Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2012

Communication scholars have examined what motivates people to seek out news and information through various platforms, most recently analyzsing how and why social network sites (SNSs) such as Twitter have become important in the formation and dissemination of news. This study seeks to build on such emerging research, using multiple methods to elucidate motivations for public engagement in the news process on Twitter and the resulting content. Against the backdrop of the 2010 shooting at the University of Texas at Austin, this study reveals novel motivations for public engagement in the news process via the social network site Twitter while also hinting that such engagement may not always be considered journalism. The findings encourage new avenues of communication and news media research while suggesting updates to current definitions of journalism.

In 2009 David Cameron, the Leader of the British Conservative Party, then in opposition, announced that ‘with a Conservative Government, Ofcom as we know it will cease to exist’ (Tryhorn 2009; Holmwood 2009). He said the United Kingdom’s communications regulator,the Office of Communications (Ofcom), would be cut back ‘by a huge amount’ and would ‘no longer play a role in making policy’. Three years later, with Mr Cameron half-way through his term as Prime Minister of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government,Ofcom’s budget had been cut – broadly in line with savings in the United Kingdom’s other public bodies – but it had far from ceased to exist. In fact it had an even wider role in regulation. Cameron’s government had asked Ofcom to regulate postal services in addition to its existing responsibilities for telecommunications and broadcasting.The British Prime Minister said the regulator’s core functions were ‘essential’ (Leveson Inquiry 2012h: 50, par. 157). His government regularly asked for policy input from Ofcom and in 2011 sought advice on how to handle issues of media plurality (Department for Culture Media and Sport 2011). Understanding how such a sudden political change of heart came about provides a case study into an issue which goes far beyond the United Kingdom’s shores – how political leaders, rather than submit to demands from news organizations for the de-regulation of their activities, may find that regulators are, in fact, a useful buttress against media pressure.

Based on a comparison between two reporting assignments – one to the North Caucasus in 2000, and another to the South Caucasus in 2008 – this article tracks the evolution of BBC newsgathering techniques as technology and editorial demand evolved. In doing so, the article also takes in examples from other assignments which the author carried out as a BBC correspondent, and considers how changing technology shaped editorial agendas for the first generation of journalists to work in the multiplatform world.

The UK is at a pivotal point in the regulation of its journalism. Following the ‘phone-hacking’ scandal which enveloped the British press in 2011, the UK’s government has established an Inquiry to gather evidence on the culture, practices and ethics of the press and recommend reform of its regulation. However this paper argues that the future of press regulation cannot be isolated from a wider settlement for regulated media content. The range of broadcast, print, self-scheduled and wider online content with which consumers engage is characterised by mutation and convergence. By contrast, media regulation remains essentially static, divided and determined by an accident of delivery platform. This paper draws on an analysis of UK and international approaches to media regulation. It argues for a new regulatory settlement that incentivises standards as a selling point for content providers, and enables citizens to make informed, democratic choices across media platforms.

The intense commercialization that underpins contemporary society has dynamically permeated into the global newspaper industry and converted journalism into a marketable commodity. Nevertheless, the demands of the marketplace, which have their origin in news commodification, may clash with traditional journalistic principles. With the aid of the face-to-face interview method and a sample of 30 press people employed by Greek newspaper companies, the present study aspires to explore the possible conflict between commercial and journalistic values, investigate its sources, and identify management problems that stem from this polarization. The results confirmed an unavoidable conflict, which ends up being an indispensable compromise between a newspaper’s informative role and the vital need to secure financial resources. Self-censorship imposed on journalists by profit-hunting media moguls creates tensions in the internal infrastructure of press firms and deprives newspaper content of veracity and objectivity.

In recent years, the creation of a number of press councils in Europe and elsewhere, as well as the concurrent appointment of internal ombudsmen or readers’ representatives in many significant newspapers, particularly in the United States, is a clear response to a growing public perception that there is a need for an appropriate level of accountability for the print media. It is fair to assume that this is related, in part, to a public perception that there is a need for remedies for abuses of media power – as there is a need for remedies for abuses of institutional power in any society.

Game journalism has become increasingly important for both consumers and producers of games. Consumers use reviews as a buyers’ guide while publishers use reviews to evaluate their developers. In this article we explore the difficulties game journalists face when writing a review and the effect of these reviews on game sales figures. More specifically, in Study 1 we describe the processes that affect the writing of game reviews based upon interviews with eight prominent game journalists. The results indicate that game journalists need to take into account the highly subjective experience of playing digital games, the rapidly evolving digital game audience, and the strong dependency on the industry. Study 2 complements Study 1 in that we examine whether game journalists influence game sales figures with their writings. Game review scores, advertising efforts and content characteristics were regressed on the official game sales figures in Belgium. The results suggest that review score and advertising eff rts are good predictors of game sales while content characteristics do not influence game sales.

This article will focus on the analysis of the two award-winning movies Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle) and The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow), both released in 2008. It examines their cross cultural representations for ‘othering’, with a view to identify the strategies used in the construction of models for social ordering and validation of western superiority. Since the narratives of these movies attempt a representation across ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ identities, it is on ‘orientalism’ imagetics that I concentrate.

Verifying information is one of the core activities of journalism, however recent research shows many stories derive from unchecked information from news agencies and PR material. That being said, reporters who do not use this pre-packaged material, but who instead produce original stories based on independent research, might be journalists who stay devoted to the verification of information. Therefore, this study focuses on in-depth stories that originated inside the newsroom. We expected that these kinds of stories would be checked and double-checked, because time constraints are less important and these stories are characteristic of independent, quality journalism. Contrary to this expectation, the results show that even these kinds of stories are not always vetted. The lack of time was seldom mentioned as an excuse. Our research points to avoidance mechanisms which inhibit journalists from verifying their information.

Elections and the Media in Post-Conflict Africa: Votes and Voices for Peace, Marie-Soleil Frere, 1st Edition (2011) London: Zed Books, 352 pp.,ISBN: 9781780320182, £21.99 | $39.95