Journalism has enjoyed a rich and relatively stable history of professionalization. Scholars coming from a variety of disciplines have theorized this history, forming a consistent body of knowledge ...codified in national and international handbooks and canonical readers. However, recent work and analysis suggest that the supposed core of journalism and the assumed consistency of the inner workings of news organizations are problematic starting points for journalism studies. In this article, we challenge the consensual (self-)presentation of journalism – in terms of its occupational ideology, its professional culture, and its sedimentation in routines and organizational structures (cf. the newsroom) in the context of its reconfiguration as a post-industrial, entrepreneurial, and atypical way of working and of being at work. We outline a way beyond individualist or institutional approaches to do justice to the current complex transformation of the profession. We propose a framework to bring together these approaches in a dialectic attempt to move through and beyond journalism as it has traditionally been conceptualized and practiced, allowing for a broader definition and understanding of the myriad of practices that make up journalism.
Shift work, defined as work occurring outside typical daytime working hours, is associated with an increased risk of various non‐communicable diseases, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease. ...Disruption of the internal circadian timing system and concomitant sleep disturbances is thought to play a critical role in the development of these health problems. Indeed, controlled laboratory studies have shown that short‐term circadian misalignment and sleep restriction independently impair physiological processes, including insulin sensitivity, energy expenditure, immune function, blood pressure and cardiac modulation by the autonomous nervous system. If allowed to persist, these acute effects may lead to the development of cardiometabolic diseases in the long term. Here, we discuss the evidence for the contributions of circadian disruption and associated sleep disturbances to the risk of metabolic and cardiovascular health problems in shift workers. Improving the understanding of the physiological mechanisms affected by circadian misalignment and sleep disturbance will contribute to the development and implementation of strategies that prevent or mitigate the cardiometabolic impact of shift work.
Shift work inevitably leads to the displacement of rest‐activity, sleep–wake and fasting–feeding cycles. In turn, this may cause misalignment of the endogenous circadian timing system with the external environment as well as sleep disturbance. While accumulating evidence suggests that this has negative effects on cardiovascular and metabolic health, more research is required for the development and implementation of strategies that prevent or mitigate the adverse health effects of shift work.
Exposure to Artificial Light At Night (ALAN) results in a disruption of the circadian system, which is deleterious to health. In industrialized countries, 75% of the total workforce is estimated to ...have been involved in shift work and night work. Epidemiologic studies, mainly of nurses, have revealed an association between sustained night work and a 50–100% higher incidence of breast cancer. The potential and multifactorial mechanisms of the effects include the suppression of melatonin secretion by ALAN, sleep deprivation, and circadian disruption.
Shift and/or night work generally decreases the time spent sleeping, and it disrupts the circadian time structure. In the long run, this desynchronization is detrimental to health, as underscored by a large number of epidemiological studies that have uncovered elevated rates of several diseases, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular risks, obesity, mood disorders and age-related macular degeneration. It amounts to a public health issue in the light of the very substantial number of individuals involved. The IARC has classified shift work in group 2A of “probable carcinogens to humans” since “they involve a circadian disorganization”. Countermeasures to the effects of ALAN, such as melatonin, bright light, or psychotropic drugs, have been proposed as a means to combat circadian clock disruption and improve adaptation to shift and night work. We review the evidence for the ALAN impacts on health. Furthermore, we highlight the importance of an in-depth mechanistic understanding to combat the detrimental properties of exposure to ALAN and develop strategies of prevention.
This article is directed towards addressing the employment related issues encountered by female workers in the gig economy in the EU. It revolves around analysing ‘the switch’ from the traditional ...labour market to the platform economy. It subsequently explains, by drawing comparisons, that the issues of gender inequality in the brick and mortar world are still prevalent in world of the digital platform. In fact, new challenges have emerged which are specifically related to the gig economy. Female workers are now affected by the inherent bias of algorithms. Moreover, due to the unequivocal propagation of ‘flexibility’ which is used as a weapon to glorify the gig economy; women are even more likely to be pushed into precarious work. The other prominent issues of gender inequality like the dynamics of intersectionality, the gender pay gap and hiring policies in traditional and digital platforms are also examined. Furthermore, the existing regulatory frameworks addressing these issues are discussed with the possibility of catering to the gender inequality issues in the gig economy through policy development. The article concludes with a reflection on the need for the EU to take immediate and efficacious policy measures in respect of female workers in the gig economy.
