The Influence of Local Culture on the Ideology of Samoan Journalism

Abstract

Abstract-Much research implicitly suggests that journalism values arise from culturally removed organizational structures and shared occupational training. Further, few studies examine the perspective of journalism from both audiences and journalists. These omissions are important given the essentiality of mutually constructed and culturally embedded normative behaviors within journalism. This research examines audiences and journalists in Samoa, a country purposefully selected as a recently independent, post-colonial, country that relies upon a very traditional, shared national identity for it's relatively nascent identificatory cohesion. This study aims to gain a better understanding of how local culture can set parameters and expectations for journalism; how journalists negotiate culture into their own professional ideology; and how audiences understand journalism within a cultural context.

Rethinking Journalism and Culture

“…In such ways, Pacific audiences' talk reinforced the functions described in the literature of providing self-representation and counter narratives to dominant media representations. There was less clear support in their talk, however, for the emerging scholarly emphasis on the importance of culture, argued, for instance, by Hanusch (2013b) who calls for a renewed focus on culture in his paper on the influence of culture and cultural values on Māori journalists' professional views and practices, and Kenix (2013), who argues that culture is central to how journalism is conceived by audiences and journalists and, in her study, more influential than organisational norms or professional orientation. The absence of cultural explanations in audiences' talk about their media use might indicate the extent to which cultural values and practices are taken-for-granted by participants but also raises questions about what we mean when we say culture shapes how people use and make sense of media.…”