81 research outputs found
Britta Timm Knudsen, Dorthe Refslund Christensen & Per Blenker (eds.) Enterprising initiatives in the experience economy: Transforming social worlds
From re-viewers to me-viewers : The #Bookstagram review sphere on Instagram and the uses of the perceived platform and genre affordances
Author byline (Culture Coverage)
This variable describes the employment basis that the writers of the articles represent. It distinguishes between staff writers, representing in-house newsroom production, and freelancer-based writers, representing outsourced production. It also examines the shares of non-signed and news agency material, as well as material produced by the audience, whenever it is placed on culture pages. These are the major production instances for cultural coverage. Tracing their development across time delivers information on the strategic and economic shifts, reflected in the use of non-specialized writers (journalists from other departments and outsourced production).
Field of application/theoretical foundation
As debates on the state of cultural journalism and the anatomy of cultural coverage are often centered around the volume of reviews, this variable delivers more detailed information about the production structures of the articles. Commissioning freelancers is specifically characteristic of cultural coverage; in cultural journalism, external authors are used more than in any other form of journalism. Through the variable, it can be examined to which extent the freelancer networks are being used for cultural coverage. Another prevalent question for cultural coverage is the extent of news agency material, or âchurnalismâ (Kristensen, 2018), which strengthens the ties of cultural coverage to cultural industry and, as an indication of less critical distance, is regarded as non-preferable.
References/combination with other methods of data collection
In coding the variable, the author name indicated in the byline is recorded. The variable typically needs background research for determining individual authorsâ employment contracts, which may also vary from time to time. For distinguishing between specialized staff journalists, general staff journalists, and freelancer journalists, the researcher may utilize newsroom superiors as informants, as well as the authors themselves. When cross-tabulated with other variables, the variable provides useful information on how freelancer production has developed in time with regard to cultural forms, genres, and gender.
Sample operationalization
The author byline is operationalized as follows:
Event type
Description
Specialized staff journalist
Cultural journalist: salary-based staff journalist in the culture department
General staff journalist
Other journalist: salary-based staff journalist in a department other than culture
Freelancer journalist
Outsourced production: writer separately commissioned for the text
Newsroom signature
Byline referring to the newspaper in question, leaving the writer anonymous
News agency
Name of the news agency (AFP, AP, Reuters, etc.)
Member of audience
A reader, non-journalist
Not recognizable
Producer of the text unknown, not signed
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Example study
Jaakkola (2015)
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Information abour Jaakkola, 2015
Author: Maarit Jaakkola
Research question/research interest: Representation of the author bylines according to the work contract of the journalists on culture pages of daily newspapers across time, to expose the production structure
Object of analysis: Articles/text items on culture pages of five major daily newspapers in Finland 1978â2008 (Aamulehti, Helsingin Sanomat, Kaleva, Savon Sanomat, Turun Sanomat)
Timeframe of analysis: 1978â2008, consecutive sample of weeks 7 and 42 in five year intervals (1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008)Â
Â
Info about variable
Variable name/definition: Author
Unit of analysis: Article
Values: 1 = specialized staff journalist, 2= general staff journalist, 3 = freelancer journalist, 4 = newsroom signature, 5 = news agency, 6 = member of the audience, 7 = not recognizable
Scale: nominal
Intercoder reliability: Cohen's kappa > 0.76 (two coders)
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References
Jaakkola, M. (2015). Outsourcing views, developing news: Changes of art criticism in Finnish dailies, 1978â2008. Journalism Studies, 16(3), 383â402. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2014.892727
Kristensen, N.N. (2018). Churnalism, cultural (inter)mediation and sourcing in cultural journalism. Journalism Studies, 19(14), 2168â2186
Forms of culture (Culture Coverage)
This variable describes what kind of concept of culture underlies the cultural coverage at a certain point of time or across time. The variable dissects the concept of culture into cultural forms that are being journalistically covered. It presupposes that each article predominantly focuses on one cultural genre or discipline, such as literature, music, or film, which is the case in most articles in the cultural beat that are written according to cultural journalistsâ areas of specialization. By identifying the cultural forms covered, the variable delivers an answer to the question of what kind of culture has been covered, or what kind of culture has been represented. Forms of culture are sometimes also called artistic or cultural disciplines (Jaakkola, 2015) or cultural genres (Purhonen et al., 2019), and cultural classification (Janssen et al., 2011) or cultural hierarchy (Schmutz, 2009). The level of detail varies from study to study, according to the need of knowledge, with some scholars tracing forms of subculture (Schmutz et al., 2010), while others just identify the overall development of major cultural forms (Purhonen et al., 2019; Jaakkola, 2015a).
