Journalistic Passion as Commodity: A Managerial Perspective

This article focuses on the role of passion in news journalism from a managerial perspective. The analysis is based on a data set of 40,621 web-based job advertisements obtained from Journalismjobs.com, from the year 2002 to 2017. The quantitative analysis shows that passion has been on the rise as only 4% of the job advertisements in 2002 asked for “passionate” journalists, increasing to almost 16% in 2013. The authors also performed a qualitative analysis of job advertisements mentioning the word “passion” for the periods 2002–2003 and 2017. These advertisements express a shift from a normative role of journalists to journalism as an activity: when mentioned …

Gendered power relations in the digital age : an analysis of Japanese women’s media choice and use within a global context

This study investigates the persistence of gendered choice and use of media, particularly in Japanese domestic settings. It shows how women’s significant presence in the digital media environment does not necessarily translate into substantial changes in gendered power dynamics in choosing and using particular media for certain purposes at home. This project’s authors, researchers from Argentina, Finland, Israel, Japan, and the US, analyzed interview data from Japan by drawing on the Foucauldian concept of micro-level power, which is categorized into three main types: personal authority, media affordances, and space-time constellations. Through this process, we interviewed 77 individuals, r…

“I love learning new things” : An institutional logics perspective on learning in professional journalism

In contemporary working life, journalists are often faced with the pressures of an increasingly precarious field where employment is less stable and more contractual than in previous years. Consequently, learning as a skill has grown in importance as journalists enter and leave the job market. Previous research has often portrayed professional journalists as unwilling to learn due to the persistence of the institution of journalism. Consequently, this study examines learning in professional journalism through interviews with 30 Finnish journalists. We adopt the institutional logics perspective to examine which institutional logics manifest in journalists' descriptions of learning and how. W…

Comparing Innovation and Social Media Strategies in Scandinavian and US Newspapers

The article focuses on innovation and social media strategies in newspaper companies in the US and three Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway and Denmark). Many previous studies have focused on the state of journalism and media industry in single countries, although media have distinct features in different countries. Through the comparative setting, it is possible to examine the differences in media innovation strategies and study what factors affect innovation in media production, business models, sources of funding, and social media strategies. The qualitative part of the paper consists of semi-structured in-depth interviews (N = 65) with media managers and experts, which were carried …

Paikallis- ja kaupunkilehtien uudet liiketoimintamallit Pohjoismaissa

Vaakakupissa vaarat ja vastuu: Julkisen palvelun median arvot sosiaalisen median alustojen paineessa

Sosiaalisen median alustat ovat muovanneet media-alan prosesseja ja käytäntöjä merkittävästi. Alustayritysten toimintaa ohjaavat erilaiset arvot ja tavoitteet kuin mediaorganisaatioita, mikä aiheuttaa toimijoiden välille ristiriitaa. Toimintatavoistaan ja arvoistaan sosiaalisessa mediassa joutuvat neuvottelemaan erityisesti julkisen palvelun mediayhtiöt, joiden peruskivenä ovat julkisen palvelun arvot. Tarkastelemme tässä artikkelissa suomalaisen julkisen palvelun mediayhtiön Yleisradion alustasuhdetta laadullisen haastatteluaineiston avulla. Kysymme, miten Yleisradiossa kuvataan ja perustellaan suhdetta sosiaalisen median alustoihin ja minkälaiseen arvopuheeseen suhteen kuvaaminen kytkeyty…

Media work in change: Understanding the role of media professionals in times of digital transformation and convergence

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This article discusses media work and the changes that have swept the media industry from the vantage point of professionals working in media companies and organisations. The concept of media work guides towards new understanding about the media industry and media professions under digital transition. Media work indicates a move towards more diversified job tasks, closer cooperation among different media professions, increased commercial thinking, and interaction with audiences.

