What Is Data Literacy?

Decades after the public journalism movement attempted to redefine the relationship between news outlets and the communities they cover, local journalists are still grappling with how best to cultivate audiences in civic spaces. Community news providers—battling against diminished levels of trust in media institutions—are seeking to counter these sentiments by building closer partnerships with their readers. In this light, data journalism is often heralded for its ability to coalesce fragmented audiences in conversation around salient civic issues. Yet despite its promise, successful storytelling requires basic data literacy skills on behalf of both practitioners and the public. To understand the story, all parties must understand the data. This chapter tackles programmatic efforts to address societal shortfalls in data knowledge and accessibility across the news production/consumption spectrum (with an emphasis on journalism experiments in community news).

‘Journalism Alongside’: A Reflection on Teaching Journalism Through Community Engagement

This paper reflects on a service-learning public journalism project in which postgraduate journalism students have explored several ways to engage with and report alongside diverse communities. The aim of this paper has been to experiment with community journalism practices that give greater power to communities by prioritizing listening, reciprocity and bilateral engagement. By testing a ‘side-by-side’ storytelling process and prioritizing reflection on students’ relationships, dialogues and interactions with sources and communities, the community-focused and embedded project, has aimed to build students’ understanding of inclusive journalism, civic responsibility and intercultural communication as it relates to their practice.

Public Journalism Without the Public: Problematizing the Public Sphere and Press Credibility in Academic Journals, 1991–2018

A review of public journalism journal articles from 1991 through 2018 revealed significant gaps in (a) conceptualizing the public sphere, and (b) ascertaining the credibility of public journalism efforts. These gaps have implications for a press that is becoming increasingly challenged in an era of self-curated news selection and polarization. This work offers conclusions regarding how journalistic engagement efforts can better consider audience perspectives and thereby examine more sustainable footings for a citizen-engaged press.

Funkcje mediów w demokracjach

The belief in the effectiveness and power of media influence causes politicians, media communication specialists, and democracy theorists to use the media for promotional activities aimed at shaping and persuading public opinion and improving it through education and empowerment. It turns out, however, that reading numerous conceptualizations of media functions depends on the way democracy is understood, how politics is perceived, and what is the role of public opinion in the system. The article places various concepts of media missions (from the Hutchins Commission social responsibility trend, through the conceptualizations of Gurevitch, Blumler, Zaller, to participatory journalism and public journalism) in the context of three basic types of democracy: liberal, elitist and participatory, deliberative. Such consideration of democracies and the functions of the media allows for a better understanding of the observed tendencies to appropriate media by politicians and transnational corporations, media concentration processes, and hopes for the revival of journalism and the public sphere in social media.

A Promising Connection of College Journalism Students and Community Engagement

This study has explored the community engagement levels of Taiwanese college journalism students who took the community engagement and public journalism courses, as well as examined the way the practices have made an impact on them. The results indicated that taking community-oriented courses increases an interest in the community for the students. It enhances their abilities when participating in civic engagement activities more than their peers. The finding also showed through focusing the reportage on the residents and helping them to form a dialogue field for discussing community public issues, the participating students recognized the feeling that they have earned the trust and respect from the residents, and were able to rebuild their connection with society. Furthermore, the process not only improved the students’ journalism skills so that they were more likely to produce in-depth and meaningful news coverage, but also strengthened their confidence to become a good news practitioner in the future.

