Claudia Mellado

Professional roles and news construction: a media sociology conceptualization of journalists' role conception and performance

Journalists’ professional roles entail an important research area, which enhances knowledge on journalism’s attempted impact on political and democratic life. Journalism scholars, however, tend not to study journalistic professional roles from its impact on news content but focus on journalists’ conception of their role concluding that the way journalists conceive of their role will eventually shape the stories they produce. Hence, the link between role conception and role performance (i.e., its impact on news) has caught more attention as a justification of research interest than as loci of empirical examination. This conceptual paper revisits this assumption, arguing for an indepth discussion of what the concept of professional role entails to understand its manifestation in news. As journalistic performance must be considered a collective outcome, this article addresses the concept of professional role from its relationship to structural characteristics of media work. Our approach suggests a media sociology conceptualization of professional roles that takes into consideration the gatekeeping context, and most importantly the organizational and societal levels, when analyzing professional roles of journalists.

Journalistic performance in Latin America: A comparative study of professional roles in news content

Comparative research across the world has shown that nation-level variables are strong predictors of professional roles in journalism. There is, however, still insufficient comparative research about three key issues: cross-national comparison of journalistic role performance, exploration of how – or whether – organizational variables account for variation in role performance across countries, and the performance of specific journalistic roles that prevail in regions with post-authoritarian political trajectories. This article tackles these three issues by comparatively measuring journalistic performance in five Latin American countries. Based on a content analysis of 9841 news items from 18 newspapers, this article reports findings from Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador and Mexico, by analyzing the presence of the ‘interventionist’, ‘watchdog’, ‘loyal’, ‘service’, ‘infotainment’, and ‘civic’ roles. Results show that the region is far from homogeneous and that while ‘country’ is a strong predictor for most of the roles, other variables such as ‘media type’, ‘political orientation’, and ‘news topic’ are also significant predictors to varying levels.

Journalism Students’ Motivations and Expectations of Their Work in Comparative Perspective

Based on a survey of 4,393 journalism students in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, this study provides much-needed comparative evidence about students’ motivations for becoming journalists, their future job plans, and expectations. Findings show not only an almost universal decline in students’ desire to work in journalism by the end of their program but also important national differences in terms of the journalistic fields in which they want to work, as well as their job expectations. The results reinforce the need to take into account national contexts when examining journalism education across the globe.

Changing Times, Changing Journalism: A Content Analysis of Journalistic Role Performances in a Transitional Democracy

Although the democratic role of journalism in new democracies is heavily debated, systematic empirical analysis is scarce. This paper studies how the performance of the watchdog and civic journalism role in Chilean newspapers develops during 22 years of democratic transition. We challenge the homogenization-thesis, which has often characterized thinking about the role of the media in democratic transition, assuming an automatic unidirectional trend toward more critical professionalism, where reporters increasingly act as watchdogs by taking the side of ordinary citizens against the political and economic elite. We argue that a rise in critical professionalism is often limited to a brief honeymoon period after the return to democracy. We furthermore argue that to understand changing role performance during democratic transition, one needs to look at specific developments of the media (press freedom, journalism education, advertisement income, and circulation) and developments in the political context, in particular the degree of political conflict. These hypotheses are tested with a unique data set consisting of a content analysis of 20,201 news articles, which make up representative yearly samples of newspaper coverage in Chile between 1990 and 2011. We find no trend toward more watchdog and civic journalism, and limited influences of developments of the media. At least for the performance of these two journalistic roles in Chile, changes in journalism during democratic transition can best be explained by the honeymoon hypothesis and the degree of political conflict. The generalizability of these findings to other transitional democracies is discussed.

Challenging the Citizen-Consumer Journalistic Dichotomy: A news content analysis of audience approaches in Chile

Transformations in media and society have forced journalists to reconsider their relation to the audience. In this article, we argue that due to these changes, a new conceptualization is needed of the way journalism addresses the audience, which goes beyond the traditional consumer–citizen dichotomy. Results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with three samples of Chilean news (N = 1,988; N = 795; N = 812) support the hypothesis that audience approaches in journalism are best represented by a three-factor solution: the infotainment, the service, and the civic models. The data also show that approaching the audience as consumer or as citizen are not two poles of one continuum, and that approaching the audience under a consumer-orientation consists of two approaches: providing service and providing entertainment.

