This study focuses on the development of press freedom and professional journalism in Cameroon since the country's transition to democracy in the 1990s. More precisely, it examines how press freedom and professionalism have become formalized through processes of legislation and institutionalization. To realize this, this study uses a broad literature review and documentary analysis to gain an overview of the evolution of press freedom and the professionalization of journalism in Cameroon. It also incorporates survey, in-depth interviews and newsroom observation to gain additional insights into how Cameroonian journalists go about their daily routines and the extent to which they feel free and autonomous to do so, as well as to better understand both the relationship between the roles of individual journalists and the organizational and societal contexts in which they operate. I contend that it is only through blending the survey, interview and newsroom observation that we can have a broader picture of the gap between role perception and performance in journalism.The study draws from the political economy approach to inform its discussions. It argues that journalism is a socially constructed activity within a specific political, economic, legal and regulatory context. It also draws from the sociology of the professions to analyse the professionalization of journalism in Cameroon, the role perception theory to underpin the journalistic role perceptions of Cameroonian journalists and the role perception and performance gap theory to explain and understand the gap between the various roles Cameroonian journalists believe the media should fulfil and the extent to which they perform these roles in daily practice.The hierarchical news environment includes not only reporters but also editors and directors of news publications, whose job involves ensuring that information reaching the public is ethically sound. From within the Cameroonian newsrooms, the role of editors and directors of news publications as gatekeepers, commercial and economic pressures, the interests of owners may undermine the efforts of journalists in performing their roles in actual practice. From outside the news organization, state interference in the media, the use of repressive press laws, sources, advertisers, political elites and the prevalence of gombo may limit the freedom and autonomy of journalists to live up to their ideals. When combined, these factors are likely to create a gap between journalists' ideals and practice. / Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Through in-depth interviews with 12 regular contributors to the Lexington-Herald Leader’s website, www.Kentucky.com, this study attempts to examine how online citizen journalists view the definitions of citizen and professional journalism, as compared to Singer’s three dimensions of professionalism (i.e., cognitive, normative, and evaluative dimensions) as well as their perceived role conceptions of professional and citizen journalists, using Weaver and Wilhoit’s four roles of journalists. Analyses reveal that the main difference in the definitions of the two types of journalists revolved around the cognitive dimension, specifically the education and training that professionals receive. The role conceptions of professional and citizen journalists were similar, with the both groups being described as serving the interpretive/investigative and disseminator roles. The roles of citizen journalists also included the adversarial and populist mobilizer roles.

Journalism as a profession in Sweden is strongly guided by collective norms, ideals and ethical guidelines. Being subjected to crimes such as threats or harassment due to the nature of the work is common amongst the force. To combat this the Swedish journalist union has guidelines as well as the Swedish police having a task force specifically for what is often referred to as crimes against the democracy, that being the act of attempting to silence people with influence over the public opinion. Nevertheless no guidelines, and furthermore scarce research, can be found regarding the impact of the journalistic identity on the decision making in the journalist’s private life. This study aims to research how Swedish journalists view their journalistic identity and whether they perceive this identity to affect journalists' propensity to report crimes they are victims of that aren’t in relation to their work. Through a quantitative survey distributed to Swedish journalists as well as semi-structured interviews with nine journalists, the study found that the journalistic identity still is concordant with the ideals and norms defined by the theory of journalism as a profession. Some, although not a majority, of the 41 participants of the survey viewed the journalistic identity as a contributing factor for whether or not they would decide on reporting a crime. Furthermore the interview study suggested that younger and/or female journalists were the ones who were mainly affected. Some stated that the ideals and ethics of the work made them more prone to reporting the crime they’d been, or hypothetically would be, a victim of. Whilst others stated that working in media made it harder to report crimes due to unwanted public attention, as well as fears of their   work, or treatment at the workplace, being affected. Due to the scale of the study the results cannot be generalised but can however be indicative of workplace cultures or phenomena that opens up for further research into the journalistic identity’s effects on an individual's private life and decision making.

The aim of this study is to explore how one citizen journalist, Joakim Lamotte, reflects on codes of journalistic standards and ethics. Lamotte is a Swedish citizen journalist who publishes texts reporting on events in society on his Facebook-page. From the Facebook-page, five texts have been sampled for analysis in this study. This is done through using Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis as a methodology. The analysis is supported by Erving Goffman's theory of self presentation and Rom Harré and Luk van Langenhove's positioning theory as theorethical frameworks, to explore Lamotte's self presentation and how he is positioning in his role as a citizen journalist. Some of the main results of the study are that Lamotte uses the term independent journalist in the self presentation of his role, but at times includes himself in the group of the public (his audience). Throughout the samples he positions himself against professional journalists and mainstream media, as a way to reinforce his position as an independent journalist. While doing so, he criticises their choices and justifies his own choices relating to codes of journalistic standards and ethics. The study is an example of one citizen journalist with a large audience, in a Swedish context, reflects on codes of journalistic standards and ethics.

