Robert E. Gutsche

There's No Place Like Home

This narrative analysis explores the juxtaposition of local crime news in Omaha, Nebraska with coverage of local troops embedded in Afghanistan in April 2011. It argues that narrative devices such as scene-setting, characterization, sourcing, and the use of dramatic elements constructed violence abroad as heroic and expected, but disruptive and dangerous at home; these contrasts worked to sustain a dominant ideology of institutional superiority.

Boosterism as Banishment

This paper performs a qualitative critical discourse analysis of 52 local news articles from four Florida (United States) newspapers to identify and expand the notion of journalistic boosterism. In the paper, I argue that boosterism—everyday news that promotes mediatized notions of a communitys dominant traditions, dominant identities, and potential for future prosperities—functions as a form of social control by performing, as banishment, an act that secludes particular social groups from participating in community spaces, social roles, and storytelling. This paper conceptualizes journalistic boosterism as operating via a duality of community building and social banishment, a practice that continues to spread across the globe.

ZOMBIES, DRUGS, AND FLORIDA WEIRDNESS

On a steamy May 26, 2012 in Miami, Florida, police officers found Rudy Eugene viciously eating another mans face. Police shot Eugene at least four times, killing him, to stop the attack. Over the next month, the story of the “Causeway Cannibal” (a.k.a. the “Miami Zombie”) fueled debate about what spawned the attack. News explanations included synthetic drugs, cannibalism, Voodoo, and zombies. This textual analysis of immediate news explanations to the attack explores and speculates on why some explanations, such as mental illness, were ignored. By distinguishing between journalistic sensationalism and Ettemas journalistic “imaginative power,” this paper presents possible cultural reasons to explain why news media all but excluded mental illness as a dominant explanation for Eugenes actions.

Journalism and the ‘social sphere’ : Reclaiming a foundational concept for beyond politics and the public sphere

This article realigns the field of journalism studies to acknowledge within itself the multiple dimensions of social life and, as well, to provide greater clarity on the social and cultural forms and functions of journalism. It reclaims the importance of the “social sphere” as a key foundational concept for journalism studies with its links to collective identity, sociability, social honour, and soft coercion. We argue the relevance of the social sphere has been subsumed over time by the dominance of the “public sphere” and, most recently, has been considered synonymous with the rise of social networking platforms and tools. Here, we recommend that scholarship shifts from the dominant influence of political theory in explanations of journalisms societal function to the value of critical cultural sociology, which reconciles power with the basic human desire for social order within individual–institutional–cultural interactions informed by and through journalism.

Contesting communities: the problem of journalism and social order

This introductory article to the combined special issue of Journalism Studies and Journalism Practice provides an overview of some of the key contemporary approaches to studying journalism and social order. It argues the need to step beyond a functionalist framework when considering the news media’s central role in shaping social connections, community and cohesion. To advance our understandings of social order, our paper suggests a greater emphasis of the significance of journalism’s relationship to the wider social sphere along with three other key considerations, including (1) a critical focus on the relationship between media, politics and social order, especially in defining and/or negotiating “anti-social” practices and social disintegration; (2) a more refined focus on the “imagined” and geographic boundaries of news audiences in digital spaces; and (3) the changing relationship to norms and conventions of journalism practice from trust and legitimacy to the role of journalists as arbiters and connectors across social spaces.

Reciprocal (and Reductionist?) Newswork

This paper builds upon previous research that examines participatory forms of “reciprocal journalism” and “public communication” led by high school and college students in Miami, Florida, USA, in the fall of 2014. In this study, the students’ assessment of local and national media coverage is used to reveal greater details inherent in examining participatory methods of newswork. Collectively, students said that media coverage emphasis on local and national public officials instead of residents and community members who experience sea-level rise first-hand, combined with a lack of scientific explanation of and solutions for sea-level rise reduced the events potential to build reciprocal relationships with younger audiences.

’Now we can talk’ : The role of culture in journalistic boundary work during the boycott of Puerto Rico’s La Comay

This paper explores debate within Puerto Ricos journalistic community regarding the journalistic role of La Comay, a full-sized puppet host of the popular information and entertainment show SuperXclusivo, which faced a boycott in late 2012 and cancelation in early 2013. Calls to boycott and shutter the daily TV show came from the islands LGBT advocates because of comments made by La Comay that they considered homophobic. This analysis of 58 texts from four of Puerto Ricos island-wide news outlets provides an opportunity to examine how a regions dominant cultural archetype—that of the motherly and controversial comadre, after which La Comay is named—appeared in boundary work conducted by local journalists as they determined whether La Comay should have been awarded journalistic status. This paper is not meant to be yet another examination of satirical journalism as much as it is a chance to explore the appearance of a regions culture in the construction or maintenance of its journalistic community.

When Local is National: An analysis of interacting journalistic communities in the coverage of sea rise

This study explicates meanings of local journalism when what was traditionally treated as a local issue for local audiences—Miami’s rising seas—was thrust onto a national stage by national press and for wider audiences. Through a textual analysis of local news stories over a period of three years, this paper highlights how local journalists demarcated local and national journalistic boundaries, using national news to legitimize previous local coverage of sea-level rise, as news sources in local environmental journalism that strengthened presentations by local press as expertise on the issue, ultimately positioning national journalists as “outsiders.”

Urban Policy, Press, and Place: City‐Making in Florida's Miami‐Dade County

ABSTRACT: This article enhances the notion of city-making by explicating its communicative processes and functions within the press. Through a quantitative content analysis and qualitative textual analysis of Miami Herald news coverage related to incorporation and annexation policies and practices over a period of 3 years, we argue for a stronger implication of the press in coverage of local policy- and place-making. Through a quantitative content analysis of 437 articles from the Miami Herald about communities affected by incorporation and annexation and a qualitative textual analysis of 51 articles related to general coverage of geographic policy-making in Miami-Dade County over a 3-year period, we argue that this coverage reveals the press as being a central feature and function of policy-making through the lens of city-making.