The concepts of culture can roughly be defined as being dominated by high cultural, popular cultural, or everyday cultural forms (Kristensen, 2019). While most culture sections in newspapers are dominated by high culture, and the question is rather about which disciplines, in the operationalization it is not always easy to draw lines between high and popular forms in the postmodern cultural landscape where boundaries are being blurred. Nevertheless, the major forms of culture in the journalistic operationalization of culture are literature, classical music, theatre, and fine arts. As certain forms of culture â such as classical music and opera â are focused on classical high culture, and other forms â such as popular music and comics â represent popular forms, distribution of coverage according to cultural forms may indicate changes in the cultural concept.
Field of application/theoretical foundation
The question of the concept of culture is a standard question in content analyses on arts and cultural journalism in daily newspapers and cultural magazines, posed by a number of studies conducted in different geographical areas and often with a comparative intent (e.g., SzaÌntoÌ et al., 2004; Janssen, 1999; Reus & Harden, 2005; Janssen et al., 2008; Larsen, 2008; KoÌnno et al., 2012; Jaakkola, 2015a, 2015b; Verboord & Janssen, 2015; Purhonen et al., 2019; Widholm et al., 2019). The essence of culture has been theorized in cultural studies, predominantly by Raymond Williams (e.g., 2011), and sociologists of art (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952). In studying journalistic coverage of arts and culture, the concept of culture reveals the anatomy of coverage and whether the content is targeting a broader audience (inclusive concept of culture) or a narrow audience (exclusive or elitist concept of culture). A prevalent motivation to study the ontological dimension of cultural coverage is also to trace cultural change, which means that the concept of culture is longitudinally studied (Purhonen et al., 2019).
References/combination with other methods of data collection
Concept of culture often occurs as a variable to trace cultural change. The variable is typically coupled with other variables, mainly with representational means, i.e., the journalistic genre (Jaakkola, 2015), event type (Stegert, 1998), or author gender (Schmutz, 2009; Jaakkola, 2015b). Quantitative content analyses may also be complemented with qualitative analyses (Purhonen et al., 2019).
Sample operationalization
Cultural forms are separated according to the production structure (journalists and reviewers specializing in one cultural form typically indicate an increase of coverage for that cultural form). At a general level, the concept of culture can be divided into the following cultural forms: literature, music â which is, according to the newsroom specialization typically roughly categorized into classical and popular music â visual arts, theatre, dance, film, design, architecture and built environment, media, comics, cultural politics, cultural history, arts education, and other. Subcategories can be separated according to the interest and level of knowledge. The variable needs to be sensitive towards local features in journalism and culture.
Example study
Jaakkola (2015b)
Information about Jaakkola, 2015
Author: Maarit Jaakkola
Research question/research interest: Examination of the cultural concept across time in culture sections of daily newspapers
Object of analysis: Articles/text items on culture pages of five major daily newspapers in Finland 1978â2008 (Aamulehti, Helsingin Sanomat, Kaleva, Savon Sanomat, Turun Sanomat)
Timeframe of analysis: 1978â2008, consecutive sample of weeks 7 and 42 in five year intervals (1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008)
Info about variable
Variable name/definition: Concept of culture
Unit of analysis: Article/text item
Values:
Cultural form
Description
1. Fiction literature
Fiction books: fictional genres such as poetry, literary novels, thrillers, detective novels, childrenâs literature, etc.
2. Non-fiction literature
Non-fiction books: non-fictional genres such as textbooks, memoirs, encyclopedias, etc.
3. Classical music
Music of more high-cultural character, such as symphonic music, chamber music, opera, etc.
4. Popular music
Music of more popular character, such as pop, rock, hip-hop, folk music, etc.
5. Visual arts
Fine arts: painting, drawing, graphical art, sculpture, media art, photography, etc.
6. Theatre
Scene art, including musicals (if not treated as music, i.e. in coverage of concerts and albums)
7. Dance
Scene art, including ballet (if not treated as music, .e. in coverage of concerts and albums)
8. Film
Cinema: fiction, documentary, experimental film, etc.
9. Design
Design of artefacts, jewelry, fashion, interiors, graphics, etc.
