Jannie Møller Hartley

Between Ideals and Practice Journalism Students Facing Ethical Dilemmas in Online Newsroom Teaching—Lessons From Denmark

This article looks at journalism students’ experiences in a course that simulates an online newsroom. On the basis of a quantitative survey and more qualitative reflections from the students, we explore the dilemmas that students experience “working” as online journalists and how these are related to broader issues of journalistic ethics. Some of these experienced problems are, combined with the technological mechanisms, much embodied in online journalism and in journalistic practice in general. The survey indicates that the problems amplify the discrepancy between the students’ expectation of good journalism and the perceived practice of online journalism. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of providing a course that simulates a real newsroom.

Emerging trends in small acts of audience engagement and interruptions of content flows

This chapter develops a set of findings around audiences’ small-scale acts of engagement with media content made available through digital media technologies. We identify and discuss three articulations of these small acts: (1) one click engagement, (2) commenting and debating and (3) small stories. In contrasting them with more collaborative and convergent productive practices, we further conceptualise these engagements in relation to two main dimensions: effort and intentionality. Lastly, we suggest a conceptualisation of the outcome of these acts which we have labelled interruption. Content flows can be challenged, if not transformed, due to the volume of small acts, which is realised by the producing audiences as well as by mainstream media. Profound changes in the way information is produced and distributed are fuelled by small acts of engagement, and these trends are likely to continue into the futures this book speaks about.

Interruption, Disruption or Intervention? A Stakeholder Analysis of Small Acts of Engagement in Content Flows

This chapter builds upon central findings arising from consultations with stakeholders about audiences’ engagement in the content flows, defined as an ever evolving ecology of online and offline content produced by a number of more and less institutionalised content producers, ranging from news organisations to YouTubers. First, we note that increasing use of audience analytics tends to fragment the monolithic audience into tangible sub-communities. Second, we discuss how production routines of legacy media change in response to small acts of engagement via digital interfaces. Third, audience creativity enters economic relations and amateur production struggles with a tension between being creative and economic logic of production. Fourth, we look at transformations related to (dis)trust as a mutual dynamic that not only concerns audiences’ trust or mistrust in legacy media, but which is increasingly significant in regard to media’s trust in content produced by audiences as well, making it more difficult for audiences to engage with the content produced by media institutions.

When Homo Academicus meets Homo Journalisticus: An inter-field study of collaboration and conflict in the communication of scientific research

The longstanding tension between journalists and academics is explored by analysing data from qualitative interviews with 25 journalists and scientists using an analytical framework derived from Bourdieu’s field theory. The article empirically shows how journalism and science are both constructed around the opposition between knowledge (content) and communication (form). Based on the analysis of narratives in the communication processes between the two fields, the article shows that scientists and journalists take different positions according to the existing ideals within their respective fields, revealing different science-communication habitus. The article presents a typology of proximity and distance, in which communication between the fields becomes easier or more difficult as both fields try to protect their historic professional identities.The longstanding tension between journalists and academics is explored by analysing data from qualitative interviews with 25 journalists and scientists using an analytical framework derived from Bourdieu’s field theory. The article empirically shows how journalism and science are both constructed around the opposition between knowledge (content) and communication (form). Based on the analysis of narratives in the communication processes between the two fields, the article shows that scientists and journalists take different positions according to the existing ideals within their respective fields, revealing different science-communication habitus. The article presents a typology of proximity and distance, in which communication between the fields becomes easier or more difficult as both fields try to protect their historic professional identities.