You’ve been busy: A roundup of research from our members

compiled by Paromita Pain, University of Nevada, Reno

“Thematic analysis of journalism engagement in practice,” by Dr. Mark Poepsel from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, in the #ISOJ Journal, the journal of the International Symposium on Online Journalism. Poepsel investigates how journalists engage audiences, and highlights how audience engagement can go beyond what has been done in the past.

“Collaborating in a Pandemic: Adapting Local News Infrastructure to Meet Information Needs,” by Dr. Andrea D. Wenzel, Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University, and Dr. Letrell Crittenden from Thomas Jefferson University, in Journalism Practice. As media outlets around the globe seek to play a constructive role in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, this study looks at how local news initiatives in the U.S. city of Philadelphia attempted to respond to the information needs of marginalized communities.

Community-Centered Journalism: Engaging People, Exploring Solutions, and Building Trust, a new book by Dr. Andrea D. Wenzel, Klein College of Media and Communication, Temple University. Contemporary journalism faces a crisis of trust that threatens the institution and may imperil democracy itself.  Wenzel models new practices of community-centered journalism that build trust across boundaries of politics, race, and class, and prioritize solutions while engaging the full range of local stakeholders.

Imagined Audiences: How Journalists Perceive and Pursue the Public, a new book by Dr. Jacob L. Nelson from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. The book draws on ethnographic case studies of three news organizations to reveal how journalists’ assumptions about their audiences shape their approaches to their audiences. Nelson examines the role that audiences have traditionally played in journalism, how that role has changed, and what those changes mean for both the profession and the public. He concludes by drawing on audience studies research to compare journalism’s “imagined” audiences with actual observations of news audience behavior. The result is a comprehensive study of both news production and reception at a moment when the relationship between the two has grown more important than ever before.

When Media Succumbs to Rising Authoritarianism: Cautionary Tales from Venezuela’s Recent History, a new book edited by Dr. Ezequiel Korin and Dr. Paromita Pain at the University of Nevada, Reno. This book provides a transversal scholarly exploration of the multiple changes exhibited around Venezuelan media during the Chávez regime. Bringing together a body of original research by key scholars in the field, the book looks at the different processes entailed by Chavismo’s relationship with the media, extending their discussion beyond the boundaries of the specific cases or examples and into the entire articulation of a nearly- perfect communicational hegemony.