Blog

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session is Lin Pan, whose interest is in investigative journalism in the social media age in China. She highlights the issue of mis- and disinformation on social media, which is a problem in China too, but notes that the impact of this problem on investigative reporting has yet to be fully understood.

This study therefore explored the impact of disinformation on Chinese investigative reporting. It drew on a hierarchy of influences model, where routine and organisational influences have stronger impacts on individuals than broader social and societal settings. The project conducted interviews with …

Up next at IAMCR 2024 are Virpi Salojärvi and Teija Waaramaa, whose interest is in the presence of Finnish legacy media on TikTok. Their move to explore this platform is part of a longer trajectory of journalistic transformation with the growing use of digital and social media technologies; this has also meant a greater incorporation of affective elements into journalistic coverage.

The present study focusses on the form and not the content of Finnish media’s TikTok uses. There is still relatively high trust in institutional media in Finland; TikTok has become a primary news source for younger generations, and the …

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session is Margaret Ng, whose interest is in the transition of journalists to other platforms following the enshittification of Twitter by Elon Musk. Twitter had been crucial to journalism for years, but after his takeover Musk began to suspend the accounts of various journalists who had offended his fragile ego; many journalists responded by sharing their Mastodon or other contact details, and saying they would leave Twitter – but did this actually happen, and how are journalists now using other social media platforms?

This project examined the activities of some 861 journalists on …

The second day at IAMCR 2024 starts with Jingxuan Gao, whose interest is in news on Weibo. She describes this as the newsification of social media, as the platform is becoming more important as a source of news for Chinese users. Weibo is broadly similar to Twitter, with some 598 million monthly active users.

Central to Weibo is Weibo Hot Search, which offers a list of trending topics on the platform and often packages entertainment information and soft news into a form of more serious news – newsifying them. This can be linked to the concept of infotainment, and may …

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session is Dmitry Romanenko, whose interest is in the media portrayal of Ukraine in New Zealand media following Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country. Western coverage of the war has tended to take a strongly pro-Ukrainian perspective, which is a substantial shift from the far more critical pre-invasion media coverage. Here, the focus is on the use of images in such coverage, which represent dominant narratives and can have a substantial effect on international relations.

This can be understood through Entman’s cascading activation paradigm; Dmitry examines this through a study of articles from …

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session is Kerry McCallum, whose interest is in the media logics surrounding public inquiries into child abuse, focussing especially on the Royal Commission into Institutionalised Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Australia, in 2013-17.

Media were a key player in making child sexual abuse in institutional settings in Australia public – but they can also reinforce public stigma and discriminatory policies. Public inquiries, in turn, can shift public discourse on critical social issues, but their non-public aspects of ‘quiet listening’ to the victims of survivors of abuse are just as critical; this needs …

The next session at IAMCR 2024 is on media framing, and we start with Henri Mütschele, whose interest is in the German media portrayals of the Fridays for Future and Letzte Generation protest movements in the ‘protest winter’ of 2022/23. Germany has a long tradition of climate protests, but these groups have very different approaches to their protests: from socially acceptable demonstrations to more radical and disruptive blockage actions.

In winter 2022/23, against the context of the European energy crisis brought on by the Russian war on Ukraine, there was a heightened rate of protests by such groups, and these …

The final speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session on Ukrainian cultural heritage narratives is Dmitry Romanenko, whose focus is on Chinese narratives on the Russian war against Ukraine.It has already been observed in some studies that Chinese media like the Global Times usually take a pro-Russian stance that’s justifies the war in Ukraine; however, an alternative perspective is that China’s public messaging is predominantly designed to promote its own, and not Russia’s, interests, and that it does not explicitly endorse the war. Whose narratives is China telling, then? What is their message, and can it be contested at an international …

The third speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session on cultural and heritage narratives surrounding the war on Ukraine is Shalabh Chopra, who begins by highlighting the changes in global power structures; in this the newly multipolar world the Global South is not readily on the side of the west in major conflicts, and may therefore also be less sympathetic towards Ukraine in the current war.

This can also be observed for the case of India. India has a long history of non-alignment, and has had historically good ties with the USSR; it has engaged in diplomatic efforts surrounding the war …

The next speaker in this session at IAMCR 2024 is Mia Angeline, who continues the theme of the arming of Ukrainian cultural heritage from the perspective of Indonesian media. Indonesia is a rising, non-aligned power in the Global South, and has a growing influence in global fora. Its historical experiences have influenced this non-alignment, and its vibrant and diverse cultural heritages may increase its sympathy for the cultural heritage concerns of other countries.

How do Indonesian media frame Ukranian cultural heritage in the context of the war, then? This might be understood in the context of agenda-setting (on salient issues) …