Journalism at the Periphery

The increasing influence of actors who might not fit into traditional definitions of a journalist but are taking part in processes that produce journalism has attracted scholarly attention. They have been called interlopers, strangers, new entrants, peripheral, and emergent actors, among others. As journalism scholars grapple with how to refer to these actors, it is important to reflect on the assumptions that underlie emerging labels. These include: 1) what journalistic tasks are involved; 2) how and why these journalistic tasks are performed; 3) who is making the definition; and 4) where and when these actors are located. However, journalism being the centre of our investigation should not automatically assume that it is at the centre of social life. So, it might also be that for the technological field, journalism is at the periphery; that for these technology-oriented actors whose influence across fields is increasing, journalists and what they do are at the periphery. For a field that supposedly plays an important role in public life, this has important implications

What Is (Fake) News? Analyzing News Values (and More) in Fake Stories

‘Fake news’ has been a topic of controversy during and following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Much of the scholarship on it to date has focused on the ‘fakeness’ of fake news, illuminating the kinds of deception involved and the motivations of those who deceive. This study looks at the ‘newsness’ of fake news by examining the extent to which it imitates the characteristics and conventions of traditional journalism. Through a content analysis of 886 fake news articles, we find that in terms of news values, topic, and formats, articles published by fake news sites look very much like traditional—and real—news. Most of their articles included the news values of timeliness, negativity, and prominence; were about government and politics; and were written in an inverted pyramid format. However, one point of departure is in terms of objectivity, operationalized as the absence of the author’s personal opinion. The analysis found that the majority of articles analyzed included the opinion of their author or authors

A Black and White Game: Racial Stereotypes in Baseball

The current study experimentally tested stereotypes and credibility of messages associated with athletes. Participants were asked to rate photos of black and white baseball players based on stereotypes identified in previous literature. They were then given an anonymous paragraph from a newspaper that featured either a stereotype consistent or inconsistent message and asked to rate the author\u27s credibility. Black players were rated significantly higher in physical strength and natural ability, which is consistent with previous literature. However, inconsistent with previous literature, white players were not rated significantly higher in intelligence and leadership. Despite these results, when measuring credibility, this study found white-consistent stereotypes to be credible, whereas black-consistent ones were not. These results are interpreted in light of Devine\u27s model of stereotype processing and in-group, out-group bias

Foul Ball: Audience-Held Stereotypes of Baseball Players

This study experimentally tested whether participants held and/or applied stereotypes of baseball players. Participants were asked to rate white, black, and Latino baseball players based on stereotypes consistently identified in previous literature. Participants saw a photo of a player and an anonymous paragraph from a newspaper that highlighted a particular stereotype. They were then asked to rate the author\u27s credibility. Black players were rated as higher in physical strength and natural ability, consistent with previous literature concerning how athletes were described. However, white and Latin players were not stereotyped. But participants rated white-consistent descriptions as credible and Latin-consistent descriptions as less credible. These results are interpreted through the prism of social identity theory

How is Fatherhood Framed Online in Singapore?

The proliferation of discussion about fatherhood in Singapore attests to its significance, indicating the need for an exploration of how fatherhood is framed, aiding policy-making around fatherhood in Singapore. Sound and holistic policy around fatherhood in Singapore may reduce stigma and apprehension around being a parent, critical to improving the nations flagging birth rate. We analyzed 15,705 articles and 56,221 posts to study how fatherhood is framed in Singapore across a range of online platforms (news outlets, parenting forums, Twitter). We used NLP techniques to understand these differences. While fatherhood was framed in a range of ways on the Singaporean online environment, it did not seem that fathers were framed as central to the Singaporean family unit. A strength of our work is how the different techniques we have applied validate each other

Audiences, Journalists, and Forms of Capital in the Online Journalistic Field

This study found divergence in how online journalists and student-audiences rated articles with varying popularity, as measured by audience metrics, and quality, as operationalized by winning a journalistic award. The findings revealed that while metrics and awards did not matter for young online news audiences, they were important for online journalists. But even among journalists, the importance of metrics and awards varied depending on whether the journalists were evaluating stories or their peers. For online journalists, popular stories were more newsworthy than those that were not. Awards did not influence their judgment of newsworthiness. But when evaluating the authors of the articles, online journalists rated authors of articles that won awards more favorably than authors of articles without awards. The popularity of stories did not matter in their evaluation of the authors

Gatekeeping influences and journalistic capital : proposing a mechanism of influence

This exploratory study proposes that one way to understand how and why journalists get influenced is to focus on their economic and cultural capital. Based on a survey of 349 journalists from the Philippines, this study found that journalists with low economic capital tend to perceive political influence as more influential on their work, while journalists with low cultural capital tend to perceive economic influence and reference groups as more influential

The pseudo-events paradox : how pseudo-events flood the Philippine press and why journalists don't recognize it

Daniel Boorstin introduced in 1961 the concept of "pseudo-events" of false realities which he said had been flooding the American Press (Boorstin, 1961). Four decades later, testing his concept on the Philippines Press, this study finds that his observation still holds true. This exploratory study, using content analysis of 2,330 news articles and a survey of 100 jornalists, offers the concept of the "pseudo-events paradox". Though journalists perceive there are more spontaneous events in their work and that these have better chances of being published, published news articles about pseudo-events actually outnumber those based on spontaneous events. News articles based on pseudo-events are usually obtaine through personal interviews, press conferences and press releases, methods Boorstin had associated with pseudo-events and which journalists admitted were among the easiest data gathering methods.Politicians, found to be among the most active stagers of events, were also the most quoted sources.​Master of Mass Communicatio

Out of bounds? How Gawker’s outing a married man fits into the boundaries of journalism

Gawker ignited a controversy when it published an article about a married Conde Nast executive who allegedly sought the services of a gay escort. The popular blog eventually removed the article following condemnation from readers and other journalists. Guided by the frameworks of boundary work and field theory, this study analyzed 65 news articles and 2203 online comments and found that journalists and audiences problematized Gawker’s identity as a journalistic organization and evaluated the article based on traditional standards of newsworthiness, audiences asserted their role in journalism’s larger interpretive community, and that the larger interpretive community assessed the article based on the ethics of outing. Investigating the discourse generated by this critical incident is important because it identifies where journalists and readers draw the boundaries of legitimate journalism, specifies the place of ethics in boundary discourse, and informs journalistic practice about the phenomenon of outing in the news