Ansgard Heinrich

Foreign reporting in the sphere of network journalism

This article explores the relationship between foreign reporting and information provision through social media channels. Drawing upon globalization debates and research on foreign news coverage, it discusses the emergence of a new kind of reporting from afar. Within a complex, global communication space, layers of information and interpretation frameworks for news stories are multifaceted. As we witness the evolution of a sphere of “network journalism”, journalists gather news while bloggers, Twitterers or Facebook users contribute to the information flow. Taken together, the material provided by traditional journalists and alternative information sources form a global news map. Case examples from the Arab Spring assist to demarcate some characteristics of this communication sphere and suggest that seizing interactive communication tools could assist to strengthen news coverage in favor of what Berglez refers to as a “global outlook” on news.

Foreign reporting and sourcing practices in the network sphere: A quantitative content analysis of the Arab Spring in Belgian news media:

This article analyzes foreign news coverage and sourcing practices in contemporary newsrooms. It builds on theories concerned with the interplay between digital technologies and journalistic practice to explore the use of social media sources at professional journalistic outlets. The central research question deals with the diversity of sources in Belgian newspaper and TV news coverage of the grass roots uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria in 2011. The quantitative content analysis shows how journalists under normal circumstances in their coverage of the street protests in Egypt and Tunisia still value traditional sourcing practices. In contrast, coverage of the Syrian uprising displays more characteristics of network journalism practices, which can be related to factors of proximity regarding news values. Moreover, we found that when covering Syria, Belgian journalists relied more on on-the-ground, non-mainstream sources that circumvented the restricted information access by means of digital networks and social media platforms.

Activating the past in the Ferguson protests : Memory work, digital activism and the politics of platforms

This article analyzes the Facebook page Justice for Mike Brown—set up during the 2014 Ferguson protests—in order to rethink the role of memory work within contemporary digital activism. We argue that, as a particular type of discursive practice, memory work on the page bridged personal and collective action frames. This occurred in four overlapping ways. First, the page allowed for affective commemorative engagement that helped shape Brown’s public image. Second, Brown’s death was contextualized as part of systematic injustice against African Americans. Third, the past was used to legitimize present action, wherein the present was continually connected to the past and future. And fourth, particular discursive units became recognizable symbolic markers during the protests and for future recall. Based on this typology, we show that memory work, although multidirectional and in flux, is stabilized by the interactions between the page administrator, users, and Facebook’s operational logic.

Witnessing in the new memory ecology: Memory construction of the Syrian conflict on YouTube

With the pervasiveness of mobile technologies, witnesses have the opportunity to mediate up-close and seemingly truthful recordings of events. As such, “witness videos” have become prominent in news reports and serve as authoritative resources in the construction of memory. However, once they are uploaded to video-sharing sites and popular archives such as YouTube, they are being reassembled and remixed by distinct actors, along the lines of their own ideological agendas. Focusing on the chemical attack on Ghouta, Syria, this article investigates how witness videos are represented by uploaders (ranging from established media to activists) and structured by the affordances and sociotechnical practices associated with the platform. Hence, we argue, although the future memory of the attack is constituted by witness videos, it is powerfully shaped by various actors, both human and nonhuman. These mechanisms of memory construction are empirically explored by qualitative and quantitative analyses of meta-data and (remixed) content.

What is ‘Network Journalism’?:

In todays interactive digital information environment, journalists lose the power to define what makes and shapes the news. Media outlets now maneouvre through a space characterised by continuous information flows, and share communication paths with new information providers in an online, always-on environment. This article sketches this dynamic sphere and introduces the paradigm of ‘network journalism’. Structured around digital networks, the sphere of network journalism unravels evolving patterns of information production. The task for journalistic organisations now is to figure out how to include the many traditional and alternative information nodes in their everyday work. The loss of control over a formerly strictly regulated information-exchange sphere is viewed here as an opportunity for journalism to review its practices.