Journalists’ Reflections on Changes in News Work
Folker Hanusch, Edson C. Tandoc, Jr., Dimitra Dimitrakopoulou, Nurhaya Muchtar, Kevin Rafter, Mireya Márquez Ramírez, Verica Rupar, and Vittoria Sacco
In 2016 an online job portal in the United States ranked being a newspaper reporter as the worst job, citing shrinking job opportunities and meager salaries (Hare 2016); being a broadcaster was ranked only somewhat higher—as the third-worst job. These were “noble careers,” it acknowledged, but the portal also suggested that “those embarking on these positions should understand the dangers, as well as the surprisingly low pay for each” (CareerCast.com 2016). Those already in the profession in the United States seem to have similarly dismal views; their levels of job satisfaction have decreased over time, as assessed by surveys since 1971 (Willnat and Weaver 2014), because traditional journalism has gone through enormous upheaval, particularly in recent years. Concerns about journalism’s sustainability as an industry have risen in the past several years owing to the impact of digitization and the related lack of a profitable business model. Today the profession is witnessing increasing workloads and new responsibilities for journalists as news organizations go digital-first, prioritizing their online platforms to accommodate news audiences migrating to online. While the U.S. news industry appears to be particularly hard hit by digitization, news media in many other countries have not escaped its impact (see, e.g., Levy and Nielsen 2010; Tong and Lo 2017).
Scholarship on change has significantly increased in the past decade, triggered by the call to examine the impact of technology on social life. The field of journalism studies is no exception. The digitization of news has triggered massive shifts in how journalism is produced, distributed, and consumed (Hermida 2012). Technological change apart, broad economic, societal, and cultural shifts have also contributed to developments such as cutbacks in editorial resources, increases in journalists’ workloads, loss of jobs, larger focus on profit making, stronger pressure from advertising demands, greater importance of audience measures, sensationalism, and shrinking editorial independence. These developments over the past decade or two have led, both in the academic literature and in journalistic narratives, to the emergence of a “crisis in journalism” frame (Franklin 2012, 665).
A close look at the scholarship on journalism reveals that these developments have been viewed predominantly in the context of the United States and other Western nations. Thus our knowledge about transformations in journalism is influenced to a large degree by the Western experience (Mitchelstein and Boczkowski 2009). Scholars have called for studies that have greater regional diversity. Such studies would help broaden our understanding of change because political transitions and upheavals that have swept through countries across the globe have transformed both media systems and the practice of journalism almost everywhere (Gross 2004). Further, such studies would fill the current lacuna in the vast literature on transformations in journalistic work, a literature wherein journalists and their practices “have not often been the main objects of study” (Dickinson, Matthews, and Saltzis 2013, 5). The Worlds of Journalism Study does precisely this. It seeks to understand change from within, by studying transformations as perceived by journalists themselves, rather than at the institutional level, because journalists experience many of these changes themselves as they engage in day-to-day journalistic activities. Further, changes at the institutional and organizational level, such as the restructuring of newsrooms, as well as the demand for new skills and for establishing stronger relationships with audiences, have direct consequences for journalism’s professional identity, values, and norms (Fenton 2010).
Hence from the vantage point of journalism as a discursive institution, one that defines its conditions and conventions in negotiation with societal structures that enable or restrain it (see chapter 2), this chapter attempts to study change in journalists’ own terms, through their own perceptions. More specifically, we investigate how change is unfolding across different journalistic cultures and in journalists’ day-to-day work. As we show in this chapter, journalists around the world generally perceive significant increases in the influence of technology, audiences, and commercial pressures. They perceive the importance of using search engines and technical skills, as well as their working hours, to have increased, but their time for research has decreased. It appears that the more highly developed in terms of information communication technologies a given country is, the more likely it is that journalists in that country perceive a stronger influence of technological aspects in their work over the past five years. At the same time, in countries with a traditionally strong newspaper market, journalists do not report audience influences to have increased as strongly as elsewhere. Further, in media markets that are still expanding or which have not encountered drastic declines, journalists tend to be more positive about their work and place stronger emphasis on increases in professionalization. Given this, we find that the narrative about journalism in crisis is particularly dominant in the West but less so in other parts of the world, pointing to the importance of comparative research on transformations in journalism for a better global understanding.
Studying Change in Journalism
In their attempt to comprehend the complexity of the world, scholars in all disciplinary fields have to contend with the concept of change because change is inherent in all societal institutions. As a concept, change is related to such other concepts as development, evolution, innovation, revolution, and transition (Stickland 1998). As “structural transformation” (Ryder 1965, 843), change refers to a departure from the status quo. Departures that have long-term effects on a particular field in terms of structures and processes need scholarly attention in particular. The magnitude of these effects depends in part on how agents within the field perceive and internalize particular changes. The literature on change focuses on radical institutional reconfigurations caused by external shocks. It pays little attention to the shifts from internal developments that often unfold incrementally (Mahoney and Thelen 2010). But these internal changes, operating as they do, almost invisibly within the field, are also influential and need attention.
