Pressure, compromise and overwork: How Australian regional journalists gain job satisfaction through community service

In a time of enormous change in the Australian news media industry – with outlet closures, redesign of company business models, rationalization of staff and shifts in medium uptake – this article explores journalists’ exposure to and perceptions of work pressures in their jobs. It explores the relationship of these experiences with the journalists’ job satisfaction. The study reports that journalists find the industry difficult and demanding, with time pressures, ethical compromise and overwork being their main concerns. However, the study also found that journalists still derive satisfaction from a profession they perceive as meaningful through informing their communities about matters that affect their decision making and how they live. This passion for community service alongside the notion of holding authority to account result in a sense of overarching job satisfaction. This article presents part of a study that investigated the experience of journalists in remote and regional media organizations in Queensland and New South Wales through survey and interviews.

News Values from an Audience Perspective

News Values from an Audience Perspective, Martina Temmerman and Jelle Mast (eds) (2021) Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 189 pp.,ISBN 978-3-03045-045-8, h/bk, $119.99

An understanding of Nigerian television mobile news applications and associate news locations

Mobile applications are already part of the contemporary news experience, which increasingly includes the convergent mobile application news content of conventional media, such as television stations. Impressively, the experience of such convergences has spread to include developing nations, including Nigeria. However, despite the enormous digital device and media penetrations in the country, little research has been done in order to understand the nature of such television stations’ mobile application news. With regards to the foregoing, and the importance of associated news locations, this content analysis research has been conducted and has found serious correlation between ownership type and television application news content. While Africa is the dominant proximate news locations of the prominent Nigerian television mobile application news studied, the news spread categories are largely similar across all mobile application news content.

A study of intermedia and interorganizational agenda-setting in the news coverage of the Ebola virus on Twitter

The Ebola virus is a rare but often severe and fatal illness in humans. It spreads from animals to humans and then transgresses through human-to-human transmission. The 2014 Ebola virus disease outbreak captured substantial media attention around the world, which is the cornerstone of our study since it can inform us about the current news coverage on the COVID-19 pandemic. This article investigates the media coverage of Ebola in five pairs of English and Arabic international television media outlets (BBC, CNN, SkyNews, RT and France24) by examining the headlines of 298,559 news stories that the respective organizations posted on their official Twitter accounts. Methodologically, we extracted headlines from news outlets that addressed the news on the Ebola virus in two languages: English and Arabic. The media outlets include the following: CNN (English and Arabic), BBC (English and Arabic), SkyNews (English and Arabic), RT (formerly known as Russia Today) (English and Arabic) and France24 (English and Arabic) from late 2013 to early 2015 during which time the Ebola epidemic intensified. We then used descriptive statistics to understand the volume of news coverage and calculate the frequencies, percentages, mean, median and standard deviations for these channels. Further, we continued to model time series regression between the five pairs of news outlets using Granger causality tests. The findings show that over the course of approximately one year’s worth of coverage on these networks, Ebola was mentioned in the headlines of 4138 stories, which constitutes 1.38 per cent of the total news coverage of all media outlets. Building on the theory of intermedia agenda-setting that outlines the ways in which major news organizations influence the agendas of other news outlets, the findings reported here indicate strong, time-ordered patterns where English-language coverage consistently precedes and helps to significantly explain the distribution of Arabic media coverage. In addition to providing evidence of intermedia agenda-setting from a comparative perspective in this context, this article expands on this theory and suggests that it can be applied to multilingual outlets from the same news organizations.

Statistics and The Quest For Quality Journalism: A Study in Quantitative Reporting, A. Martinisi and J. A. Lugo-Ocando (2020)

Statistics and the Quest for Quality Journalism: A Study in Quantitative Reporting, A. Martinisi and J. A. Lugo-Ocando (2020) London: Anthem Press, 1 pp., ISBN 978-1-78527-533-3, h/bk, $125.00

Investigative Journalism, Hugo de Burgh and Paul Lashmar (Eds) (2021)

Investigative Journalism, Hugo de Burgh and Paul Lashmar (Eds) (2021) London: Routledge, 316 pp., ISBN 978-0-36718-248-9, p/bk, £26.39, h/bk, £96.00

User comments on Facebook as a form of interactive engagement

The purpose of this article is to examine the quality of user comments on the Facebook posts of the Greek Public Broadcasting Corporation (ERT) with a view to acquiring an in-depth understanding of the way the users express themselves publicly. Moreover, the article has looked into which characteristics of the posts prompt the users to comment and whether post time is related to user comments. In all, 2547 user comments recorded on ERT digital platform have been analysed, the majority of which feature negative content. The posts that include a photo have a positive influence on users and result in increased interaction, while the relation between comments and post type is also ascertained.

The Crisis of the Institutional Press, Stephen D. Reese (2021)

The Crisis of the Institutional Press, Stephen D. Reese (2021) Cambridge: Polity Press, 214 pp., ISBN 978-1-5095-3802-4, p/bk, £15.99

Editorial: Refashioning stories for celebrity counterpublics

Using celebrity narratives as a starting point, this Special Issue explores the social significance of storytelling for social change. It builds on the 8th Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies conference, which brought together scholars and media practitioners to explore how narratives inspired by the lives of celebrities, public intellectuals, critics and activists offer useful rhetorical tools to better understand dominant ideologies. This editorial further problematizes what it means to be a popular ‘storyteller’ using the critical lens of celebrity activism and life-writing. Throughout the issue, contributors analyse the politics of representation at play within a wide range of glamourous narratives, including documentaries, memoirs, TED talks, stand-up performances and award acceptance speeches in Hollywood and beyond. The studies show how we can strategically use aesthetic communication to shape identity politics in public personas and bring urgent social change in an image-driven celebrity culture.