Rune Ottosen

JOURNALISTS IN THE MAKING

This article examines Norwegian journalism students’ views about their profession and education at different phases in their career and also outlines the social background of the new generation of journalists. The article presents key findings from several surveys of students conducted at the two most popular and prestigious journalism schools in Norway between 2000 and 2004. The main aim is to investigate any development in attitudes to different professional values between the beginning of students’ studies through to their first years as working journalists. What do the journalists of tomorrow consider to be the most important tasks for journalism in society? What motivates them to study journalism? What kind of knowledge, skills and traits are seen as crucial for journalists? And to what extent do the J-schools actually make a difference in the shaping of the next generation of journalists? An important finding is that most professional attitudes seem to stay quite stable from the beginning of studies until early career, though the results also indicate a general decline in classical journalistic professional idealism after entering the newsroom.

The war in Afghanistan and peace journalism in practice

This article argues that Johan Galtung’s theory on peace journalism can serve as a fruitful supplement to theory-building in the field of war and peace journalism, and critically reviews the scholarly debate on peace journalism. By using examples from Norwegian media coverage of the war in Afghanistan and examples of research on the Norwegian media coverage of the war, the author argues that Galtung’s theory on peace journalism can also serve as a useful platform for teaching and journalism training in the field of conflict and war reporting.

Digital Challenges on the Norwegian Media Scene

Abstract This article summarises findings from a research project on the digitisation of Norwegian newsrooms, analysing trends in the industry and changes in user-habits. Findings suggest that most journalists are positive about the digitisation of the newsroom but fear that cutbacks in staff will prevent them from exploiting the potential of the new technology. They also fear that too much focus on technical skills will leave less space for critical journalism. Findings also suggest a correlation between resources used to develop the online edition and the perceived ethical standards of the content. More online journalism leads to a higher degree of scepticism among the readers. There are two different justifications for using resources on the online edition. Some newspaper executives hope to use the online edition to recruit new readers to the paper edition while another group hopes to develop the breadth of market service through a portfolio of publishing platforms.

The Military-Industrial Complex Revisited: Computer Games as War Propaganda

President Dwight D. Eisenhower became famous for his speech in 1960 on “The military-industrial complex” as he was leaving the White House at the end of his presidential term. His message was in short that the alliance between the arms industry, the armed forces, and influential segments of the political elite represented a threat to democracy (Ottosen 2007b). He admitted that he as president was unable to control this segment of the society. Almost fifty years later, the power of the militaryindustrial complex is even stronger, but very few politicians invite the electorate to reflect on the consequences of this power force for the future of democracy. Eisenhower’s frank statement has been supported by findings from peace researchers who predict that the mechanisms at work in the arms race and military spending on a global scale will even be stronger in the future (Gleditsch and Njølstad 1990). According to the nongovernmental organization United for Peace and Justice, the United States, being the most formidable military power, spends more than the rest of the G7 countries combined:

Peace journalism: A proposition for conceptual and methodological improvements

The peace journalism (PJ) field now has an appreciable amount of published material to show for its first decade of serious operation, in research, teaching and training alike. It amounts to a serious project to reform professional education programmes in journalism. But so far, the proposed remedies are more individual projects than coordinated and organized reforms; they are scattered geographically and do not have a global scope. This article discusses the need for a joint approach together with universities, colleges, training institutes and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and inter-governmental organizations, if PJ is to contribute to establishing journalism as an important factor in international norm-setting and to raise the profession’s ethical standards with regard to violent conflicts. To enable this, further conceptual development is also necessary. A combination of Johan Galtung’s PJ approach, with insights from critical discourse analysis (CDA), offers a way of managing the demand for contextual reflexivity that has been raised in the debate about PJ. CDA offers an opportunity to address war and peace issues in a more comprehensive manner, integrating analysis of the propaganda discourses during peacetime, underestimated by Galtung in his model.