10. Architecture
Design, aesthetics, and planning of built environment
11. Media
Television, journalism, Internet, games, etc.
12. Comics
Illustrated periodicals
13. Cultural politics
Policies, politics, and administration concerning arts and culture in general
14. Cultural history
Historical issues and phenomena
15. Education
Educational issues concerning different cultural disciplines
16. Other
Miscellaneous minor categories, e.g., lifestyle issues (celebrity, gossip, everyday cultural issues), and larger categories developed from within the material can be separated into values of their own
Scale: nominal
Intercoder reliability: Cohen's kappa > 0.76 (two coders)
References
Jaakkola, M. (2015a). The contested autonomy of arts and journalism: Change and continuity in the dual professionalism of cultural journalism. Tampere: Tampere University Press.
Jaakkola, M. (2015b). Outsourcing views, developing news: Changes of art criticism in Finnish dailies, 1978â2008. Journalism Studies, 16(3), 383â402.
Janssen, S. (1999). Art journalism and cultural change: The coverage of the arts in Dutch newspapers 1965â1990. Poetics 26(5â6), 329â348.
Janssen, S., Kuipers, G., & Verboord, M. (2008). Cultural globalization and arts journalism: The international orientation of arts and culture coverage in Dutch, French, German, and U.S. newspapers, 1955 to 2005. American Sociological Review, 73(5), 719â740.
Janssen, S., Verboord, M., & Kuipers, G. (2011). Comparing cultural classification: High and popular arts in European and U.S. elite newspapers. KoÌlner Zeitschrift fuÌr Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 63(51), 139â168.
KoÌnno, A., Aljas, A., LoÌhmus, M., & KoÌuts, R. (2012). The centrality of culture in the 20th century Estonian press: A longitudinal study in comparison with Finland and Russia. Nordicom Review, 33(2), 103â117.
Kristensen, N. N. (2019). Arts, culture and entertainment coverage. In T. P. Vos & F. Hanusch (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of journalism studies. Wiley-Blackwell.
Kroeber, A. L., & Kluckhohn, C. (1952). Culture: A critical review of concepts and definitions. Meridian Books.
Larsen, L. O. (2008). Forskyvninger. Kulturdekningen i norske dagsaviser 1964â2005 [Displacements: Cultural coverage in Norwegian dailies 1964â2005]. In K. Knapskog & L.O. Larsen (Eds.), Kulturjournalistikk: pressen og den kulturelle offentligheten (pp. 283â329). Scandinavian Academic Press.
Purhonen, S., HeikkilĂ€, R., Karademir Hazir, I., Lauronen, T., RodrĂguez, C. F., & Gronow, J. (2019). Enter culture, exit arts? The transformation of cultural hierarchies in European newspaper culture sections, 1960â2010. Routledge.
Reus, G., & Harden, L. (2005). Politische âKulturâ: Eine LaÌngsschnittanalyse des Zeitungsfeuilletons von 1983 bis 2003 [Political âcultureâ: A longitudinal analysis of culture pages, 1983â2003]. Publizistik, 50(2), 153â172.
Schmutz, V. (2009). Social and symbolic boundaries in newspaper coverage of music, 1955â2005: Gender and genre in the US, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Poetics, 37(4), 298â314.
Schmutz, V., van Venrooij, A., Janssen, S., & Verboord, M. (2010). Change and continuity in newspaper coverage of popular music since 1955: Evidence from the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Popular Music and Society, 33(4), 505â515.
Stegert, G. (1998). Feuilleton fĂŒr alle: Strategien im Kulturjournalismus der Presse [Feuilleton for all: Strategies in cultural journalism of the daily press]. Max Niemeyer Verlag.
SzaÌntoÌ, A., Levy, D. S., & Tyndall, A. (Eds.). (2004). Reporting the arts II: News coverage of arts and culture in America. National Arts Journalism Program (NAJP).
Verboord, M., & Janssen, J. (2015). Arts journalism and its packaging in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, 1955â2005. Journalism Practice, 9(6), 829â852.