The global economic recession of the recent past severely affected media organizations around the world (Paulussen 2012). In an institution where precariousness of employment is becoming common, such employment conditions are further aggravated by organizational changes in a media market pressured to reduce costs and increase profits (Altmeppen 2008). Additionally, digital technologies have enabled the emergence of a plurality of news providers that threatens major media companies’ delivery monopolies. These developments have affected journalists in two major areas: in their practices and ideologies as well as in their relationships with their audiences (Hermans, Vergeer, and d’Haenens 2009; Mitchelstein and Boczkowski 2009; Singer 2011).
Journalists are working in a complex time trying to formulate and understand what it means to be a professional in an online and social media–enabled age (Sacco and Bossio 2014). Digital technologies have facilitated the daily work of journalists, but they have also made these routines more complex. Journalists are now expected to be capable of producing multiple types of content for very different platforms using several tools in newsrooms that count smaller workforces owing to budget cuts. Proficiency in computer and technological skills has become indispensable to successfully managing the different tasks expected of a journalist (Singer 2011). Studies have focused on new ways in which journalists have to search for news content, to present it in innovative ways, and to distribute it instantly (e.g., Hirst and Treadwell 2011; Phillips 2012). These new routines sometimes contradict existing norms. For example, journalists now struggle to reconcile their role as marketers on social media with their normative belief in and practice of their autonomy (Tandoc and Vos 2016).
The use of search engines in doing journalistic fact finding has also become commonplace, yet this creates dilemmas for journalists because search engines are also susceptible to manipulation (Machill and Beiler 2009) and have consequences for journalistic decisions (Dick 2011). Thus while digital technologies have not changed the need for good reporting (Baker 2004), they have placed additional pressures on journalists. Journalists also find themselves shouldered with additional responsibilities, such as reporting via social media (Hanusch 2013). These new tasks increase the amount of time needed to complete their work; today younger journalists report higher rates of burnout than their older colleagues (Reinardy 2011). New responsibilities in the newsroom also require new skill sets, which poses enormous challenges to journalism education around the world (Deuze 2006b).
Changes in technology have led to developments that in turn have affected the relationship between journalists and their audiences. These developments include the rise of crowdsourcing (Akagi and Linning 2013; Poell and Borra 2012), audiences’ ability to distribute news content (Hermida 2012; Thorson 2008), and the increased significance of audience preferences in the production and delivery of news content (Tandoc 2014; Lee and Tandoc 2017). New technologies allow audiences to get involved in the entire cycle of news creation from newsgathering to selecting, editing, producing, and delivering news content (Borger et al. 2013). Blogging and social media have created a space where professional journalists and citizens can have a conversation (Reese et al. 2007). A majority of studies have focused on the relationship between journalists and user-generated content (UGC) in the news production cycle (e.g., Thurman 2008; Boczkowski 2004). Some of these have explored the ways in which UGC affects journalistic norms of impartiality, detachment, and balanced coverage (e.g., Hermida, Lewis, and Zamith 2012). Others have focused on matters such as whether UGC leads to publication of manipulated or unverified information, lack of original investigation, and poor information quality and have in fact found otherwise (e.g., Quandt and Singer 2009).
While measuring perceived changes in journalism is important, it is not easy to do. When we ask journalists about their own perceptions of changes, we run the risk of confounding retrospective assessments of change with respondents’ current circumstances (Pudney 2011). The gold standard is to conduct longitudinal or panel studies to assess changes in journalists’ perceptions over time. Surveys of journalists also suffer from a gap between perception and practice, as recent studies on journalistic role enactment have shown (e.g., Tandoc, Hellmueller, and Vos 2013). Further, journalists may reflect on changes in the journalistic community more generally rather than on changes in their own work. Hence it is important to consider journalists’ assessment of the amount of change in a way similar to the understanding we bring to their role perceptions: that these reflect a discourse about the changes that journalists in a particular community experience. Still, journalists’ change perceptions provide important insights into trends in journalistic transformations not only within particular national boundaries but also in a comparative context across the globe.
