Understanding the civic impact of journalism

Simons, Margaret; Tiffen, Rodney; Hendrie, Doug; Carson, Andrea; Sullivan, Helen; Müller, Denis; McNair, Brian

doi:10.1080/1461670x.2015.1129284

Cited by 22 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As well as highly concentrated levels of ownership, Australia’s commercial media outlets employ fewer journalists than in the past. An estimated 3000 Australian media jobs have been lost since 2012 (Christensen, 2013), potentially creating pockets of deficits in traditional news coverage, including regional journalism (Simons et al, 2016). Australia’s major media companies have cut costs because of revenue falls exacerbated by digital technologies and fierce competition for advertising that, in turn, has driven down advertising’s unit cost (Carson, 2015: 1035).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A new symbiosis? Opportunities and challenges to hyperlocal journalism in the digital age

Carson

Müller

Martin

et al. 2016

Media International Australia

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper draws on "hyperlocal" journalism scholarship to investigate aspects of the civic function of Australian local journalism in the digital age. The paper uses case studies based on interviews with media practitioners and civic leaders from three disparate communities. The interviews are thematically analysed to understand the civic functions of local journalism and news media and the effects on these functions caused by digital disruption. The research finds community groups are engaging with social media, particularly Facebook, to connect locals to services and community news. It finds community service providers are increasingly adept at using social media and, in many cases, prefer it to legacy media to gather, disseminate and exchange news information. Concurrently, legacy media have lost newsroom resources and journalists, hampering their capacity to practice "shoe leather" journalism and making them more dependent on official sources without independent verification. News outlets are adapting to a reduced financial base to support their journalism including forming symbiotic relationships with non-media news providers. This paper finds that as legacy media news coverage shrinks there are promising alternatives for fostering civic discourse and engagement in local communities through digital technologies but reduced capacity for verified, independent journalism.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For that study, our five categories are campaigning, investigative, civic forum, reportage and comment/opinion. For more details on this methodology and purpose, see Simons et al (2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A new symbiosis? Opportunities and challenges to hyperlocal journalism in the digital age

Carson

Müller

Martin

et al. 2016

Media International Australia

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Public perceptions of it and its practitioners are at frighteningly low levels in certain places, such as the United States, and the implications for democracy and rational thought are dire. Whether the cause of this low confidence is, as some scholars (Blöbaum, 2014; Boehmer, Carpenter, & Fico, 2018; Craft & Heim, 2009; Felle, 2016; Franklin, 2014; Heemsbergen, 2013; Peters & Broersma, 2013; Simons et al, 2017, etc.) posit, due to trust issues; accountability and transparency issues; economics, including the tension between the profit and public service model; or, more likely, a mix of factors is beyond the scope of this work.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Front of the Lens: The Expectations, Experiences, and Reactions of Visual Journalism’s Subjects

Thomson

2019

Journalism & Communication Monographs

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Visual journalism is a curious form of interaction usually involving strangers who have their private lives transformed—wittingly or not—into public objects of attention. Sometimes the interaction between journalist and subject is extended and in-depth, sometimes it is brief and shallow, and sometimes it is nonexistent. People are often reactive to cameras, and tension can exist between the idealized ways people want to be depicted and the ways journalists visually render them. Considering that visual media are “complex reflections of a relationship between maker and subject in which both play roles in shaping their character and content,” scholars have called for more research on journalists’ subjects and how they behave in front of the visual news media. This work answers that call and provides one of the first empirical glimpses into how people regard the experience of being photographed and video-recorded by journalists. As a primary arc of the work is concerned with the nature of experience, it adopts a phenomenological approach and seeks to identify (a) the expectations that news media subjects have of visual journalists, (b) how journalists’ subjects perceive the experience of being photographed and video-recorded in a news media context, and (c) how the subject’s identities and representational aspirations affect their perception of the imaging event. These questions are explored through a four-pronged approach: (a) nonparticipant observations, (b) word association exercises, (c) in-depth interviews, and (d) photo-elicitations. The findings suggest that subjects are more outcome- rather than process-focused; that technological changes and resulting behavior shifts are altering the nature of reality and experience, which has implications for privacy and consent; and that perception is quite fluid and can be affected by identity, habituation, and emotionally valenced experiences.

show abstract

“…It is in this area that journalism and journalism studies enter the era of shared public space. Efforts to ‘understand the civic impact of journalism’ (Simons et al, 2016) or large research projects ‘to discover how journalism is changing as a cultural form’ which investigates ‘the ways journalism is produced and who produces it; and how journalistic content is used by practitioners and citizens’ (McNair and Bruns, 2016) are, for example, under way in Australia.…”

Section: Journalism Skills: the Bedrock Of Journalism Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Which bedrock in a sea of change?

Josephi

2018

Journalism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In answer to the question of how journalism studies can prove its continued significance, this article argues that journalism skills should be seen as bedrock for journalism studies. From a historical perspective, journalism studies has grown out of journalism education, with its emphasis on training journalists. From a global perspective, it is the skill of sourcing, verifying, and communicating news, which is common to journalists around the world, and sets them apart from other information providers. In this respect, both historically and globally, journalism skills are fundamental to journalism and, by extension, can aid journalism studies to locate its own center and draw distinctions from other fields of study.

show abstract

Understanding the civic impact of journalism

Cited by 22 publications

References 14 publications

A new symbiosis? Opportunities and challenges to hyperlocal journalism in the digital age

A new symbiosis? Opportunities and challenges to hyperlocal journalism in the digital age

In Front of the Lens: The Expectations, Experiences, and Reactions of Visual Journalism’s Subjects

Which bedrock in a sea of change?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About