Widholm, A., Riegert, K., & Roosvall, A. (2019). Abundance or crisis? Transformations in the media ecology of Swedish cultural journalism over four decades. Journalism. Advance online publication August, 6. Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884919866077
Williams, R. (2011). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. Routledge. (Original work published 1976)
Vernacular reviews as a form of co-consumption: The user-generated review videos on YouTube
Reviews of arts and culture are typically focused on legitimate forms of art rather than popular and consumer culture. Looking beyond such institutionalized reviews, this article inquires into the online-native, bottom-up forms of reviewing. The aim is to identify user-generated reviews of popular cultural objects, defined through the user reviewersâ position as cultural consumers and the size of their audiences. The objects of study are YouTube channels that include a regular output of review videos. First, the 5,000 most-subscribed channels are analysed to identify content creators who establish a relationship to cultural objects. Second, types of reviewing are identified, and the methods and boundaries of âvernacular reviewingâ are discussed. User-generated reviewing on YouTube presents a meta-practice related to cultural objects for young audiences that is marked by the use of hybrid genres, humour, irony and the idea of co-consuming, reflected in the concept of intramediatio
Journalistic genre (Culture Coverage)
This variable describes the basic journalistic genres typically used in specialized cultural coverage. The fundamental distinction goes between fact-based objective-seeking genres, such as news and news feature, and opinionated articles based on subjective accounts, such as columns, essays, comments and reviews. In journalism, it is important to separate opinions from facts, and this is why subjective views are differentiated from ways of representation that are based on the strategic ritual of objectivity (Tuchman, 1972), i.e., presenting facts by referring to sources or simply describing them instead of exposing the journalistsâ own opinions and feelings. Reviews present a specialist genre of their own, connected to the institution of criticism (Hohendahl, 1982). Reviewing â the evaluation of new cultural products on the market â underlies the assumption that only selected experts are allowed to write reviews (Chong, 2020). Newspapers are also constantly developing their means of presentation, which results in an increased number of different newspaper-specific and hybrid formats, both in print and online (see, e.g., Santos Silva, 2019). Being not only medium-specific, genres may also vary from one journalistic culture to another, which makes a nuanced cross-cultural comparison difficult and motivates a limited use of values.
Field of application/theoretical foundation
Journalistic genres constitute the epistemological ground on which cultural journalists and reviewers cover culture. Scholars have been interested in the shifts in cultural coverage that have occurred between descriptive, interpretative, and evaluative content (Widholm et al., 2019). Descriptive content is often regarded in professional terms as non-ambitious in culture, while the meaning-making subjective elements are preferred and conceived of as an indication of quality (proactive professional engagement rather than marketing of cultural events). In cultural coverage, it is yet often difficult to separate facts from evaluative accounts, as the description of products, phenomena, persons, and events often require that they are put into an evaluative frame.
The selection of a genre is related to the production structures, as many reviews are written by freelancers outside the newsroom. The number and share of reviews are typically regarded as an indication of journalistic acknowledgement for expert knowledge, and also the volume of outsourced production, as a great majority of reviews are written by freelancer-based experts. A decreasing number of reviews is thus typically interpreted as a crisis of criticism (Elkins, 2003; Jaakkola, 2015).
References/combination with other methods of data collection
Journalistic genres are often studied in conjunction to the artistic genres (see variable âForms of cultureâ). Some studies are only interested in tracing the number and volume of reviews.
Sample operationalization
The two basic journalistic genres are news and reviews. News coverage can be further broken down to news feature (phenomenon-led coverage also called reportage) and person-led feature (typically referred to as person portraits). Further, there are two typical opinionated genres, essays and columns, and many kinship genres such as analysis, (news) comment and preview, that can be separately identified or merged into one variable showing personal voicing of the author.
Example study
Jaakkola (2015)
Information about Jaakkola, 2015
Author: Maarit Jaakkola
Research question/research interest: Representation of the share of journalistic genres applied in covering culture on culture pages of daily newspapers across time, to expose the production structure
Object of analysis: Articles/text items on culture pages of five major daily newspapers in Finland 1978â2008 (Aamulehti, Helsingin Sanomat, Kaleva, Savon Sanomat, Turun Sanomat)
Timeframe of analysis: 1978â2008, consecutive sample of weeks 7 and 42 in five year intervals (1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008)
Â
Info about variable
Variable name/definition: Journalistic genre
Unit of analysis: Article/text item
Values:
Journalistic genre
Description
1. News
Informative, fact-based article intended to deliver an objective account on an event
2. Review
Opinionated, subjective article related to a new cultural product with an intention to evaluate it, written by a reviewer or critic
3. Person portrait/feature
An informative article, typically interview-based, in which a person constitutes the topic
4. Reportage/feature
An informative article intended to give account of the context of a news event or examine a phenomenon
5. Essay
A longer opinionated, subjective article written by a journalist or reviewer to cover a phenomenon, process, state of the art or arts, etc.
