Big Data and Journalism Lewis, Seth C.; Westlund, Oscar
Digital journalism,
05/2015, Letnik:
3, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Big data is a social, cultural, and technological phenomenon-a complex amalgamation of digital data abundance, emerging analytic techniques, mythology about data-driven insights, and growing critique ...about the overall consequences of big-data practices for democracy and society. While media and communication scholars have begun to examine and theorize about big data in the context of media and public life broadly, what are the particular implications for journalism? This article introduces and applies four conceptual lenses-epistemology, expertise, economics, and ethics-to explore both contemporary and potential applications of big data for the professional logic and industrial production of journalism. These distinct yet inter-related conceptual approaches reveal how journalists and news media organizations are seeking to make sense of, act upon, and derive value from big data during a time of exploration in algorithms, computation, and quantification. In all, the developments of big data potentially have great meaning for journalism's ways of knowing (epistemology) and doing (expertise), as well as its negotiation of value (economics) and values (ethics). Ultimately, this article outlines future directions for journalism studies research in the context of big data.
Many news organizations have developed policies on the use of named and unnamed sources, including whether the latter can be directly quoted or paraphrased in news stories. In this experiment, we ...test how audience members respond to these policy dictates by measuring news credibility in a political story that manipulated whether the source was named, whether that source was directly quoted, and the source's political connection to the story. We found that while each of these manipulations had little or no main effects, they combined to trigger a discernible change in credibility in the eyes of the audience.
This historical case study looks at the Oklahoma City bombing through the eyes of the local journalists who covered it. This study examined how theory concerning institutional codes and rules ...translated to journalism practice during an event that killed 168 people in 1995. More than 1,700 pages of transcripts of interviews with 83 local journalists were reviewed at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. These accounts serve as evidence of a link between professional journalism practices and the institutional rules taught in journalism schools and outlined in journalistic ethics codes. The journalists' most powerful motivation was a sense of responsibility informed by core journalistic principles such as seeking the truth, providing accurate information, and remaining impartial and fair. The journalists spoke of following unwritten rules calling for risk-taking, emotional detachment, and stoicism. The journalists also talked about experiencing symptoms common to those suffering from trauma-and stressor-related mental disorders. The coverage also was historically significant because of how a bank loan officer's wrenching Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of an Oklahoma City firefighter holding the body of a bloodied child augured the rise of citizen journalists and the new ethical challenges faced by mainstream media outlets in the coming Internet age.
Despite the various attempts to de-Westernise journalism studies and profession, the dominance of Western theories and practices remains absolute. This article seeks to develop a hybrid ...Islamic/Western worldview that represents a comprehensive, flexible and multicultural paradigm that emphasises sharing rather than imposing one's heritage and view. The article particularly reflects on resolving the existing ontological, epistemological and methodological issues as a crucial task in overcoming obstacles and stagnation related to the hybridisation of theory-building efforts. This article demonstrates how the proposed normative paradigm can be grounded in the realistic context of journalistic practice by examining two research issues: media and democratisation and the globalisation of journalism ethics.
This article compares how the Swedish public and journalists assessed the ethical aspects of harmful exposure and dissemination of unverified information in news reporting of the 2017 terrorist ...attack in Stockholm. The analysis derives from comparable web surveys with 1092 journalists and 3881 citizens who answered identical questions about the attack. Focus is placed on ethics as an expression of journalistic practice and the influence of situational factors on ethical assessments. The findings demonstrate an overall similarity between the public's and journalists' assessments of ethical judgments made in the news reporting, but also notable differences. Furthermore, significant differences were found between journalists who had personal experience of reporting on the terrorist attack and those who did not. One conclusion is that the public assesses ethical decisions based on information aspects more than do journalists, while the opposite is true for considerations of personal integrity. The main contribution of this study is that it adds to previous research on the influence of organisational and individual factors by demonstrating the additional influence of situational factors on journalists' ethical assessments.
This article sheds light on the professional role of freelance journalists and examines ethical dilemmas faced by Norwegian freelance journalists. Freelancers and self-employed journalists have to ...manage their own financial interests and secure their income, as well as the professional ethics of journalism. Finding themselves placed between autonomy and precarity, these freelancers are also engaged in non-journalistic activities, such as PR, because these kinds of jobs usually pay better than news work. This article discusses freelancers and ethical dilemmas. Further, it addresses how freelancers deal with the blurring borders between journalism and PR.
Journalists have long covered outbreaks of infectious disease. In the history of global health journalism-from the 1721 Boston smallpox epidemic to the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak in China and Singapore ...and to recent outbreaks of Ebola in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo-newsrooms have wielded their power both responsibly and irresponsibly. This article examines journalism practice during the 2013-2016 Ebola epidemic and recommends strategies for improving epidemic reporting.
Dentro del proyecto de I+D+I, “MediaACES. Accountability y Culturas Periodísticas en España. Impacto y propuesta de buenas prácticas en los medios de comunicación españoles”, financiado por el ...Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España, se ha llevado a cabo un trabajo de campo entre periodistas y ciudadanos sobre las buenas prácticas periodísticas y los sistemas de rendición de cuenta. Entre las cuestiones formuladas se ha planteado de qué manera los periodistas podría ver comprometida su independencia informativa ante relaciones más o menos estrechas con poderes políticos y económicos, así como cuando puedan mediar regalos que puedan ir desde un simple gesto de cortesía institucional a ciertas formas de compensación por un tratamiento informativo favorable. En esta comunicación se analiza la posición de los profesionales y de los ciudadanos.
THE TROUBLE WITH TRANSPARENCY Allen, David S.
Journalism studies (London, England),
20/6/1/, Letnik:
9, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article argues for a more complex understanding of how the ethic of transparency is used within American journalism. Following the ethical theories of Jürgen Habermas and Michel Foucault, it ...suggests that transparency has become central to debates about identity formation, disputes over professional jurisdiction, and how journalists have come to cover political events. Recognizing the complex role that transparency plays within journalism, it calls for the articulation of an ethical framework that sees transparency less as an instrumental value and more as a normative goal.
Science journalists face significant challenges as they seek to report on scientific research in socially beneficial ways. This study draws on recent scholarship in the philosophy of science that can ...help journalists navigate these challenges. It proposes that science journalists have the opportunity to contribute to the open science movement by identifying and explaining major value judgments in scientific research for members of the public. Journalists are uniquely situated to fulfill this role because they serve as gatekeepers of information for the public and because their investigative skills are ideal for uncovering value judgments. The study concludes by examining a case study of recent journalistic reporting on possible health effects associated with cell phone radiation in order to illustrate how science journalists can adopt this role.
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