Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time

Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time, Herbert Gans. Vintage Books, New York (1980), 393 pp., $5.95

This article focuses on news journalism, social media platforms and power, and key implications for epistemology. The conceptual framework presented is intended to inspire and guide future studies relating to the emerging sub-field of journalism research that we refer to as “Epistemologies of Digital Journalism”. The article discusses the dependencies between news media and social media platforms (non-proprietary to the news media). The authority and democratic role of news journalism pivot on claims that it regularly provides accurate and verified public knowledge. However, how are the epistemic claims of news journalism and the practices of justifications affected by news journalism’s increased dependency on social media platforms? This is the overall question discussed in this article. It focuses on the intricate power dependencies between news media and social media platforms and proceeds to discuss implications for epistemology. It presents a three-fold approach differentiating between (1) articulated knowledge and truth claims, (2) justification in the journalism practices and (3) the acceptance/rejections of knowledge claims in audience activities. This approach facilitates a systematic analysis of how diverse aspects of epistemology interrelate with, and are sometimes conditioned by, the transformations of news and social media.

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The Dislocation of News Journalism: A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Epistemologies of Digital Journalism

In 1963, at the end of his 20-year tenure as Editor of The Lancet, Theodore “Robbie” Fox gave a series of three lectures at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The transcripts of those lectures were published as a book entitled Crisis in Communication: The Functions and Future of Medical Journals two years later. In the book, Fox makes a stark prediction: “A day will come when journals will be superseded as a means of publishing new research.” (FOX, 1965). As the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication draws near, it is worth reassessing Fox’s prediction. Will journals be superseded 50 years from now? At first glance that seems unlikely. The first scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions, was published in 1665. Three centuries later, when Fox wrote Crisis in Communication, there were 6,000 medical journals in existence. Now, Scopus, one of the largest indexes of scholarly output, includes around 21,000 journals in its database: it has indexed 21 million articles published between 1823 and 1996, and a further 33 million records published within the last two decades. Indeed, according to a recent analysis, scientific output continues to increase by around 8-9% per year (BORNMANN; MUTZ, 2014). This increase in the number of articles is often at the expense of quality, with many papers never being cited. According to one estimate, as many as 12% of papers in the clinical sciences, and 27% of papers in the life sciences, are not cited within 5 years of publication (REMLER, 2014). The drivers for this are clear — academics feel pressured to publish as many papers as possible in order to get tenure and to secure new research funding. Furthermore, the huge volumes of papers being published also puts pressure on the academic community in other ways: readers are struggling to keep up with the literature; and many journals are finding it increasingly hard to secure the services of qualified peer reviewers to judge the suitability of papers for publication. The process of doing science is also changing. Not so long ago, single-author papers were considered to be essential for career advancement, as they demonstrated the ability to do research independently. More recently, large-scale collaborations are the order of the day, with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of researchers collaborating on expensive, international scientific studies. Jim Gray, a computer scientist, identified this shift in the scientific method calling it ‘the fourth paradigm’. In his words (GRAY, 2007, p. xix): The world of science has changed, and there is no question about this. The new model is for the data to be captured by instruments or generated by simulations before being processed by software and for the resulting information or knowledge to be stored in computers. Scientists only get to look at their data fairly late in this pipeline. The techniques and technologies for such data-intensive science are so different that it is worth distinguishing data-intensive science from computational science as a new, fourth paradigm for scientific exploration. Even small-scale studies often generate large amounts of data, and making these data discoverable and reusable is becoming an increasingly important priority for the scientific community. The rise of the open science movement, in which both the raw data and final publication are made available for easy access and reuse, has opened up opportunities for scientific-data-hosting companies like Figshare and Dryad, as well as for open-access ‘mega-journals’ like PLoS One and Scientific Reports. However, open-access journals, which generate revenue by charging authors an ‘article processing charge’ (APC) to publish their paper, have the potential to make the problem worse, not better, by making it easier for authors to publish their work. Fox considered journal publishing to be in crisis 50 years ago, but the crisis in communication is arguably far worse now than it was then (FOX, 1965). Funders and academic institutions need to address the current crisis in two ways. First, they need to reward scientists for the quality, not quantity, of the work that they publish; surrogate markers of quality, such as journal impact factors, are widely perceived to be imperfect ways of judging an individual scientist’s research output and new metrics are urgently needed. Second, funders and institutions should encourage their researchers to publish much of their work in repositories. These standardized reports would not necessarily be read by human beings, but rather would hold data and data descriptors in a form that is machine-readable to allow accurate indexing and meta-analysis by computers. There are early signs that such an approach would be feasible, but it will take time to change 350 years of academic culture. How long, exactly, remains to be seen. After all, as Niels Bohr so eloquently put it: “it is very difficult to predict — especially the future” (MENCHER, 1971, p. 37). - Figshare and Scientific Reports, which are mentioned in this article, are part of Macmillan Science and Education, the author’s employer. The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Macmillan Science and Education.