Our analysis of perceived changes in journalism is based on a subsample of 19,069 journalists interviewed for the WJS (69 percent of the global sample) for two reasons: in some countries (Denmark, Qatar, and Sudan) the change questions were not asked, and only those journalists who had worked in journalism for a minimum of five years were asked to respond to these questions, based on the reasoning that five years of experience gave them sufficient expertise to make an informed assessment. We used two questions to assess change perceptions. The first was: “The importance of some influences on journalism may have changed over time. Please tell me to what extent these influences have become stronger or weaker during the past five years in your country.” Response options ranged from 5 (“influences strengthened a lot”) to 1 (“influences weakened a lot”), with 3 meaning no change at all. The second question was: “Journalism is in a state of change. Please tell me whether you think there has been an increase or a decrease in the importance of the following aspects of work in your country.” Again, a 5-point scale provided response options ranging from 5 (“importance increased a lot”) to 1 (“importance decreased a lot”), with 3 meaning no change.
Changes in Work Influences
Chapter 2 conceptualized journalism as a field of forces in which institutional actors find themselves in constant struggle (Bourdieu 1998). At the macro level journalism finds itself confronted with pressures from other fields, notably the economic and political fields (Bourdieu 2005). At the micro level agents within journalism participate in a struggle to either transform or preserve the field (Benson and Neveu 2005). What is at stake at both levels is journalism’s autonomy. Journalism, similar to other fields of practice, is dominated by two forms of power, economic capital and cultural capital. Economic capital refers to assets that can be directly converted into money, such as advertising; cultural capital refers to resources that distinguish journalism from other fields, such as expertise, knowledge, and educational credentials (Benson and Neveu 2005). Journalism’s cultural capital helps preserve its autonomy, while its economic capital makes it susceptible to external influences, such as economic pressures (Bourdieu 2005). This relative influence of cultural versus economic capital is subject to constant discursive negotiation within the newsroom and in the institution of journalism as a whole.
The various factors that were assessed for change can be conceptually grouped into influences related to journalism’s economic and cultural capital. In general, journalists around the world see influences related to economic capital, such as audiences and competition, as having become stronger, while those related to cultural capital, particularly journalism education and even ethical standards, have remained relatively stable (see table 10.1).
Table 10.1 Perceived changes in influences on journalism across countries
|
N |
Meana |
Fb |
Eta2 |
|||||
|
Social media |
18,331 |
4.44 |
46.04 |
.137 |
||||
|
User-generated content, such as blogs |
18,143 |
4.06 |
28.32 |
.090 |
||||
|
Competition |
18,276 |
4.00 |
27.75 |
.088 |
||||
|
Audience feedback |
18,158 |
3.91 |
29.01 |
.092 |
||||
|
Profit making pressures |
17,930 |
3.89 |
37.37 |
.116 |
||||
|
Audience involvement in news production |
18,045 |
3.84 |
25.95 |
.083 |
||||
|
Advertising considerations |
17,877 |
3.79 |
25.82 |
.084 |
||||
|
Pressure toward sensational news |
18,035 |
3.69 |
33.30 |
.105 |
||||
|
Audience research |
17,634 |
3.64 |
26.57 |
.087 |
||||
|
Public relations |
17,956 |
3.60 |
33.79 |
.106 |
||||
|
Western ways of practicing journalism |
4,450 |
3.47 |
22.50 |
.105 |
||||
|
Journalism education |
17,535 |
3.38 |
56.28 |
.169 |
||||
|
Ethical standards |
18,143 |
3.07 |
73.36 |
.204 |
a Weighted.
b df = 63, except for “Western ways of practicing journalism” (df = 23); all p < .001.
Globally, the strongest perception of change was in the influence of social media. This seems to be almost universal, with national differences accounting for 14 percent of the variance in journalists’ responses. The influence of UGC came next, marked by even more agreement across countries, with national differences accounting for only 9 percent of variance. Social media and UGCs are platforms for audiences’ participation in news construction (Loosen and Schmidt 2012); thus it is not surprising that the influence of audience feedback and involvement in news production were also perceived to have become significantly stronger over the past five years, ranking fourth and sixth, respectively. In essence, journalists around the world recognize the increasing influence of the audience on journalism, facilitated now, it appears, by participatory technologies.
Our respondents also perceived increasing impact from economic factors such as competition and profit-making pressures, which ranked third and fifth. To a lesser extent, the influence of external factors, particularly advertising considerations and public relations, was also perceived to have strengthened in the past five years. National variations were not large, accounting for between 8 percent and 12 percent of the variance for these factors. It is clear, then, that journalists around the world perceived that the influence of economic aspects had increased; as a result, they likely recognize that these factors have become increasingly central to their work.
The influence of journalism education was perceived to have increased only slightly. However, in the case of the influence of ethical standards, despite this period when trust in journalism seems to be shaky, marked by accusations of media bias across different media systems and the migration of audiences to other—albeit more questionable—information sources (Hanitzsch, Van Dalen, and Steindl 2018), journalists did not see any increase. National differences, however, accounted for 20 percent of the variance, indicating a considerable range of opinions in this regard across countries (see fig. 10.1).
