Journalistica

Editorial preface

Eva Mayerhöffer — 2022-12-13

Journalistica's editor-in-chief, Eva Mayerhöffer, presents the 2022 issue and introduces the new, more continuous publication format, where incoming contributions are published online first and published in a single issue at the end of each year.

The Online Video Research Interview (OVRI)

Lene Heiselberg — 2022-12-13

In this section, Journalistica puts a spotlight on research methods used in journalism studies and/or journalism practice.

Listen to the Journalistica podcast episode about this article on Spotify or in your browser.

Ekspertkilder i landsdækkende danske dagblade

Kresten Roland Johansen — 2022-10-13

Ekspertkilder optræder overalt i mediebilledet og bidrager til at give journalistikken autoritet og troværdighed. Men eksperterne udgør en broget forsamling og bruges i vidt forskellige roller og funktioner. Der mangler aktuel forskningsbaseret viden om, hvem de er, og hvad de bruges til. I denne artikel undersøges begge dele. Vi laver en indholdsanalyse af fire ugers dækning i 2021 i de tre største landsdækkende dagblade i Danmark (Jyllands-Posten, Politiken og Berlingske Tidende) og sammenligner resultaterne med eksisterende forskning. Knap halvdelen af dagbladenes ekspertkilder er privatansatte ikke-forskere. Økonomer og andre samfundsfagligt uddannede udgør 79 procent af disse. Blandt forskerkilderne udgør kvinder 22 procent. De er særligt underrepræsenterede inden for naturvidenskab. 86 procent af forskerkilderne udtaler sig om aktuelle begivenheder og andres forskning, mens 14 procent udtaler sig om egen forskning. I 98 procent af artiklerne med ekspertkilder castes en eller flere ekspertkilder til at levere vurderinger. Resultaterne rejser spørgsmål om journalisters kriterier for at udvælge ekspertkilder, og om journalister tildeler ekspertkilder deres autoritetsfunktion på et tilstrækkeligt kildekritisk grundlag.

Exploring the boundaries of Nordic journalism: Introduction to special issue

Ester Appelgren — 2022-12-13

Keeping journalism socially relevant and financially viable is more challenging than ever. It might seem like a paradox, but in a time when news media is challenged by inadequate business models, precarious labor conditions and competition from platform companies, and contested by populist politicians, the public is consuming more news than ever before. The changing media landscape, technological platforms and structural conditions are influencing journalism, its practices and its roles in everyday life, society, culture, and politics—central topics when communication scholars gather at international and national conferences dedicated to media and communication research.

The NordMedia Conference 2021 was arranged in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. It was supposed to be held in Reykjavik, Iceland, but was ultimately held virtually. Naturally, the topics tended to focus on how journalists were covering the pandemic, but they also included studies on truth, disinformation and facts as well as technology in journalism in the form of AI and automation. The presenters were later invited to participate in this special issue, which celebrates Nordic scholarship and the Journalistica journal.

In this issue, we bring together three studies that each illustrate the current developments within Nordic journalism research along with a book review of a book on political communication in the Nordics.

Ethics and trust are common threads that run through the three articles published in this special issue of Journalistica. The articles cover very different topics—from podcasting as a genre, alternative media and comment moderation to ethics in local news media — and ethics and trust are recurring themes in the discussions. What constitutes as news today is increasingly blurred as it mixes with commercial content (influencers and content marketing — commercial genres that look like news), opinions (comments appearing as news) or false and manipulated content (fake news or disinformation). Many people, especially young adults, get their news from social media, and the newsfeed does not differentiate between different types of content. News from respected newsrooms has the same design as rumors from a suspicious website. Thus, users have to pay more attention to differentiate between the trustworthiness of the information.

This blurring of content and genres is challenging for journalism’s trustworthiness. The articles in this special issue touch on some of the challenges appearing as a result of this blurring despite the long tradition of strong ethical guidelines for journalism in Nordic newsrooms. Nevertheless, the users of Nordic news are still demonstrating high levels of trust, among the highest in the 45 countries of the Reuters Digital News Report 2022 track. Finnish news users report the highest trust in news (69%), particularly the news they use (75%), followed by Denmark (58%/63%), Norway (56%/63%), and Sweden (50%/56%). Iceland was not included in Reuters’ survey.