Conflict Coverage in a Digital Age: Challenges for African Media

In an increasingly networked and globalized—or globalizing—society, the recent emergence of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) in a fast-pluralized media ecology presents challenges for most of Africa’s hitherto state-dominated “big man” politics. We argue in this chapter that in situations of political-ethnic conflicts, new digital tools produce opportunities for propaganda, but at the same time they also offer new possibilities for counterpropaganda. Alternative information from blogs, e-mail lists, Web sites, especially through NGOs with Web sites and e-mail networks, have—in addition to cell phone text messaging—complicated recent political contests linked to socioeconomic tensions. This chapter not only analyzes the links between violence and electoral politics but also examines the contribution of new ICTs in exacerbating or ameliorating inter-“ethnic” and interparty violence—especially around national polls in selected African countries.

Blood and Security during the Norway Attacks: Authorities’ Twitter Activity and Silence

Abstract This chapter analyses the Norwegian authorities’ presence on Twitter during the 22 July 2011 terrorist attacks. Twitter activity by two official institutions is analysed in particular, namely, the blood bank at Oslo University Hospital and the Norwegian Police Security Services (PST). Our findings show that the Norwegian authorities were almost completely absent on Twitter during the critical hours of the terrorist attack, and that there was no coordination and synchronisation of communication from the authorities. This official silence allowed the diffusion of speculation and misinformation to take place; these were neither corrected nor addressed, as the analysed PST case shows. In contrast, the blood bank used Twitter to mobilise blood donors to address an acute problem: a shortage of blood to treat casualties. The chapter concludes by offering recommendations to the authorities for future major incidents.

WIKILEAKS: ETHICAL MINEFIELD OR A DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION IN JOURNALISM?

This article discusses the ethical dilemmas involved in using WikiLeaks as a source for critical reporting. On one hand, WikiLeaks has provided news organisations with useful material for their reports, but the ethical dilemmas arising from publishing this material with—in many cases—unknown sources, remains a problem. Using framing analyses inspired by the work of Robert Entman, the stories about Afghanistan published after the leaks in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten are compared to other news stories from Afghanistan in the same period. The samples in this survey are picked from both the online and the print version in order to get as many stories from Afghanistan as possible. All the stories were placed in pre-defined frames. The findings may also be seen in the light of earlier content analyses of the Afghanistan coverage in selected Norwegian media. The study concludes that the impact of WikiLeaks has been more significant for the framing than in the choice of topics. It seems that stories based on the WikiLeaks source tend to have a more critical narrative than other articles about Afghanistan when the topic is related to civilian casualties.

The Norwegian journalism education landscape

Journalism is one of the most popular study programmes in Norway. There are several pathways into the Norwegian news industry for young people seeking a career in journalism, but it is increasingly common for aspiring journalists to start off with a journalism education. In this article the landscape of Norwegian journalism education is presented, including a closer look at the content of the studies, the connection to the industry and the students of journalism themselves. The description of the students is based on a dataset from a series of questionnaires administered between 2000 and 2004 to three complete cohorts of Norwegian journalism students at Oslo University College and Volda University College, the largest and oldest J-schools in Norway. Norwegian journalism education can be described as working quite well as measured by both the students’ success in the job market and their expressed satisfaction with their studies. The fact that the application rate for several years has been among the very highest compared with other university programmes also validates this point. Keywords: Norway, journalism education, relation between industry and j-schools. p>

Targeting the Player

Abstract The historical roots of the technology and design of computer games can be found in Pentagon-supported research in 1960s. Many computer games had their origin as simulators and training equipment for the armed forces. It can be argued that the content of computer games concerning real wars reflects the ideological interest of the military-industrial complex or the military-entertainment complex, as Robin Andersen has redefined it. Selected games such as ’America’s Army’, ‘Army of Two’’ and companies such as ‘Kuma War’ are analysed critically within the framework of the fight for ideological hegemony in the Global War on Terror. It is argued that when computer game are read as text, they can also be read as propaganda.