Taking a Break from News : A Five-nation Study of News Avoidance in the Digital Era

This article comparatively examines news avoidance in a rapidly changing media environment. We utilize findings from a large dataset of 488 in-depth interviews with media consumers, conducted in Argentina, Finland, Israel, Japan, and the US. We aim to make a contribution to the study of news avoidance by providing a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the drivers, practices, and patterns of news avoidance as they occur in and are shaped by a variety of national contexts. We argue that news avoidance is shaped not only by individual characteristics, but is also manifested and performed as part of specific time frames and socio-cultural factors. We distinguish two drivers of intentiona…

Creativity and Innovation in Technology-Mediated Journalistic Work : Mapping out Enablers and Constraints

This qualitative study examines creativity and innovation in dispersed, journalistic teams. Specifically, we study the factors enabling and constraining creativity and innovation in journalistic work in technology-mediated settings and explore how technology shapes these phenomena in dispersed journalistic teams. The study is motivated by the media industry’s heightened need for creativity and innovation as well as the changing nature of working life where an increasing amount of work is done via information and communication technologies. By closely examining two journalistic teams and their idea sharing and development processes, this study finds that successful creative work and innovati…

Onko media ja journalismin tulevaisuus Googlen ja Facebookin käsissä?

Studying incidental news : Antecedents, dynamics and implications

In light of concerns about decreasing news use, a decline in interest in political news or even active avoidance or resistance of news in general, the idea of ‘incidental news’ has been seen as a possible remedy. Generally, ‘incidental news’ refers to the ways in which people encounter information about current events through media when they were not actively seeking the news. However, scholars studying incidental news through different theoretical and methodological perspectives have been arriving at differing evaluations of the significance and implications of this phenomenon – to the extent of downright contradictory findings. This introductory piece posits the aim of this special issue…

Pioneers as Peers : How Entrepreneurial Journalists Imagine the Futures of Journalism

The article investigates the futures of journalism that pioneering entrepreneurial journalists anticipate. This comprises the different imaginaries that journalists employ to make sense of journalism’s present potentials, anticipate its possible futures, and inform their decision-making. By analysing semi-structured interviews with Finnish entrepreneurial journalists, the article identifies a peer-to-peer imaginary on which the interviewees draw and construct to anticipate the potential futures of journalism. In this peer-to-peer imaginary, journalism is produced in journalists’ and audiences’ peer networks of affinity and shared interests. The imaginary promises elevated audience engagemen…

Mediated by the giants: Tracing practices, discourses, and mediators of platform isomorphism in a media organization

News media are increasingly interwoven with social media platforms. Building on institutional theory, we trace the repercussions of the platform infrastructure inside a media organization by focusing on organizational discourses and practices in connection with the journalistic use of social media. The empirical material includes interviews, field notes, chat logs, and documents collected from a public service media organization during a 6-month on-site and virtual ethnography. The findings show how platform pressures intertwine with content production, audience representation, journalistic values, and organizational development, thus manifesting the infrastructuralization and institutional…

Researching News Media : Creating Societal Impact from Research for the Media Industry and Policymakers

This chapter reports on two Finnish cases based on recently commissioned research projects on media management: a study focusing on the state of media and communications policy in Finland, and a three-study project on new business models in news media (focusing on Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the United States and Germany). A public authority, the Ministry of Traffic and Communications, funded the first project as a part of a wider governmental programme with the goal of preparing a new national media policy programme. The second project was financed by an advocacy organisation for the Finnish newspaper industry together with a research foundation under the Finnish Media Federation. The proj…

Researching News Media

Uutismedian uudet liiketoimintamallit Pohjoismaissa

Editorial: New Forms of Media Work and Its Organizational and Institutional Conditions

This thematic issue explores the widening scope of media work and the institutional and organizational conditions that support new forms of media work. The media industry has undergone significant economic, structural, and technological changes during the past few decades, including changing patterns of ownership and digitalization of media production, distribution, and consumption. Simultaneously, practices of media work are adopted also in other industries. The 10 articles in the issue not only focus on the new professional roles and responsibilities emerging in the news media industry but also study the practices of media work in organizations in other fields, such as the music industry …

