Journalistic performance in Latin America: A comparative study of professional roles in news content

Abstract

Comparative research across the world has shown that nation-level variables are strong predictors of professional roles in journalism. There is, however, still insufficient comparative research about three key issues: cross-national comparison of journalistic role performance, exploration of how – or whether – organizational variables account for variation in role performance across countries, and the performance of specific journalistic roles that prevail in regions with post-authoritarian political trajectories. This article tackles these three issues by comparatively measuring journalistic performance in five Latin American countries. Based on a content analysis of 9841 news items from 18 newspapers, this article reports findings from Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador and Mexico, by analyzing the presence of the ‘interventionist’, ‘watchdog’, ‘loyal’, ‘service’, ‘infotainment’, and ‘civic’ roles. Results show that the region is far from homogeneous and that while ‘country’ is a strong predictor for most of the roles, other variables such as ‘media type’, ‘political orientation’, and ‘news topic’ are also significant predictors to varying levels.

The Hybridization of Journalistic Cultures: A Comparative Study of Journalistic Role Performance

“…Each role is composed of specific indicators that have been tested and validated by different international studies (Hellmueller & Mellado, ; Mellado et al, ; Mellado & Van Dalen, ; Stępińska et al, ; Wang et al, ). Role performance studies conceptualize professional roles as flexible, situational and independent sets of functions that can be combined in various ways across space and time, often subject to adaptation and combination (Hallin & Mellado, ).…”

“…A second strand of literature has been concerned with developing alternative concepts and models to account for the hybrid nature of both media systems and journalistic cultures across the globe (Dobek‐Ostrowska, ; Guerrero & Márquez‐Ramírez, ; Hallin & Mancini, , ; Mancini, ; Preston, ; Voltmer, ). Finally, a third line of research has analyzed to what extent journalists from different countries differ in their professional roles (Hanitzsch et al, ; Weaver & Willnat, ; Mellado, Hellmueller, & Donsbach, 2017a; Mellado, Márquez‐Ramírez, Mick, Oller Alonso, & Olivera, ; among others).…”

De la Redacción a la (gran) pantalla: roles profesionales del periodismo y su representación en la ficción audiovisual

“…Hanitzsch 2011, mediante un análisis por conglomerados y a partir de las respuestas de 1.800 periodistas de 18 países, presenta cuatro roles profesionales: "difusor populista", "vigilante imparcial", "agente crítico del cambio" y "facilitador oportunista". Mellado et al (2017) identifican a partir de un análisis comparativo de la prensa de cinco países de Latinoamérica (Brasil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador y México) el desempeño del profesional como "intervencionista", "perro guardián", periodista "cívico", "orientador al servicio", periodista "de infoentretenimiento" y "facilitador leal". Asimismo, Berganza et al (2017), al recoger los resultados de una encuesta realizada a 390 periodistas españoles, coinciden en su clasificación del periodista como "perro guardián" y califican al resto de roles como "difusor", "altavoz de la ciudadanía", "instructor de la audiencia", "entretenedor de la opinión pública" y "favorecedor del statu quo".…”

El rol de las fuentes en las noticias

“…Estas preguntas buscan complementar, mediante el foco puesto en el análisis de las fuentes informativas, las observaciones registradas por diversas investigaciones sobre la práctica periodística en América Latina, realizadas en el marco del estudio JRP (Mellado y Van Dalen, 2013;Hellmueller y Mellado, 2016;Mellado et al, 2016;Mellado et al, 2017).…”