One factor that can help maintain and strengthen trust in news in the Nordic countries is strong ethical practices in newsrooms. Since the early 20th century, Nordic newsrooms and journalism organizations have developed ethical guidelines for journalism that are continually updated to reflect developments in the profession and society at large:

Norway:Code of Ethics for the Norwegian Press
Sweden: Rules of Professional Conduct
Denmark: Press Ethical Rules
Finland: Guidelines for Journalists
Iceland: Rules of Ethics in Journalism

Ethical guidelines and their practical implementation in the newsrooms can help Nordic journalists navigate the challenges emerging from the changing media landscape, competition from technological platforms and structural conditions influencing journalism. The articles in this special issue of Journalistica each offer a unique contribution to address some of these challenges.

Freedom of expression or censorship of antisemitic hate speech?

Birgitte P. Haanshuus — 2022-06-23

Taking the dilemma between freedom of expression and censorship of antisemitic hate speech as a point of departure, this article explores how three prominent and controversial Norwegian far-right alternative media perceive and perform comment moderation and how editorial and audience perspectives on the issue correspond. Based on a critical discourse analysis of interviews with key staff members and a strategic selection of comment sections, the article demonstrates how both moderators and debaters understand the boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate expressions and how transgressive content should be dealt with. The article argues that when it comes to regulating comment sections, these oppositional media actors are not so alternative after all. The study illustrates how comment moderation is crucial for all actors who seek to obtain or protect their legitimacy, regardless of their (counter-) position in the public sphere. While there is widespread agreement on antisemitic hate speech as illegitimate, there is, however, more tolerance for generalising statements about Muslims and immigrants, which underpins these actors’ antagonism towards these groups.

The ethics of journalism challenged

Jaana Hujanen — 2022-08-09

The article examines Finnish news professionals’ views on the ethical challenges that ensue from emerging and intertwining forms of local professional journalism and communications. Besides describing the current situation, the article employs data from a survey of editors-in-chief to investigate how news professionals anticipate the relationship between journalism and communications evolving in the future. Respondents perceived a blurring of the boundary between local journalism and communications. They observed economic pressures creating incentives for news media to compromise their journalistic ethics and ethical concerns arising from professional communications’ adoption of journalistic practices. Editors-in-chief maintained that the boundaries between journalism and other forms of communication are clear in their media but indistinct in other local news media outlets and in society in general. They predicted an ambiguous, even grim, future of local news media in Finland. However, local news media may have a positive future if they become distinct, attractive and relevant again to citizens.

Podcast – Commentary journalism in a digital public

Lisbeth Morlandstø — 2022-12-13

The internet and digital platforms provide commentary- and opinion-based journalism with new opportunities to develop into new digital formats, such as podcasts. This article is based on the case studies of four Norwegian podcasts in 2020 and 2021. The findings show that commentary journalism in the form of podcasts has an obvious dual purpose: as publicity and as a commercial. The podcast facilitates a societal mission for the public while creating branded goods for the companies involved. Based on the material and the categories we had constructed, we developed a set of binaries that, understood as typologies, capture important dimensions of the differences between the podcasts. These binaries are monologue vs. dialogue, factual vs. personal, reflexive vs. assertive, and intellectual discussants vs. experts. In the article, we discuss how podcasts draw commentary journalism in a dialogical direction. We also discuss what impact this has upon public reasoning and the democratic role of commentary journalism.

Eli Skogerbø, Øyvind Ihlen, Nete Nørgaard Kristensen and Lars Nord (eds.): Power, Communication and Politics in the Nordic Countries. Nordicom, 2021, 396 pp.

Jakob Linaa Jensen — 2022-09-12

Associate Professor Jakob Linaa Jensen reviews the book Power, Communication and Politics in the Nordic Countries by Eli Skogerbø, Øyvind Ihlen, Nete Nørgaard Kristensen og Lars Nord.