Mats Ekström

Epistemologies of TV journalism A theoretical framework

This article sketches a theoretical framework for studies of the epistemologies of journalism. In this context epistemology does not refer to philosophical inquiries into the nature of true knowledge but to the study of knowledge-producing practices and communication of knowledge claims. The focus in the article is mainly on TV journalism. The theoretical framework distinguishes three fundamental areas and three main questions for research on the epistemologies of journalism: (1) form of knowledge (What are the characteristics of the knowledge that television journalism produces and offers its audiences?); (2) production of knowledge (What rules, routines, institutionalized procedures and systems of classification guide the production of knowledge and how do journalists decide what is sufficiently true and authoritative?); and (3) public acceptance of knowledge claims (What conditions are decisive for the publics acceptance or rejection of the knowledge claims of television journalism?). The article develops the framework by way of theoretical conceptualizations and empirical illustrations from concrete forms of TV journalism.

Information, storytelling and attractions: TV journalism in three modes of communication

The competition for the attention of potential audiences, and the problem of audience appeal, has become an increasingly important aspect of TV journalism. The aim of this article is to present a conceptual framework for studies of TV journalism as communication; including different intentions, strategies applied to appeal to viewers, processes of production, bases for audience involvement, roles and relations. I differentiate three modes of communication: information, storytelling and attractions, and argue that this trichotomy is more fruitful and analytically developed, compared to other conceptualizations such as the dichotomy: information and entertainment. The article describes and conceptualizes the specific characteristics of information, storytelling and attractions; and presents empirical examples of TV journalism communicating within these modes of communication.

Information, Interaction, and Creative Production: The Effects of Three Forms of Internet Use on Youth Democratic Engagement

This study examines the effects of informational, interactional, and creative forms of Internet use on behavioral and cognitive indicators of youth democratic engagement. Data from an extensive two-wave panel survey of Swedish adolescents (N = 1,520) were examined. Results show that the effects of informational and interactional Internet use on political participation are indirect, with online political interactions acting as an intervening variable. In addition, creative production was found to be a direct positive predictor of online and offline political participation but negatively related to political knowledge. The effects were statistically significant even when accounting for self-selection and previous levels of democratic engagement. Taken together, these findings contribute novel theoretical insights into the mechanisms by which Internet use may encourage or hinder youths’ democratic engagement.

Young people’s everyday political talk: a social achievement of democratic engagement

Everyday political talk is an important democratic activity. Research on young people has focused on the role of talk in political socialization. The overall question in this study is: What encourages or impedes young people to participate in everyday political talk? Politics has been described as a potentially unsafe topic. The study investigates young people’s own experiences of conversations in families, peer groups, and social media. The study applies a social interactional approach and understands political talk as a social achievement, related to norms and the management of self-identities. It is based on a multimethod approach comprising individual interviews, group interviews, and diaries. The group consists of 23 high school students (aged 17–18). The results show that the engagement in political talk is sensitive to the social settings. Norms make political topics expected or best to avoid. The family and peer groups are potentially important context for friendly talk, argumentations, exploration of opinions, and identities. The participants are in general more reluctant to express opinions in social media. The fear of face-threatening responses is one important aspect. The study suggests that political talk is an activity in which young people express, reveal, and carefully manage political self-identities.

THE COMPLEX VISUAL GENDERING OF POLITICAL WOMEN IN THE PRESS

In this article, we present an analysis of how gendering is “being done” in press visuals of women in politics. In short, we will argue that women professionals working within the area of politics are gendered and type-cast in more complex ways than previous research has yet shown. In a qualitative analysis of visuals from three different political scandals in Sweden involving prominent political women, we analyse the diversified ways of portraying women in visuals that do not simply reproduce the idea that the gendering of women uncritically correlates with concepts like sexualization, objectification, passivity and otherness. As on-lookers of a professional woman in politics caught in a pressing situation in a photograph, we will argue that at times we may be invited to see her both as an Other but also a person with whom we can identify. Or a woman may be positioned as an object with a focus on appearance, but not by emphasizing her femininity and sexuality but by doing exactly the reverse. We will also discuss the complexity that is related to the various contextual factors that come into play when press photographers and editors communicatively “work” at accomplishing specific gendered visual “preferred readings”.