6. Other commentary
A short opinionated, subjective article written by a journalist (non-reviewer): a column, causerie, comment, preview or analysis, sometimes related to a news article
7. Other
A text item not suited for any other category; e.g., a list, visualization, hybrid format, or similar
Â
Scale: nominal
Intercoder reliability:Â Cohen's kappa > 0.76 (two coders)
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References
Chong, P.K. (2020). Inside the criticsâ circle: Book reviewing in uncertain times. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Elkins, J. (2003). What happened to art criticism? Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Bristol University Presses.
Hohendahl, P.U. (1982). Institution of criticism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Jaakkola, M. (2015). Witnesses of a cultural crisis: Representations of mediatic metaprocesses as professional metacriticism of arts journalism. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 18(5), 537â554. doi:10.1177/1367877913519308
Santos Silva, D. (2019). Digitally empowered: New patterns of sourcing and expertise in cultural journalism and criticism. Journalism Practice, 13(5), 592â601. doi: 10.1080/17512786.2018.1507682
Tuchman, G. (1972). Objectivity as strategic ritual: An examination of newsmen's notions of objectivity. American Journal of Sociology, 77(4), 660â679. doi:10.1086/225193
Widholm, A., Riegert, K., & Roosvall, A. (2019). Abundance or crisis? Transformations in the media ecology of Swedish cultural journalism over four decades. Journalism. Advance online publication August, 6. Journalism. doi:10.1177/146488491986607
Reporting like there was no pandemic: Cultural journalism during the COVID-19 pandemic in Finland, Sweden, and Latvia
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused both a widespread public health crisis and a global economic crisis, disrupting every aspect of our lives, health, education, jobs, and social life. To provide the public with trustworthy and continuously updated information and stories during uncertain times, newsrooms have made pandemic coverage a priority. Conducting a content analysis of Norwegian news and debate programs on radio and television throughout 2020, we found that the frames most dominant in news broadcasts were the least used frames in debate programs, and vice versa. Overall, the five most common frames were societal consequences, economic consequences, medical risk, government measures, social behaviour, and risk. This suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic was contextualized as an economic and social crisis as well as a health crisis. However, the lack of politicization, conflict and responsibility frames, suggests media coverage missed a critical perspective
Community-First Criticism : Reviewing Art and Culture in Local Newspapers
This article explores community-conforming criticism published in local or community newspapers. Currently, professional cultural criticism is largely focused on capital-based and regional newspapers, as well as cultural magazines, implying the specialisation of work and compartmentalisation of content, while local newspapers cover a wide variety of societal issues and dedicate attention to culture in genres other than the review. The article analyses the findings from a three-year development project launched by the Finnish Criticsâ Association (2020â2023) that aimed to rethink reviewing in local journalistic settings. An analysis of the stories published until the summer of 2022 (n = 28) and semistructured theme interviews with the involved critics and staff journalists (n = 14) show the potential and challenges for local journalistic cultural criticism. Based on the analysis, I develop a theoretical framework for community-conforming criticism that places the primary focus on social values of art and preferences that rise from within the local community.Peer reviewe
From vernacularized commercialism to kidbait : Toy review videos on YouTube and the problematics of the mash-up genre
Entiset pÀÀtoimittajat muistelevat
Vuonna 2024 tulee kuluneeksi 40 vuotta ensimmĂ€isen Kulttuurintutkimus-lehden numeron ilmestymisestĂ€. NeljĂ€n vuosikymmenen vuosikerrat ovat tarjonneet suurelle joukolle kirjoittajia ja toimittajia mahdollisuuden kehittyĂ€ ja löytÀÀ ammatillinen tiensĂ€ â vaikka helppoa se ei ole ollut, sillĂ€ toimitustyö on syönyt aikaa omalta tutkimustyöltĂ€. Lehden toimittajuudesta saatua kokemusta ei ole myöskÀÀn aina arvostettu yliopistomaailmassa, kertovat alkuaikojen pÀÀtoimittajat Vesa Niinikangas, Urpo Kovala ja Eeva Peltonen, Tuija Saresma sekĂ€ Riitta Koikkalainen. Parasta on kuitenkin ollut yhteistyön voima. Haastattelijana Maarit Jaakkola
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