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JOS17
Changing Role and Identity of Journalists
PP 370
Same Same but Different. Journalists' Professional Identities in a Changing Mediascape
M. Melin
1
1
Malmö University, School of Arts and Communication, Malmö, Sweden
In a world where media presence is everywhere and modernity has turned mobile, where new technology changes the very structure of the mediascape
that surrounds us, and where professionals and amateurs work side by side – what happens to professional praxis and identities of media professionals?
These issues have been the focus of the research project Re:searching New Media Professionals through four field-studies. In this paper I want to focus on
one of those – a study of journalists working at a traditional daily newspaper. The aim of the paper is to theoretically explore and discuss the professional
identity of a group of traditional newspaper journalists, who have experienced dramatic changes to their professional everyday life. The theoretical stand‑
point of the project is placed in the intersection of feminism, cultural journalism studies and profession-studies. Concretely this means using a feminist
appropriation of Pierre Bourdieu’s field-theory, particularly his concepts doxa and habitus, as well as theoretical concepts from profession, such as profes‑
sional identities (Alvesson, 2000) and professional boundaries (Fournier, 2000). Albeit I am not alone in using Bourdieu in profession-research (Postill, 2009;
Carlehed, 2011) or to understand journalism as a media-profession (Wiik, 2009), one of my main arguments is, however, the usefulness of using Bourdieu’s
field-theory as a bridge between journalism-studies and profession-studies. And that a feminist appropriation of these, sharpens the theoretical tools when
studying powered cultural constructions (e.g. journalism). Methodologically, the study was conducted on one Swedish traditional daily newspaper. Ten
journalists were interviewed and observed during their every-day work. Interviews were taped, and field-notes were made up by both written texts and
photographs, i.e. both more traditional as well as visual ethnography was conducted (cf. Rose, 2007). The snow-ball method was used to make up the sam‑
ple of journalists, which interestingly created a spread of journalists on different hierarchical and editorial positions, but also of mainly male journalists.
This, indeed, biased sample-result itself is part of the findings and will be discussed in the paper. Another issue that is discussed is that the field-study is too
small to generalise from. I will, however, use previous similar research made in the UK to compare with, and thus theoretically validify the Swedish results
(Melin, 2008; 2014). Empirically I show that the studied newspaper underwent dramatic personal-cuts in a larger context of economically and technologi‑
cally driven changes. As a result of that, individual journalists experienced substantial praxis-changes, i.e. changes in how they went about their every day
work of doing journalism. They also experienced fear of loosing their job, of not managing to handle new technological changes, and fear of new-comers
to the field (bloggers). I further show, that the result of all this, was strengthened professional identities, and strengthened boundaries against threatening
others (bloggers). To survive in ‘this new mediascape’ journalists emphasised that an ethical approach, professional (multi)competence, broad education
and affiliation to a large media-organisation was necessary. Some of these results were surprising, and show changing identities compared to previous
decades (Melin, 2008; 2014).
PP 371
Changing Notions of Democracy – Changing Roles of Journalism? Results of a Multi-Method Study in Austria
M.I. Lohmann
1
, A. Riedl
2
, J. Seethaler
1
1
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies, Wien, Austria
2
University of Vienna, Department of Communication, Wien, Austria
Even those who would not go as far as Colin Crouch (2008) when he speaks of the dawning of a “postdemocratic” age, cannot deny that there is growing
criticism of the form of democracy that has emerged in the majority of constitutions in many parts of the Western world. Particularly among the under
40 age groups turnout at elections is below average compared to the population as a whole, and it continues to fall. Even in a country like Austria, where
traditional loyalties are strong, party membership is in steady decline. Trust in democratic organizations is on the wane. On the other hand, there is an ever
growing number of people who don’t want only to delegate their sovereign powers, but they want to be part of a broadly based public discourse of what
has to be considered socially important. Obviously, these changing notions of democracy bring with them different ideas of the role of the public sphere and
thus of the role of journalism. The“classical”representative model of democracy is based on the assumption that citizens can only make a rational decision
in the polling booth if they are correctly informed about political matters. Accordingly, it is one of the tasks of media reporting to provide the public with
relevant information in an impartial, factual manner without any political bias. Connected with this is the ideal of the“informed citizen”(Patterson & Seib,
2005). On the other hand, deliberative and participatory forms of democracy promote public awareness created through communicative action in order to
negotiate what has to be considered as relevant issues, how they have to be dealt with, and who is responsible (and accountable) for what. While delibera‑
tive and participatory approaches differ in the ways how this should be done, they agree on the notion of what Porto (2007) called the“interpreting citizen,”
who is regarded as competent in developing and arguing consistent preferences and, thus, making sense of political and social reality. Therefore, media
reporting has to create the necessary preconditions for identifying relevant issues, forming opinions, making decisions and acting accordingly. Based on
these theoretical assumptions, a set of indicators has been developed to examine the different approaches to the role of the media in a democratic society.
During 2014 and 2015, a large-scale study was carried out in Austria to investigate the function of journalism within society. Using a multi-method design,
the study involved a representative survey of Austrian journalists (N=812) in order to assess their professional orientations and role perceptions, as well as
a content analysis of news coverage in 36 media outlets, based on a sample of 24 days, randomly selected to build four constructed weeks (without Sundays;
N=24,612 news stories). Results show that we should “break free from the assumption that the media are a single institution with a common democratic
purpose. Different media should be viewed as having different functions within the democratic system, calling for different kinds of structure and styles
of journalism.”(Curran, 2004, p. 140).