Social media and UGC appear to be key influences on journalists across the globe, and this was predominantly the case in countries that are highly developed in the use of information communication technologies (ICTs). We found significant correlations between the 2015 ICT Development Index (IDI), published by the United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU 2015), and a perceived growth in the influence of social media and of UGC (see table 10.2). The IDI measures three main indicators—ICT access, use, and skills—that together make up a composite index that provides a snapshot of ICT development across the globe. Hence our results indicate that the more technologically developed countries are, the more likely are journalists there to perceive social media and UGC as having become increasingly growing influences on journalism.
Recent journalism scholarship is replete with studies of the impact of these technologies on journalism in the West (see, e.g., Bossio 2017; Hedman and Djerf-Pierre 2013; Naab and Sehl 2017), and it does appear that technologies are foremost on journalists’ mind in countries in Western Europe and North America. One typical example is Australia, which reports some of the highest increases in these influences. Recent studies have noted how digital influences have contributed to a significant transformation of journalism culture in Australia, with increased job precariousness, significant declines in circulation and profits for legacy media, the emergence of a number of digital-only media, and high social media use among journalists (Hanusch 2017; Hanusch and Bruns 2017; Zion et al. 2016).
Figure 10.1 Journalists’ perceived changes in influences on journalism across countries (distribution of mean scores)
Source: WJS; N = 64 (for Western ways of practicing journalism: N = 24).
Note: Scale: 5 = “strengthened a lot” … 1 = “weakened a lot.”
Table 10.2 Correlates of perceived changes in influences on journalism
Notes: Pearson’s correlation coefficient. ***p < .001; **p < .01; *p < .05. N = 64 (countries) unless otherwise indicated.
a Freedom House; Freedom of the Press Index; scale reversed.
b Reporters Without Borders; World Press Freedom Index; scale reversed.
c United Nations International Telecommunication Union; N = 57.
d WARC, in percent of all advertising spending; N = 53.
e WARC, in percent of all advertising spending; N = 48.
f Economist Intelligence Unit; EIU Democracy Index; N = 63.
g World Bank; percentile rank.
h World Bank; growth of real GDP; N = 63; current US$.
i UNDP; Human Development Index; N = 63.
j Scores calculated based on WVS/EVS data; N = 56.
k All N = 24, except for c N = 21, d N = 17, e N = 14, j N =18.
In contrast, journalists in many African countries and in South Asia, which score comparatively low on the IDI, did not indicate as large an increase in the influence of these technologies as their Western counterparts. This is not to say that technologies like social media are irrelevant in these countries. In Egypt, for example, even though journalists ranked the rise in influence of social media lower than did journalists in a vast majority of countries, the national average rating was 3.98 on our 5-point scale (see table A.6 in the appendix). This still represents a considerable increase, and the role that social media have played in the country in recent years is well documented (see, e.g., Hamdy and Gomaa 2012; Tufekci and Wilson 2012).
Digital technologies have also played an important role in reshaping the relationship between journalists and their audiences (Loosen and Schmidt 2012), and our results demonstrate the increasing influence of audience feedback and audience research perceived by journalists. As noted earlier, there was little variance by country, and it is therefore difficult to identify any significant relationships with specific factors at the societal level. However, some trends do emerge across countries. Our results suggest that influences from audience feedback are related to the dominance of print journalism in a particular country. The relative strength of print journalism is indicated in the percentage of advertising that is spent on newspapers in a given country (according to the WARC Adspend Database, 2015). This advertising spending is significantly correlated with audience feedback, audience research, and audience involvement in news production (table 10.2). Hence the stronger a country’s newspaper market, the less likely it is that journalists in that country view audience feedback and research as increasingly important influences on their work. A number of studies have repeatedly pointed to resistance among print journalists to accept audience feedback and research (Anderson 2011; MacGregor 2007; Singer 2004). We find a small increase in perceived influence from audience feedback, research, and involvement in countries such as Austria, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland, all of which have maintained a relatively strong print journalism sector (Newman et al. 2017). At the other end of the spectrum, journalists in countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico—all of which have historically strong broadcasting markets (Newman et al. 2017)—were more likely to have perceived influences from audience feedback and research to have become stronger.
Across the globe, journalists also perceived economic factors as increasingly influential. As noted earlier, there was very little cross-national variance in the perception of how the influence of competition, profit-making pressures, advertising considerations, and public relations on journalism have changed. At the national level these were all highly correlated with each other, with r > .55 in all cases. The strongest correlation was for advertising considerations and profit-making pressures (r = .80, p < .001, N = 64), indicating that the more journalists in a country perceived that the influence of profit-making pressures had increased, the more likely they were to also perceive increases in influence from advertising.
