The 2021 Future of Journalism conference was organised by the School of Journalism, Media and Culture (JOMEC) at Cardiff University and held between the 22 and 24 September. After seven successful biennial conferences where sessions were hosted at Cardiff University, this year’s Conference was held online due to the coronavirus pandemic. The conference themes—Overcoming obstacles in journalism– reflected both the immediate challenges created the pandemic as well as the more long term difficulties faced by journalists reporting in increasingly hostile and polarised environments. The conference featured almost 200 papers from international scholars and practitioners- as well as keynote speeches from Professor Danielle K. Brown (Michigan State University), Professor Cherian George (Hong Kong Baptist University), and Professor Gary Younge (Manchester University).
The call for papers for the conference encouraged contributions across a wide range of issues and debates in journalism, including:
How have news organisations around the world covered the pandemic? What have been the major logistical and ethical challenges in doing so?
How have news organisations managed the coverage of major events beyond the pandemic (e.g., the Black Lives Matter movement and critical race theory, and the US presidential elections)?
How have news organisations responded to unprecedented attacks on journalists as professionals and journalism as an institution?
What new storytelling formats, techniques and platforms have journalists developed to cover the pandemic?
What has been the role of emerging practices (e.g., data journalism, fact-checking artificial intelligence, constructive journalism) in shaping storytelling?
How has audience engagement with the news changed?
How have news organisations responded to the “infodemic” of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories? What role have social media played in this context?
What has been the emotional impact of covering news in crisis, and how can news organisations ensure support for the mental health of journalists in the future?
How can practising journalists and academics strengthen their ties and work to better inform audiences?
With such a wide remit, the presentations at the conference drew on leading edge research across a wide range of topics. Unsurprisingly, considering the unprecedented global impact of Covid-19, the effects of pandemic on news media were the subject of many papers. These focused not only on how the virus and the consequent public policy responses were reported, but also on how the pandemic transformed journalism practice and news consumption. However, presenters also engaged with long standing debates in journalism research including: impartiality and balance, sourcing, diversity in newsrooms, new technology, disinformation, news literacy, gatekeeping, and the economic viability of news. Thus, the Conference addressed both the immediate impact of the coronavirus pandemic alongside economic challenges to the industry and new technological developments.
A number of major themes run through the collection of articles selected for this special edition of Journalism Studies. One concerns the perennial issue of how journalists can obtain independent access to information and hold those in power to account. Such challenges have been sharpened by the pandemic and the consequent tendency for reporting to be increasingly structured around official sources. This has been a particular problem in more authoritarian polities where restrictions on movement and reliance on official data have narrowed the space for critical reporting by increasing journalism’s reliance on state information managers. However, threats to independent journalism long predate the pandemic, including the rise of populists leaders around the world who are increasingly relying on legislation to curb reporting. A second, related theme running through this collection concerns how journalists manage their relationships with key sources. Whether they be elite political figures, scientists, PR professionals, whistleblowers or citizens, how do journalists with a public interest ethos interact with such sources without compromising their critical stance.
This special issue begins with Hughes et al.’s paper: “Does the Political Context Shape How ‘Due Impartiality’ is Interpreted? An Analysis of BBC Reporting of the 2019 UK and 2020 US Election Campaigns,” which explores how BBC journalists approach claims made by political leaders in domestic and international stories. Utilising data from the 2019 UK General Election and the 2020 US Presidential Election they analyse the frequency and manner in which claims from political leaders are subject to scrutiny. At the heart of the study is the question of whether—in an environment in which populist politicians appear increasingly willing to lie and spread misinformation—journalists are prepared to fulfil their watchdog role. The authors find that claims are more likely to be challenged in foreign than domestic reporting and that broadcast reporting features less scrutiny of claims than online news. Although the authors admit they lack the necessary data to conclusively establish the factors behind these patterns in reporting, they tentatively suggest that domestic political pressure and BBC journalists’ well established links with UK party communicators are likely to be significant. The paper concludes with a plea for more “nuanced” and “fine grained” research which unpacks the complexities of how journalists construct balance and impartiality across platforms and jurisdictions.
