Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2012

Transdisciplinary action research (TD) is about understanding and improving the real world, the “life-world” (e.g. Hirsch Hadorn, et al., 2008, p. 20). In the TD research framework, academics from various disciplines collaborate with practitioners to investigate and sustainably solve a socially-relevant practical problem. TD transcends academe: It is research “on, for and with” practitioners (Cameron, Frazer, Rampton, & Richardson, 1992, p. 22). This position paper outlines TD as the ideal research framework to “bridge the gap between media and communication scholarship on the one hand and media practitioners on the other” (http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=220). To illustrate TD, I draw on the Idée suisse research project (e.g. Perrin, 2011a). In this project, academics and media practitioners collaborate to investigate how the Swiss national TV company and its journalists work and what they need to do to improve their output.

Being the CEO of a broadcasting company, I have come to realize that a big part of my professional life has to be devoted to distribution, be it cable, satellite, terrestrial or the Internet. Distribution is a complex question. It is about technology, economy, politics and very much about ideology. Or to be even more precise, it is about democracy and the right for all citizens regardless of age, education and income, to obtain information via television and via the Internet. This essay focuses on distribution via the Internet, the fastest growing of all forms of distribution of media. In it, I will highlight four issues: coyright, spectrum policy, network neutrality and media policy.

The lifeblood of developing democracies is a well-informed and engaged electorate, which requires a free and vibrant press. However, where journalistic standards are lax, and media often face pressure from government and business, a lack of media literacy hampers a citizen’s access to accurate and independent media. Citizens become accustomed to the poor journalistic standards and lose all trust in the fourth estate including any independent media. Just as a more informed electorate demands better governance, Internews Network, an international media development NGO, hypothesized that a more media literate audience demands higher journalistic standards. Since 2003, Internews has implemented a comprehensive media development program in Ukraine, U-Media. Drawing on the work of experts like Renee Hobbs, Chris Worsnop, Neil Andersen, Jeff Share and Scott Sullivan, Internews has focused on journalistic standards and their relationship with media literacy.

Journalism is involved in substantial change caused by technological, social and economic developments, which lead to the need for innovation at every level: the working process, the content of the product, the form of the product, the public, the platform that is used to get the message across and the profession as a whole. For each of these elements of journalism we attribute one of the following major innovations: Transparency, navigation, storytelling, participation, crossmedia and entrepreneurship.

In which way will these innovations have an effect on the learning goals in European journalism education, according to professional journalists? Our research shows that there is a large consensus among European professionals concerning the future key qualifications for young journalists. Furthermore, there is not much evidence that a majority of European journalists is ready to make the jump to renewal, perhaps with the exception of online journalists. Most professional journalists across Europe appear to hold a rather traditional view on their profession.

BBC’s earliest interpretations of impartiality were very simple. They did not require any elaboration so long as the public discourse appeared bipolar: There was the government on the one hand and the opposition on the other; there was capital, there was labor. But by the turn of this century, the BBC found itself in a position in which it became extremely difficult for its editors to apply and practice impartiality as before. Dramatic changes and transformations within the British society and the world at large prompted the BBC to come up with new defining values for impartiality. This article traces how the BBC developed its own standards and practices of impartiality in news and current affairs in the decades since its establishment in 1922.

Today, participating in social media has become an obligation for all news organizations. Among these, Facebook and Twitter play central roles. Nevertheless, different reports show that, at least in Spain, several media outlets use these 2.0 tools with a 1.0 mentality. Thus, despite the wide potential that Twitter provides for mainstream media, most broadcasters underuse the technology by only posting news headlines or using it for self-promotion while failing to adequately engage with their audiences or link to external content. In order to shed new light on the proper use of Twitter, this paper presents a collection of some inspiring and valuable practices. To illustrate and enrich the analysis, screenshots are included.

With the Greek debt crisis unfolding and slowly expanding as an economic crisis all over Europe, coverage of this event was heavy and steady – not only in the Eurozone. American media were closely following the situation in Greece from the very beginning at the start of 2010. Similar long-term coverage of Europe has been rare in the new millennium which begs the question why this crisis became such a big continuous news story in the United States. In this empirical study, it will be argued that the status of Greece as a news topic has been elevated due to the ongoing crisis because it is topically connected and contextualized to a broader story of Europe’s economy. Thus, including topical and contextual considerations in the news factor country status seems necessary. This paper uses news value theories as its theoretical background and is based on qualitative interviews with several Europe-based U.S. correspondents.

Israel gets more media coverage than any other country in the Middle East, with the bulk of the news originating in the country itself. Although a very small country, Israel is a base for one of the largest foreign press corps in the world. This article reviews how news from Israel streams to the rest of the world, its content, images as well as other important issues related to the conflict within the country and its various governing bodies on the type of media portrayal the Jewish state wants to relay to the world.