The countries in which journalists reported the largest increases in pressure from competition are located across the world. Among these, Austria, Finland, Germany, and Switzerland are beginning to experience important transformations and market pressures in their traditional print markets. Switzerland and Austria, for example, are seeing a slow decline in print circulation, the emergence of digital competitors, and government initiatives to maintain or enhance diversity in their media markets that have historically been considerably concentrated (Dal Zotto, Sacco, and Schenker 2017; Trappel 2017). These factors possibly led journalists in these countries to perceive more acutely the increase in competition pressures than did journalists in the United Kingdom, for example, which has always had one of the most competitive environments for journalism (Davis 2014), and from which vantage point the change may not have appeared as drastic.
From the Global South, Kenyan and South African journalists also reported increasing influence from competition, in fact more strongly than did their counterparts in many other countries. Both countries have indeed experienced increased competition in their media markets in recent years (Ireri et al. 2018; Lohner, Neverla, and Banjac 2017). Another case in point is New Zealand, where journalists scored the influence of all commercial factors—increased competition, profit-making pressures, advertising considerations, and public relations—high. News media in New Zealand have experienced significant transformations, through organizational restructuring, shrinking revenues, stronger competition, and a decline in offline advertising revenue coupled with slow growth in digital advertising income (Hollings, Hanusch, and Balasubramanian 2016).
We found considerable association between perceptions of influence from commercial pressures and from the pressure to produce sensational news. In particular, the influence of pressure to produce sensational news was significantly correlated with that of profit-making pressures (r = .73, p < .001, N = 64), a finding consistent with research that suggests sensationalism is driven by profit orientation (Skovsgaard 2014). We also found that the more journalists in a country perceived the influence of competition to have increased, the more likely they were to perceive increasing influence from the pressure to produce sensational news (r = .37, p < .01, N = 64). Studies have found that more competitive media systems lead to a higher prevalence of sensationalized news content (Arbaoui, De Swert, and Van der Brug 2016). Several southeastern European countries, such as Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Albania, and Kosovo, were among the countries in which journalists perceived a particularly high increase in the influence of pressure to produce sensational news. Media in these and other postcommunist countries have been undergoing enormous transformations since the late twentieth century (Gross and Jakubowicz 2013), including in particular witnessing the arrival of pluralistic media markets marked by strong competition and increased sensational content (Pjesivac, Spasovska, and Imre 2016).
The largest, and most substantial, variations in perceptions were found for the influence of journalism education and of ethical standards (table 10.1). Both of these were strongly correlated at the national level (r = .77, p < .001, N = 64), indicating that in countries where journalists perceived an increase in the influence of journalism education, they also perceived an increase in the influence of ethical standards. We found a relatively even split in the number of countries where journalists thought the influence of both had increased and those where journalists thought it had decreased. Among those where journalists saw an increase, we find countries of the Global South, predominantly South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Latin America. Indeed, we found significant correlations between the level of human development and perceived increases in the influence of journalism education and ethical standards (see table 10.2). Thus the less developed countries are, the more likely journalists are to perceive an increase in these influences. This may be explained by the fact that formalized journalism education has only recently become a concern in these countries, as they set about further professionalizing their journalistic workforce, particularly in terms of developing their own, de-Westernized approaches to such education (Skjerdal 2012; Ullah 2014). Bhutan is a particularly interesting case in this regard. The country became a democracy only in 2008, and this development led to the adoption of a free media system (Josephi 2017). Hence journalism in Bhutan underwent a fundamental transition from being state-controlled to being free, bringing with it a renewed focus on journalism training. In our study, Bhutanese journalists saw journalism education as the one influence that had increased the most, more so than commercial and technological influences.
Where the influence was perceive to have decreased, we found predominantly Western, developed media markets in Europe and North America, but also countries like Russia and Israel. In Russia, for example, this may be explained by the fact that tertiary journalism education is experiencing an important era of transition, with tension between unprecedented media reforms in the digital age and educational reforms (Lukina and Vartanova 2017). This situation is also found in many Western countries, which have for a long time experienced such tensions between industry demands for hands-on, practical skills and university educational priorities (Obijiofor and Hanusch 2011).
