The 67th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association

Interventions: Communication Research and Practice

Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel
San Diego, CA, USA
25-29 May 2017

We presented our paper “The Hybridization of Journalistic Cultures: A Comparative Study of Journalistic Role Performance in 19 Countries” in the panel “Comparative Journalism Research: Where Do We Stand?” in the ICA 2017 in San Diego (EE.UU.). The coordinators of this project, Claudia Mellado and Lea Hellmueller worked in it very hard and did a exceptional work. In this paper worked Maria Luisa Humanes, U Rey Juan Carlos, SPAIN; Mireya Marquez Ramirez, U Iberoamericana Ciudad de Mexico, MEXICO; Adriana Amado, U Nacional de la Matanza. ARGENTINA; Jacques Mick, U Federal de Santa Catarina, BRAZIL; Dasniel Olivera, U de la Habana, CUBA; Martin Oller, U de La Habana, CUBA; Nikos S. Panagiotou, Democritus U of Thrace, GREECE; Svetlana Pasti, U of Tampere, FINLAND; Patric Raemy, U of Fribourg, SWITZERLAND; Anna-Maria Schielicke, Technical U of Dresden, GERMANY; Henry Silke, Dublin City U, IRELAND; Colin Sparks, Hong Kong Baptist U, CHINA; Agnieszka Magdalena Stepinska, Adam Mickiewicz U, POLAND; Gabriella Szabó, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, HUNGARY; Moniza Waheed, U Putra Malaysia. MALAYSIA; and Haiyan Wang, Sun Yat-Sen U, CHINA.

Abstract:

The concept of journalistic voice has not gained much attention in comparative media research at the expense of a stronger focus on the voices of sources in news coverage. Based on content analyses in 19 countries (N=34,514) this research investigates the types of journalistic voices that are performed in advanced democracies, transitional democracies and non-democratic countries. This study analyzes the neutral-advocate dimension of the journalistic voice in news stories introducing a cross-culture measure of journalistic voice in news. The results show that interventionism is not limited to Mediterranean or partisan media cultures, but can be explained by structural variables such as media freedom and the level of crime in society as well as organizational-level variables such as political leaning of the news outlet, news beat as well as the amount of sources that accompany the journalistic voice in news stories.