The distanced closeness. The model of ecumenical relations between Catholics and Protestants – sociological contexts

The article deals with the nature of ecumenical relations between Catholics and Protestants. In order to grasp their specificity, they are compared with everyday relations which are not focused on building religious unity between these Christians. This analysis served to reconstruct the model of ecumenism presented on the websites of Catholic weeklies. Additionally, a reflection has been undertaken on the possibility of supporting the ecumenical movement by these services. The analysis is conducted in the sociological perspective on the basis of empirical studies of the content of the Internet services of the Catholic weekly magazines “Gość Niedzielny” and “Niedziela”. Content analysis was applied as a research method, and the texts dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation were studied. This selection of empirical material resulted from the fact that ecumenical themes are rarely taken up in the Catholic press, and the jubilee caused greater interest in them. The sources used were also found research on interfaith relations. The analysis shows that relations between Catholics and Protestants are close and characterised by openness, but they are also marked by distance and remembrance of a difficult history. Moreover, the model of ecumenism promoted by the websites is superficial and concentrates, among other things, on its practical aspect at the expense of its spiritual and theological dimension. The websites of Catholic weekly newspapers, on the other hand, face a hitherto untapped opportunity to support the ecumenical movement.

“You Had to be Reporting Constantly”: COVID-19’s impact on U.S. weekly newspapers’ journalistic routines

This study examines COVID-19’s impact on the journalistic routines of U.S. community newspapers during the pandemic’s early months. Oral history interviews with 22 journalists and state newspaper association directors indicate weekly journalists discarded entrenched journalistic routines to better serve their communities during a crisis. However, structural issues with business models, internet access and legal definitions of newspapers hinder weeklies from fully embracing the digital era during a crisis and in the long term.

Did Polish Nationwide Catholic Weekly Newspapers Support Andrzej Duda in the Presidential Campaign in 2020? A Case Study

The aim of the article was to determine the degree of political involvement of the most important representatives of the Polish Catholic press, i.e. “Gość Niedzielny”, “Niedziela”, “Idziemy”, and “Przewodnik Katolicki” in the 2020 presidential campaign in Poland. The periodicals took into account the important context of the campaign, i.e. the coronavirus pandemic, the lockdown and its social and political consequences, as well as the problem of polarisation of the Polish political scene. “Gość Niedzielny”, “Niedziela” and “Idziemy” gave clear support to Andrzej Duda. The political involvement of the above press titles should be assessed as going beyond Catholic social science. “Przewodnik Katolicki” was the only one to point out both the strengths and weaknesses of the incumbent’s programme and political activity.

War or peace journalism? Kenyan newspaper framing of 2007 post-election violence

This study sought to examine the dominant frame in terms of ‘war’ and ‘peace’ in the coverage of the 2007/2008 post-election violence. At the time, Kenya had eight daily and over 10 weekly newspapers (Mbeke, 2008). The Daily Nation and The Standard were selected for the purpose of this study. The study applied systematic sampling method to select stories from The Standard and simple random sampling to select the stories from Daily Nation. A sample of 35 news articles (an average of 5 every day) for each of the newspapers and a maximum of 10 for each of the other categories were selected from 294 and 180 articles from The Standard and Daily Nation respectively. Details of each story were recorded in the coding sheet. This information was afterwards transferred to SPSS, a statistical data analysis programme. The study employs 11 of Johan Galtung’s 13 indicators of war/peace journalism to analyse the framing of the conflict. Galtung has proposed a new approach to reporting war and conflict that he terms 'peace journalism'. The two newspapers had an equal number of war journalism-framed stories (6 or 2%). Peace journalism framing was dominant in both newspapers. The findings contrast Galtung’s argument that in reporting war and conflict the media always give emphasis to war journalism frames.

So, who is responsible? A framing analysis of newspaper coverage of electoral violence in Zimbabwe

This study examines how the 2008 election violence was framed in three mainstream Zimbabwean weekly newspapers – The Sunday Mail, The Independent and The Zimbabwean. It was noted that four frames – the victim, justice and human rights, trivialization and attribution of responsibility frames dominated the coverage of electoral violence in these three newspapers. The dominance of the trivializing frame in The Sunday Mail privileged the ruling party’s (Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front; ZANU PF) interpretation of electoral violence as inconsequential to the electoral process. Simultaneously, the prevalence of the victim, justice and human rights frames in The Independent and The Zimbabwean newspapers signifies the private media’s obsession with ZANU PF’s alleged electoral malpractices and situates these alleged transgressions within a broad global social justice and human rights trajectory to cultivate the West’s sympathy with the ‘victimised’ opposition.

