Igor Vobič

Online Multimedia News in Print Media: A Lack of Vision in Slovenia

Using the case of two Slovenian print media as an example, this article examines how online multimedia news has been adopted, what role different newsroom organization models play in online multimedia news production, and what multimedia news formats have emerged on news websites of Slovenian print media organizations. In the last decade, different multimedia news content has been emerging rapidly within news websites of print media organizations with online production organized differently and multimedia news formatted distinctly. A review of scholarly debates and research in media and journalism studies reveals that the particular institutionally structured features of online news production, and the technical and organizational attributes which influence what gets represented in the medium and the manner in which it is done have not yet emerged. Furthermore, on the basis of news format analysis, participant observation, and problem-centered interviews, the article concludes that there is a lack of vision in furthering the evolution of online production organization and news formats in Slovenian print media arena, which signals the present marginal significance of online multimedia news.

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

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.

Manufacturing Consent among Newsworkers at Slovenian Public Radio

Abstract This paper takes an often neglected labour perspective on journalism and investigates labour relations and processes at Slovenian public radio. By taking into account public radio’s specific position in the media environment, which importantly shapes the dynamics between power, property, and work, and by drawing from the work of Michael Burawoy, this paper explores the strategies of manufacturing consent at the Slovenian public radio that minimise potentials of class consciousness among newsworkers and labour-management conflict on one hand and practices and possibilities for resistance and solidarity on the other. Investigation of labour relations and processes at Radio Slovenia was conducted a few months after the Slovenian government adopted austerity measures that have also resulted in layoffs and changes of the employment arrangements of a considerable number of atypical workers at the Slovenian public broadcaster. To gather, assemble, and analyse data, the authors used two research methods: first, participant observation in two newsrooms of Radio Slovenia, and second, in-depth interviews with public radio editors and journalists.

Twitter Campaigning in the 2011 National Election in Slovenia

The chapter examines the Twitter campaigning of parliamentary political parties and their influential members during the 2011 preterm national election campaign. We examine the rationales behind the adoption and appropriation of Twitter in the Slovenian political arena. Content analysis of 4,610 Tweets and conducted interviews with campaign managers of seven lists of candidates allowed us to revisit three perennial hypotheses about political communication on the web: the copycat, revolution and normalisation hypotheses. While the examined parties’ move into the Twittersphere confirmed the copycat hypothesis, their utilisation of the tool revealed mixed evidence for the revolution vs. normalisation dilemma. Party campaigning did show signs of ‘politics as usual’, with political powerhouses taking the lead on Twitter as well. However, it also demonstrated a substantial degree of genuine direct political interaction between politicians and citizens.

Converging practices and discourses: Obstacles in production culture for interactivity in Slovenian online newspapers

The debates on new communication patterns between journalists and their audiences have been coupled with the concept of interactivity, which has become one of the pillar terms in discussions on the future evolution of journalism. By exploring general understanding of interactivity between news editors and organisational circumstances where interactivity as a set of new communication practices is articulated in journalism, this study shifts the attention from the user perspective to occupational ideology, news production culture and the organisation of news production. The aim of this study is to explore to what extent such realities can be identified to Slovenian online news culture that has gone through many changes in recent years. By adopting two ethnographic methods – news website analysis and in-depth interviews with print and online editors – the article offers a case study of the new websites of three prominent Slovenian print media organisations: Delo, Dnevnik and Žurnal. Productivity, efficiency and profitability have pushed traditional journalistic values in Slovenian online media to the margins. When it comes to interactive modes of audience engagement, editors and journalists control online news production. As a consequence, despite various interactive features provided on news websites, news production culture develops with the aim of retaining control over information delivery rather than of creating a new space of dialogue and interactive communication.

Normativne Vrste Novinarstva in Poročanje O Politiki Skozi Optiko Slovenskih Novinarjev, Politikov in Državljanov

Povzetek Članek preučuje družbeno določenost normativnih predpostavk novinarstva skozi optiko novinarjev, politikov in državljanov, pri čemer se osredinja na sodobne politične, ekonomske in kulturne dinamike slovenskega novinarskega in medijskega okolja. Glede na storitve, ki jih novinarji nudijo svojim odjemalcem, in hkrati glede na različne primarne funkcije novinarjev v družbi s pregledom literature prepoznavamo pet normativnih vrst novinarstva: mediativno, odvetniško, razsvetljensko, razvedrilno in komunitaristično. Razpravo o tipih novinarstva uokvirjamo s ponovnim premišljevanjem občutnih transformacij v odnosu med državo, civilno družbo in mediji, ki so v Sloveniji nastopile z vpeljavo različice zahodnega tipa demokracije in tržne ekonomije pred dvema desetletjema ter s sočasnimi normativnimi spremembami novinarstva, odnosov med novinarji, politiki in državljani ter njihovimi funkcijami v političnem življenju in novinarstvu. Glavni raziskovalni cilji članka so identificirati, kako anketirani slovenski novinarji, politiki in državljani percepirajo funkcije novinarjev v poročanju o politiki, preučiti razlike med temi skupinami anketirancev v politično, ekonomsko in kulturno specifičnem kontekstu ter skozi prizmo normativnih vrst novinarstva ponuditi premislek o sodobnem statusu novinarstva in novinarjev v politiki.

