“What we do is not actually journalism”: Role negotiations in online departments of two newspapers in Slovenia and Serbia

Abstract

This study offers insights into articulations between the normative and the empirical in online journalists’ self-negotiations concerning their roles in people’s assimilation of information, the daily provision of news and their institutional status in online departments. In-depth interviews with online journalists from two leading newspapers, Delo in Slovenia and Novosti in Serbia, are used to investigate their negotiations with respect to their societal role. The analysis reveals troubled negotiation processes among interviewed online journalists when they consider what is regarded as “true” journalism, news production requirements and their institutional status. This indicates that rearrangements of political–economic relations in both post-socialist societies have increased journalism’s responsibility to the media owners and power holders and surpassed its normatively defined responsibility to the public. Both case subjects are compared through the prism of the processes of negotiation of normative principles of journalism in the social, national and institutional contexts of the two newspapers.

Patriotism on the internet: Journalists’ behavior and user comments

“…Carpenter (2008), for example, who compared the work of online citizen journalists with the work of online daily newspaper journalists, found that the latter, while verifying and publishing stories, still embrace objectivity because they are relying more on routine external sources, such as formal spokesmen and eye witnesses, than the former. Similar findings are demonstrated by Vobič and Milojević (2013) who interviewed online journalists from two established journalistic institutions in the Balkans. Quite opposite evidence was found by Agarwal and Barthel (2015), who demonstrated that, while some traditional norms were not disappearing with the transition to the online world, this is not the case regarding objectivity.…”

“…Some scholars focus on the very nature of journalism as a social phenomenon versus its economic dimension and in particular the tendency towards market-driven journalism (Cohen, 2002); others discuss the extent to which online journalism adapts itself to the unique features of the internet, interactivity in particular (see, for example, Deuze, 2003;Deuze et al, 2007;Quandt, 2008); a large cluster of studies addresses questions regarding the identity of online journalists and the difference, if it exists, between 'professional' online journalists and other online news providers, bloggers in particular (e.g. Agarwal and Barthel, 2015;Allan, 2003;Deuze et al, 2007;Gans, 2007;Singer, 2003Singer, , 2007; very close to this last cluster of studies, are studies that address the influence of the new online environment on journalists' perceptions regarding their roles in society (O'Sullivan and Heinonen, 2008;Vobič and Milojević, 2013) and consequently the linkage between perceptions regarding roles, on the one hand, and professional values and norms on the other (on this linkage, see for example, Plaisance and Skewes, 2003). The current study follows this last group of studies that address the connection between roles of (online) journalism and associated values and norms.…”

Who Is Willing to Pay for Online Journalistic Content?

“…Slovenia and Serbia, two CEE countries similar to Estonia, reveal similar drawbacks in relation to online news media content. The analysis of online multimedia formats indicates a lack of the knowledge required to format multimedia information properly and exploit internet possibilities to the fullest (Vobič, 2011;Vobič & Milojević, 2014). The example of Slovenia does not differ from the Greek example (Spyridou & Veglis, 2008) or the German company, welt.de (Brandstetter & Schmalhofer, 2014), whose paywall protected information segment offers no content of added value in terms of the medium's technical possibilities.…”

Legitimating a platform: evidence of journalists’ role in transferring authority to Twitter

“…The methods employed here are limited in that we cannot determine journalists' motivations or reasoning for behaving as they do. Future studies might present this evidence to journalists and ask for their explanations, but we would expect them to fall along the lines already presented in scholarly work: difficult economic and cultural conditions for journalists limiting their access and reach lead them toward shortcuts as a matter of expediency (Brandtzaeg et al, 2016;Coddington, 2019;Vobič & Milojević, 2014). Regardless of whether audiences become accustomed to this shift in form and authority, it's not given that they will also perceive the use of social media sources positively (c.f.…”