Engaged Journalism and News Work: A Sociotechnical Analysis of Organizational Dynamics and Professional Challenges

ABSTRACT

Building upon the sociotechnical perspective presented by Lewis and Westlund (2015, “Actors, Actants, Audiences, and Activities in Cross-media News Work: A Matrix and a Research Agenda.” Digital Journalism 3 (1): 19–37. doi:10.1080/21670811.2014.927986), this study examines organizational dynamics, technological affordances and professional challenges of engaged journalism practices by analyzing how Hearken, one of the most celebrated audience engagement companies, and its tools and services are being implemented in 15 U.S. news organizations. This framework identifies Hearken and organizations like it as important “external actors” providing technological “actants” that are shaping how newsrooms report the news by providing ways for audiences to be brought into producing the news, particularly during the earlier phases of the reporting process. Based on in-depth interviews, we find that nearly every news organization in our sample reports some measure of success by using Hearken for involving audience members throughout the production of news. At the same time, we also identify how this implementation is significantly shaped by organizational imperatives and the models particular organizations create for producing audience-centric news work. Ultimately, this study presents a partial update to the decades-long literature on participatory journalism by suggesting that engaged journalism practices actually create opportunities for meaningful audience involvement.     

Engagement with news on Twitter: insights from Australia and Korea

ABSTRACT

This study examines the patterns of news engagement among news consumers with different political affiliation and cultural background. We use computational methods and data from Twitter in a cross-country comparison of engagement with six online news sources in Australia and South Korea. For our analysis, we used a subset of Twitter users who retweeted at least one political story during the period of collection, and for whom we were able to predict political affiliation using correspondence analysis and data on Twitter follower ties to politicians. We find that right-wing Australian retweeters are more intense in their news engagement, compared with their left-wing counterparts, whereas in South Korea it was the opposite. Australian right-wing political retweeters have more diverse information sources, while there was no difference in information diversity between the right and left in South Korea. We discuss how the political situation in South Korea at the time of data collection may have affected our analysis. We emphasise the methodological contributions of our research and its connection to on-going research into the behavioural foundations of ‘filter bubbles’.     

工作资源对高校图书馆员敬业度影响机制的实证研究

[目的/意义]探讨工作资源对高校图书馆员敬业度的影响与机制，以期为高校图书馆实施人力资源管理和提升图书馆员的敬业度提供参考。[方法/过程]选取湖南各高校图书馆的358名馆员为研究对象，考察工作资源对高校图书馆员敬业度的预测作用以及心理资本与组织承诺在两者之间的中介作用。[结果/结论]描述性统计与差异分析、相关分析和逐步回归分析的结果表明，不同性别的高校图书馆员在组织承诺量表得分上存在显著性差异，男性馆员组织承诺得分显著高于女性，不同性别馆员在其余得分上均不存在显著性差异。不同婚姻、年龄、学历、职位、职称者在各量表得分上均不存在显著性差异。高校图书馆员工作资源、心理资本、组织承诺与敬业度的两两相关都达到统计显著性水平。工作资源对高校图书馆员的敬业度具有正向预测作用，心理资本和组织承诺能够在工作资源对高校图书馆员敬业度的影响中起部分中介作用。丰富高校图书馆员工作资源，增进其组织支持感，增强其心理资本和组织承诺，是促进高校图书馆员敬业度提升的有效路径。     

智能化时代传统媒介新闻理念的演进与方法创新

在新闻智能化传播的环境下,传统媒介的新闻信息资源理念发生变化,智能算法成为新闻信息资源获取和开发的重要手段。智能化传播的新闻信息价值判断,建构了新闻事实信息-社会数据信息-用户需求信息三位一体的新闻信息价值确认系统,体现了智能化新闻信息价值理念的特殊追求。新闻信息生产流程中人工智能系统与新闻传播者形成特殊的生产关系,新闻信息生产理念强调人机协作与共处,由此产生新闻报道视野和新闻产品形态的变化。智能化的新闻发布机制,促进了新闻信息的多渠道推送和分散化传播,也有力推动了传统媒介新闻信息传播理念的智能化转变。     

Reimagining Newsroom Collaboration: How Two European News Nonprofits Are Inviting Citizens In

ABSTRACT

News nonprofits in the U.S. have been proliferating over 15 years as a way of addressing troubles in the business model for news. For these newsrooms, collaboration, with each other and with mainstream news, has emerged as a key way to build readership and attain relevance in a crowded media space. Still, past research has told us that the strong connection to mainstream news has constrained these organizations’ critique of journalism. In Europe, nonprofit news remains nascent and represents a response to declining trust in and engagement with journalism, and rising populism across the continent. Against this very different context, this study examines two players at the forefront of the European news nonprofit movement. It demonstrates the path dependency inherent in the origins of these organizations: In Europe, they are a response to a different societal change, and thus developed rather differently than did their peers in the United States, with a focus on redefining the idea of collaboration and the role of their audiences by seeing citizens as collaborators, both in the creation and in the dissemination of news. By seeing citizens as collaborators, not just readers, they work to empower and build news audiences as well as participants.     

