Mellado, Claudia; Hallin, Daniel C.; Blanchett, Nicole; Márquez-Ramírez, Mireya; Jackson, Daniel; Stępińska, Agnieszka; Skjerdal, Terje; Himma, Marju; McIntyre, Karen; Hagen, Lutz M.; Amiel, Pauline; Abuali, Yasser; Fahmy, Nagwa; Boudana, Sandrine; Chen, Yi-Ning Katherine; Davidov, Sergey; De Maio, Mariana; Frías Vázquez, Maximiliano; Garcés, Miguel; Humanes, María Luisa; Herczeg, Petra; Lee, Misook; Lin, Christi I-Hsuan; Melki, Jad; Mick, Jacques; Mincigrucci, Roberto; Ninković Slavnić, Danka; Nolan, David; Olivera, Dasniel; Olmedo, Samantha; Pizarro, Marcela; Quinn, Fergal; Szabó, Gabriella; Van Leuven, Sarah; Viveros Aguilar, Diana and Wyss, Vinzenz. 2024. The societal context of professional practice: Examining the impact of politics and economics on journalistic role performance across 37 countries. Journalism, 25(11), pp. 2237-2263. ISSN 1464-8849 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

The impact of socio-political variables on journalism is an ongoing concern of comparative research on media systems and professional cultures. However, they have rarely been studied systematically across diverse cases, particularly outside Western democracies, and existing studies that compare western and non-western contexts have mainly focused on journalistic role conceptions rather than actual journalistic practice. Using journalistic role performance as a theoretical and methodological framework, this paper overcomes these shortcomings through a content analysis of 148,474 news stories from 365 print, online, TV, and radio outlets in 37 countries. We consider two fundamental system-level variables—liberal democracy and market orientation—testing a series of hypotheses concerning their influence on the interventionist, watchdog, loyal-facilitator, service, infotainment, and civic roles in the news globally. Findings confirm the widely asserted hypothesis that liberal democracy is associated with the performance of public-service oriented roles. Claims that market orientation reinforces critical and civic-oriented journalism show more mixed results and give some support to the argument that there are forms of “market authoritarianism” associated with loyalist journalism. The findings also show that the interventionist and infotainment roles are not significantly associated with the standard measures of political and economic structure, suggesting the need for more research on their varying forms across societies and the kinds of system-level factors that might explain them.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849241229951
Additional Information:	Funding: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq), Brazil; 422609/2021-8 and 316093/2021-1, National Research Development and Research Office, Hungary; No. 131990, Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness; CSO2017-82816-P, 10.13039/501100007776; Chile’s National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (FONDECYT No. 1220698); Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, Chile; VCU College of Humanities and Sciences; SEED Award, Universidad Iberoamericana Mexico City; Excepcional Standard Grant 2019-2022, Northwestern University in Qatar; Institute of Applied Media Studies (IAM), Zurich University of Applied Studies; Mitacs, Centre d’´ etudes sur les m´ edias, the Journalism Research Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University, the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University, and Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada.
Keywords:	Journalistic cultures, role performance, professional roles, media systems, comparative studies
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Media, Communications and Cultural Studies
Dates:	Date Event 30 January 2024 Published Online November 2024 Published
Item ID:	39517
Date Deposited:	04 Sep 2025 14:58
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2025 21:51
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/39517

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