Quelle Différence?

Abstract

Canada, Belgium and Switzerland are multicultural countries with several similarities including having French as a minority language. The trio also shares similar media landscapes, systems and approaches to journalism to those of other Western European and Northern American countries. These commonalities offer an opportunity to probe for the possibility of a language-based differentiation in journalists’ professional identities. Our comparative analysis of Worlds of Journalism Study data suggests that francophone journalists in our three countries have much more in common than not with their other-language peers. However, the francophone journalists seem more likely to identify with a politicized role that includes agenda-setting, citizen-motivation and scrutinizing power, and less likely to be driven by attracting and satisfying audiences. A différence francophone exists, but it is modest.

KEYWORDS:

• Belgium
• Canada
• francophone
• journalism
• language
• media systems
• professional identity
• Switzerland

Notes

1. French-speakers constitute approximately 38 percent of the population in Belgium (where the majority language is Dutch), 23 percent in Switzerland (majority German) and 21 percent in Canada (majority English). In all three countries, francophone populations and media are often concentrated in particular geographic regions. All these countries also have other important minority languages.

2. Italian-speaking Swiss journalists’ responses are not included in the present analysis because they are neither part of the dominant language group, nor part of the Francophonie.

3. Reliability depends in part on the number of items in the scale (Nunnally 1978, 227–228), and it is therefore not surprising to find that several of our scales fall slightly below Spector’s (1992) proposed minimum Cronbach’s alpha of 0.7, which has become a generally accepted guideline. Nevertheless, we note that the factor groupings relevant to role orientation all have alpha scores quite close to 0.7 or higher.

4. Summary statistics of the scales (valid N; mean; standard deviation; median) were as follows. Fourth estate: 1659; 6.29; 1.67; 6.57. Audience-servers: 1746; 6.03; 1.77; 6.00. Community-builders: 1683; 6.83; 1.54; 6.80. Special interests: 1696; 3.60; 1.36; 3.67. Professional imperatives: 1636; 6.86; 1.30; 7.00. Organizational interests: 1445; 5.32; 1.45; 5.20. Extreme practices: 888; 9.61; 0.85; 10.00. Deceptive practices: 1735; 7.61; 1.43; 7.78.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 435-2015-0589]; the Swiss National Science Foundation [grant number 10001CE_147680]; the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek—Vlaanderen [grant number G099112N].