Julie Firmstone

The social function of trust and implications for e-commerce

This paper draws on sociological theories of trust to examine the role of trust within modern society. Having conceptualised the main function of trust within modernity as one of reducing complexity and the management of risk, the paper applies this understanding to the role of trust within marketing, particularly in relation to e-commerce. Empirical support is given to the conceptual analysis by the presentation of findings from a longitudinal panel study of peoples attitudes towards new technology and the place of new technology in their lives—futura.com. The paper points to the vital role of abstract or systems trust within modernity, and raises questions concerning the particular difficulties that e-commerce faces in establishing trust in the internet as a system.

The Changing Role of the Local News Media in Enabling Citizens to Engage in Local Democracies

Using Leeds City Council in the United Kingdom as a case study, we analyse comparatively the changing role of local journalism in the public communications and engagement strategies of local government. Drawing on over 20 semi-structured interviews with elected politicians, Council strategists, mainstream journalists, and citizen journalists, the article explores perceptions of the mainstream news medias role versus new modes of communication in engaging and communicating with citizens. We evaluate the Councils perceptions of its online and offline practices of engagement with different publics, and focus in particular on their interactions with journalists, the news media, and citizen journalists. The article considers how moves towards digital modes of engagement are changing perceptions of the professional role orientations of journalists in mediating between the Council and the general public.

THE EDITORIAL PRODUCTION PROCESS AND EDITORIAL VALUES AS INFLUENCES ON THE OPINIONS OF THE BRITISH PRESS TOWARDS EUROPE

British newspapers have been criticised for their coverage of the European Union and accused of contributing to the strength of anti-European opinion in the United Kingdom. Despite these claims, research by media sociologists and political communications scholars has commonly focused on news reporting, overlooking editorial opinions on European issues. This article addresses this gap by presenting a sociological analysis of editorial journalism in relation to European integration at 10 British national newspapers. The findings show that newspapers vary widely in the resources and roles they have assigned for editorialising on Europe, and provide an original insight into the common routines employed for producing editorial opinion. A model, entitled the editorial production process, is developed to illustrate the key stages of this routine. The specialist practices of editorial journalism are discussed through the identification of a set of editorial values used to select issues for comment.

Public engagement in local government: the voice and influence of citizens in online communicative spaces

The communications and engagement strategies of local councils play an important role in contributing to the publics understanding of local democracies, and their engagement with local issues. Based on a study of the local authority in the third largest city in the UK, Leeds, this article presents an empirically based analysis of the impact of new opportunities for public engagement afforded by digital media on the Councils communication with citizens. Drawing on over 20 face-to-face semi-structured interviews with elected politicians, Council strategists, Council communications specialists, mainstream journalists, and citizen journalists, the article explores perceptions of the Councils engagement and communication with citizens from the perspective of a range of actors involved in the engagement process. The research asks what the differing motivations behind the Councils communications and engagement strategies mean for the way that digital media are and might be used in the future to enhance the role of citizens in local governance. The research suggests that while there are no grounds for expecting digital media to displace existing channels of public engagement, digital media are beginning to play an important role in defining and reconfiguring the role of citizens within local governance.

Contested meanings of public engagement: exploring discourse and practice within a British city council

This article explores local government engagement and communication with citizens in one of the UK’s largest cities from the perspective of a range of actors involved in the engagement process. We establish that a variety of interpretations and contested meanings of engagement exist among professionals involved in different spheres of public engagement. These meanings have different outcomes for the potential voice and influence given to citizens in the city’s democratic existence. We explore what the differing motivations behind the council’s communications and engagement strategies mean for the way that the democratic space of the city is constructed and communicated to citizens. We conclude that there is a need for closer integration of engagement and communications strategies. Integral to the success of such strategies is an empirically informed understanding of what public engagement is, and what skills and practices are necessary to engage with citizens successfully, especially in the reconfigured communication ecology to which new media adds a new dimension.

