The Literary Construction of Journalism Education : A Review of the Course Literature in the Nordic Academic Journalism Programmes

This article investigates the course literature in the curricula of 12 major journalism schools at Northern European universities. This analysis of the course literature listed in documentation of bachelor programmes traces how journalism education institutions constitute their knowledge base on journalism. It is found that Nordic journalism students are required to read almost four books per study credit on average. Undergraduate academic journalism programmes are professionally oriented, and professional literature by non-scientific publishers occupies a major place in the course literature. A strong emphasis is placed on professional books written in the domestic language, with an average age of seven years. Though the Scandinavian languages show high degrees of similarities with each other, there is very little circulation of literature across the countries within the Nordic area. This analysis of the literature points to a relatively homogeneous educational culture with small differences and raises questions about the qualitative dimensions of instructional design.peerReviewe

Exploring the Normative Foundation of Journalism Education : Nordic Journalism Educators’ Conceptions of Future Journalism and Professional Qualifications

This article deals with Nordic journalism educators’ conceptions of journalism by placing the concept of normativity at the center. The values, norms and ideas concerning journalism and journalistic practice have previously been studied by journalists and journalism students around the world and in the Nordics, while the Nordic journalism educators’ conceptions have remained more or less without attention. Nevertheless, journalism educators play a crucial role in defining what journalism is and what it is not, and thus largely affect future practitioners’ ideas of journalism. Using a questionnaire that has been employed in previous studies, journalism educators within the academic journalism training in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden (n = 115) were surveyed in terms of their conceptions. It was found that the journalism educators, of which 35 per cent had a doctoral degree, still largely subscribe to the ideas of the welfare state. In addition, the ideas of slow, investigative, constructive and solutions-based journalism have gained high popularity among the Nordic educators, which, we argue, dovetails well with the pedagogical aims of journalism education.peerReviewe

A competent participant in the new media landscape: Promoting an interdisciplinary perspective

Dynamic changes in media technology, society, media consumption and the economy affect the media landscape as well as the role and status of media users who are no longer passive receivers, but active media participants, and thus need to develop appropriate competence areas. We argue that using an interdisciplinary perspective within communication and journalism studies is necessary to address the scope of challenges that new media users are facing. Hence, we propose a palette of competence areas to be achieved, which would include intercultural communication, interpersonal communication and a basic knowledge of ethics, visual literacy, and source criticism abilities. While we understand these competence areas to be strongly intertwined, we elaborate each separately. Throughout this chapter, we raise issues related to (i) the pervasive and unproblematized use of the notion of culture, (ii) the increasingly interactive and interpersonal nature of the new media landscape, (iii) the importance of learning how to interpret visual content, and (iv) the ability to evaluate information accuracy and quality. We conclude that a holistic view, including, but not limited to, communication scholarship and journalism studies is required and needs to be further developed in order to deine the characteristics of the new media participant. Directions for future research are suggested in the conclusion.peerReviewe

A Pilot Study on Developing Newsgames in Collaboration between Journalism and Computer Science Students

Producing digital and interactive journalistic products offers unique and important new learning opportunities for journalism education. This study analysed the experiences of two pilot courses on so-called ‘newsgames’ in a Finnish university in 2015 and 2017. The data consisted of the newsgames and other materials produced by the students, student feedback concerning the course and observations of teachers throughout the project. Our analysis demonstrates how producing newsgames in the context of higher education may foster project-based learning experiences, something that has been relatively rare in traditional journalism education. Collaboration with media companies also offered valuable feedback for the students throughout the course and provided them with an opportunity to practice selling their expertise. The study highlights how interdisciplinary and project-based cooperation may benefit journalism education.peerReviewe