Activist-journalism and the Norm of Objectivity: Role Performance in the Reporting of the #MeToo Movement in Denmark and Sweden

ABSTRACT

This article presents the results of a study examining the self-perceived roles of journalists covering the #MeToo movement in Denmark and Sweden. Drawing on qualitative interviews with journalists, editors and activists (N = 20) and participant observation at various #MeToo events, we examine the professional journalism cultures underpinning differences in the coverage and the broader public debate spurred by the movement in the two countries. The analysis is informed by the theoretical framework of role performance [Mellado, C. 2015. “Professional Roles in News Content: Six Dimensions of Journalistic Role Performance”. Journalism Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2014.922276; Mellado, C., L. Hellmueller, and W. Donsbach. 2016. Journalistic Role Performance Concepts, Contexts, and Methods. Routledge) in combination with Tuchman’s (1972. “Objectivity as Strategic Ritual”. American Journal of Sociology 77 (4): 660–679) seminal work on “Objectivity as Strategic Ritual”. This combined framework enables an analysis of how journalists negotiate ideals of objective reporting and activist imperatives when covering the movement and issues of gender (in)equality more broadly. Our study shows that journalists, to a varying degree, felt torn between ideals of impartiality and objectivity and ideals of active reporting oriented towards action and problem-solving but that these experiences differed between the two countries and between newsrooms. We discuss these findings in light of differences in the political climates around issues related to gender in the two countries and partially diverging normative ideals and professional journalistic cultures regarding the extent to which journalism and activism can and should be combined.

KEYWORDS:

• Journalistic norms and practices
• journalistic roles
• objectivity
• activism
• role theory
• #MeToo

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 When addressing differences in media cultures across Denmark and Sweden, we dovetail on a transcultural aproach to studying media cultures, as proposed by Hepp and Couldry (2009) in their critique of “essentialist container thinking” in contemporary comparative media research. This entails an understanding of media cultures not as strictly bounded by a specific national territory, or as completely de-territorialised, but as a kind of specific, if often blurred, cultural “thickening of translocal processes of the articulation of meaning”. Rather than mining the data for that which is essentially Danish or Swedish cultural properties, such an approach to media cultures tries to consider the specificity of such thickenings and the complex interrelations between them.

2 By the term activists, we refer to both civil society actors and people who work professionally and full time with gender issues as part of NGOs such as Dansk Kvindesamfund, Sex og Samfund, Efter #MeToo, Mangfold, Danner and Kvinfo.

3 In reference to “putting on the Pussy Bow blouse and running with the flock”, this journalist from a Swedish tabloid newspaper hints at the public outcry against the ousting of the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy Sara Danius. The Pussy Bow blouse, often worn by Danius, including on the day of her resignation, became a symbol of protest in Sweden and a nation-wide way of showing support for Danius, who many considered to have been unjustly “sacrificed” by (male) members of the academy. In the weeks following the scandal in the Swedish Academy, which came to be intrinsically linked to #MeToo, news anchors, prominent journalists, politicians and celebrity activists alike posted pictures of themselves wearing Pussy Bows on social media, and some took to the streets as part of the protest events organised in Stockholm and other major cities.