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A Crisis in Communication

Incremental updates to breaking news stories online have become embedded in newspapers in the 24/7 online era. This article reviews four US metropolitan newspapers, using field observations and interviews to examine how journalists choose breaking news stories and their rationale for these continuous updates. Specifically, the article explores the connection between temporality and authority, positing that journalists use these updates to retain their role as authoritative truth-tellers in relation to audiences, the competition, and their own position in the profession. As newspaper coverage becomes more like local TV, these metropolitan newspaper journalists worry that a breaking news strategy, while potentially necessary, is also questionable and even potentially harmful, but nonetheless pursue it.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1464884916689151

Breaking news production processes in US metropolitan newspapers: Immediacy and journalistic authority:

Using an ethnographic case study of the Newschannel at TV2 Norway, this article reveals ways in which the assembly-line mentality required by 24/7 news production nevertheless encourages reporters to negotiate a certain autonomy over their work and the routines required to produce it. By reorganizing its staff's use of time, space, and resources, TV2 was able to generate roughly 18 hours of “live” news coverage a day during the article's research period from 2007 to 2009. This production process is framed in terms of Schlesinger's “reactive” mode, here qualified as “reactive-active”, because it allows for the possibility of broadcasting live and gathering news at the same time. The article also revisits the concept of “professionalism” with regard to a traditional broadcaster's implementation of a 24/7 news channel within its existing newsroom. As a result of this process, more news—and more content concerning that news—is produced more efficiently while the tenets of traditional journalism remain operative.

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MORE NEWS FOR LESS: How the professional values of 24/7 journalism reshaped Norway's TV2 newsroom

Terror attacks are moments of chaos and destabilization. From a journalistic perspective, terror attacks disrupt everyday news work where journalists find themselves struggling to restore order and report the event at hand as accurate and speedy as possible. From the perspective of the affected audience, journalism fills vital functions in making sense of the attack, by responding to a complex and rapidly changing mix of social needs. In this article, we explore how such disrupting events as terror can contribute to newsroom innovation in terms of journalistic processes, journalistic products, and even journalistic genres. We use the terror attack and massacre in Norway on 22 July 2011 as a case study, as it to a large extent forced journalists to think outside the box in order to meet the audience’s informational and rhetorical needs. The study shows that innovation is tightly connected to the development of the rhetorical situation through three phases: shock, start-up, and transformation. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with journalists who covered the attack, as well as a rhetorical exploration of the evolving situational context and the texts that were created in response.

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Digital Innovation During Terror and Crises

Over the past decade, the frequency of terror attacks around the world has increased. In the context of the 22 July 2011 terror attacks in Norway, social media use by citizens, and even victims, became an essential feature of reporting. Social media confronted the legacy media’s way of covering crisis events. It raised questions about traditional journalism’s ability to handle audience’s as, not only news consumers, but also producers. In the present article, we look at the ways in which the professional norms and values of traditional journalism are specifically challenged by social media use in times of terror, using the 22 July 2011 attacks as a case study. We find that Norwegian journalists initially held to their professional roles, and to the classic self-representational principles of journalism, including objectivity, autonomy and immediacy. When they integrated social media into their traditional platforms and modes of coverage, they framed it as a “source” of sorts. As the 22 July 2011 event cov...

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Social Media’s Challenge to Journalistic Norms and Values during a Terror Attack

This chapter summarises the findings of a case study on social media activity during the 22 July 2011 terrorist attacks in Norway Based on these findings and on theories and previous research on the role of social media in situation awareness (SA) configuration during crisis situations, the chapter offers seven recommendations for key communicators in official crisis management and response institutions, journalistic institutions, NGOs and others: (1) acknowledge social media as important and master monitoring and management of features across social media; (2) synchronise communication and establish a standard operating procedure (SOP); (3) establish and make known a joint social media emergency account; (4) participate, interact and take the lead; (5) be aware of non-hashtagged content; (6) implement verification tools and practices and (7) engage with and learn from celebrities

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Social Media and Situation Awareness during Terrorist Attacks: Recommendations for Crisis Communication

A news ethnography of discourses of professionalism, technology, and journalistic practices at TV2 Newschannel and VG Nett/ VGTV, 2007-200.

Maria Konow-Lund

Papers

MORE NEWS FOR LESS: How the professional values of 24/7 journalism reshaped Norway's TV2 newsroom

Digital Innovation During Terror and Crises

Social Media’s Challenge to Journalistic Norms and Values during a Terror Attack

Social Media and Situation Awareness during Terrorist Attacks: Recommendations for Crisis Communication

Moving-image news production in two newsrooms