Mediji na manjinskim jezicima i novinari u kontekstu društvene integracije u Estoniji

The article focuses on the role of Russian-speaking journalists and the potential of Russianlanguage media in advancing societal integration in Estonia. As a consequence of socialist colonization during the Soviet regime a quarter of Estonian population today is Russian-speaking. The two main language communities have different informational spaces separated by a language barrier. Integration can only be successful if there is unhampered communication between minority and majority groups, and equal opportunities for individuals and groups to participate in the public sphere. First, we discuss the concept of minority language media and the position of Russian-language media in the context of…

Issues of Ethics and Methods in Studying Social Media

The Editorial raises some challenging ethical and methodological aspects of Internet based research (such as protection of informational privacy, informed consent, general ethical guidelines vs case-based approach), which are further discussed in the five articles of this special issue.

Journalists’ Associations as Political Instruments in Central and Eastern Europe

This editorial provides the overall context for the five cases—three national and two international—covered in this thematic issue. While the cases are from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), they highlight fundamental questions of journalism everywhere, including contradictions between freedom and control, professionalism and politics, individual and collective. The associations of journalists serve as very useful platforms to study these questions, especially at historical turning points when the whole political system changed, as happened twice in CEE after World War II.

LUOTSIVA. Luotettavuutta ja sitoutuneisuutta vahvistamassa : sanomalehtien Facebook-sivut yleisösuhteen lujittajina. Tutkimusraportti

Tässä tutkimuksessa on selvitetty, minkä tyyppisiä postauksia ja minkälaista sisältöä neljän kotimaisen sanomalehden Facebook-sivuilla jaetaan ja millaista aktiivisuutta ne lukijoissa herättävät. Tutkimuskohteina ovat kaksi maakuntalehteä (Keskisuomalainen ja Kaleva) ja kaksi paikallislehteä (Jämsän Seutu ja SisäSuomen Lehti), jotka ovat sitoutuneet hankkeeseen yhteistyöosapuolina. Kehittämishankkeen tavoitteena on kehittää postaus- ja keskustelustrategioita, jotka loisivat lukijoiden ja lehtien välille aktiivista ja tiivistä vuoropuhelua. Tutkimuksen aineisto koostuu neljän sanomalehden yhden vuoden Facebook-datasta aikaväliltä 1.6.2016 - 31.5.2017. Lisäksi tutkimuksen taustoittamiseksi ha…

LUOTSIVA. Luotettavuutta ja sitoutuneisuutta vahvistamassa : sanomalehtien Facebook-sivut yleisösuhteen lujittajina. Tutkimusraportti 2

Kehittämishankkeen tavoitteena oli luoda strategioita, jotka ohjaisivat sanomalehtien toimituksia määrätietoisesti käyttämään Facebook-sivujaan yleisösuhteen vahvistamiseksi ja verkkolukijakunnan laajentamiseksi. nonPeerReviewed

The Protean Nature of Communist Censorship : The Testimony of Collections

Ethical Demands and Responsibilities in Online Publishing: The Finnish Experience

Rapid advancement of online communication and publishing poses new challenges to media policy-makers and regulators for both statutory regulation and self-regulation. For journalists, ‘the Internet shapes and redefines a number of moral and ethical issues … when operating online or making use of online resources’ (Deuze and Yeshua, 2001: 276).

Frames and Contradictions of the Journalistic Profession

In his essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism Oscar Wilde wrote: ‘In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press’. His words reflect the noticeable power the press had acquired in society already by the end of the 19th century. Journalism began to obtain characteristics of a profession, developing from craft towards an occupation demanding certain specific qualities.

Chances and Challenges of Computational Data Gathering and Analysis

Digital and social media and large available data-sets generate various new possibilities and challenges for conducting research focused on perpetually developing online news ecosystems. This paper presents a novel computational technique for gathering and processing large quantities of data from Facebook. We demonstrate how to use this technique for detecting and analysing issue-attention cycles and news flows in Facebook groups and pages. Although the paper concentrates on a Finnish Facebook group as a case study, the demonstrated method can be used for gathering and analysing large sets of data from various social network sites and national contexts. The paper also discusses Facebook pla…

A View from the Inside: The Dawning Of De-Westernization of CEE Media and Communication Research?

