Journalistisk dækning af danske shitstorme

Genmæle, vidensbidrag og kildekontakt

Abstract

In this article, we examine how Danish journalists cover the relatively new, online media phenomenon 'shitstorms'. We first argue that shitstorms are a by-product of negative electronic word-of-mouth on social media, and that shitstorms must be understood in relation to already existing studies of media scandals. Hereafter, we establish an analytical framework for our content analysis based on a number of journalistic ideals that we believe most professional journalists should be able to agree with – that journalists should listen to and give the accused party the opportunity to respond, try to add new and exclusive sources and perspectives for their stories and verify and fact-check information. Our empirical data was collected via Infomedia and consists of a total of 1,107 articles dealing with 10 shitstorms from 2019. Based on our analysis, we can conclude that most journalists let the accused party respond, and that the journalists also try to add exclusive and new sources and perspectives for their stories. Furthermore, we can conclude that shitstorms where the criticism is directed at political actors motivate contact with sources to a greater extent. Based on the analytical conclusions, we finally discuss the relevance of the ideals in the coverage of shitstorms.