1- Social Media and Postelection Crisis in Kenya
Maarit Mäkinen
University of Tampere, Finland, maarit.makinen@uta.fi
Mary Wangu Kuira
International in Kenya
The International Journal of Press/Politics
July 2008, Volume 13, No. 3
http://hij.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/3/328
This article analyzes the role of the media during the two months of postelection crisis in 2008 in Kenya. We discuss how people exchanged information during and after the media ban and analyze online discussions and media coverage. Particular emphasis is given to the role of the social media, such as Web 2.0 communication tools and services, which enable citizens to interact or share content online. Our analysis shows that during the crisis, the social media functioned as an alternative medium for citizen communication or participatory journalism.This experience has important implications for the process of democratization in Kenya.
Key Words: Kenya • social media • weblogs • participatory journalism • citizen journalism
2-Ambivalent ambassadors and realistic reporters
The calling of cosmopolitanism and the seduction of the secular in EU journalism
Heikki Heikkilä
University of Helsinki, Finland, heikki.heikkila@helsinki.fi
Risto Kunelius
University of Tampere, Finland, risto.kunelius@uta.fi
Journalism
August 2008, Volume 9, No. 4
http://jou.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/4/377
The European Union represents an emerging transnational political system for mainstream professional journalism. As a developing and enlarging system of power, expertise and a field of negotiation for compromises it provides a new horizon for journalism and journalists who have been strongly shaped by national discourses about politics, democracy and the public sphere. This article tackles this broad challenge in three steps. First, a synthetic analysis based on interviews with European journalists from 11 countries describes the dominant professional horizons of professional identities and relates them to EU news. Second, an interpretation of the generic forms of journalistic storytelling is suggested by linking the professional identities and trends into an idea about the dynamics of chronotropes of EU-journalism. Finally, a third layer of the discussion is provided by connecting the potentials and pitfalls of professional journalism to theorizations about transnational democracies and public spheres.
Key Words: chronotropes • European public sphere • European Union • journalism • news • professional identities • transnationalization
3-Making Europe news
How journalists view their role and media performance
Paul Statham
University of Bristol, UK, paul.statham@blueyonder.co.uk
Journalism
August 2008, Volume 9, No. 4
http://jou.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/4/398
This article addresses `media performance' and European governance. It examines how newspaper journalists view different aspects of their practices and roles in this process. First, the study provides a general picture of how journalism has responded to the transformation of politics resulting from advancing European integration. Second, it examines whether, based on journalists' assessments, this has involved a transformation of the practices and norms of journalism. The sample consists of 110 interviews with journalists from newspapers in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland, plus four transnationals. We find a limited but emergent `Europeanization' of journalism, carried by transnational newspapers serving specialist audiences and to a limited extent by European correspondents on the national press. Regarding `performance', we consider that journalists would be able to adapt and `Europeanize' to a greater extent if politicians improved their own communication efforts and made European governance more relevant to citizens.
Key Words: Europe • journalism • media performance • political communications
4- Approaches of the transnational press to reporting Europe
Julie Firmstone
University of Leeds, UK, j.a.firmstone@leeds.ac.uk
Journalism
August 2008, Volume 9, No. 4
http://jou.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/4/423
The concept of a European public sphere, and the emergence of a transnational media within this space, has been the subject of debate in recent years, yet little attention has been given to investigating the functioning of the media that currently occupy this space. This article provides an empirically based insight into the organizational context within which transnational newspapers produce coverage of the European Union (EU). Material collected in interviews with journalists from four transnational newspapers (Wall Street Journal Europe, International Herald Tribune, Financial Times Europe and European Voice) is presented, and the way in which a range of internal and external factors shape transnational coverage of the EU is discussed. The findings suggest that as a consequence of the diverse range of approaches adopted by transnational newspapers, the EU remains unreported as a polity in its own right, and is predominantly covered from an external point of view.
Key Words: democratic deficit • EU correspondents • journalism and the EU transnational media • public sphere
5-European Councils as first encounters of trans-European media communication?