The Editorial outlines some characteristics of the development of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) media and communication scholarship during the past 25 years. In the majority of CEE countries, the media and communication research was re-established after the collapse of communism. Since then, a critical mass of active scholars has appeared who form an integral part of the larger European academia. A gradual integration of East and West perspectives in media and communication research is taking place along with moving away from the barely West-centred approach, and utilizing the research done by CEE scholars. Certain 'de-westernization' and internationalization of the research in ter…

Kansainvälisyys - kasvava osa Jyväskylän journalistikoulutuksen ydintä

Estonia : From analog to digital - one step forward but two steps back?

In Estonia, the key decisions concerning media accountability were made in the 1990s: First, a press council was established in 1991, then a code of ethics was adopted in 1997, and an ombudsperson institution for the public broadcasting was established in 2007. Since then, there has not been any improvement – the accountability system has not been adapted to the challenges of digitalization and the internet, and even the code of ethics has not been amended accordingly. However, Estonia has steadily occupied high positions in the global press freedom rankings, which evidences that the general political environment is favorable for media freedom. Estonian journalists are cynical about self-re…

Facebook’s Emotional Contagion Experiment as a Challenge to Research Ethics

This article analyzes the ethical discussion focusing on the Facebook emotional contagion experiment published by the <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em> in 2014. The massive-scale experiment manipulated the News Feeds of a large amount of Facebook users and was successful in proving that emotional contagion happens also in online environments. However, the experiment caused ethical concerns within and outside academia mainly for two intertwined reasons, the first revolving around the idea of research as manipulation, and the second focusing on the problematic definition of informed consent. The article concurs with recent research that the era of social med…

The Rocky Road towards Professional Autonomy : The Estonian Journalists’ Organization in the Political Turmoil of the 20th Century

This article attempts to explain the relationships between journalists, politics and the state from the perspective of collective autonomy, that of the professional organization of journalists. The case of Estonian Journalists’ Union demonstrates the complexity and historical contingency of professional autonomy of journalism. The development of the Estonian journalists’ organization occurred as a sequence of transformations from the Estonian Journalists’ Association to the Estonian Journalists’ Union to the Soviet type journalists’ union, and lastly to an independent trade union. This sequence was disrupted by several fatal breakdowns that changed not only the character of the association,…

Facebook’s ad hoc groups: a potential source of communicative power of networked citizens

Ad hoc groups (sporadically formed on social network sites for achieving particular common objectives) have been seen as a public space for citizen participation and debate. This study focuses on Facebook’s ad hoc groups in Finland. The aim is to detect the potential of these groups to enhance networked citizens’ communicative power for raising societally important issues to public agenda and initiate changes in society. We suggest a categorization of the groups according to their missions, and present their members’ specific motivations and objectives through an online survey. Despite the general entertainment-orientation and self-referential nature of social media, the results show that a…

Journalistic Autonomy as a Professional Value and Element of Journalism Culture: The European Perspective

The current combination of economic recession and info-technological revolution is drastically affecting the working environment of journalists and challenging their autonomy more than ever. This article focuses on how journalists in specific European countries perceive professional autonomy and analyzes the various factors that affect such autonomy. Continuity and discontinuity in journalism cultures are factors that can help us to understand the barriers to media independence and the occupational freedom of journalists. Periods of political and economic instability or crisis can bring about a break down in professional values, the loss of whole journalistic communities, and abrupt changes…

Proclivity of sexual harassment and blame attribution in journalism: experiential narratives of ghanaian female journalists

Though the proclivity of sexual-related harassments in African journalism is high, the rates of reporting of these incidences and empirical studies are low. Using a gendered approach, the study presents and exploratory inquiry into the lived experiences and impressions of Ghanaian female journalists about incidences of sexual harassments. The study examines how female journalists experience both newsroom harassments and on-assignment sexual harassments including the role they play in quid pro quo exchanges, which are relevant aspects of sexual harassments in the profession. The study also looks at blame attribution strategies female journalists adopt in assigning blame for sexual harassment…

