The Future of Professional Photojournalism

Abstract

The work practices of the professional photojournalist are currently undergoing rapid change in the digital era. New technologies, new platforms and new methods of visual storytelling are exerting a range of pressures and influences that require photojournalists to adapt and respond in different ways. The changes provoke a number of questions that are critical to the future of professional photojournalism: What are the new risks being faced by photojournalists? How are the transformations in the media economy affecting photojournalists’ employment? What does this mean for image quality? How do photojournalists think about the manipulation of images or the staging of events? Given the rise of citizen journalism, digital technology and social media, will there even be professional photojournalists in the future? This paper presents some of the results and new analysis from the first international study into the current state and future of professional photojournalism, with a specific focus on risk and on perceptions of risk among photographers. The results indicate a high degree of risk is experienced among professional photographers with a very strong correlation to the country in which they are based.

KEYWORDS:

• change
• country
• digital
• employment
• photography
• photojournalism
• risk

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Our grateful thanks go to the following: Geert Linnebank, Katrin Voltmer, Reuters Institute Director David Levy, World Press Photo Foundation Managing Director Lars Boering, his predecessor Maarten Koets and World Press Photo Foundation head of communications Kari Lundelin, and to D. J. Clark and the photojournalists at Reuters in London who helped us with the pilot of the questionnaire. The research analyses data taken from 1500 professional photojournalists from more than 100 countries and is a partnership between the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, the University of Stirling’s journalism department and the World Press Photo Foundation, one of the premier platforms for the recognition of global excellence in photo- and video-journalism.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Photographers describe themselves in a range of different ways from photojournalists to visual storytellers and while there are many kinds of photographers and a wide range of photographic work, equipment and endeavour, our principle focus is on news photography and, in particular, on photojournalism and documentary photography.

2. See Hadland, Campbell, and Lambert (2015).

3. Scores were constructed by adding together the scores for the principal dimension (85.7 per cent of inertia) of a multiple correspondence analysis between three variables: responses to questions on levels of risk and future prospects of risk; and a dichotomous indicator of whether or not the risk of physical injury or death was mentioned as a main concern. The risk score has a mean of 1.5, a range from 0 (lowest levels of physical risk) to 4.2 (highest levels of physical risk) and a standard deviation of 1.

4. This property is known as “shrinkage” towards the overall pattern, and means that the estimated values are slightly different to those that would be obtained by simply calculating the mean patterns of responses within a country (which is problematic when many countries have low numbers of respondents).

Additional information

Funding

This research was part-funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland [Small Grant Number 31917].

Notes on contributors

Adrian Hadland

Adrian Hadland (author to whom correspondence should be addressed), Division of Communications, Media & Culture, University of Stirling, UK.

Paul Lambert

Paul Lambert, Division of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Stirling, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

David Campbell

David Campbell, Communications and Marketing, World Press Photo Foundation, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]