Check out the latest publications from GJIL researchers.
Innovation
Mary Lynn Young and Alfred Hermida published two research articles in the academic journal, Digital Journalism.
People, Power, Platforms, and the Business of Journalism
This special issue marks a growing complexity and complicatedness in research on the business of digital journalism. This shift is appropriate and reflects a necessary deepening and increased rigor by scholars as the number of interconnected parts of digital media systems has grown, while the addition of platforms has made the business of journalism more opaque and challenging to negotiate. The scholars of the issue’s eight articles ably take on these conditions from a range of research questions, conceptual approaches methodologies, and geographic vantage points (Brazil, Europe and the United States). They add original approaches to understanding a professional field reorienting from the early business of digital journalism research focused on making online pay to conditions that remain about survival but within a more nuanced set of institutional, competitive and economic contexts.
Young, M. L., & Hermida, A. (2024). People, Power, Platforms and the Business of Journalism. Digital Journalism, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2023.2273523
Why Infrastructure Studies for Journalism?
This article makes a case for the value of infrastructure studies in analyzing journalism’s evolving landscape. It argues that infrastructural thinking is valuable to understand the changing neighbourhood of journalism, encompassing not just newsrooms but also the broader sociotechnical systems and resources, values and practices shaping news production, distribution, and consumption. Through a careful reading of the literature on infrastructure thinking and its application to journalism studies, it highlights how infrastructural thinking has been used for new and conventional research objects from micro, meso and macro levels of the field. We identify four themes that journalism scholars have focused on: journalism institutions, platforms and platform power, adjacent institutions and applications, and sociotechnical apparatus. We argue that infrastructure studies provides a timely two-way lens to deconstruct the “always there” nature of prior journalism systems and how they shape both the scope of scholarly inquiry and journalism.
Young, M. L., & Hermida, A. (2024). Why Infrastructure Studies for Journalism? Digital Journalism, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2024.2396551
Audience and Uptake (XJO)
The Audience and Uptake team published the results of a timely survey about news consumers’ expectations regarding AI in journalism, and a journal article on using computational methods to measure online discourse.
Survey: How news consumers in Canada want AI to be used in journalism
When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) and news production, Canadian news consumers want to know when, how and why AI is part of journalistic work. And if they don’t get that transparency, they could lose trust in news organizations. News consumers are so concerned about how the use of AI could impact the accuracy of stories and the spread of misinformation, a majority favour government regulation of how AI is used in journalism.
Toward a computational mixed methods framework to measure online deliberative discourse
Stuart Duncan, Lauren Dwyer, Hanako Smith, Davis Vallesi, Frauke Zeller, and Charles Davis
This article proposes and tests a reproducible framework for a computational method to measure social media-based deliberative discourse by analyzing commentary surrounding the Canadian convoy protests of COVID-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions. Employing a combination of analytic calculations, alongside tools such as Google Perspective and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), this article assesses the quality of online deliberative discourse using established measures of deliberation including the variables rationality, interactivity, equality, and civility. We propose computational approaches to measuring these variables, and work toward validating our approach by observing correlations between an established computational measure of online deliberation-cognitive complexity. This computational approach is tested using Twitter and Reddit commentary related to the convoy protests that took place in Ottawa, Canada, during February 2022, which influenced the emergence of similar protests around the world. In addition to testing our proposed online deliberative discourse measurement framework, this case study provides insight into the deliberative characteristics of the Twitter and Reddit social media platforms.
Duncan, S., Dwyer, L., Smith, H., Vallesi, D., Zeller, F., & Davis, C. (2024). Toward a computational mixed methods framework to measure online deliberative discourse. Communication and the Public, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/20570473241284759
Policy
Elizabeth Dubois and Anna Reepschlager published a paper examining the evolution of hate speech policies on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.
This article makes a case for the value of infrastructure studies in analyzing journalism’s evolving landscape. It argues that infrastructural thinking is valuable to understand the changing neighbourhood of journalism, encompassing not just newsrooms but also the broader sociotechnical systems and resources, values and practices shaping news production, distribution, and consumption.
Dubois, E., & Reepschlager, A. (2024). How harassment and hate speech policies have changed over time: Comparing Facebook, Twitter and Reddit (2005–2020). Policy & Internet, 16, 523–542. https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.387
Michelle Bartleman, Elizabeth Dubois, and Isabel Macdonald have also published a journal article on academic explanatory journalism, looking at the case of The Conversation Canada.
A framework for examining hybridity: The case of academic explanatory journalism
Across a number of disciplines, hybridity is regularly invoked when two previously distinct elements – whether objects, concepts, frameworks, practices, models, mediums or institutions – are brought together. However, this is often done with a vague theoretical nod. Labeled a hybrid and left at the level of broad theory, scholarship has tended to ignore a critical issue: what happens when the disparate elements of a hybrid are introduced in practice? This conceptual paper takes the case of academic explanatory journalism, a nascent intentional collaborative practice between academic authors and journalist editors, in order to illustrate how the theoretical concept of hybridity plays out in practice.
Bartleman, M., Dubois, E., & Macdonald, I. (2024). A framework for examining hybridity: The case of academic explanatory journalism. Convergence, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241255044
Global Engagement
The Global Engagement team members have published working papers, journal articles and book chapters on a number of topics in science and health reporting.
Book chapter: “Social media and science/health reporting” in the Palgrave Handbook of Science and Health Journalism (pp. 217-238). Michelle Riedlinger and Silvia Montaña-Niño
The social actors, technologies, affordances and business models behind digital media and platforms, such as Facebook, X (previously Twitter), YouTube and Weibo, have changed the practices of science/health reporting. Platformisation offers new opportunities to bring valuable health/science news to audiences with limited access to and low interest in traditional media such as newspapers, magazines and television. In addition, the networked environments where science/health news circulates make it easier, and more likely, for scientists and medical experts to fact-check science and health stories, thus potentially increasing the likelihood that audiences will receive more accurate information. However, digital media innovation and platformisation have also created new pitfalls, given that science/health journalists may find themselves competing with science and health ‘storytellers’ who have far less ability for, or interest in, communicating accurate information.
Riedlinger, M., & Montaña-Niño, S. (2024). Social media and science/health reporting. In McKinnon, M. & Walsh-Childers, K. (Eds.), Palgrave handbook of science and health journalism (pp. 217-238). Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-49084-2_12
Fact-Checking Role Performances and Problematic Covid-19 Vaccine Content in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa Michelle Riedlinger, Silvia Montaña-Niño, Ned Watt, Víctor García-Perdomo, Marina Joubert
The move from political fact-checking to a “public health” or debunking model of fact-checking, sustained by policies and funding from platforms, highlights important tensions in the case of Covid-19. Building on findings from studies focused on journalistic role performance, we investigated how professional fact-checkers in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa conceived of and performed their professional roles when addressing Covid-19 vaccination topics. Interviews with fact-checkers from six well-established, Meta-affiliated, International Fact-Checking Network-accredited organizations operating in these regions indicated that fact-checkers recognized the diversification of tasks and new roles associated with addressing problematic content from social media users.
Riedlinger, M., Montaña-Niño, S., Watt, N., García-Perdomo, V. and Joubert, M. (2024). Fact-checking role performances and problematic COVID-19 vaccine content in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Media and Communication, 12, 1-23. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.8680