Approaches of the transnational press to reporting Europe

The concept of a European public sphere, and the emergence of a transnational media within this space, has been the subject of debate in recent years, yet little attention has been given to investigating the functioning of the media that currently occupy this space. This article provides an empirically based insight into the organizational context within which transnational newspapers produce coverage of the European Union (EU). Material collected in interviews with journalists from four transnational newspapers (Wall Street Journal Europe, International Herald Tribune, Financial Times Europe and European Voice) is presented, and the way in which a range of internal and external factors shape transnational coverage of the EU is discussed. The findings suggest that as a consequence of the diverse range of approaches adopted by transnational newspapers, the EU remains unreported as a polity in its own right, and is predominantly covered from an external point of view.

Mapping Changes in Local News

Local news media in the United Kingdom are undergoing a multitude of changes which have implications for our understanding of their value in local democracies. Despite the potential significance of these changes for those actors responsible for the provision of local news, very little research has investigated journalists’ and political communicators’ perceptions of the impact of these threats and opportunities. This article addresses this gap by presenting research which investigated the views of key stakeholders in the production of local news in a large city in the United Kingdom. The thematic analysis of 14 interviews evaluates how normative roles attributed to journalism, such as representing the public, acting as a watchdog, providing information, and running campaigns, are being fulfilled by different news providers in the current news ecology.

Introduction: A Discourse Analytical Approach to Researching Mediated Political Communication

In this introductory chapter, Ekstrom and Firmstone introduce the overall aim of the book and the theoretical and methodological approach. The approach to political communication is distinctive in three ways. First, we take a contextual approach, analysing the political communication in relation to the tensions and disruptions shaping European politics at a particular moment in time. Second, the book focuses on the performative and discursive dimensions of political communication. An interdisciplinary discourse analytical approach is developed to analyse how the roles and relationships between citizens, politicians and journalists are performed and represented in the media. Finally, we develop a systematic qualitative comparative approach for the cross-national analysis of political discourse. The contribution of the book is discussed in relation to previous research on political communication and media coverage of European Elections. The countries included in the study (France, Greece, Italy, Sweden, UK) are introduced with respect to their historical relationship with the EU, the effects of the economic crisis, the development of Euroscepticism, and the electoral success of mainstream and populist parties.

Conclusion: Tensions and Disruptions in Mediated Politics

In this concluding chapter, Ekstrom and Firmstone reflect on the findings of individual chapters to consider the overall consequences for the five key questions explored by the study: 1) How are tensions and disruptions in European politics discursively constructed and negotiated in broadcast media across countries? 2) How is politics represented and communicated through different journalistic practices and media discourse; genres, styles and narratives of reporting, forms of interviewing, etc.? 3) How are citizens represented, talked about, talked to, and invited to participate with their own voices in the media? 4) What constitutes the mediated performances of mainstream and populist political leaders, and how do politicians meet the various challenges of political communication at the particular moment in time? 5) How are the relationships between journalists, politicians and citizens discursively constructed and negotiated in television news and current affairs across countries? The chapter concludes by presenting the benefits of the comparative approach to qualitative discourse analysis of political communication developed by the authors and suggesting directions for future research.

The Performances of Mainstream Politicians: Politics as Usual?

In the chapter Coleman and Firmstone’s multimodal discourse analysis captures both the visual characteristics and the spoken discourse of the performances of mainstream politicians in television news in five countries (France, Italy, Greece, Sweden and the UK). Examples are used to illustrate the performative frames and discursive strategies that mainstream politicians employ in order to establish themselves as serious and authoritative personae, while at the same time attempting to realize qualities of authenticity and public representativeness. In order to appear popular rather than populist, mainstream politicians are driven to produce hybrid performances that enable them to realise a delicate balance between authority and authenticity. The chapter suggests that political performances are played out within a spectrum, with an ideal type of perfectly self-controlled mainstream imagery at one end and populist appeals to be ‘one of the people’ and to understand ‘ordinary people’ at the other. The analysis also explores the discursive strategies of journalists in constructing mainstream politicians and questions journalists’ roles in the construction (and deconstruction) of politicians as mainstream in the genre of interactive news making.