Exploring the boundaries of Nordic journalism: Introduction to special issue

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

Data Journalism as a Service : Digital Native Data Journalism Expertise and Product Development

The combined set of skills needed for producing data journalism (e.g., investigative journalism methods, programming, knowledge in statistics, data management, statistical reporting, and design) challenges the understanding of what competences a journalist needs and the boundaries for the tasks journalists perform. Scholars denote external actors with these types of knowledge as interlopers or actors at the periphery of journalism. In this study, we follow two Swedish digital native data journalism start-ups operating in the Nordics from when they were founded in 2012 to 2019. Although the start-ups have been successful in news journalism over the years and acted as drivers for change in Nordic news innovation, they also have a presence in sectors other than journalism. This qualitative case study, which is based on interviews over time with the start-up founders and a qualitative analysis of blog posts written by the employees at the two start-ups, tells a story of journalists working at the periphery of legacy media, at least temporarily forced to leave journalism behind yet successfully using journalistic thinking outside of journalistic contexts.Peer reviewe

Data Journalism Research : Studying a Maturing Field Across Journalistic Cultures, Media Markets and Political Environments

Peer reviewe

Expectations, Challenges, and Expertise : The Importance of Non-Western Data Journalism

Peer reviewe

The Reasons Behind Tracing Audience Behavior : A Matter of Paternalism and Transparency

This article analyzes privacy agreement texts and cookie consent information collected from 60 news sites in three countries (U.S., UK, and Sweden) within the context of paternalism. The goal of this study is to explore how paternalism is present in news media companies’ stated reasons for collecting behavioral data. Twenty-five categories of reasons were identified and divided into six categories: personalization and enhanced user experience, delivery and maintenance of services, internal and corporate use of data, legal reasons, communication with the user, and third-party use of data. The analysis shows that the reasons can be formulated in both paternalistic and nonpaternalistic ways, and that the market-driven logic of Web analytics seems to collide with ethics in a journalistic context

Från kontroll till en illusion av interaktivitet : Datajournalistik som grävande arbetsmetod

Datajournalistik som grävande arbetsmetod resulterar ofta i att journalistiska vinklar visualiseras i form av mönster eller specifika samband med hjälp av digitala medieformer. Här möts två tidigare åtskilda kulturer då journalistiska arbetsmetoder kombineras med tekniska arbetsmetoder. För att skapa en berättelse får journalister förtroende att fatta beslut åt publiken, i publikens intresse, medan en ingenjör istället kan bli anklagad för att fatta paternalistiska beslut över huvudet på människor. Med utgångspunkt från aktuell nordisk datajournalistik diskuteras i denna artikel därför vad som händer när just dessa två kulturer möts, i termer av beslutsfattande åt publiken, i publikens intresse

The influence of media convergence on strategies in newspaper production

Convergence implies that previously unalike areas come together, approaching a common goal. A subordinate concept of convergence, i.e., media convergence, is a concept that has become common when denoting a range of processes within the production of media content, its distribution and consumption. The concept of media convergence has achieved buzzword status in many contexts due to its widespread use. The concept is not new and has been discussed by researchers in many academic fields and from several different points of views. This thesis will discuss media convergence as an ongoing process and not an end state. Newspapers are one of many so-called publishing channels that provide information and entertainment. They have traditionally been printed on paper, but today’s digital technology makes it possible to provide newspapers through a number of different channels. The current strategy used by newspaper companies involves a process of convergence mainly regarding multiple publishing. A newspaper company interested in publishing content through multiple channels has to adapt its production workflow to produce content not only for the traditional printed edition, but also for the other channels. In this thesis, a generalized value chain involving four main stages illustrates the production workflow at a newspaper company in relation to the convergence processes. The four stages are creation, packaging, distribution and consumption of content. The findings of the thesis are based on studies of the newspaper industry in Sweden and reflect specific newspaper companies, their strategies, production workflow and ventures from 2002 to 2005. The methods used have been case studies, literature studies and scenarios. Some of the conclusions of the thesis indicate that convergence processes have steered the newspaper companies’ development towards multiple channel publishing. Advancing technology and mergers between companies have contributed to the processes of convergence. However, the new publishing channels have been described as threatening to the traditional printed editions since they compete for consumers’ time and advertising revenues. Convergence of technology has made it possible to store, edit and publish material over many different networks using the same tools and the same database system. If the content is stored in a neutral format, it can be packaged and used in many different types of publishing channels. However, according to the studied newspapers, a fully automated workflow for all publishing channels is undesirable and impossible to achieve with the existing technology, standards and organizational structure. This licentiate thesis will discuss some of the strategies behind multiple channel publishing, production workflows and market conditions to detect how the newspaper industry is coping with media convergence.QC 2010112