Context clues: News audiences and their higher valuation of contextualist journalistic roles
Paper accepted to the Journalism Studies division of the International Communication Association 2020 conference, Gold Coast..
Abstract: This study explores the news audiences’ perceptions of journalistic roles, in particular the contextualist role, through a U.S. nationally-representative survey. As members of the public lose trust and interest in the media, some outlets are turning to forms of reporting like constructive/solutions journalism to provide a greater context to news consumers. Our survey shows that the American public values such reporting, and even places its functions above many of the others traditionally assigned to journalism.
Whistleblowers and their faith in journalism: The (d)evolution of trust among the sources that journalists need most
Abstract: Using in-depth interviews conducted with 12 U.S. whistleblowers who contacted the press in the 1970s through the 2010s, this paper examines changing perceptions of the news media and journalists among those who have confided in them and how these views have evolved. I find that trust in individual journalists, more so than in the […]
We are the People: Audience Engagement as Catalyst for Newsroom Unionization?
Abstract: This study explores the tension between management, journalists and their audience around audience engagement with a focus on the role of newsroom unionization. Ethnographic work in three U.S. newsrooms and interviews with 130 journalists, newsroom managers and editors in four newsrooms, shows that audience engagement work encourages unionization and that journalists in already unionized […]