This article adds to our knowledge of precarious journalist work in advanced welfare states. By drawing on the literature on neoliberal governmentality, it explores how entrepreneurial subjects are ...constituted, and the particular role of freelance work in this process. The article is based on interviews with 52 freelance journalists in Sweden. The study illustrates how the impermanent and marketized forms of freelance work enforces an entrepreneurial subjectivity onto the individuals who engage in it – a subject position which in turn seems to be necessary when it comes to making it in a fierce freelance market. In this way, the neoliberal discourse of entrepreneurship has a performative effect in that it helps to produce the kind of entrepreneurial subjects needed in order for a competitive precarious labour market to function. At the end of the article, I discuss how the particular role of the Swedish setting, that is, an advanced welfare state with strong worker protection, paradoxically seems to amplify the precarious work done by some professionals as it only protects those on the ‘inside’ of traditional employment, while leaving increasing groups of outsiders, such as freelance journalists, exposed to precarization.
Freelance journalism has become a key employment alternative in the current media landscape, with news organizations often relying on these independent professionals to reduce organizational budgets. ...Although extant research reveals a high degree of job satisfaction among professionals in different markets, such as the United States or Norway, freelancing is a position shaped by the tension between precarity and autonomy and is often related to economic insecurity. To deepen our understanding of this complex reality in Spain, this study explores freelance journalists' perceptions of the craft through 30 semi-structured interviews. Based on these results, this study proposes the existence of a "freelancers' shelter architecture"-a group of variables that define personal working conditions and levels of job satisfaction. This study makes a practical contribution to the field insofar as it provides a freelancing empowering toolkit for enhancing the professional situation of freelance journalists.
The shift to service and gig economy and increasing polymediality have created communicative contexts where the workers have to construct varying social relations in different kinds of digital and ...text-based interaction environments. This article examines how transprofessional collaboration is managed in such contexts in the field of applied arts. Based on email and mobile messaging data, we study a project where an artist creates an installation artwork for the use of an organisation. By applying the methods of conversation analysis, we investigate text-based requests and news delivery sequences related to applying for external project funding. Our results show how the participants negotiate the aspects of knowledge, power and emotion within these sequences, and by doing so, maintain mutual professional relationships and display various levels of commitment to the continuation of the project. The article illuminates the facets of transprofessional collaboration in digital professional communication and in atypical work.
The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted the well-being of healthcare workers (HCWs). HCWs are highly exposed to shift work and their work schedules have been subject to increasing ...unpredictability since the start of the pandemic. This review aims to: (1) map the studies providing information about factors associated with sleep characteristics in HCWs working in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic during the first and second waves and (2) examine the state of the evidence base in terms of the availability of information on the influence of atypical work schedules. A literature search was performed in PubMed. Studies containing information about factors (demographic; psychological; occupational; COVID-19-specific; work schedule; lifestyle; medical; or other) associated with various sleep characteristics among HCWs working in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic were included. Particular attention was paid to the availability of information on the role of atypical work schedules on HCW sleep. Fifty-seven articles met the inclusion criteria. Most studies were reports of quantitative cross-sectional surveys using self-report measures. Associations between female sex, frontline HCW status, psychological factors, and poorer sleep were observed. Six studies included a measure of shift work in their analyses, 5 of which reported an association between shift work status and sleep. A wide range of factors were investigated, with female sex, frontline HCW status, and psychological factors repeatedly demonstrating associations with poorer sleep. Sleep was predominantly measured in terms of self-reported sleep quality or insomnia symptoms. Few studies investigated the influence of atypical work schedules on HCW sleep in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Research on this topic is lacking in terms of reliable and consistent measurements of sleep outcomes, longitudinal data, and knowledge about the influence of covariates such atypical work schedules, comorbidity, and medical history on HCW sleep.
Abstract
We study atypical workers’ experiences with voice of in the Netherlands. We take a relational approach to worker voice and hypothesize that atypical workers are particularly vulnerable to ...refrain from voice and to experience suppression. We test our hypotheses using unique data on workers’ actual experiences with voicing discontent and supervisors’ responses (N = 4708; collected in 2017 and 2018). We find that temporary and freelance work, job insecurity, replaceability and precarious values are barriers to worker voice. Job insecurity and precarious values are associated with less support and more suppression from supervisors. These insights offer a valuable contribution to scholarly and public debates on atypical work by demonstrating how it not only affects workers’ job security, income stability and entitlements but also reduces workers’ ability to speak up and solve problems at work.
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