Who Leads the Twitter Tango

By reconsidering the complexities of the journalist–politician relationship, the study pursues the metaphor of tango introduced by Herbert J. Gans and analyses the online interplay in Twitter conversations between journalistic and political actors. Various types of conversations emerged through the quantitative analysis of the tweets, which ranged from seeking mutual affection, through monitoring–advocating connections and information sharing to unbridgeable advocacy. According to the interviewed journalistic and political actors, such tweets were shaped by their subjective considerations of boundaries in their Twitter repertoires as the principles of social media networking have not been institutionalized in either Slovenian newsrooms or parties. The results revealed that neither journalists nor politicians led the Twitter tango, but instead whether these actors engaged in Twitter conversations as either initiators or respondents. The identified boundary dynamics of the Twitter tango indicate that social media are a particular venue for the articulation of journalist–politician relationships, which in some cases are shaped by offline relations. The findings imply that in Slovenia contemporary journalism’s relation to politics is paradoxical because it is shaped by the liquidity of late-modern social communication and the compactness of an elite culture.

Engineering Technologies for Journalism In the Digital Age

Although technological innovations in journalism have recently received growing scholarly attention, studies have hardly questioned or explored the naturalised dominance of technology over newswork. By drawing on critical scholarship, the study aims to explore how articulations between technology and journalism are negotiated by actors engineering technological innovations for and implementing them as part of newswork. Adopting the qualitative methods of interviews and document analysis, the study explores the XLike project (Seventh Framework Programme) co-ordinated by the Jožef Stefan Institute, a Slovenian public research institution for natural sciences and, among others, partnered with the New York Times, Bloomberg Media and the Slovenian Press Agency. One of its main results is a technology that is able to extract formal knowledge from texts in different languages scattered online in a structured way. While the study indicates journalists and editors are seen as conservative and hesitant to adopt what is understood as progressive technology, the project chiefly focuses on journalism as a business by pursuing a better understanding of audience behaviour, tracking online traffic and customised advertising. Additionally, newsrooms played at best a marginal role in defining the project’s goals and implementing the technology, and that these were driven foremost by business concerns.

Changing Faces of Slovenia

Abstract The study indicates that political, economic and social faces of Slovenia have changed substantially during the half-decade of the crisis. While the ability of citizens to influence important political decisions has been curtailed on both the national and transnational level, instability has become endemic and social solidarity has been eroded. By using quantitative and qualitative content analysis the study analyses how the unfolding crisis has been communicated in the media in the 2008–2013 period with respect to the dynamics between structure and agency as well as regarding the key (inter)national features and contours of the crisis. The study indicates Slovenian news media hardly served as an integrative force and a common forum for an inclusive and open debate. Namely, results of the quantitative content analysis indicate that journalism communicated the “causes” for the crisis by portraying it as something purely accidental, while rarely pointing at the possibility of its systemic nature. Similarly, “solutions” have been predominantly portrayed within the prevailing paradigms or through the neoliberal prism favoured by holders of political and economic power. Qualitative content analysis of how Slovenian news media communicated the decisive breaks and formative moments of the unfolding crisis shows they mostly relied on event-orientation, simplistic juxtapositions and naturalisation of the established power divisions on national as well as international levels.

Konvergenca novinarskih uredništev: detradicionalizacija v časopisnih organizacijah

Povzetek Članek z etnografsko študijo v časopisnih organizacijah Delo in Dnevnik ugotavlja, da konvergenca uredništev ni uniformen in tehnično pogojen proces, temveč gre za specifične družbene in kulturne dinamike, ki odslikavajo kompleksne artikulacije med prostorom, delom in močjo. Rezultati raziskave kažejo, da je tradicija decentraliziranih uredništev, ki je značilna za slovenski tisk, v procesu preoblikovanja, toda ne v smeri izumljanja »nove« tradicije uredništev, temveč prej kot posledica spreminjanja »starega«. Čeprav sta se pri Delu in Dnevniku oblikovala različna pristopa k procesom konvergence ter uveljavila različna razumevanja prostorske (pre)ureditve delovnih okolij, gre za podobni uredništvi skozi prizme delitve dela in uredniškega nadzora v spletnih oddelkih ter čezoddelčnega sodelovanja. Te ugotovitve v uredništvih tako ne kažejo razkroja »starih« procesov in odnosov, temveč njihovo transformacijo v kontekstu poznomodernega novičarskega dela in tako nakazujejo proces detradicionalizacije. Pri Delu in Dnevniku namreč ne gre za ukinjanje tradicije decentraliziranega uredništva, temveč za njeno rekonstrukcijo, ko v usmeritvah prostorskega, procesnega in vsebinskega povezovanja časopisnih in spletnih oddelkov ključno vlogo igrajo koncepti heterogenosti, individualizacije in fragmentacije.