O Civic Journalism / Public Journalism examinado por um de seus criadores

Davis Merritt é uma lenda no Jornalismo internacional. Lenda no melhor sentido que a palavra pode ter. Autor de quatro livros (o mais recente em 2015, chamado On life, liberty and the pursuit of perfect), esteve no topo do Jornalismo americano por mais de quatro décadas, atuando especialmente para a cadeia Knight Newspapers. Atuou como professor na University of Kansas e na Wichita State University. E, entre 1975 e 1997, atuou na liderança do Wichita Eagle, um diário no qual faria história, ao lançar as bases do que hoje se conhece como Civic Journalism (CJ), uma proposta fundada na visão de que, mais do que simplesmente denunciar problemas da vida em sociedade, o jornalista deve pensar em soluções e, especialmente, estimular a participação do cidadão na vida coletiva.Na entrevista a seguir, Merritt compartilha informações preciosas sobre esse movimento que surgiu no final da década de 1980, ganhou corpo nos anos 1990 e começou a definhar a partir de 2000. No auge, o Civic Journalism era notícia e produzia notícias nos EUA, Colômbia, Bolívia, Argentina, Brasil, Portugal, Espanha e em muitos outros países. Agora, mais de 30 anos depois de suas primeiras inquietações sobre os rumos de então do Jornalismo, Merritt rememora os tempos inaugurais (inclusive destacando o papel de Jay Rosen, considerado o outro criador do Civic Journalism), esclarece a questão Civic Journalism / Public Journalism (que, aliás, ele prefere, como se percebe em todas as suas respostas) e pensa sobre o tempo presente.Sobre este quesito Civic Journalism / Public Journalism, cabe destacar o que segue: todos as perguntas feitas a Merritt fazem menção ao Civic Journalism, já que esta é a denominação mais conhecida no Brasil e em outras nações. Merritt, como ponderado antes, prefere Public Journalism (PJ). Por uma questão de respeito à opinião do entrevistado, mantivemos PJ em suas respostas. Essa dualidade, inclusive, é parte da riqueza dessa conversa sobre uma das mais inovadoras formas de se pensar e fazer Jornalismo nos últimos 50 anos.

The Civic Journalism / Public Journalism examined by one of its creators

Davis Merritt is a legend in International Journalism. Legend in the best sense that the word can have. Author of four books (the most recent in 2015, called On life, liberty and the pursuit of perfect), has been at the top of American Journalism for more than four decades, working especially for the Knight Newspapers chain. He served as a professor at the University of Kansas and at Wichita State University. Between 1975 and 1997, he served as head of the Wichita Eagle, a diary in which he would make history, laying the foundations of what is now known as Civic Journalism (CJ), a proposal founded on the idea that, rather than simply denouncing life's problems in society, the journalist must think about solutions and, especially, stimulate citizen participation in collective life.In the following interview, Merritt shares invaluable information about this movement that emerged in the late 1980s, gained in the 1990s, and began to languish in 2000. In its maximum moment, the Civic Journalism was news and produced news in the US, Colombia , Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, Spain and many other countries. Merritt recalls the inaugural times (including highlighting the role of Jay Rosen, considered the other creator of CJ), clarifies the Civic Journalism / Public Journalism (more than 30 years after his initial concerns about Journalism's, so he prefers, as one perceives in all his answers) and thinks about the present time.On this issue Civic Journalism / Public Journalism (PJ), it is possible to emphasize what follows: all the questions made to Merritt make mention to the Civic Journalism, since this is the denomination better known in Brazil and in other places. As a matter of respect for the interviewee's opinion, we kept PJ in his responses. This duality is part of the richness of this talk about one of the most innovative ways of thinking and doing Journalism in the last 50 years.

Speaking on behalf of oneself and others: Negotiating speaker identities in journalistic discourse on refugee activism in Sweden

Journalism has an important role in making political participation visible to the public. In representing the voices of the public, journalism produces discourses on democratic engagement that tell us a great deal about the norms of how these discourses conceive of practices of political engagement. The aim of this article is to study the ways in which speaker identities are given to and taken by migrant activists participating in Swedish radio interviews. Employing Goffman’s concept of footing, this article shows that there are conflicting speaker identities that the activists are adopting and are given by the framework of the radio interviews. The main conflict in how the speaker identities are made up is based on the negotiations around how the activists are talking about themselves or about others. The article further shows how talking about others in a public discourse such as journalism requires speakers to make difficult choices in how to represent oneself as a speaker, and that such choices might stand in conflict with a news discourse’s preferred authentic and experiential identity of its sources.