Hybrid Engagement: Discourses and Scenarios of Entrepreneurial Journalism

Although the challenge posed by social media and the participatory turn concerns culture and values at the very heart of journalism, journalists have been reluctant to adopt participatory values and practices. To encourage audience participation and to offer journalism that is both trustworthy and engaging, journalists of the future may embrace a hybrid practice of journalistic objectivity and audience-centred dialogue. As innovative and experimental actors, entrepreneurial journalism outlets can perform as forerunners of such a culture. By analysing discourses in the “About Us” pages of 41 entrepreneurial journalism outlets, the article examines the emerging journalistic ethos of entrepren…

Working the fields of big data : Using big-data-augmented online ethnography to study candidate–candidate interaction at election time

The paper proposes big-data-augmented ethnography as a novel mixed-methods approach to studying political discussions in a hybrid media system. Using such empirical setup, the authors examined candidate–candidate online interaction during election campaigning. Candidate–candidate interaction crossing party boundaries is scarce and occurs in the form of negative campaigning via social media, with the shaming of rival candidates and engaging in battles with them. The authors posit that ethnographic observations can be used to contextualize the computational analysis of large data sets, while computational analysis can be applied to validate and generalize the findings made through ethnography…

From the barbecue to the sauna: A comparative account of the folding of media reception into the everyday life

How and why do people still get print newspapers in an era dominated by mobile and social media communication? In this article, we answer this question about the permanence of traditional media in a digital media ecosystem by analyzing 488 semi-structured interviews conducted in Argentina, Finland, Israel, Japan, and the United States. We focus on three mechanisms of media reception: access, sociality, and ritualization. Our findings show that these mechanisms are decisively shaped by patterns of everyday life that are not captured by the scholarly foci on either content- or technology-influences on media use. Thus, we argue that a non-media centric approach improves descriptive fit and ad…

Sharing media content in social media: The challenges and opportunities of user-distributed content (UDC)

The article explores the distribution of mass media content by the online audience that connects by using the different social platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. The focus is on the new and developing concept of user-distributed content (UDC). From the viewpoint of media organisations, UDC is a process by which the mass media converge with online social networks through the intentional use of social media services and platforms in an effort to expand the distribution of media content. UDC does not have a long trajectory as a study object in media studies. The study suggests that practices related to UDC can be more strongly incorporated into management and journalism in main…

Practical, Not Radical : Examining Innovative Learning Culture in a Public Service Media Organization

Recent scholarship has argued for media organizations’ need to radically innovate to ensure their survival in the future. This study deploys the innovative learning culture (ILC) framework to qualitatively study innovation and learning in a legacy public service media organization. While innovation and learning are linked, the learning processes of professional journalists have received only little attention. Through an analysis of a development network operating in a public service media organization, we identify characteristics of ILC in the network and how those characteristics manifest in practice, as well as examine contextual factors that shape ILC. Our findings indicate that innovati…

Youth Political Talk in the Changing Media Environment : A Cross-National Typology

While political communication scholarship has long underscored the importance of political talk—casual conversations about news and politics that occur in everyday situations—as a way for citizens to clarify their opinions and as a precursor for political engagement, much of this literature tends to depict political talk as uncomfortable and difficult for citizens. Yet, this focus on the challenging aspects of political talk has been informed predominantly by the US context. To what extent may a different picture emerge when looking across different cultural contexts? And how are these dynamics shaped by the affordances of the multi-platform social media environment? This paper explores th…

Framing digital competence in media work - The case of Finland

PurposeThis article aims to study digital competence (DC) in media work.Design/methodology/approachThe authors utilize frame analysis to investigate how DC is framed in media work using 30 semi-structured interviews as data with journalists in Finland.FindingsThe authors identify three main frames of DC in the context of media work. The individual attitude frame emphasizes employees' attitudes toward DC, the team-level support frame underlines the need for support in the work community and the organizational-level practice frame highlights enablers of and organizations' requirements for digital competence.Practical implicationsFirst, media workers' DC is necessary to enhance work efficiency…