The present study aims to reconcile conflicting evidence from previous research on the role of objectivity in journalists’ and citizens’ information behaviors. Drawing on news quality frameworks and confirmation bias research, the article proposes a model of “biased objectivity” that was tested by a quasi-experiment with 430 journalists and 432 citizens in Germany. Results show that both perceived objectivity value (news quality perspective) and attitude consistency of a message (confirmation bias perspective) enhanced the informational value of a message, with objectivity value mediating the effect of attitude consistency on informational value perceptions (“biased objectivity” perspective). Journalistic professionalism did not moderate this relationship.

Studien syftar till att, ur ett medieetiskt perspektiv, analysera vilka oetiska och etiska metoder som organisationen Dumpen använder samt att granska hur individer som söker kontakt med barn i sexuellt syfte andrafieras. Detta för att bidra med kunskap till forskningen kring journalistik och medieetik. För att uppnå studiens syfte genomförs en kvantitativ innehållsanalys med ett totalurval som omfattar 255 konfrontationsvideos som publicerats på hemsidan Dumpen.se. Studiens teoretiska ramverk består av medieetik, reglerad medieetik och andrafiering.    Studiens resultat visar att organisationen Dumpen inte använder oetiska metoder i stor utsträckning, bortsett från de oetiska metoder vars förekomst beror på det empiriska materialet konfrontationsvideos. Resultatet visar också att organisationen i stor utsträckning använder den etiska metoden får försvara sig och att andrafiering i form av avvikande beteende är vanligt förekommande. Andrafiering i form av behov av vård förekommer däremot sällan. Resultatet visar också att vid de tillfällen som andrafiering förekommer, sker det inte i samband med oetiska metoder. Vidare föreslås forskning där allmänhetens åsikter kring medborgarjournalistik och organisationer som Dumpen studeras, samt olika jämförande studier. / The purpose of this study is, from a media ethics perspective, to analyze the ethical and unethical methods used by the organization Dumpen, as well as examine how individuals that are seeking contact with children for sexual purposes are othered. To achieve this study´s purpose, a quantitative content analysis was conducted with a total sample of 255 confrontation videos published on the website Dumpen.se. The theoretical framework of the study includes media ethics, regulated media ethics and othering.   The study´s results indicate that the organization Dumpen does not extensively employ unethical methods, except for those unethical methods whose occurrence is linked to the empirical material of confrontation videos. The findings also reveal that the organization largely utilizes ethical methods to defend itself, and othering in the form of deviant behavior is commonly observed. However, othering in the form of a need for care is rarely present. Furthermore, the results show that when othering occurs, it is not associated with unethical methods. The study suggests further research on public opinions regarding citizen journalism and organizations like Dumpen, as well as various comparative studies.

"The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of journalism training received at North Texas State College by journalism majors."--4

The aim of this bachelor thesis was to examine how cultural art journalistic critique manifests on different digital platforms today. I chose to focus on film criticism as it not only tells a story about the movies but also about the society. The bachelor thesis also aims to examine if there are any differences in how amateurs and professional journalists frames film criticism and in extension the society. The research questions examined were:How are the reviews composition and content arranged? How does the reviews rhetoric get constructed? How do the writers approach appraisements in their texts and how do these get framed? Do the texts have an inclination towards the aesthetic or the journalistic paradigm? I used Hulténs mass media rhetoric analysis which is a form of qualitative media content analysis in order to find differences and similarities in the texts. By closely examining the reviews, I found that references to popular culture were of great significance in the field of journalistic film criticism. They do not only show the journalists habitus but also their position in the field and the fields doxa. The study shows that the amateurs often emulates and are inspired by the professional journalists. The amateurs also largely depend on the aesthetic paradigm whilst the professionals strives for an equiponderant relation to both paradigms. My conclusion is that the amateurs compose a heterodox rebellion towards the current doxa on the field and that the professionals reigns the field with their knowledge and their complex and critical portrayal of movies and the society.

While journalistic ethics exists in the Untied States today, it works primarily to address dilemmas in the profession, as opposed to working to comprehensively understand journalism in relation to its public duties. This role in United States journalism is not only misunderstood by the majority of journalists working in the media industry, it is also misunderstood by the public. This misinterpretation is directly linked to the concepts of cultural separation between the 'natural' laws that run the market place and those things in society that influence everything else. In this sense, journalism has become an industry working in the market place. Essentially, the product of completely corporatising the media industry has created a gap between the role of journalism in a democratic society and the current state of journalism in the United States. That said, the relationship between the media and democracy can be traced back through the history of United States democracy and the subsequent history of journalism as a profession that was an essential part to keeping the public sphere of democratic debate healthy. A section of journalists, public journalists, currently attempt to heed the public responsibility needed to create this space for democratic debate. However, these journalists, though earnest in their pursuit to rebuild the type of journalism needed to create this democratic sphere, cannot reach the masses effectively without more funding and more autonomy. Likewise, the public broadcast station (PBS) in the United States could be enhanced in many ways with more funding and more autonomy. Such funding and autonomy for media in the United States could come from a tax-payer funded public broadcast station. And though not all media need to bear the responsibility of journalism focused on public life and politics, a section of the mass media should commit itself to creating a sphere to enhance democratic debate. This thesis explores the necessity of a government funded mass media source in the United States. Given that United States media and democracy are inherently linked, as I will aim to show through the development of democratic history and the development of liberal democracy in the United States today, the ethical need for a media source that can fulfil its democratic duties.