate analyses allow these data to be compared with data for the adult population as a whole, the electorate, and the group of people intensively engaged in politics. The results corroborate earlier studies that show that journalists do not reflect the population; their characteristics and views only match the diversity of society to a certain extent.

Edition 3-4/2023, Paper

Generative visual AI in newsrooms Considerations related to production, presentation, and audience interpretation and impact

By T. J. Thomson and Ryan J. Thomas | AI services that provide responses to prompts, such as ChatGPT, have ignited passionate discussions over the future of learning, work, and creativity. AI-enabled text-to-image generators, such as Midjourney, pose profound questions about the purpose, meaning, and value of images yet have received considerably less research attention, despite the implications they raise for both the production and consumption of images. This essay explores key considerations that journalists and news organizations should be aware of when conceiving, sourcing, presenting, or seeking to fact-check AI-generated images. Specifically, it addresses transparency around how algorithms work, discusses provenance and algorithmic bias, touches on labor ethics and the displacement of traditional lens-based workers, explores copyright implications, identifies the potential impacts on the accuracy and representativeness of the images audiences see in their news, and muses about the lack of regulation and policy development governing the use of AI-generated images in news. We explore these themes through the insights provided by eight photo editors or equivalent roles at leading news organizations in Australia and the United States.

Edition 2/2023, Paper

New game, new rules An investigation into editorial guidelines for dealing with artificial intelligence in the newsroom

By Kim Björn Becker | The introduction of the language model ChatGPT created plenty of hype around the use of artificial intelligence – not least in journalism. In a profession based around language, the new technology has a wide range of applications. Yet these new possibilities also give rise to questions about how the media deal with artificial intelligence (AI). Some editorial offices have now begun to react to the challenge by publishing their own AI guidelines, aiming to clarify the principles on which their use of algorithms is based. This paper conducts a comparative examination of the documents issued by seven international media in order to gain a fundamental understanding of where the editorial offices see opportunities and the pitfalls they address. The investigation looks at two organizations each from Germany and the USA, as well as one each from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The analysis shows that news agencies tend to have more concise rules, while public service broadcasters are subjected to more comprehensive regulatory standards. Each editorial office sets its own focus: While almost all the media’s guidelines cover human control of AI and questions of transparency, there is less focus on requirements for trustworthy algorithms. The investigation shows that, although media are already looking at fundamental questions thrown up by the new technology, newsrooms still have blind spots when it comes to dealing with AI.

Edition 2/2023, Paper

Fear and balanced The world according to the foxnews.com homepage

By Fred Vultee | This discourse analysis draws on a database of foxnews.com homepages from 2022-23 to assess the issues, stories and actors that help form the worldview of the Fox audience. The thematic assessment is complemented by a study of text features that address licensing: who speaks and how, and under what conditions? Results address a question that has drawn attention for more than two decades: »What is Fox News?«

Edition 2/2023, Paper

Separating Advertising Business from Journalism How pertinent is Karl Bücher’s 1919 concept for press reform today?

By Horst Pöttker | The purpose of this article is to raise awareness for fundamental problems of journalistic quality assurance. To do this, we analyzed Karl Bücher’s largely forgotten reform concept of 1919 against the backdrop of current media developments for its sociopolitical relevance, its merits and flaws compared to other concepts of journalistic quality assurance (most of which Bücher himself already mentioned at the time), its applicability to various media, and its political, legal, and economic viability. Our hypothesis is that the most promising and viable approach is to extend the principle of public broadcasting to other media.