Incidentality on a continuum: A comparative conceptualization of incidental news consumption

This article seeks to contribute to theorizing the dynamics of incidental news consumption. Through an analysis of 200 semi-structured interviews with people in Argentina, Finland, Israel, Japan, and the United States, we show that intentionality in news consumption can be viewed on a continuum, which goes from deliberately setting apart time to access the news on specific outlets to skimming through unsought-for news on social and broadcast media, with intermediate practices such as respondents setting up an environment where they are more or less likely to encounter news. Drawing on structuration theory, this article conceptualizes incidental news in the context of the wider media environ…

Social Media as Distribution Tool

Trust-oriented affordances: A five-country study of news trustworthiness and its socio-technical articulations

Research on trust has come to the forefront of communication studies. Beyond the dominant focus on informational trust and its country-specific articulations, trustworthiness evaluations can relate to the materiality of news and its global manifestations. Especially in digital algorithmic environments, understanding news trustworthiness requires a holistic approach, which combines informational and socio-technical aspects while addressing both institutional and interpersonal trust. Drawing on 488 in-depth interviews with media consumers in Argentina, Finland, Israel, Japan, and the United States, this article investigates news (dis)trust from the lens of socio-materiality. The six trust-or…

Työelämän digitalisoituminen ja media-alan työ työmarkkinajärjestöjen ulostuloissa

Media-ala ja media alalla tehtävä työ ovat digitalisoituneet nopeasti. Artikkelissa tarkastellaan, miten erityisesti toimitustyön digitalisoitumista käsitellään työmarkkinajärjestöjen ulostuloissa. Millaisena ongelmana digitalisaatio esitetään? Millaisiin oletuksiin ja olosuhteisiin tämä representaatio perustuu? peerReviewed

Newspapers and Cross-Level Communications on Social Media : A comparative study of Japan, Korea, and Finland

In order to examine how the same types of social media are perceived and utilized in different national contexts for journalism and news media, we studied mainstream newspapers in three countries where both newspapers and social media are viable: Japan, Korea, and Finland. Our in-depth interviews with journalists indicate both similarities and differences in the three countries. The most outstanding similarity is that newspapers have not fully incorporated cross-level communications available on social media platforms. Factors related to organizational structures, goals, policies, and procedures served as filters for the incorporation of social media into the news production and distributio…

Participation in Social Media: Studying Explicit and Implicit Forms of Participation in Communicative Social Networks

The diverse forms of participation in social media raise many methodological and ethical issues that should be acknowledged in research. In this paper, participation in social media is studied by utilising the framework of explicit and implicit participation. The focus is on the communicative and communal aspects of social media. The aim of the paper is to promote the reconsideration of what constitutes participation when online users create connections rather than content. The underlying argument is that research on social media and the development of methods should concentrate more on implicit forms of participation.

“They’re a little bit squeezed in the middle”: Strategic challenges for innovation in US Metropolitan newspaper organisations

This paper focuses on media innovation among publishers of metropolitan newspapers in the United States, in cities such as San Diego, Boston, Miami, Philadelphia and Dallas. The situation for metropolitan newspapers is difficult, as they fall between national newspapers, which can aim for extending their reach both nationally and globally, and local newspapers, which have a smaller cost structure and can cater to a more limited, and often more engaged, audience community. Our paper demonstrates that there seems to be great awareness of what can be done by US metropolitan newspapers, but managers are struggling with constraints, such as lack of financial and human resources and general organ…

Media management and economics research in Northern Europe

Researchers and academics in media economics and management with a Northern European affiliation have played a major role in the development of the field and in creating strong international networks, including The World Media Economics and Management Conference (WMEMC) and European Media Management Association (emma). The chapter provides an overview of media management and economics research in this geographical region. peerReviewed