BEYOND THE BROADCAST INTERVIEW: Specialized forms of interviewing in the making of television news

Based on a mixed-method approach, this article aims at exploring the specialized forms of interviewing that are used as resources in television broadcast news production. Interviews are analysed as functionally specialized forms of interaction (cf. Heritage, 1985) with various functions in different phases of the news production. We assume that interviews are organized and carried out as communicative activities oriented towards specific tasks, identities and contexts of interaction. In contrast to established definitions of the archetypical on-air news interview, we argue that broadcast interviewing is only partially produced for an “overhearing audience” (Heritage, 1985). Taking into account the entire process of producing and presenting news, journalism harbours a multitude of interviewing practices and activities which remain invisible if only the taped and transcribed broadcast talk is analysed. Our study clearly indicates that news interviews contain more diversified and hybrid activities of communication than have been described in previous research.

JOURNALISM AND LOCAL POLITICS

Political accountability is defined as an important aspect of scrutiny. By analysing newspapers at three different points in time (1961, 1981 and 2001), this study suggests that the kind of scrutiny often mentioned in the literature, characterised by thorough investigations and disclosures of political wrongdoings, barely exists in the local press. By identifying other forms of scrutiny more closely related to ordinary news reporting, the study shows that one-third of the 1500 articles analysed display some degree of scrutiny. The local press plays an important role in communicating information and critique concerning the ways in which local authority service provision works and how political responsibilities are fulfilled. This study indicates that this role has been strengthened during the second half of the 20th century.

CONVERSATION ANALYSIS IN JOURNALISM STUDIES

The article considers the role of conversational analysis in the study of journalism. The author argues that conversation is inherent to the very being of journalism, whether it be conversational exchange in broadcast journalism or the conversation engaged in by print journalists in their news gathering activities. The article offers a brief history of the field of conversational analysis. Of particular interest in conversational analysis for journalistic study is the role of institutional interaction. The author discusses the role of communication and conversation in news legitimacy.

Three tasks for mediatization research: contributions to an open agenda:

Based on the interdisciplinary experience of a Swedish research committee, this article discusses critical conceptual issues raised by the current debate on mediatization – a concept that holds great potential to constitute a space for synthesized understandings of media-related social transformations. In contrast to other, more metaphorical constructions, mediatization can be studied empirically in systematic ways through various sub-processes that together provide a complex picture of how culture and everyday life evolve in times of media saturation. The first part of this article argues that mediatization researchers have sometimes formulated too grand claims as to mediatization’s status as a unitary approach, a meta-theory or a paradigm. Such claims have led to problematic confusions around the concept and should be abandoned in favour of a more open agenda. In line with such a call for openness, the second part of the article introduces historicity, specificity and measurability as three transdisciplinary and transparadigmatic tasks for the contemporary mediatization research agenda.

The Mediatization of Political Accountability

This study investigates how political accountability, as a key democratic principle, is performed in the media and how the practices and representations of accountability are transformed over time by the influences of mediatization. The implications of mediatization are analyzed with a focus on how aspects of media dramaturgy and independent journalism influence news reporting of political responsibility and how politicians are held to account in the media. The effects of mediatization are understood as conditioned by other structural changes in political life, in particular depoliticization. The empirical study is designed as a comparison of news reports on two national industrial crises in 1980–1982 and 2008–2011, and is based on content analyses of daily morning newspapers, evening tabloids, and regional and local newspapers. The study provides evidence for a non-linear understanding of mediatization. Significant aspects of media dramaturgy are shown to be rather stable between the two time periods whilst the journalistic independence and interpretations increase as expected. The hypothesis of depoliticization receives some support although the results are not unambiguous.