“Thy Mangl’d Empire”

By analyzing the protests of merchants against the Stamp Act and other taxes, this chapter revises previous interpretations which have argued that there was no political agitation in Quebec similar to the Patriot opposition in the Thirteen Colonies. It also explores the emergence of classical republican modes of political discourse within the weekly newspapers and the censorship of radical Whig discourse throughout the American Revolution, demonstrating how political commentary thus became increasingly anti-American and more loyalist in tenor. It also compares the divergent strategies to maintain the allegiance of the French Canadian majority and the indigenous allies by the British government and Governors Carleton and Haldimand during the American Revolution, to show the emergence within official governmental circles of greater condemnation of the French Canadian majority who were represented as proto-rebels.

South Africa's Weekly Media: Front-Page Reporting 9/11, Preventing Islamophobia

New York's twin tower bombings, popularly referred to as 9/11, are regarded as a watershed period in world affairs. It happened at the cusp of the new century and its impact, since then, has been enormous, for it radically changed many aspects of human life. Both the print and the electronic media were pivotal in these changes. Besides shaping the way that communities perceive others, it also influenced the manner in which communities are dealing with one another. Since a radical Muslim group was blamed for this dastardly deed and since Muslims were implicated for this reprehensible act, the secular media expectedly placed the Muslims - in majority and minority settings - around the world under the spotlight. The media's negative portrayal and reporting about Muslims did not only contribute towards a tendentious relationship between the media and the Muslims but it also contributed towards the spread of Islamophobia. This thus caused Muslims in both majority and minority settings to adopt a skeptical view of the role of the secular media. Considering these developments, this essay's focus turns to the South African print media that reported and analyzed their reporting of this event during that period. Since it is beyond this essay's scope to look at all the country' s daily and weekly tabloids, it restricted itself to two widely circulated South African weekly newspapers, namely the Sunday Times and Mail & Guardian. It first describes and discusses their front-page reports as they captured the tragic 9/11 event, before it reflects on their editorials -columns providing one with insights into the respective editors' understanding of this event and their perceptions of Muslims nationally and globally. Being a purely textual study, it conceptualizes Islamophobia as the essay's conceptual frame.

Community Journalism

It is all too common to think of community journalism as being like all other types of journalism, just on a smaller scale. With the growth of the Internet and virtual community, this form of journalism cannot be distinguished solely by circulation size or geographic delineations. Within the larger journalism research sphere, community journalism remains underrepresented, even though the majority of publications in the United States can be classified as community journals, and throughout the world, small publications, both in print and online are commanding respect. If community media outlets are defined as having a circulation of lower than 50,000, then there are 7,184 community daily or weekly newspapers in the U.S. compared to only 4 publications with circulations of more than 500,000. Worldwide, data cannot be as easily condensed into percentages, but it is reasonable to think the figures are similar. Yet, media research typically focuses on the work and attitudes of the elites, i.e. the larger and best-known publications. Existing research on community journalism has identified key distinctions between community journalism and other types. First, community media focus on information connected to everyday life, and second, its media members tend to develop a closer, more intimate connection to the community they serve. The idea of closeness began with early research into the idea of community itself. Community as a concept revolves around emotional connection and membership. The two necessary elements for community formation are for a group of people to have something in common, and something that differentiates them from other groups. Community media build upon these concepts to give communities a voice. The audience for community news is often connected by an interest in, and emotional attachment to, a geographic area, which represents one form of community or a specific viewpoint, interest, or way of thinking which often represents virtual community. Both groups need journalists, who provide factual information on the community and enable and support strong community ties. Community journalists can also help build place attachment and create third places for community members to congregate and interact socially in.

Reading Poet Amy Levy through Victorian Newspapers

In this essay, Linda K. Hughes casts light on Amy Levy’s (1861–89) dexterous placement of her poetry in carefully selected newspapers throughout the 1880s. Levy is perhaps best known for her novels and three published volumes of poetry, as well as for her associations with various intellectual and political coteries in fin de siècle London; however, she was, in fact, ‘entrepreneurial’ in her dealings with the daily and weekly newspapers she published in throughout the 1880s, often ‘submitting in a verse medium that had already found favor with the editors’ (p. 459). The significance of media publishing contexts for Levy’s career has been underplayed in scholarship of the author, yet, as Hughes cautions, to obscure this dimension of her authorship is ‘to miss a crucial dimension of her work, even to distort her achievement and her engagement with the publishing world’ (p. 456). What emerges from this account is an entirely new perspective on Levy as a savvy and strategic newspaper poet, with a perspicacious understanding of poetry’s relationship with ‘audience, placement, and opportunity in the Victorian press’ (p.457).