Journalists’ contributions to political life in Switzerland: Professional role conceptions and perceptions of role enactment

Abstract

Despite shifts in the news ecology, many journalists in Western democracies still aspire to function as contributors and informants of political life. This study investigates how these journalistic roles unfold in a political system that grants its citizens rather high political power. Based on survey data of 121 Swiss newspaper journalists, we study journalists’ role conceptions and perceptions of role enactment related to the domain of political life. In addition, we explore how characteristics of the media organization and the media system influence their perceptions. The results revealed five role types related to journalists’ news-gathering processes of politics and intended effects on their audiences: ‘advocating watchdog’, ‘monitoring watchdog’, ‘adversarial analyst’, ‘educating disseminator’, and ‘mediating analyst’. These results are discussed in regard to journalists’ role conceptions and perceptions of role enactment that depend on the social system as well as organizational and demographic factors.

Journalistic illusio in a restrictive context: Role conceptions and perceptions of role enactment among Iranian journalists

“…The finding that journalistic roles in a context that is deemed 'non-democratic' are constructed to some extent similar to more democratic contexts, suggests that journalism's identity can exist somewhat isolated from its practised performance, which is in line with the previous literature (e.g. Raemy et al, 2018;Tandoc et al, 2013). So far, various aspects of journalism, including journalistic roles, have been mainly evaluated in relation to political systems (Altschull, 1997, Zelizer, 2013.…”

“…The available studies on journalists’ understanding of their functions in politically restrictive contexts mainly focus on role ideals and not on the perception of role enactment. The second aim of this article is to examine how Iranian journalists think about the possibility of performing their roles, which is conceptualized as perceived role enactment and narrated role performance within the role-related literature (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2017; Mellado et al, 2017; Raemy et al, 2018). This aspect helps us to understand how journalists see their roles in connection to the actual restricted practice, particularly in a restrictive media environment where it is assumed that there is a substantial gap between journalists’ role conceptions and their perceived role enactment.…”

“…Mellado and Van Dalen, 2014; Tandoc et al, 2013). As Raemy et al (2018) underline, examining the connection between what journalists think they should do and their perception of the possibility of enacting normative role conceptions offers a more comprehensive approach for country-specific analyses. This study, therefore, considers both journalists’ role conceptions (normative role orientations) and their perceptions of role enactment (narrated role performance).…”

Role conceptions, performance, and the impact of credibility: Professionals’ and citizens’ views on citizen visual contributors

“…Role performance intention. We asked about both groups' likelihood to perform their journalistic roles (Raemy et al, 2018). Specifically, to CVC, we asked how likely they were to contribute their visuals for certain news stories, using a 7-point Likert scale from 'not at all likely' (1) to 'extremely likely' (7).…”

“…Other roles have also been identified, such as the disseminator–interventionist, loyal, watchdog, civic, service and infotainment roles (Mellado, 2013). Investigations on role conceptions have taken place globally, including Australia, Brazil, China, Chile, Germany, Indonesia, Spain, Switzerland and the UK, demonstrating the significance of this topic (Hanitzsch, 2011; Mellado and Lagos, 2014; Raemy et al, 2018; Shen and Zhang, 2013; Van Dalen et al, 2012).…”