The complexities of managing source-media relations and establishing truth claims are also central concerns in Franks et al.’s “Beyond Cheerleading: Navigating the Boundaries of Science Journalism in South Africa”. This paper explores how science journalists manage their relationship with sources in a context of increasing financial pressure and the growth of public relations and professionalised corporate science communication. Drawing on interviews with 20 South African science journalists, Franks et al. seek to explore how reporters interact with scientists and other key institutional sources as well as how the growth of PR has shaped the way science is covered. The research finds that science journalists—like elite political journalists—must walk a fine line between fostering enduring relationships with key sources, whilst also attempting to hold them to account. The paper thus furthers contemporary debates around how commercial pressures and the growth of public relations are in danger of eroding the boundaries between science journalists, scientists and corporate communicators so posing the question of whether journalists are “watchdogs” or “cheerleaders” for new scientific discoveries.
The issue of the relationship between journalists and sources is also central to Wuergler et al.’s study of how investigative journalism might be identified. The authors note that despite many recent developments in the field—such as a shift to cross-national and data sciences approaches- investigative journalism remains a “blurred concept” in need of greater conceptual clarity. In particular, Wuergler et al. note that previous studies have relied on award-winning or best examples of the genre: consequentially they miss a body of work that fails to conform to a narrow set of prescriptive elements. To rectify this, the authors have created a text-based, multi-step approach that focuses on the scale of sources consulted and the degree of activity/passivity of journalists’ interactions with sources. As the results of their study show, this allows for the identification of investigative journalism within a broader range of stories beyond those traditionally concerned with malfeasance and crime.
The next two articles focus explicitly on how the pandemic impacted journalism. Arafat and Porlezza’s article explores how the journalism industry in Egypt adapted to Covid-19. They find that the pandemic threw up considerable technical and logistical challenges for journalists who were forced to innovate and introduce new digital tools for sourcing and news gathering. However, as the authors note, media outlets differed in their ability to adjust to these challenges in important ways. Whilst the private profit-driven newsrooms—which already had plans to expand multimedia formats—were able to quickly innovate employing artificial intelligence and interactive visual news, the more traditional media, heavily reliant on print and “traditional storytelling” struggled to adapt. Their research also uncovered how the pandemic reconfigured the role perceptions of journalists, strengthening what can be seen as their educational role in helping to inform their audiences. However, despite the widespread belief that crises can function as events which open up spaces to challenge the legitimacy of the existing social order, Arafat and Porlezza find that the pandemic strengthened journalists’ reliance on official sources as part of their drive to combat misinformation.
In a very different national context Laura Amigo’s paper explores how the Italian daily L’Eco di Bergamo employed various strategies to bring itself closer to audiences during this traumatic period. Combining an analysis of initiatives undertaken by the newspaper with semi-structured interviews with its journalists, her research finds that L’Eco di Bergamo utilised similar initiatives to those employed in the pre-pandemic period but at greater scale and intensity. These initiatives—classified as “gatekeeping”, “commercial” or “social”—were undertaken simultaneously so that ‘L’Eco related with audiences in multi-layered ways’. Amigo suggests this means that audiences were conceived as an “elastic figure determined by these strategies” and were assigned various roles: consumer, citizen, neighbour, or stakeholder. Ultimately this attempt to create greater closeness with audiences accomplished multiple objectives for ‘L’Eco. Not only did it fulfil commercial imperatives but it also sought to meet the informational needs of audiences, whilst also engendering cohesion, resilience, and social solidarity.
This special issue of Journalism Studies closes with Carson and Gibbon’s study “The Big Chill? How Journalists and Sources Perceive and Respond to Fake News Laws in Indonesia and Singapore”. Rather than focusing on interventions to improve the veracity of public discourse, the authors draw attention to how political actors utilise public fears of “fake news” to restrict independent and critical reporting. Based on data from 20 interviews with journalists, editors, sources and fake news experts in Indonesia and Singapore, Carson and Gibbons find that fake news laws in both countries are primarily targeting journalists, civil society actors, political opponents, and social media platforms. They argue that the consequences have been self-censorship by reporters and a decline in public trust in journalism. Nevertheless, the authors also note how journalists in both countries have attempted to circumvent such restrictions by teaming up with foreign journalists to avoid being targeted, or putting news organisations outside the reach of the new laws by registering them overseas. The authors conclude with a warning that, in the understandable drive to combat misinformation, states should be wary of introducing “fake news laws’ which can be used to muzzle independent journalism.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).