英国的医学知识服务保障体系

在"健康中国"战略下,医学知识服务保障体系对建设国家健康信息化服务体系、提高健康教育服务能力和提高全民健康素养进行支撑。文章从医学知识服务管理机构、医学知识服务支持政策、医学知识服务实施策略、医学知识服务研究和培训、医学知识服务合作和医学知识服务质量评价等方面对英国医学知识服务保障体系现状进行分析,提出我国医学知识服务保障体系建设策略:加强医学知识服务管理机构和政策体系建设,开展医学知识服务项目研究和职业教育培训,重视医学图书馆知识服务合作和评价。     

What About the Hyperlocals?

Using a survey of a sample of hyperlocal actors in Sweden (N?=?178), this article examines preconditions, motivations and sustainability for hyperlocal media operations, outside the traditional media chains, in order to provide a picture of their function in the current media landscape, and to further build on the understanding of the hyperlocal business model. This study extends the hyperlocal definition by including media platforms other than websites. The results show that the operations indeed aim to support and foster citizenship, strengthen democracy and mirror the local community. At the same time, as shown by other studies, the fact that they are not large-scale, highly profitable operations may challenge their sustainability. Nonetheless, most of them claim to be profitable, largely because of the print platform, and have a positive outlook on the future. Revenues from advertising and readership are currently less substantial for Web-based operations, which reinforces the need to broaden the definition of hyperlocal publishing platforms when talking about financial sustainability. Currently, hyperlocal media in Sweden, with small resources and a lower publishing frequency, cannot be viewed as a replacement of established media, but play important roles as complementary alternative voices and contribute to media plurality in the local community.     

Where populist citizens get the news: An investigation of news audience polarization along populist attitudes in 11 countries

This article presents a secondary analysis of two multi-national cross-sectional surveys conducted in 2015 (11 countries, N?=?10,570) and 2017 (4 countries, N?=?2165) to examine the relationship between populist attitudes and media use. The results indicate that populist citizens are more likely to consume news than non-populist citizens. Specifically, populist citizens exhibit a preference for commercial television (TV) news, as well as a tendency to read tabloid newspapers. While they use fewer quality newspapers, public TV news are not systematically avoided. Regarding the online news environment, populist citizens prefer Facebook over Twitter as a source of political information. This selective pattern will be discussed in light of the debates on news audience polarization and political polarization.     

Parental mediation during the U.S. 2016 presidential election campaign: How parents criticized,restricted, and co-viewed news coverage

Presidential election campaigns provide opportunities for parents to socialize their children to become politically engaged citizens. However, news coverage of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign contained inappropriate content, leading parents to possibly restrict or denigrate rather than encourage child campaign news consumption. This study built on literatures in political socialization and parental mediation to explore mediation of campaign news coverage. Data from a representative sample of American parents during the Autumn of 2016 revealed that co-viewing, active mediation, and restrictive mediation were relatively common. The predictors of mediation included political variables, parenting orientations, and child factors, with the latter two often interacting with one another. The results have implications for how we conceptualize both political socialization and parental mediation.     

科研合作中机构间科研主导力及邻近性机理——以中国生物医学领域为例

在学科紧密相关和信息资源相融的当代,探究科研合作的影响因素成了诸多学者关注的话题。然而,现有研究将各种合作关系视同一律,即两人发表一篇合著文章,便形成合作关系;同时,大部分研究没有系统地研究多维邻近性的影响。为此本文提出了"科研主导力"的概念与测度,并从多维邻近性出发系统地分析科研合作的影响因素。本文基于Web of Science (WoS)上2013-2017年的生物医学(Life Sciences&Biomedicine)领域中国境内科研机构发表的论文数据,采用社会网络分析和引力模型,揭示了中国境内生物医学领域的科研主导网络的网络拓扑特征与多维邻近性机制,发现科研主导力两极分化严重,分散程度提高,互惠程度提高;主导机构(通信作者所在机构)和参与机构(非通信作者所在机构)的累积科研主导力显著促进科研主导力的扩散,且主导机构的促进作用大于参与机构;地理距离会阻碍科研主导力的扩散;认知背景相似度越高,社会关系越密切,越能形成科研主导关系;同样的制度环境、文化环境可以促进科研主导关系的形成。本文对全面理解多样化的科研合作模式、演化及其影响因素提供借鉴意义,研究科研主导力的相关方法可以推广到其他领域中。