Journalists’ perception of changes in the influence of ethical standards is similar to, and goes hand-in-hand with, their perceptions about changes in the influence of journalism education. It is also negatively related to the perceived change in the influence of profit-making pressures (r = -.41, p < .001, N = 64) and of pressure to produce sensational news (r = -.30, p < .05, N = 64), suggesting that increasing influence of such pressures is related to the decreasing influence of ethical standards. It is striking that in countries where journalists support collaborative and accommodative roles (see chapter 7), they are also more likely to perceive an increase in the influence of ethical standards (collaborative role: r = .59, p < .001; accommodative role: r = .55, p < .001, N = 64). Alternatively, it can be said that journalists in countries that reject the collaborative and accommodative roles—which can be found mostly in the West (chapter 7)—are most likely to perceive a decline in the influence of ethical standards. These findings suggest important connections among perceptions about roles, about commercial influences on journalism, and about the influence of ethical standards in journalism. Our finding is consistent with the broader critical position in the West that laments an increase in profit motives, a reduction in autonomy, and a lowering of ethical standards in journalism (McManus 1997).
The exportation of Western journalistic values and practices to the Global South has been a topic of discussion in journalism scholarship for some time (Boyd-Barrett 2014). Journalists in twenty-four non-Western countries indicated how much the influence of Western ways of practicing journalism had changed. While in general this influence had not become stronger to the same degree as technological, audience, or commercial influences had, journalists still reported a significant increase. We found the largest increases in influence in Kenya, the United Arab Emirates, Sierra Leone, and Malawi, while Singapore and Russia actually perceived a decrease. The latter findings may arguably be related to these being more mature media markets, which are more assertive of having developed their own journalistic values and practices. Singapore, for example, has a long history of developing its own brand of development journalism juxtaposed to Western traditions (Xu 2005), while in Russia what Western journalism represents is seen as potentially undermining the cultural code of the field (Lowrey and Erzikova 2013). We found that perceptions of an increase in the influence of Western ways of practicing journalism are related to a similar perception about the influence of journalism education (r = .77, p < .001, N = 24). In many African countries in particular, journalism education is still largely imported through Western textbooks and curricula. There is a heightened awareness of this problem, as displayed through regular calls for a de-Westernization and Africanization of journalism on the continent (Banda et al. 2007; Dube 2016).
Changes in Aspects of Work
We also asked journalists to indicate their perceptions about changes (increases or decreases) in their respective countries in certain often researched and discussed aspects of their work such as technical skills, time, freedom, education, and credibility. Our results indicate that, much like for influences, technological aspects appear to have changed the most (table 10.3).
The use of search engines and technical skills were ranked first and second, while interaction with audiences—arguably the result of technological innovations—was ranked fourth overall; the relatively small amount of variance in these variables indicates considerable agreement across countries (see fig. 10.2). Journalists perceived substantial increases in the number of hours they worked, relatively uniformly across countries, and a decrease in the time they had available for researching stories, with considerable national differences as indicated by the relatively large variances (roughly 26 percent). Journalists also reported a slight decrease in journalism’s credibility, but here, too, national differences accounted for 26 percent of the variance. They reported increases in the importance of having a university degree as well as in having a degree in journalism or a related field. Journalists also perceived a slight increase in journalism’s relevance for society, but their perception of their freedom to make editorial decisions remained more or less at the same level. All these aspects of journalists’ work exhibited substantial variance—around 17 to 18 percent—pointing to a diversity of perceptions across countries.
Table 10.3 Perceived changes in aspects of journalistic work across countries
|
N |
Meana |
Fb |
Eta2 |
|||||
|
Use of search engines |
18,292 |
4.45 |
50.91 |
.150 |
||||
|
Technical skills |
18,236 |
4.13 |
35.10 |
.108 |
||||
|
Average working hours of journalists |
18,006 |
3.86 |
25.96 |
.084 |
||||
|
Interactions of journalists with their audiences |
18,051 |
3.69 |
23.57 |
.076 |
||||
|
Having a university degree |
17,823 |
3.51 |
59.09 |
.173 |
||||
|
Having a degree in journalism or a related field |
17,804 |
3.40 |
60.93 |
.178 |
||||
|
Relevance of journalism for society |
18,128 |
3.40 |
62.04 |
.178 |
||||
|
Journalists’ freedom to make editorial decisions |
17,894 |
3.07 |
57.13 |
.168 |
||||
|
Credibility of journalism |
18,139 |
2.94 |
98.70 |
.256 |
||||
|
Time available for researching stories |
18,141 |
2.54 |
99.14 |
.257 |
a Weighted.
b df = 63; all p < .001.
Figure 10.2 Journalists’ perceived changes in aspects of work across countries (distribution of mean scores)
Source: WJS; N = 64.
Note: Scale: 5 = “increased a lot” … 1 = “decreased a lot.”
