Reporting and Interviewing

Climate change, consumer lifestyles and legitimation strategies of sustainability-oriented firms

Abstract This study explores the links between climate change, consumer lifestyles, and legitimation strategies of sustainable firms. Our findings offer new insight into this under-researched area based on qualitative case studies of four Nordic firms operating in industrial and consumer contexts. We find that climate change consciousness is a major driver for all case firms’ sustainability-focused operations, but the dynamics differed. Achieving sociopolitical legitimacy emerges as an important factor for the case firms operating in the energy sector, especially as it connects to government incentives and regulative pressures. However, cognitive legitimacy is increasingly important for the…

Media councils and self-regulation in the emerging era of news automation

This report introduces the present state of affairs in news automation and discusses what ethical considerations it raises in the work of media councils. Based on a European-wide research project, the three key takeaways are as follows:1) Large media players use automatically updated counters and infographics, but the automated gener-ation of news text is still mainly experimental in nature. We need to keep our eyes open to the possible need for self-regulatory guidance on news automation, though there are as yet no urgent issues. 2) We must not underestimate the technical progress already made in the field. Issues regarding data, agency and transparency should not be overlooked when discus…

Etic and emic data production methods in the study of journalistic work practices : A systematic literature review

This methodological paper discusses the application of etic and emic perspectives in producing data sets for the study of journalistic praxis. The concepts refer to the researcher-analyst’s and the practitioner-informant’s viewpoints, respectively, and that being the case, they have inherent weaknesses if used independently. We argue that these shortcomings can be mitigated through an integrated application of the concepts and by seeing the two perspectives as complementary to each other. Combining etic and emic perspectives will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of complex yet routinized real-life behaviour such as journalistic work. Following the appraisal of the etic-emic comb…

Linguistic recycling : The process of quoting in increasingly mediatized settings

“She said that he said that they said…” – This issue of the AILA Review focuses on practices of quoting by which language is recycled in new contexts, transgressing formerly clear boundaries in environments of increasing mediatization. In the introduction, we first present working definitions of our topic’s key terms (Part 1). Then, we go through the topics, outcomes, and main interconnections of the ten approaches as discussed in the papers of this issue (Part 2). Based on the insights from the discussion so far, we develop a systematic framework to analyze the formal, functional, and procedural aspects of linguistic recycling (Part 3). Finally, we touch some of the white spots of this iss…

Piilossa tekstin takana

Juttuja kirjoittaessaan toimittajat tekevät lukuisia valintoja. Nämä valinnat eivät kuitenkaan ole arvioitavissa sen mukaan, mikä on totta ja mikä ei. Siteerauksen ja sitä edeltävien työvaiheiden analyysi johtaa päätelmiin, joissa journalismin jakamattomin ydin, faktapohjaisuus, asettuu kyseenalaiseksi. nonPeerReviewed

News Automation : The rewards, risks and realities of ‘machine journalism’

sj-pdf-1-jou-10.1177_14648849211016997 – Supplemental material for Etic and emic data production methods in the study of journalistic work practices: A systematic literature review

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-jou-10.1177_14648849211016997 for Etic and emic data production methods in the study of journalistic work practices: A systematic literature review by Lauri Haapanen and Ville JE Manninen in Journalism

Diskurssintutkimus - monitieteinen ja monimenetelmäinen ala

There is a growing interest towards metatheoretical examination of linguistic research. This special issue contributes to this examination from the perspective of discourse studies. The issue consists of seven articles which present methods in different areas of discourse studies. The aim of this introductory article is firstly to define the notions of discourse and method. Secondly, through the presentation of the articles of the issue, we present a variety of methods pertaining to different stages of research. In particular, methods of data collection and classification, as well as of data analysis, are presented. We conclude the article with some remarks on the future avenues of the meth…

JSN määritteli algoritmit osaksi journalistista työtä

Problematising the restoration of trust through transparency: Focusing on quoting

Transparency is seen as a panacea for a major problem facing journalism and journalists today, that is, the loss of trust and credibility. However, the scholarly literature has focused primarily on normative considerations, without providing much empirical data that could confirm what are widely assumed to be the positive effects of transparency. In this paper, I argue, first, that editorial texts, in their various manifestations, are the most potent of the various established means of displaying transparency for opening up the production of news item. However, I then draw on my linguistic, process-focused research on quoting and highlight challenges this process creates for the use of edi…

