Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: The reflexive sociology of Pierre Bourdieu offers a promising analytical framework for extending the insights offered by the tradition of ethnographic newsroom studies. On a methodological level, Bourdieu’s field theory shows potential in addressing one of the key questions in ethnographic research: The concept of 'context'. The question is not least practical in nature. When it comes to newsroom ethnography, one of the traditional inference problems is the 'invisibility' of the structures guiding journalistic practice, for instance the political-economy of everyday news work. Working with the analytical concepts ‘journalistic field, ‘news habitus’ and ‘newsroom capital’, reflexive sociology offers a research strategy for simultaneously studying journalistic practices and the structures that enable and constrain them. This presentation will define the key concepts for using reflexive sociology as framework for ethnographic media production studies, using illustrative empirical material from a Danish television news ethnography.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: An online survey (n=360) of working journalists looks at the concept of optimistic bias to better understand journalists’ perception of self-censorship in U.S. newsrooms. The study shows that the surveyed journalists reported practicing self-censorship less often than their colleagues did. Both broadcast and print journalists would believe that they face less editorial control than their cross-media counterparts. There was no gender difference in terms of journalists’ perception of self-censorship. The results supported the hypotheses proposed under the theory of optimistic bias.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper outlines dimensions of communication as a managerial competency in South Africa’s mainstream media newsrooms. It highlights differences on the importance and implementation of this competency, given media management transformation in a post-apartheid society. Moderately and practically significant effect sizes were calculated between reporters’ and first-line managers’ experiences on all dimensions of this competency. Results emphasized the need to improve first-line news managers’ communication skills to unify newsrooms and improve journalism output.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: We explicate a dynamic in which media are simultaneously an agent and subject of social control in depictions of intellectual deviance. In a case study of newspaper coverage of Ward Churchill, textual analysis showed how devices within the bounds of conventional objectivity enabled newspapers to operate as an unobtrusive agent of social control. We also interviewed reporters and editors to gain insights on attitudes that help to explain motives associated with control of intellectual deviance.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This article examines the way in which newspaper discourse gets changed. Through examining the changes, we can see how newsrooms employ the politics of self-censorship to minimize political risks at the same time of maximizing the possibility to realize journalists’ professional ideals and to pursue public interest. Original reports journalists sent to newsrooms of three cases on social problems and their finally published reports are comparatively studied by using critical discourse analysis to find out what is included and what is excluded in media coverage. Issues raised here are considered with differential concerns between two newsrooms and among news workers at different levels arranging from journalists, to editors, to Editors-in-Chief. Considerations are given to interest conflicts between journalists and newsrooms as a result of the pressures on the press. The conflicts of interest lead to practicing self-censorship within newsrooms as a key way to keep balance among power relations that cast influences over media. The politics of self-censorship in nowadays China has been practiced as a way to counterattack the political censorship from the authority.