As for the importance of technical skills and the use of search engines, it was predominantly journalists in Western countries who reported the largest increases (much like they indicated the increasing influence of technology earlier). These countries have high press freedom, and thus it was not surprising that we found significant correlations between these perceptions and the level of press freedom as measured by Freedom House (see table 10.4). Among the nations scoring in the top twenty, we found Anglophone countries (Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States) but also countries from southern Europe and Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Mexico, and Spain; see table A.7 in the appendix). This finding appears in line with a study of Spanish and UK journalists, in which José Alberto García Avilés et al. (2004) found that journalists saw a need to develop technical skills. In contrast, technological aspects are less of a concern in countries that have a less free media system and that may be less advanced technologically. China, which has a highly controlled media system but is technologically very advanced, presents an anomaly: its journalists rank toward the bottom in terms of their perception of increases in the importance of technical skills and in the use of search engines. Broadly, the strong political influences on their work (see chapter 5; see also Tong 2017) as well as tight censorship of search engines in China may be the explanation (Tang and Sampson 2012; Xu 2015). Further, China’s complex system of personal networks—known as guanxi—and its impact on journalistic work (Xu 2016) may make personal connections comparatively more important when researching stories.
Scholars have for some time documented the negative impact that technological innovations have on the time journalists have for completing core tasks like researching stories (Underwood, Anthony, and Stamm 1994). We found that in countries where journalists perceived an increased importance of technical skills, they also noted an increase in work hours (r = .47, p < .001, N = 64) and a decrease in time available for research (r = -.36, p < .01, N = 64). A similar relationship was found for the use of search engines (work hours: r = .51, p < .001; time available: r = -.52, p < .001, N = 64). On a broader plane, the Global ICT Development Index was also negatively correlated with time available for research (see table 10.4). The more technologically advanced a country is, the more likely are its journalists to perceive that they have less time for researching stories, suggesting possibly that these technologies are introducing new routines and taking journalists away from their core tasks. The largest decreases in research time were perceived by journalists from technologically advanced countries in Western Europe. Growing time pressures have been documented for some time by UK journalists, for example, who report they are increasingly fulfilling administrative functions (Witschge and Nygren 2009). Similar examples can be found across Europe and in the United States, with news organizations aiming to produce more with less, and journalists increasingly expected not only to produce content but to also moderate and curate online (Bakker 2012), and to promote their stories and interact with audiences on social media (Tandoc and Vos 2016).
Table 10.4 Correlates of perceived changes in aspects of journalistic work
Notes: Pearson’s correlation coefficient. ***p < .001; **p < .01; *p < .05. N = 64 (countries) unless otherwise indicated.
a Freedom House; scale reversed.
b Reporters Without Borders; scale reversed.
c United Nations International Telecommunication Union; N = 57.
d WARC, in percent of all advertising spending; N = 53.
e WARC, in percent of all advertising spending; N = 48.
f Economist Intelligence Unit; N = 63.
g World Bank; percentile rank.
h World Bank; Atlas method; N = 63; current US$.
i UNDP; N = 63.
j Scores calculated based on WVS/EVS data; N = 56.
While our results support the narrative that journalism is experiencing a crisis in the West (Franklin 2012), as well as in a number of transitional countries, we also found that nearly one in three countries actually reported a slight increase in time available to research stories. As noted earlier, these countries included Middle Eastern, African, and South Asian nations that are still on the other side of the digital divide. Further, news media in the industrialized and technologized countries of the Global North have experienced relatively good work conditions but have in recent years also seen significant downturns in their industry. In contrast, journalism and the news media are still expanding, or at least not contracting to a similar degree, in many countries of the Global South. One good example in this regard is Bangladesh, which has experienced exponential growth in its media sector since the turn of the century, spurred on by deregulation of the media market but also through growth of the country’s middle class, increased literacy, higher purchasing power, and consumer demand for pluralistic media (Ullah 2016). India, which in recent times has undergone an “explosion” in its media scene in terms of numbers, is another example (Jain 2015). Despite this dynamic and pluralistic Indian media landscape, structural developments like commercialism, rising levels of concentration and cross-media ownership are also beginning to affect journalism on the subcontinent (Chadha 2017). This may explain why journalists in India reported little change in the time they have available for research.
The crisis narrative is also evident when we examine journalists’ perceptions of their freedom to make editorial decisions. Here we found that perceptions of increases or decreases in editorial freedom are strongly correlated with perceptions of the time journalists have available for research (r = .82, p < .001, N = 64). This suggests that in countries where journalists felt they had less time for core tasks, they also felt they had less autonomy. Further, in countries where journalists perceived decreasing editorial freedom, they also believed that journalistic credibility and the relevance of journalism for society were decreasing (credibility: r = .90, p < .001; relevance: r = .85, p < .001, N = 64). At the societal level, perceptions of increases in editorial freedom are also related to press freedom, human development, and emancipative values (see table. 10.4), indicating the importance of journalism’s opportunity structures. These results shed further light on the earlier findings that journalists in countries with high press freedom, high human development, and a stronger appreciation for emancipative values enjoy greater editorial autonomy (see chapter 6). While this editorial autonomy was not correlated with journalists’ perception of increases or decreases in editorial freedom, it would appear that in societies that provide for larger amounts of freedom, journalists more acutely see these as under threat.