Recycling a genre for news automation: The production of Valtteri the Election Bot

Abstract The amount of available digital data is increasing at a tremendous rate. These data, however, are of limited use unless converted into a user-friendly form. We took on this task and built a natural language generation (NLG) driven system that generates journalistic news stories about elections without human intervention. In this paper, after presenting an overview of state-of-the-art technologies in NLG, we explain systematically how we identified and then recontextualized the determinant aspects of the genre of an online news story in the algorithm of our NLG software. In the discussion, we introduce the key results of a user test we carried out and some improvements that these re…

Translingual quoting in journalism : behind the scenes of Swiss television newsrooms

This chapter focuses on translingual quoting (TQ), i.e. the subprocess of news-writing by which utterances from sources are both quoted and translated. Analyses of journalists’ mental and material activities suggest conceptualizing TQ as a complex and dynamic activity in which journalists’ individual and collective (e.g., institutional) language awareness, knowledge, and practices interact with multi-layered contexts of text production. Based on this empirically and theoretically grounded concept of TQ, the chapter presents a two-part typology of TQ: In sequential TQ, ready-made media items or interview materials are translated into another language; in parallel TQ, interviews and/or texts …

Modelling Quoting in Newswriting : A Framework for Studies on the Production of News

The Mediated Social Communication (MSC) approach considers mass media a venue for opposing and complementary societal groups to publicly negotiate socially relevant topics. This negotiation is conducted through representatives of these groups and mediated by journalists. Inspired by the MSC approach, this paper presents an empirically grounded model that structures the mediating process through the process of quoting. By identifying the key phases of newswriting as sub-processes of quoting, the paper argues that journalists (1) decide on a topical issue to be addressed (topicalisation), (2) identify groups of people who are linked to this issue (societal localisation), (3) pick some people …

Dataa näkyvissä: Läpinäkyvyys algoritmien ja datan journalistisessa hyödyntämisessä

Läpinäkyvyyden käsite on noussut keskeiseksi viestinnän, median ja politiikan tutkimuksessa sekä viestinnän ja politiikan käytäntöjen eettisessä arvioinnissa. Läpinäkyvyyttä on esitetty keinoksi ylläpitää ja kasvattaa luottamusta journalistista työtä ja sen tuotteita kohtaan interaktiivisessa media- ja viestintäympäristössä. Tiedontuotannon ja päätöksenteon perustuessa yhä enemmän dataan ja sen prosessointiin läpinäkyvyys on noussut keskeiseksi käsitteeksi myös algoritmisen päätöksenteon kohdalla. Tässä artikkelissa tarkastelemme läpinäkyvyyden roolia dataa ja algoritmeja sekä journalismia koskevassa keskustelussa ja esitämme mahdollisuuksia dataan ja algoritmeihin tukeutuvan journalismin l…

Etic and emic data production methods in the study of journalistic work practices: A systematic literature review

This methodological paper discusses the application of etic and emic perspectives in producing data sets for the study of journalistic praxis. The concepts refer to the researcher-analyst’s and the practitioner-informant’s viewpoints, respectively, and that being the case, they have inherent weaknesses if used independently. We argue that these shortcomings can be mitigated through an integrated application of the concepts and by seeing the two perspectives as complementary to each other. Combining etic and emic perspectives will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of complex yet routinized real-life behaviour such as journalistic work. Following the appraisal of the etic-emic com…

Näkökulmia tarinalliseen journalismiin

Arvio teoksesta: Lassila-Merisalo, Maria (2020). Tarinallinen journalismi. Tampere: Vastapaino, 176 s.

Personalisation in Journalism: Ethical insights and blindspots in Finnish legacy media

The algorithmic personalisation and recommendation of media content has resulted in considerable discussion on related ethical, epistemic and societal concerns. While technologies of personalisation are widely employed by social media platforms, they are currently also being instituted in journalistic media. The objective of this study is to explore how concerns about algorithms are articulated and addressed when technologies of personalisation meet with long-standing journalistic values, norms and publicist missions. It first distinguishes five normative concerns related to personalisation: autonomy, opacity, privacy, selective exposure and discrimination. It then traces the ways that the…