Journalism

The next speaker in this Future of Journalism 2023 conference session is Carolyn Jackson-Brown, who highlights the dilemma for journalists inherent in their dual missions to inform and entertain (or, more to the point, attract clicks from news users). Her focus here is on the reporting of the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022, and she worked with journalism students on how they received news about the war – in the first place, from TikTok, Twitter, and professional journalists’ accounts.

The final session on this first day of the Future of Journalism 2023 conference begins with Jaume Suau, whose interest is in the role of news organisations in the spread of mis- and disinformation. What is the impact of disinformation, and how might we study it? Jaume is focussing here first on foreign-sponsored disinformation, whose main objective is to diminish societal trust and increase polarisation; Howe can we assess whether these campaigns have been successful?

The final speaker in this Future of Journalism 2023 conference session is Karen Assmann, who begins with Nieman Lab’s prediction that ‘democracy beats’ (journalism in defence of democracy) were soon coming to US journalism – a prediction made in 2021 and then again in 2022, yet still barely realised. Journalism has of course long been seen as a pillar of democracy, yet what this means is hardly ever fully explained – this is a folkloristic view, for the most part.

The next session at Future of Journalism 2023 conference that I’m attending is on polarisation, so of course I had to check it out; it starts with Mel Bunce and her colleagues’ study of the Media Freedom Coalition. However, they’ve asked for this study not to be tweeted at this stage, so I shall also not blog about it for now.

The second keynote at the Future of Journalism 2023 conference today is by the wonderful Jane B. Singer, who will be reflecting on the past and future of journalism studies as a field.

The final speaker in this Future of Journalism 2023 conference session on the war in Ukraine is Turo Uskali, whose interest is in news surveillance technologies in war reporting; his team is exploring this through interviews with Finnish war correspondents in Ukraine, and their Ukrainian fixers, from 2014 to 2021. How are they cutting through the fog of war in their reporting?

The next speaker in this Future of Journalism 2023 conference is Marisa Porto, whose interest is in local news sustainability during times of crisis – what can be learnt from the performance of local news organisations in Ukraine during the current war? Her project studied 10 local newsrooms there in September and October 2022 (some six months after the Russian invasion), with interviews at times interrupted by air raids and other safety issues.

The second presenter in this Future of Journalism 2023 conference is Svenja Boberg. She begins by noting that crisis reporting seems to be the new normal in journalistic reporting of the current permacrisis, from COVID-19 to the Ukraine war and beyond. But journalism is not necessarily prepared for this, and the quality of its reporting especially on war crimes and other critical matters is sometimes problematic and insufficiently thought-through.

The next session I’m attending here at Future of Journalism 2023 conference is on the Russian war on Ukraine, and starts with James Rodgers, who begins by noting the long history of censorship of foreign journalists in the Soviet Union, and links this to questions about the Russian war on Ukraine as a potential rekindling of Russia’s imperial ambitions.

It’s a Thursday in September in a surprisingly non-drizzly Cardiff, so I must be at the Future of Journalism 2023 conference – and it kicks off with a keynote by Valérie Bélair-Gagnon, whose focus is on the intersections between digital journalism and digital platforms. Journalism has always engaged in digital news innovation, and journalism research has accompanied this; the research has usually seen this innovation as a tangible process with its particular dynamics and stakeholders, and that could be measured and quantified, for instance by assessing its online success. Such success might mean improvements to work methods and workflows, to content forms and formats, to audience and engagement, and other aspects.

But there was a lack of a critical stance – while researchers lamented journalism’s difficulty in adapting to the new Internet technologies now available, a critical stance towards the impact of these technologies on journalism was often missing. This applies for instance to the mental health consequences for journalists of the competitive metrification of journalism engagement measures via social media metrics, or of the increasing targetting of journalists representing minorities with abuse on social media. Journalism research instead adopted the discourse of platform companies, without questioning its biases.