Hence we found very similar national trends across journalists’ perceptions of changes in editorial autonomy, in the credibility of journalism, as well as in journalism’s relevance for society. Largely, journalists in countries with saturated media markets that have experienced substantial pressures in recent years were quite pessimistic about these aspects and adhered to the well-documented crisis narrative that has been the subject of so much recent journalism scholarship. An additional factor for this pessimism may be that public trust in the news media is typically declining in these countries (Hanitzsch, Van Dalen, and Steindl 2018). Faced with a skeptical public, journalists themselves may adopt a more negative view of the news media. On the other hand, we found a significant number of countries where journalists appear to be comparatively more positive about these aspects of their work. These media systems tend to be still expanding, or at least they are not under as much pressure as elsewhere.
In line with this expansion, we can also interpret our findings in relation to perceived increases in the importance of university education generally, and journalism education more specifically. Here we found strong correlations between the perceived changes in the influence of journalism education and the importance of having both a university degree (r = .76, p < .001, N = 64) and a degree in journalism or a related field (r = .81, p < .001, N = 64). While globally journalists typically saw such degrees as playing a more important role, this was particularly pronounced in countries that had placed an increasing focus on the tertiary education of journalists, such as in Africa and parts of Latin America. Tertiary journalism education has a longer tradition in many Western countries and is thus well established there, while in many countries of the Global South, this educational trend has emerged only more recently (Skjerdal 2012). For example, Ethiopia has invested considerable effort into formalizing educational programs for journalism (Skjerdal and Ngugi 2007), and we found that Ethiopian journalists perceived a strong increase in the importance of journalism education. Similarly, formalized journalism education in Malawi—where journalists also reported an increase in its importance—emerged only in the mid-1990s, and news media still have some way to go along the path of professionalization (Manda 2015).
Conclusions
This chapter explored the degree to which journalists around the world perceived changes in their profession, in terms of both changing influences and changing aspects of work. Predominantly, our results paint a picture of the growing significance of technological and commercial pressures, a trend that has been well documented in journalism scholarship over recent years (see, e.g., Altmeppen 2008; Boczkowski 2004; Bruns 2008; Lowrey and Anderson 2005; Paulussen 2012; Robinson 2007). This transformation appears to be a global phenomenon, but, as we have noted throughout, there are important differences based on journalism’s opportunity structures. First, a society’s level of ICT development is related to journalists’ perceptions of changes in the role technology plays in their work. Second, in countries with strong newspaper markets—as indicated through advertising spending in newspapers—journalists perceive a less pronounced increase in audience influences compared with elsewhere. Third, in media systems that are still expanding—or which have not experienced the drastic decline as elsewhere—journalists tend to be more positive about their conditions of work and feel that increases in pressures from technology and commercial aspects are not as strong as elsewhere. In these countries there is instead slightly greater emphasis on processes of professionalization, indicated through perceptions about journalism education and ethical standards.
Journalists’ perceptions of how different aspects of and influences on their work are changing are relevant, because such perceptions can affect how they do their work. Therefore future studies should examine how perceptions of change are related to how journalists carry out their work, such as when it comes to choosing what to report about. How journalists perceive and experience change can also affect them psychologically, and scholars should, for example, examine how journalists’ perceptions of the various transformations in their day-to-day routines affect levels of job satisfaction and feelings of burnout.
In terms of limitations, we need to acknowledge the possible impact of the period—2012 to 2016—when data were gathered for the WJS. During this period many journalists were affected not only by the aforementioned technological changes but also, like workers in other professions, by the global economic crisis, which no doubt affected many countries in our sample. In this regard, employment-related pressures, including increased work hours, would not be exclusive to journalists. For example, the ongoing process of precarization is not limited to the journalism profession; rather, it is occurring in a large number of professions (Elefante and Deuze 2012) and appears to be strongly pronounced in the Western media systems in our study. The economic crisis may well be another external factor influencing how journalists rate the relevance and credibility of their profession. For example, in several European countries, the external economic environment that necessitated bailouts by the International Monetary Fund and European governments may have dampened journalists’ perceptions of their work even if nothing much had changed in journalism per se.
Most significantly, while our findings largely confirm the crisis narratives established in the literature, the crisis appears to be particularly pertinent to Western, developed countries; many other journalistic cultures are perhaps not (yet) quite as severely affected. Thus, as journalism scholars, it is important that we differentiate our assessments of the state of journalism across the globe and take account of the specific political, economic, social, cultural, and technological contexts of particular countries and regions.