Practical, Not Radical: Examining Innovative Learning Culture in a Public Service Media Organization

Koivula, Minna; Laaksonen, Salla-Maaria; Villi, Mikko

doi:10.1080/1461670x.2022.2065339

Cited by 8 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…You are constantly afraid of something" [I3]. The development network, however, seemed essential in providing an arena for such aspirations across the organization and fostering a culture that allows for innovating and testing (Koivula et al, 2022):…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediated by the giants: Tracing practices, discourses, and mediators of platform isomorphism in a media organization

Laaksonen

Koivula

Villi

2022

New Media & Society

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News media are increasingly interwoven with social media platforms. Building on institutional theory, we trace the repercussions of the platform infrastructure inside a media organization by focusing on organizational discourses and practices in connection with the journalistic use of social media. The empirical material includes interviews, field notes, chat logs, and documents collected from a public service media organization during a 6-month on-site and virtual ethnography. The findings show how platform pressures intertwine with content production, audience representation, journalistic values, and organizational development, thus manifesting the infrastructuralization and institutionalization of platforms in the media industry. While the interviewees articulated tensions related to adopting social media, the fieldwork data revealed forms of mimetic and normative isomorphism, mediated by platform data and professional roles in the organization. Moreover, the platform infrastructure seems to cultivate both critical and aspirational talk in the organization, which implies a more complex relationship beyond coercive platform power.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediated by the giants: Tracing practices, discourses, and mediators of platform isomorphism in a media organization

Laaksonen

Koivula

Villi

2022

New Media & Society

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“…This is due to the study’s adoption of the institutional logics perspective which allows the highlighting of diversity of experiences within a field. Furthermore, the study’s focus on learning instead of innovation merits a notion: while journalism innovation research often concludes that news organizations are incapable and/or unwilling to produce innovations and thus secure their future (see Koivula et al, 2022), less attention has been devoted to the mechanism through which this comes to be. Learning allows for the building of routines which make new learning more difficult to achieve (Edmondson and Moingeon, 1996).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The changing skill demands have been well-documented in academic research on, for example, newsroom convergence and multiskilling (Bro et al, 2016; Nygren, 2014; Cottle and Ashton, 1999) as well as in studies on ideal skills for both professional journalists (Chew and Tandoc, 2022; Royal et al, 2020; Min and Fink, 2021) and students of journalism (Valencia-Forrester, 2020; Jaakkola, 2018; Mensing and Ryfe, 2013). Some studies have looked at the effects of newsroom culture on learning and innovation (Porcu, 2020; Porcu et al 2022; Koivula et al, 2022) and, relatedly, still others have examined the effects of mid-career training (Smith et al, 2022; Salzmann et al, 2021). These studies exemplify the amorphous nature of learning in journalism as an object of study: Learning has been examined from multiple viewpoints but studies that focus on the process of learning or its larger institutional context are rare.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“I love learning new things”: An institutional logics perspective on learning in professional journalism

2023

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In contemporary working life, journalists are often faced with the pressures of an increasingly precarious field where employment is less stable and more contractual than in previous years. Consequently, learning as a skill has grown in importance as journalists enter and leave the job market. Previous research has often portrayed professional journalists as unwilling to learn due to the persistence of the institution of journalism. Consequently, this study examines learning in professional journalism through interviews with 30 Finnish journalists. We adopt the institutional logics perspective to examine which institutional logics manifest in journalists' descriptions of learning and how. We identify a labor market logic that highlights how the need to learn continuously to satisfy employer needs is felt as pervasive. Additionally, our analysis suggests that journalists negotiate the technology logic’s push for learning digital skills with journalism’s professional logic. The analysis also highlights a negotiation of market and professional logics in the journalists' experiences of intensification in relation to learning. Intensification, specifically, may have consequences for journalists' skill levels and occupational well-being.

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“…Journalists, furthermore, usually dedicate their creative energies almost entirely to the execution of day-to-day activities (Koivula et al, 2020). A wealth of empirical research in the field of organisational studies has demonstrated that news media companies usually struggle to make space for exploratory activities, as they find it hard to balance daily media production and explorative innovation, an ability that has been labelled as ambidexterity (Koivula et al, 2022;Porcu, 2017). However, it is precisely through the enactment of explorative innovation practices that the potential for substantial value creation and financial rewards emerges.…”

Section: Explorative Innovation In Journalism As An Organisational En...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Breaking Away From Hectic Daily Media Production: Unleashing Explorative Innovation Through Inter-Firm Collaborations

Zambelli,

Morganti

2024

MaC

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Beyond the widespread disruption narrative around media innovation, journalism scholarship has put forward valuable remedies to counteract a techno-deterministic perspective by embracing socio-constructivist and socio-technical approaches. Nevertheless, thus far, scholarly attention has primarily been directed towards the newsroom despite the journalism field having undergone significant structural transformations. In this article, we adopt an organisational perspective to journalism innovation and apply it to the emerging locus of inter-firm collaborations in journalism. In fact, while the newsroom has traditionally been considered the dominant location for implementing innovations, an increasing amount of media work currently occurs in decentralised settings. Our study draws upon 20 qualitative interviews with media practitioners and media managers who have been involved as project leaders in inter-firm collaborative projects. These projects have received institutional funding specifically aimed at fostering media innovation. We strive to understand how practitioners conceive of innovation in their overall activity, what obstacles they encounter in their usual routines, and how collaborative practices support them in their innovation trajectory. Our findings indicate that innovation is predominantly perceived as a demanding and complex ongoing practice characterised by adaptation to an evolving environment and hindered by a lack of resources and time. We also find that collaborations offer media practitioners a temporary framework for balancing their efforts to keep up with the demand for daily media production and their aspiration to carry out explorative activities. Lastly, our research reveals that these collaborations provide occasions for knowledge exchange and self-reflection that are frequently absent in non-collaborative settings.

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Practical, Not Radical: Examining Innovative Learning Culture in a Public Service Media Organization

Cited by 8 publications

References 49 publications

Mediated by the giants: Tracing practices, discourses, and mediators of platform isomorphism in a media organization

Mediated by the giants: Tracing practices, discourses, and mediators of platform isomorphism in a media organization

“I love learning new things”: An institutional logics perspective on learning in professional journalism

Breaking Away From Hectic Daily Media Production: Unleashing Explorative Innovation Through Inter-Firm Collaborations

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