Elite Media Trends Towards the Extent of Commitment of Kurdish Websites to the Ethics of the Profession in the Kurdistan Region - A field Study

The study aims to explain and identify the trends of the Kurdish media elite with regard to the level of commitment of Kurdish websites to professional ethics in the Kurdistan Region. This study is a descriptive study in which the survey method was used. The community of this study is consists of the media elite in the Kurdistan Region, whether it is the lecturers in the media departments in the universities and institutes of the region, or the experienced media professionals who are in charge of managing media institutions. The most prominent results of the study are: The majority of the study sample agrees that the content of Kurdish websites is a mixture of adherence to the principles of professional ethics, especially in presenting all the information related to the event and avoiding intentional exaggeration, and also non-compliance with these principles, especially in their lack of commitment to the sources of information contained in the news.

Suscripción a la prensa digital como contención a los discursos de odio

User discussions on digital media usually include offensive comments. This kind of content has become more frequent and intense because of political polarization and the health and economic crises associated with Covid-19. Little is known about the journalists who moderate these forums, how they approach this task in such difficult circumstances, and their opinion about their role in the democratic public debate. To improve understanding of this phenomenon, we carried out 12 semistructured open interviews with moderators from several types of Spanish digital newspapers: generalist, local, and sports. The aim was to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of moderation filters against hate speech in readers’ comments. The results show that the introduction of paywalls in many Spanish newspapers has reduced the intensity of such hate speech, although it has not completely disappeared. These moderation systems are limited mainly to ruling out insults and swearing. There is consensus among the interviewed journalists that most hate speech comments relate to political news. The most frequent topics are racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and homophobia. Several journalists presented the banning of offending users as a possible solution. However, others see this as a business opportunity and proposed solutions ranging from creating specialized moderators to controlling the activity history or trying to educate those users how to participate in a democratic forum. This research contributes to the ongoing debate about moderation systems among media professionals. Resumen Los comentarios de los usuarios en los medios digitales contienen con frecuencia alusiones incívicas, que se han incrementado por la polarización política y las crisis sanitaria y económica provocadas por la Covid 19. Se sabe poco sobre cómo los periodistas encargados de moderar estos foros se enfrentan a esta situación y cuál es su punto de vista acerca de los mismos y de su importancia en el debate democrático. Se han realizado doce entrevistas abiertas de tipo semiestructurado a estos responsables de la prensa digital española: generalista, regional y deportiva. Se analizan estos materiales para valorar las fortalezas y las debilidades de los sistemas de moderación de los discursos de odio que afloran en los comentarios de los lectores. Los resultados muestran que la introducción de la suscripción en la mayoría de los periódicos digitales ha reducido la presencia de comentarios con odio, aunque no han desaparecido. Los sistemas empleados para controlar estos comentarios filtran básicamente insultos y palabras soeces. Los entrevistados coinciden en señalar que una parte muy importante de los comentarios de odio se produce en la sección de política. El racismo, la xenofobia, la misoginia y la homofobia se citan como los temas más recurrentes en estos discursos. Algunos periodistas plantean la eliminación de la participación de los usuarios. Otros ven ventajas desde el punto de vista del negocio y proponen desde crear equipos especializados para ejercer la moderación, controlar a los autores a través del historial de sus actividades o sencillamente educarles para intervenir en foros democráticos. Estos resultados muestran que el debate sobre los sistemas de moderación permanece abierto entre los profesionales.

Fortifying boundaries

This article examines how recent changes in the hybrid media environment have led media actors to define the “how and why” of their practices. We consider the discussion on the differences and similarities surrounding both the legacy media, and newcomers such as countermedia, to be part of journalism’s boundary work: the ongoing, yet temporally fickle, process of marking the boundaries between journalism and non-journalism. We demonstrate how both legacy and countermedia actors drew boundaries through vocabulary, institutional reflection, demarcation practices, and ethos. While the Finnish media underlined its institutional autonomy and dominance by defending the social good of journalism and dubbing countermedia as fake media, countermedia actor MV-lehti drew its own boundaries by ridiculing media professionals, media institutions, and journalists. Our findings illustrate how these actors consistently asserted the flawed ideological foundations of “the other”, with the consequence that boundaries have become fortified, rather than crossed or blurred.

Case Method As an Effective Tool for Training Media Professionals

This paper examines the practice of using innovative communication technologies, in particular the case method, in the process of training journalist students. The study comprehends the practice of adapting the case method to the specifics of the educational process in the field of journalism, the possibility of using technology in various disciplines of the profile. In addition, the outline of the study case and the methodology of work in student groups according to the methodology under consideration are presented. The authors of the article come to the conclusion that the case method as an interactive form of learning creates conditions for the educational process, in which the theory is translated into the field of practical application of knowledge, and students have a unique opportunity to develop critical thinking aimed at finding solutions to problem situations, posing problematic questions, determining a range of interrelated problems, the choice of a method for processing the information received.

