In this article, we examine how journalists address and tackle online harassment by connective practices that involve joint action with peers and editors that we find are particularly effective in ...addressing the emotional effects of harassment. Theoretically, we bridge community of practice research with theories of emotional labour to develop a novel perspective to examine online harassment. Drawing on 22 interviews with Finnish journalists, we find three categories of connective practices that are particularly effective in tackling harassment: (1) supportive connection between the journalist and the editor; (2) shared collegial practices among peers in the newsrooms and (3) emotional engagement among peers outside the newsroom. All three categories illustrate how journalists as a community of practice develop new practices through dynamic processes innovation, improvisation, trial and error, reciprocal learning and mutual engagement. Importantly, emotional labour forms an important dimension of these practices as the journalists jointly address and tackle the emotional effects of harassment. We posit that the effectiveness of these connective practices largely stems from their ability to provide emotional support. While addressing feelings of fear, anger and shame, these shared practices also help consolidate the newly acquired knowledge and the professional identity under attack. Finally, we offer recommendations for newsrooms and journalists on how to collectively counter harassment and develop policies to address it.
Recent developments in journalism seemingly curtail a satisfying work environment and contribute to journalists experiencing discrepancies between initial job expectations and actual day-to-day ...practices. This can lead to disillusionment, challenging journalists’ dedication to their job. Research indicates that young journalists are particularly affected by the symptoms of the journalistic crisis and thus exhibit low job commitment. This study examines the extent to which their initial job motivations and expectations are met or disappointed in practice. We apply Bourdieu’s concept of illusio to advance our understanding of expectations and experiences in the journalistic field and as an explanation for why journalists tend to remain in the profession. Based on in-depth interviews with 40 Austrian journalists we found that autonomy constitutes a key facet of the field’s illusio, both as an ideal of journalistic work, as well as the superior reason to become a journalist despite the awareness of financial drawbacks. While respondents are disillusioned by the lack of autonomous decision-making in everyday work, they still adhere to the ideal of acting as autonomous providers of information and thus remain in the profession. Crucially, they believe that accepting periods of precarity, as well as less autonomous work empowers them to better contribute to journalism’s societal mission.
This article examines how journalists in non-permanent employment respond to their growing precarity. It is based on in-depth interviews with freelance journalists and interns who find that their ...working lives increasingly require entrepreneurial efforts. To work towards continuous access to journalistic work, these casually employed journalists engage in self-management and self-branding. To be able to make a living, they subsidize their income with work for clients outside of journalism that frequently offer better working conditions than news organizations but pursue narrow, strategic goals. The article develops a typology of non-journalistic work that illustrates that some non-journalistic jobs, but not others, cause these precarious news workers to defend their journalistic professional integrity. Furthermore, the study introduces Michel Foucault’s notions of the ‘entrepreneurial self’ and the ‘ethical self’ to interpret the different registers of professionalism between which journalists move today, identified as counter-, conforming and coping subjectivity. Thereby, the article uses a novel conceptual lens to make sense of resilience and change in journalistic professional identities under conditions of precarity.
This study explores the extent to which the Corona pandemic has changed the working conditions of journalists in Germany and how they perceive these changes. The goal is to provide both the scale and ...qualitative nature of Corona-induced changes in the working environment of journalists by means of an online survey of German journalists (n = 983) in different employment situations. The results indicate that objective changes such as short-time work, income losses and the sudden shift to home office have notably shaped the world of journalistic work. On a subjective level, journalists' responses mainly point to the personal financial fallout and resulting existential fears. Our findings suggest an intensified precarity in the working environment of journalists and highlight a growing gap between freelance and employed journalists.
