23pgs, Media scholarship has commonly regarded newspapers as an essential element of strong democratic societies: a forum that structures public debate, providing engaged citizens with coherent frameworks to identify, interpret and tackle complex issues. Despite general agreement on the merits of this goal, there is little empirical evidence suggesting it approximates the democratic role historically played by newspapers. We examined three decades of newspaper coverage of chicken meat production in the UK to find evidence relevant to the normative expectations of the democratic role of newspapers as forum for public debate, by means of a two-stage framing analysis of 766 relevant articles from seven outlets. We found mutually disconnected episodic coverage of specific issues whose aggregate effect is consistent with the diffusion rather than the structuring of public debate. Newspapers here afforded polemic rather than the systemic contestation expected. The polemic contestation we found, with diffusion of public debate as an emergent political effect, troubles the assumptions subsequent to which it is possible to argue for the democratic role of newspapers.
16 pages, This article focuses on the processes of sense-making of forest fires in a Mediterranean context. The authors use a textual approach to compare media framing with activist organizational storytelling. The authors conducted a frame analysis in two major daily newspapers in Catalonia (La Vanguardia and El Periódico de Catalunya) during three summers and compared the results with the stories from four leading activist and volunteering organizations that came out of in-depth interviews with their members, one focus group and published materials. The results identified up to five major mainstream media frames, among which were stories focusing on agricultural risk, climate change and weather conditions; imprudent and negligent attitudes; inappropriate fuel management and woodland conditions; and arson. The natural self-regulatory frame was present as part of the discourse of resilience but almost residual. Some journalism focused on the spectacular nature of the events and their dramatic impact, which led to some degree of mediatization of wildfires. The organizations problematized these frames and discussed about the appropriateness of human intervention to prevent forest fires. The results also revealed that activists observed the issue from a broader complexity, replicating frames on “structural responsibility” instead of “individual responsibility” allocation. The authors point out that if wildfires are to be better understood and dealt with more in-depth knowledge is required of different stakeholders’ approaches to preventing forest fires.
22 pages, Cambodia’s ruling party cracked down on the press, civil society, and opposition in the lead up to the 2018 national elections. Drawing on interviews with Cambodian journalists who lost their jobs, as well as long-standing research on rural struggles in Cambodia, we argue that the Cambodian state’s crackdown on media is part of an ongoing transformation of authoritarian populism that has reduced the space for rural collective action. The state’s repression and co-optation of media also signals a change in the ruling party’s brand of populist authoritarianism: from simultaneously courting and spreading fear amongst rural voters, to casting rural people aside. The media is a space of both emancipatory and authoritarian potential, and for the journalists who saw themselves as building the post-conflict democratic state, the crackdown signals the loss of a more emancipatory, democratic imaginary. This study contributes to analyses of authoritarianism as practice by drawing attention to the various scales and spaces in which it is produced, enacted, and imagined.
30 pages, via online journal, Environmental journalists, as gatekeepers, often become arbiters of risk and benefit information. This study explores how their routine news value judgments may influence reporting on marine aquaculture, a growing domestic industry with complex social and ecological impacts. We interviewed New England newspaper journalists using Q methodology, a qualitative dominant mixed-method approach to study shared subjectivity in small samples. Results revealed four distinct reporting perspectives—“state structuralist,” “neighborhood preservationist,” “industrial futurist,” and “local proceduralist”—stemming from the news value and objectivity routines journalists used in news selection. Findings suggest implications for public understanding of, and positionality toward, natural resource use and development.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 202 Document Number: D12115
Notes:
Online from website of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona. 2 pages., Article cites definitions that include corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a sense of responsibility toward the community and the environment that companies incorporate into their business models. Includes resources that journalists can use to report on CSR. Identifies a source of data about the top 100 companies with the best CSR reputation.
The award-winning editorial (two pages)is attached to this document. It is available online at https://www.farmprogress.com/farm-life/beware-rural-outrage-cycle., Via online issue. 2 pages., This editorial was written by the author of the winning entry in the Editorial Opinion category, 2019 AAEA communications contest.