In/visibility in Social Media Work: The Hidden Labor Behind the Brands

Despite the staggering uptick in social media employment over the last decade, this nascent category of cultural labor remains comparatively under-theorized. In this paper, we contend that social media work is configured by a visibility paradox: while workers are tasked with elevating the presence—or visibility—of their employers’ brands across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more, their identities—and much of their labor—remains hidden behind branded social media accounts. To illuminate how this ostensible paradox impacts laborers’ conditions and experiences of work, we present data from in-depth interviews with more than 40 social media professionals. Their accounts make clear that social media work is not just materially concealed, but rendered socially invisible through its lack of crediting, marginal status, and incessant demands for un/under-compensated emotional labor. This patterned devaluation of social media employment can, we show, be situated along two gender-coded axes that have long structured the value of labor in the media and cultural industries: 1). technical-communication and 2). creation-circulation. After detailing these in/visibility mechanisms, we conclude by addressing the implications of our findings for the politics and subjectivities of work in an increasingly digital media economy.

Gender equality for sustainable development: Аnalysis of local journalists’ role in Bangladesh

Gender discrimination turns women and girls into a part of a marginalized community. As a traditional value-centric and gender biased society, people in Bangladesh undervalue the contribution of women in family and community. Goal five of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), nevertheless, calls directly for achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls. Some analysts also intend that gender equality is connected with achieving all the 17 goals of SDGs. As such, promoting gender equality through media portrayal is a key to the sustainable development of Bangladesh. Different literature also focused on media professionals’ responsibilities for eliminating gender-based discrimination. However, media mainly give more concentration on the central or core level issues of society. Thus, the representation of local or peripheral gender issues in media remains poor. Media professionals, local journalists in particular, could play a significant role in promoting local gender equality issues. Under the given context this study aims to analyze to what extent the local journalists play roles in achieving gender equality for sustainable development. Incorporating a multi-level social ecological framework, this study adopted both the quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Employing convenience sampling, 32 local journalists from different media in Chittagong city, a Southeastern coastal city of Bangladesh, were surveyed. In addition, five in-depth interviews from gender and media analysts were taken using purposive sampling. The findings of the study demonstrated that based on journalistic principles a significant portion of local journalists plays a positive role to promote local gender issues from the individual level to the policy level. Thus, they accelerate the course of achieving sustainable development goals. This study also suggests guidelines for the policymakers to use local journalists for promoting gender equality at the local level.

Sports media professionals reflect on racial stereotypes and ethnic diversity in the organization

PurposeThe aim of this article is to examine how professionals within Dutch sports media give meaning to racial/ethnic diversity in the organization and reflect on the use of racial stereotypes in sports reporting.Design/methodology/approachTen in-depth interviews with Dutch sports media professionals have been conducted to obtain the data. Respondents had a variety of responsibilities within different media organizations in the Netherlands. The authors used thematic analysis supplemented with insights from critical discourse analysis to examine how sports media professionals give meaning to racial/ethnic diversity and the use of racial/ethnic stereotypes.FindingsThe following main themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews: (1) routines within the production process, (2) reflections on lack of diversity on the work floor and (3) racial/ethnic stereotyping not seen as an issue. Generally, journalists showed paradoxical views on the issue of racial/ethnic diversity within sport media production dismissing it as a non-issue on the one hand while also acknowledging there is a lack of racial diversity within sport media organizations. Results will be placed and discussed in a wider societal and theoretical perspective.Originality/valueBy focussing on the under-researched social group of sport media professionals in relation to meanings given to race and ethnicity in the production process, this research provides new insights into the role of sports media organizations in (re)producing discourses surrounding race/ethnicity in multi-ethnic society and the operation of whiteness in sports media.

Journalism Research That Matters

Despite the looming crisis in journalism, a research–practice gap plagues the news industry. This volume seeks to change the research–practice gap, with timely scholarly research on the most pressing problems facing the news industry today, translated for a non-specialist audience. Contributions from academics and journalists are brought together in order to push a conversation about how to do the kind of journalism research that matters, meaning research that changes journalism for the better for the public and helps make journalism more financially sustainable. The book covers important concerns such as the financial survival of quality news and information, how news audiences consume (or don’t consume) journalism, and how issues such as race, inequality, and diversity must be addressed by journalists and researchers alike. The book addresses needed interventions in policy research and provides a guide to understanding buzzwords like “news literacy,” “data literacy,” and “data scraping” that are more complicated than they might initially seem. Practitioners provide suggestions for working together with scholars—from focusing on product and human-centered design to understanding the different priorities that media professionals and scholars can have, even when approaching collaborative projects. This book provides valuable insights for media professionals and scholars about news business models, audience research, misinformation, diversity and inclusivity, and news philanthropy. It offers journalists a guide on what they need to know, and a call to action for what kind of research journalism scholars can do to best help the news industry reckon with disruption.