Multiskilled in many ways : Ghanaian Female Journalists Between Job and Home

In Ghana, feminisation of journalism profession has become a fact: more girls are entering journalism programmes in the Universities, and the number of women employees are growing in the newsrooms. The problem of balancing worktime arrangements (e.g. irregular and unpredictable work schedules, weekend work and long working hours) with equally important domestic obligations are familiar to most female journalists around the globe. Even in countries with well-developed social support structures, and well-defined labour laws, the current nature of journalism worktime arrangements impedes many female journalists to achieve work–life balance. For most Ghanaian female journalists, the culturally …

CEE media and communication research on the global map

The Future of National News Agencies in Europe. Case study 2 : The survival challenges for news agencies in a small market : News agencies in the Baltic countries

This case study provides complementary explanatory information for understanding the current state and future prospects of European national news agencies. It focuses on the Baltic news agencies, BNS (Estonian and Lithuanian branches), LETA (Latvia) and ELTA (Lithuania), as examples of news services in small markets. Our purpose was to investigate how news agencies in small markets respond to the challenges of the internet, digitalisation and the social media era, which has altered their formerly indispensable position in the news ecosystem. All the news agencies in the Baltic countries declare as their primary role the serving of society with reliable and diverse information. In order to s…

Droonijournalismi : kauko-ohjattavien kamerakopterien toimituskäyttö

Camera drones (remotely piloted aircrafts or unmanned aerial vehicles) open up new and exciting possibilities for journalistic newsgathering and video and photo shooting. The current report describes and analyses the results of the research project called “Drone Journalism: UtilizingRemotely Piloted Aircrafts (RPA) in Journalistic Purposes”. The project lasted 12 months (1.4.2015-31.3.2016) and was funded by Helsingin Sanomat Foundation. The project was carried out at the Department of Communication of the University of Jyväskylä. The aim of the project was to clarify the problems and possibilities of utilizing camera drones for journalistic purposes. The project focused on: 1) national and…

Are the two different information spaces in Estonia getting closer to each other?

Reminders of responsibility : Journalism ethics codes in Western Europe

Journalistic codes of ethics articulate conventions of professionalism as it is understood in Western democracies. Codes of ethics combine theoretical and applied ethics, defining the duties (e.g., service of the public, respect for human dignity, etc.) and offering practical instructions for information gathering, processing, and publishing. Codes of ethics do not solve ethical dilemmas but oblige journalists toward moral reasoning and give advice for making the right decisions. The codes of ethics created for traditional media have become insufficient in the current digital media era. The internet is global, as is the public, and increasingly, also the practice of journalism. The global i…

Editorial: Issues of Ethics and Methods in Studying Social Media

The Editorial raises some challenging ethical and methodological aspects of Internet based research (such as protection of informational privacy, informed consent, general ethical guidelines vs case-based approach), which are further discussed in the five articles of this special issue. nonPeerReviewed

Vinkkejä sosiaaliseen mediaan : postaus- ja keskustelustrategioita toimituksille - julkaisualustana yhteisöpalvelu Facebook. Strategiaopas.

LUOTSIVA on Jyväskylän yliopiston kieli- ja viestintätieteiden laitoksella 2017–2019 aikana Media-alan tutkimussäätiön rahoituksella toteutettu tutkimushanke. Sen päämääränä oli löytää ja kokeilla keinoja, joilla sanomalehdet voisivat hyödyntää Facebook-sivujaan lukijasuhteen vahvistamiseen ja aktivoimiseen. Toimituksissa toteutetun kokeilujakson aikana neljä kotimaista sanomalehteä toteuttivat postaus- ja keskustelustrategioita omilla Facebook-sivuillaan. Kokeilujakso toteutettiin Keskisuomalaisen, Sisä-Suomen Lehden, Kalevan sekä Jämsän Seudun toimituksissa joulukuun 2018 ja tammikuun 2019 välisenä aikana. nonPeerReviewed