Perceptions of the News Media’s Societal Roles

Abstract

A longitudinal study of U.K. journalism undergraduates records how their attitudes on societal roles of the news media changed during university education. Students became more likely to endorse an adversarial approach toward public officials and businesses as extremely important. Yet students did not support these roles as strongly as an older generation of U.K. journalists did. Students also became less likely to support the role of giving “ordinary people” a chance to express views. This may indicate a “generation gap” in attitudes that journalism educators need to understand. The authors also are concerned that the U.K. journalism workforce—now including many students from such programs—has become more socially elite.

Public interest or self-interest? How journalism attracts future journalists

“…Other scholars have tried to pinpoint how the professional values of journalism students tend to change from their first year as students to their first year as media employees (Bjørnsen, Hovden, and Ottosen 2007). Yet others have studied how the perceptions and professional values of journalism students seem to change during their professional education (Hanna and Sanders 2012).…”

Socializing Journalist Trainees in the Newsroom: On How to Capture the Intangible Parts of the Process1

“…A major part of this research has studied socialization by focusing on the products of the socialization process: on the journalist trainees. By conducting surveys, researchers have been able to study how, for instance, attitudes, values and norms change during the period of internship (Bjørnsen et al 2007;Hanna and Sanders 2012;Elmelund-Praestekaer et al 2008Hovden et al 2009).…”

Socializing mechanisms in the routinized practice in the newsroom

“…So far, much research on socialisation within the profession of journalism has focused on the products of socialisation (Gravengaard & Rimestad 2014), that is on the interns. Using surveys, researchers have studied how attitudes, values and norms change during the period of internship (Bjørnsen et al 2007;Hanna & Sanders 2012;Elmelund-Praestekaer et al 2008Hovden et al 2009). However, these results do not reveal how and why we see these changes and they can not explain what actually happens in the socialisation processes in the media organisations.…”