The Use of Objective and Analytical Reporting as a Method of Professional Work A Cross-Longitudinal Study of Chilean Political Coverage

Based on a cross-longitudinal content analysis of 3,624 political news stories published by Chilean national newspapers between 1990 and 2010, this study analyzes the changes and patterns in the reporting styles of the political press by examining the value of objective and analytical reporting used by professional journalists. The study presents empirical evidence on how journalists justify truth claims in political news and how journalistic performance has evolved in a post-dictatorial regime setting. The results show that objective reporting is more common than analytical reporting for both the popular and the elite press. However, although the Chilean traditional press assume objectivity as a criterion of good journalism, they reinterpret its meaning in practice. Specifically, the findings show that the use of analytical reporting has significantly increased in political coverage. The absence of formal separation between facts and opinions in the Chilean case confirms the global tendency toward more partisan journalism, especially in journalistic contexts closer to the “polarized pluralist” model. The differences in the use of objective and analytical reporting between the popular and the elite press do not show a clear pattern.

Valued skills among journalists: An exploratory comparison of six European nations

Cross-national comparative studies of journalists generally focus on the demographic characteristics and/or the values and role-perception of journalists. Systematic studies of journalistic skills have been rare, however. This article reports the findings from a comparative study of journalists from Britain, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden. Based on an email survey of 2238 news professionals, journalistic skills can be grouped into three distinctive dimensions: reporting, editing, and networking skills. The data also show a number of similarities, but also important differences regarding the importance journalists give to different professional skills in different European countries.

Protest and Accountability without the Press The Press, Politicians, and Civil Society in Chile

We examine political news in Chilean newspapers after elections were reestablished, including a recent period of civic protests of policies linked to the authoritarian past. Data show that similar to journalism in Western democracies, throughout the twenty-one years under study, journalists relied upon official sources, allowed politicians to set the news agenda, and eschewed civil society in favor of representing citizens as voiceless individuals. However, news frames changed during the protest period in unexpected ways given current understandings of the press and civil society. During the protest period, the press framed a greater percentage of coverage as issues and offered contextualization while continuing to privilege official sources, defer agenda setting to politicians, and disregard collective organizations. Based on research elsewhere, issue frames and context may reorient causal attribution for social problems and encourage greater participation. Shortly after the study period, reform topped the political agenda, and disputed policies were overhauled. Connecting content to protests through time sequencing, findings suggest rethinking the relationship between civil society visibility in the press and processes of social accountability. They also provide an example of how legacies of authoritarianism may affect the press under democracy, helping advance theories of press performance beyond experiences in the West.

Expanding Influences Research to Insecure Democracies: How violence, public insecurity, economic inequality and uneven democratic performance shape journalists’ perceived work environments

Democracies with sharp violence and public insecurity have proliferated in recent decades, with many also featuring extreme economic inequality. These conditions have not been explicitly considered in comparative research on journalists’ work environments, an omission that may obscure important realities of contemporary journalism. We address this gap through analysis of journalist surveys in 62 countries. We confirm the existence of insecure democracies as an empirical phenomenon and begin to unravel their meaning for journalists. We find democracies with uneven democratic performance tend to have more journalist assassinations, which is the most extreme form of influence on work, and that levels of democratic performance, violence, public insecurity and economic inequality significantly shape how journalists perceive various influences in their work environment. Case studies of insecure democracies in Africa and Latin America address why these conditions sometimes (but not always) lead to journalist assassinations and other anti-press violence. They suggest anti-press violence is higher when sub-national state actors intensify criminal violence and when insecurity is geographically and topically proximate to journalists. How journalists’ perceive influences on work are therefore more complex and multidimensional than previous research has suggested. The study concludes by identifying areas for improvement in data collection.

Do digital platforms really make a difference in content? Mapping journalistic role performance in Chilean print and online news

Previous research has largely explored the differences and similarities between print and digital media in terms of news cycles and specific content characteristics. However, fewer studies have add...