Alessio Cornia
University of Perugia, Italy, cornia_alessio@hotmail.com
Julia Lönnendonker
University of Dortmund, Germany, julia.loennendonker@udo.edu
Pia Nitz
ZDF, Germany, pia.nitz@udo.edu
Journalism
August 2008, Volume 9, No. 4
http://jou.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/4/493
This case study, based on a multi-method research design, analyses the work routines of European journalists onsite during the European Spring Council 2006 and the coverage of the event in newspapers in Germany and Italy. The analysis finds some initial positive signs indicating a growth of trans-European (media) communication, which might eventually increase the amount of trans-European issues in public discourse. The results also suggest that similar work routines and close cooperation between journalists from different EU member states can be considered first indicators of a developing European journalism culture. Nevertheless, this does not directly translate into similar journalistic products. When it comes to selecting and presenting the news, journalists are still geared to national frames and schemes. National relevance is still the core criterion for news selection.
Key Words: European journalism culture • European public sphere • EU reporting • European Council
6-Nordic newspapers on the EU
European political journalism after `non' and `nee'
Vanni Tjernström
Kalmar University, Sweden, vanni.tjernstrom@hik.se
Journalism
August 2008, Volume 9, No. 4
http://jou.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/4/516
Previous studies (by the author of this article) on coverage of the EU in 1993 and 1996 by four leading Nordic newspapers generated three theoretical categories for a `European political journalism'. The categories were named participation, legitimacy and mondialization/universalism. The present study revisited the same Nordic newspapers over 10 years later in 2005, shortly before and after the referenda on the proposed new EU Constitution in France and the Netherlands, to test the validity of these categories. Generally speaking, the same conceptual landscape still applies to Nordic journalism on the EU, but some of the empirical material seemed to demand the new category of `identity'. This category seemed to be linked both to threats to national identity and to the loss of an emerging `core European identity'. The article suggests that the core category of journalism's sense-making about the EU is the question of `participation'. This core category is grounded on the classical Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft distinctions. The three other important categories — legitimacy, mondialization and identity — can be seen as supporting categories in the analysis of media coverage of the European Union. Within this general and normative conceptual frame, there are remarkable differences in the way the Nordic newspapers contribute to such European political journalism.
Key Words: cross-national comparative studies • cosmopolitan gaze • European political communication • Grounded Theory • identity • legitimacy • mondialization • participation
7-The contribution of the press to Europeanization of public debates
A comparative study of issue salience and conflict lines of European integration
Barbara Pfetsch
University of Hohenheim, Germany, pfetsch@uni-hohenheim.de
Silke Adam
University of Hohenheim, Germany, adamsilk@uni-hohenheim.de
Barbara Eschner
TNS Infratest, Munich, barbara.eschner@tns-infratest.com
Journalism
August 2008, Volume 9, No. 4
http://jou.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/4/465
In our study we seek to understand how national political contexts and different media formats constrain the role of the press in contributing to a Europeanization of national public spheres. To single out the explicit role of different newspapers in seven Western European countries we systematically compare their commentating about European integration. The role of the press is analyzed with respect to the visibility of European issues and actors and to the synchronization of conflict lines across Europe. The results show that the further a country is integrated into the European Union, the less parochial is its press and the stronger it takes part in a common European debate. Compared to these political settings the influence of specific press formats seems to play a secondary role.
Key Words: comparative political communication • European public sphere • media formats • political contexts • press commentary analysis
8-Foreign policy and the framing of the 2003 Iraq War in elite Swedish and US newspapers
Daniela V. Dimitrova
Iowa State University, USA, DanielaD@iastate.edu
Jesper Strömbäck
Mid Sweden University, Sweden, jesper.stromback@miun.se
Media, War & Conflict
August 2008, Volume 1, No. 2
http://mwc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/1/2/203
This study investigated the framing of the Iraq War in the elite newspapers in Sweden and the USA during the official war period, 20 March—1 May 2003. The content analysis revealed significant cross-cultural differences in the framing of the war in terms of tone, frames and use of sources. The differences in framing were consistent with the characteristics of the national political environment and foreign policy stances in each country.
Key Words: cross-cultural framing of conflict • Iraq War coverage • news framing • Swedish press • US press
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