A future of journalism beyond the objectivity-dialogue divide? : Hybridity in the news of entrepreneurial journalists

As pioneers of new ideas and practices, many entrepreneurial journalists spearhead the change of journalism towards hybridity. By applying appraisal theory, this article examines a hybrid of objectivity and dialogue in daily news articles by five entrepreneurial journalism outlets – Axios, MustRead, National Observer, The Skimm and the Voice of San Diego. For comparative purposes, a dataset from three legacy media outlets was also analysed. The results show that the entrepreneurial journalism outlets employ journalistic dialogue in otherwise stylistically objective news texts notably more often than do legacy media outlets. Dialogic registers provide subtle, non-partisan assessments of eve…

Yleisradion audio-on-demand (AOD) : tarjonta ja julkinen palvelu

Yleisradio tilasi tutkimusryhmältämme laajan katsauksen Ylen audio-on-demand (AOD) -tarjonnan merkityksestä julkisen palvelun tehtävän toteuttamiselle. Raporttimme nojaa 1) aiempaan tutkimukseen ja jo olemassa olleisiin data-aineistoihin, 2) väestöllisesti edustavaan uuteen kyselytutkimukseen, 3) lähes 60 AOD-sisältötunnin analyysiin, sekä 4) kymmeneen tutkimushaastatteluun suomalaisten audiomedian asiantuntijoiden kanssa. Raporttiin pyydettiin selvittämään AOD-sisältöjen ja lineaarisen radion eroja ja yhtäläisyyksiä. Keskityimme erityisesti podcastien ja radion erotteluun, koska podcast-sisältöjen tuominen radiosisältöjen rinnalle edustaa Ylen tarjonnassa laajempaa muutosta kuin radio-ohje…

'A Shared Reality between a Journalist and the Audience': How Live Journalism Reimagines News Stories

Live journalism is a new journalistic genre in which journalists present news stories to a live audience. This article investigates the journalistic manuscripts of live journalism performances. With the focus on texts, the article reaches beyond the live performance to explore the wider implications and potentials pioneered by live journalists. The data were gathered from <em>Musta laatikko</em> (‘Black Box’) manuscripts, a live journalism production by the Finnish newspaper <em>Helsingin Sanomat</em>. The manuscripts were analysed as <em>eudaimonic journalism</em> through four conceptual dimensions: self-transcendence, autonomy, competence, and relatedne…

20 Media management and economics research in Northern Europe

Paljon vanhaa, jotain uutta ja jotain lainattua: Suomalaisjournalistien ammattikuva Worlds of Journalism Study -kyselyssä

Tässä raportissa perehdytään suomalaisten journalistisen työn tekijöiden ammattiarvoihin, -etiikkaan, työoloihin ja käsityksiin journalismista. Työ perustuu kansainväliseen Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS) -projektiin, jossa selvitetään säännöllisesti journalismin tilaa eri puolilla maailmaa (WJS 2022a). Ensimmäinen kysely tehtiin vuosina 2007–2011, jolloin mukana oli 21 maata ja 2 100 journalistia. Suomi liittyi projektiin vuonna 2013 sen toisessa aallossa. Siihen osallistui vuosina 2012–2016 kaikkiaan 67 maata ja yli 27 500 journalistia. Tässä raportissa keskitytään projektin kolmanteen aaltoon, joka on käynnissä vuosina 2021–2023. Mukana on yli 120 maata eri puolilta maailmaa. WJS-projek…

‘I shared the joy’: sport-related social support and communality on Instagram

The popularity of sharing photographs on digital platforms has increased significantly due to the communicative affordances of mobile media and the emergence of photo-sharing applications, such as Instagram. In this paper, we examine how social support and communality can be built and reinforced through digital visual communication. We focus especially on photo sharing in the context of recreational climbing and trail running. In a qualitative study with Finnish climbers and runners, we asked what meanings sports practitioners ascribe to the practice of sharing and observed how they communicate these meanings through photographs. The results indicate that different types of visual content b…