Journalism Studies

Souza Neuls, Gisele; Battocchio, Ava Francesca; da Silva, Marcos Paulo

doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2025.2593450pmid: N/A

This essay examines the similarities and differences between the values underpinning Indigenous and Western journalism. It contributes to broader conversations about the conception and study of journalism through three key contributions. Theoretically, it bridges feminist standpoint and Indigenous epistemologies to enrich journalism studies and practice. Conceptually, it offers a typology of universal themes in Indigenous journalism, identifying five key dimensions – values, roles, approaches, narratives, and organizational structures. Practically, this framework points to how Western journalism can adopt lessons from Indigenous practices to address ongoing ethical and professional challenges.

Bisso Nunes, Ana Cecília; Cools, Hannes; Flores, Ana Marta; Porlezza, Colin; Kretzschmar, Sonja; Eyrich, Julia; Ferri, Giulia; García-Avilés, Jose A.; Singer, Jane B.

doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2025.2594650pmid: N/A

News organisations are seeking to innovate but face constraints related to time and resources for experimentation. In response, many have established in-house “labs” to support the development and testing of new ideas. This multi-national study explores how these media sandboxes operate within public service and commercial news outlets in Western Europe, as well as what they suggest about change within the journalistic field. Interviews with leaders from 12 diverse European media labs reveal the existence of three archetypes of news innovation labs: those focused on creativity and originality, those driven by business validation, and those that interpret innovation through educational programmes. Results show that innovative projects aim to serve both the parent organisations and their audiences to maintain their position in their respective countries’ journalistic landscape. But respondents highlighted challenges including cultural resistance, organisational complexity, and funding issues, which differ among European countries.

Vasilendiuc, Natalia; Bardan, Alexandra; Matei, Antonia; Șuțu, Rodica Melinda; Fiscutean, Andrada; Anghel, Gheorghe; Oprea, Bogdan; Ionescu, Carmen

doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2025.2594654pmid: N/A

This article underscores the multiple threats – physical, psychological, digital, and institutional – that Romanian journalists confront. The study is based on an online survey of 365 journalists conducted between 2022 and 2023, as well as comparative assessments by UNESCO and the Committee for the Protection of Journalists. It shows that severe verbal abuse and psychological intimidation are widespread, often accompanied by digital attacks such as hacking and doxing. More than 61% of respondents cite impunity as a major problem and point to the government’s failures in accountability and legal protection. Women journalists are at increased risk of sexual harassment, reflecting the persistent global gender inequality in press freedom. In addition, organisational structures, economic uncertainty and the remaining challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbate these dangers, prompting some professionals to self-censor, change fields of work or relocate. The findings highlight serious institutional deficiencies, and the intertwining of professional, economic and political factors required for an independent press, emphasising the urgent need for comprehensive action. The situation in Romania shows that inadequate protection not only jeopardises the well-being of individual journalists but also threatens the core democratic principles that underpin free media.

De Cooker, Jessy; Arets, Danielle; Brugman, Marius; Wernaart, Bart; Van Vliet, Marieke; Van Leeuwerden, Tim

doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2025.2595290pmid: N/A

This study investigates the shifting role of AI in Dutch investigative journalism, examining the structural, individual, and professional factors shaping its adoption. Through semi-structured interviews with 25 national, regional and local Dutch news media organisations, including newspapers, magazines and broadcasters, and using the lens of the Diffusion of Innovations Theory, we identified key factors hindering adoption. The interviewed investigative journalists expressed uncertainty in selecting and utilising AI tools, emphasising the complexity of these technologies. Communication issues with IT professionals further impede AI adoption, highlighting the need for clearer collaboration mechanisms. Additionally, resource constraints, such as time, personnel, AI literacy and technical guidance, limit experimentation and the full adoption of AI methods. Our findings suggest that AI adoption is not merely a technological transition but a broader cultural shift in investigative journalism’s professional culture and editorial structures. Also, to facilitate AI adoption in investigative journalism—identified as a special kind of journalism—, organisations should address these structural and knowledge-based barriers while fostering a more collaborative, interdisciplinary culture within newsrooms.

Maes, Bart; Beckers, Kathleen; van der Goot, Emma; Soontjens, Karolin

doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2025.2597869pmid: N/A

Journalists’ perceptions of the public and their audience play a pivotal role in shaping their reporting, yet research shows that these perceptions often exhibit a right-wing bias. Surprisingly, little is known about the factors driving these misperceptions. Drawing on survey data from 2018 and 2022 among political journalists in Flanders (Belgium), this study reveals a notable shift: journalists are increasingly relying on social platforms to gauge public opinion. This shift carries significant consequences. The findings suggest that the more journalists prioritize social platforms as a source, the more right-wing they perceive their audiences to be – potentially distorting their understanding of the public’s ideology and influencing reporting in unintended ways.

Johnson, Patrick R.

doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2025.2600428pmid: N/A

This article examines how journalists define news literacy, a concept typically framed as an audience skill set. I analyze 204 open-ended responses from U.S. journalists using discourse analysis grounded in metajournalistic discourse and organized with the 5Cs of context, creation, content, circulation, and consumption. Four patterns recur: defending professional boundaries, reasserting epistemic authority, constructing civic identity, and performing epistemic maintenance. These uses position news literacy as professional meaning-making as much as pedagogy, enacted through boundary work across participants, practices, and professionalism. The analysis also surfaces silences about access, affect, platform power, and journalism’s own complicity. Building on these findings, I propose an extension to prevailing definitions. News literacy should retain audience competencies while adding a practice-facing component for journalists: deliberate reflection on method and constraint (creation and context), clear communication of sourcing, evidence, and genre distinctions (content), attention to how stories travel and become visible (circulation), and cultivation of habits that sustain care for truth under strain (consumption). This reframing treats news literacy as a relational and ethical framework that links what publics are asked to do with what journalists do and show, offering a more reflexive, inclusive, and structurally aware model of practice.

Vaarala, Viljami; Farkas, Johan

doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2025.2600439pmid: N/A

Discourse analysis has a long history within journalism studies, representing a key area of theoretical cross-fertilization with linguistics, semiotics, continental philosophy, and political theory. In recent years, discursive approaches have garnered new attention in journalism research through scholarly calls for a “discursive turn” in relation to journalistic roles, boundaries, and institutions and for the study of “metajournalistic discourse”. To map this analytical development and its inter-disciplinary theoretical foundations, this article presents a systematic literature review of discourse analytical studies in five leading journalism journals between 2018 and 2022. Based on a quantitative content analysis of 115 academic articles – in combination with a qualitative close reading – the study finds a theoretical deficit in the application of discourse analysis, with 32 out of 115 studies not engaging with any theoretical literature from major school of discourse analysis. The study also finds limited theoretical diversity among those that reference major schools, with most drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (n = 70) and few engaging with alternatives such as Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (n = 2) and (the Essex School of) Discourse Theory (n = 1). These findings call for deeper theoretical engagement and more diverse approaches to better understand journalism as a discursively constituted institution and practice.