Investigating the Gap between Newspaper Journalists’ Role Conceptions and Role Performance in Nine European, Asian, and Latin American Countries

Abstract

Based on a standardized operationalization of the watchdog, civic, interventionist, loyal-facilitator, infotainment, and service roles, this study combines survey ( N = 643) and content analysis data ( N = 19,908) to explain gaps between newspaper journalists’ role conceptions and the performance of their press organizations in nine countries from Latin America, Western Europe, and Asia. Taking an institutional approach by focusing on institutional influences on the conception–performance gap at three levels (individual, organizational, societal), our results show that these gaps are largest for the two roles most connected with the public functions of journalism, the civic, and the watchdog roles. Multilevel analyses offer significant evidence on that, across all six analyzed roles, the size of the gaps differed more clearly between journalists and between media organizations, than among countries. Although influences on an individual level (i.e., perceived autonomy) have some explanatory power, influences on the organizational level and, more specifically, ownership and codified editorial policies are the factors that best explain conception–performance gaps. The implications of these findings are discussed in light of the public skepticism about the performance of journalism and the media.

Shock to the system? Journalism in Irish public service media after the crash

“…These include the effacement of the democratic implications of the crisis, the upholding of pro-incumbent logics of sourcing, agenda-setting and accrual of representative legitimacy, and the valourisation of professional authority and autonomy from the public as a key guarantor of PSM values. These findings suggest the explanatory value of studies of professional normativity and role performance that explore the dynamics of change and resilience in response to specific changes in the political-economic and socio-cultural contexts in which journalistic work is undertaken (Mellado et al., 2020: 19).…”

“…Further and more extensive empirical exploration with journalism practitioners on professional normativity would help shed light on the impacts, if any, of subsequent political and economic developments in the intervening years since this fieldwork was undertaken. Combined with parallel analyses of journalistic output, such work could, as Mellado et al. (2020: 16) emphasise, yield important insights on the relationships between journalistic role conception and actual role performance as well as the individual, institutional and extra-institutional factors that mediate the nature and extent of the discrepancies between the two.…”

“…Hallin and Mancini (2004: 236) suggest in their discussion on the extent of the relative autonomy enjoyed by the BBC that ‘the most important political limits on broadcasting are to be found not in political intervention from outside, but within the community of broadcasting professionals, in their commitment [to] a centrist, consensualist view of “responsible” professional broadcasting’, a view echoed in Golding and Elliott’s (1979: 62) analysis of Irish public service broadcast professionals. Elsewhere, research on journalistic role performance has demonstrated and emphasised that journalistic norms and cultures are not fixed and immutable but situationally contextualised, socially constructed and renegotiated over time (Mellado et al., 2020: 4).…”

Negotiated Autonomy: The Role of Social Media Algorithms in Editorial Decision Making

“…Further, as an interview study, our data can only speak to what journalists perceive themselves to be doing, not what they actually do. Research on journalistic role performance (e.g., Mellado et al, 2020;Mellado & Van Dalen, 2014) has shown there is often a gap between journalists' perceptions of their performance and their actual performance both on the individual and organization level. We cannot account for response bias on the part of the journalists we interviewed, who despite the anonymous nature of the interviews, may not have been open to expressing or even aware of the full extent to which their algorithmic 'folk theories' influence their editorial decisions, especially in ways that would violate their own understandings of their normative journalistic roles.…”

mundo do trabalho de jornalistas no Brasil

“…No primeiro, ela comparou percepções de jornalistas de São Paulo com profissionais da França e dos Estados Unidos (Herscovitz, 2000;2004); no segundo, reuniu respostas de jornalistas de todas as regiões em estudo comparativo com países de todos os continentes (Herscovitz, 2012). Essas pesquisas deram continuidade a investigação anterior Cardoso, 1998) (Mellado, 2020).…”