The study of emotion in journalism has largely been ignored and, when studied, is relegated almost exclusively to media texts. As such, this research aims to rectify this imbalance by focusing on the ...human side of journalism practice and the emotional labor and work experienced by documentary visual journalists. It does so through an in-depth, interview-based approach with 23 journalists in eight countries and identifies the sources of emotional labor and work experienced by those in the profession and how visual journalists manage the effects of the emotional labor and work they experience. The findings suggest that emotional labor and work pervade the production, editing, and post-production phases of journalistic work but not equally for all types of visual journalists. Female journalists, in particular, reported unique emotional investment and display practices, while a subset of male journalists reported unique emotional management ones. In addition, almost across the board, the visual journalists in this sample reported relying on more informal rather than formal strategies to manage the effects of their work-related emotions.
Photojournalism professionals play a key role in producing and choosing the visual coverage that we see in the daily news media. This article focuses on photo editors and other photojournalism ...professionals behind the news images, and explores how they see and look at pictures professionally in order to decide what is newsworthy. The actual work practices of photojournalism professionals were scrutinized by using methods of newsroom observation and interviews at three media organizations. The theoretical framework applies ethnographic studies of vision in professional practices that consider vision as a socially situated activity and education of attention. The findings suggest that the education of the professional eye of photojournalism practitioners involves informal and everyday work practices that include characteristics of an apprenticeship. Finally, four areas where the professional knowledge accumulates were found: (1) constant following of news; (2) the use of reference images; (3) the use of specific software; and (4) social interaction among the professionals. In conclusion, it is argued that photojournalism professionals’ visual expertise is poorly understood. The shared vision is constitutive for the social organization of the profession while it concurrently narrows the visual coverage published in the media.
This article discusses the phenomenon of serendipity in media work and in media organizations. Based on an empirical analysis of diary material, we identify and elaborate three types of serendipitous ...processes in creative work, that is, serendipitous, semi-serendipitous and antiserendipitous processes. In addition, we discuss the role of lucky incidents and human capabilities in serendipity, and consider their value to creative processes in media organizations. We argue that conceptual frameworks and theories of serendipity are useful in identifying, evaluating and harnessing unpredicted and accidental creative incidents and processes. The article shows that serendipity offers valuable conceptualizations and insights for scholars and practitioners alike in the context of the rapidly changing media industry and media work.
The conscience clause, sometimes also referred to as the right to conscientious objection, is based on the possibility of refusing to comply with a binding legal norm due to its non-conformity with ...the indications of conscience of the person who invokes its content. Commonly derived, especially in Poland, from Article 53 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, this clause initially applied to physicians’ actions. It was also suggested that this clause could form the basis for conscientious objection to an abortion procedure. Drawing on Article 10(2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and emphasising the differences in the wording of this provision in different language versions, the article argues that such interpretation of the conscience clause is too narrow and poor. Attention is drawn to the amendments made to the wording of Article 10(2) of the Press Law, where the legislator replaced the journalist’s obligation to follow the editorial policy with the right to refuse to carry out an official order if the journalist believed that they were expected to publish a material that would violate the principles of reliability, objectivity and professional diligence. This solution undoubtedly constitutes the approval of the broadly understood conscience clause explicitly formulated in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The content of Article 10(2) of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights allows for conscientious objection to apply to actions of the representatives across all professions.
Journalists work in a creative profession and often become emotionally attached to "their" medium. Emotions toward their work are an integral part of journalists' career histories. At the same time, ...working conditions within contemporary journalism are in a state of constant change that could lead to job precariousness and general insecurity. Emotions are also understood to be part of the journalists' engagement with the local media environment: though local newsrooms are experiencing similar changes, peripheral newsrooms have different opportunities to respond. The aim of this article is to investigate local journalists' emotions toward their work during times of change. Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative case study based on interviews, this article focuses on how journalists manage their emotions throughout their career histories in the local media environment. The study focuses on local journalists in the VLM group, the dominant local press owner in the Czech Republic, which has experienced permanent losses and staff layoffs over the past few years. The interviewed journalists manifest deepening contradictions in their feelings towards work, the media organisation which employs them and the local community. The increasing volatility of their emotional responses has led to a general dissatisfaction and the growing importance of emotional management.
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