Journalism

The next session at Future of Journalism 2023 conference starts with my own presentation on behalf of our larger team, so here are the slides:

The second day at Future of Journalism 2023 conference in Cardiff begins with a pre-recorded keynote by my former QUT colleague John Hartley, and John is also standing by for the Q&A later. He begins with the story of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, killed by bandits in Inner Mongolia in 1935 – after whom a memorial travelling scholarship at the University of Wales is named.

Is Jones the ideal type of the fearless truth warrior in journalism, though, or a pawn in the Great Game of imperialist powers? The existence of a scholarship and the rhetoric around it suggests the former; he was seen as a passionate seeker of the truth in foreign lands, who took risks under difficult circumstances to uncover atrocities, and there are various books, films, and TV series about his exploits. His father was a headmaster in Barry, Wales, while his mother spent time in the late 1800s as a tutor in Hughesovka or Yuzovka, now part of Donetsk, Ukraine.

The final speaker in this last Thursday session at the Future of Journalism 2023 conference is Steen Steensen, whose focus is on the impact of political fact-checking during the 2021 parliamentary election in Norway (as part of the Source Criticisms and Mediated Disinformation project, or SCAM).

The next speaker in this Future of Journalism 2023 conference session is Carolyn Jackson-Brown, who highlights the dilemma for journalists inherent in their dual missions to inform and entertain (or, more to the point, attract clicks from news users). Her focus here is on the reporting of the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022, and she worked with journalism students on how they received news about the war – in the first place, from TikTok, Twitter, and professional journalists’ accounts.

The final session on this first day of the Future of Journalism 2023 conference begins with Jaume Suau, whose interest is in the role of news organisations in the spread of mis- and disinformation. What is the impact of disinformation, and how might we study it? Jaume is focussing here first on foreign-sponsored disinformation, whose main objective is to diminish societal trust and increase polarisation; Howe can we assess whether these campaigns have been successful?

The final speaker in this Future of Journalism 2023 conference session is Karen Assmann, who begins with Nieman Lab’s prediction that ‘democracy beats’ (journalism in defence of democracy) were soon coming to US journalism – a prediction made in 2021 and then again in 2022, yet still barely realised. Journalism has of course long been seen as a pillar of democracy, yet what this means is hardly ever fully explained – this is a folkloristic view, for the most part.

The next session at Future of Journalism 2023 conference that I’m attending is on polarisation, so of course I had to check it out; it starts with Mel Bunce and her colleagues’ study of the Media Freedom Coalition. However, they’ve asked for this study not to be tweeted at this stage, so I shall also not blog about it for now.

The second keynote at the Future of Journalism 2023 conference today is by the wonderful Jane B. Singer, who will be reflecting on the past and future of journalism studies as a field.

The final speaker in this Future of Journalism 2023 conference session on the war in Ukraine is Turo Uskali, whose interest is in news surveillance technologies in war reporting; his team is exploring this through interviews with Finnish war correspondents in Ukraine, and their Ukrainian fixers, from 2014 to 2021. How are they cutting through the fog of war in their reporting?

The next speaker in this Future of Journalism 2023 conference is Marisa Porto, whose interest is in local news sustainability during times of crisis – what can be learnt from the performance of local news organisations in Ukraine during the current war? Her project studied 10 local newsrooms there in September and October 2022 (some six months after the Russian invasion), with interviews at times interrupted by air raids and other safety issues.