1st Edition
The Routledge Companion to Political Journalism
This international edited collection brings together the latest research in political journalism, examining the ideological, commercial and technological forces that are transforming the field and its evolving relationship with news audiences.
Comprising 40 original chapters written by scholars from around the world, The Routledge Companion to Political Journalism offers fundamental insights from the disciplines of political science, media, communications and journalism. Drawing on interviews, discourse analysis and quantitative statistical methods, the volume is divided into six parts, each focusing on a major theme in the contemporary study of political journalism. Topics covered include far-right media, populism movements and the media, local political journalism practices, public engagement and audience participation in political journalism, agenda setting, and advocacy and activism in journalism. Chapters draw on case studies from the United Kingdom, Hungary, Russia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Italy, Brazil, the United States, Greece and Spain.
The Routledge Companion to Political Journalism is a valuable resource for students and scholars of media studies, journalism studies, political communication and political science.
CONTENTS
List of tables and figures
List of contributors
Introduction: the new terrain of mediated politics
James Morrison, Jen Birks and Mike Berry
PART I
From ‘truth’ to ‘post-truth’ eras? The history of political journalism
1 The origins and development of political journalism in Britain
Brian Cathcart
2 Partial news: election editorializing in inter-war Britain
Dominic Wring and David Deacon
3 Reinventing political reporting: Outsides, disruptors and innovators
Erik Neveu
4 Political news and the ‘celebrity frame’
John Corner
5 Evolving journalism norms: Objective, interpretive and fact-checking journalism
Jen Birks
PART II
Political journalism and media systems: Political economy and journalistic professionalism
6 The Scottish independence referendum, political journalism and the news media landscape
Marina Dekavalla
7 Local political journalism: Systematic pressures on the normative functions of local news
Julie Firmstone and Rebecca Whittington
8 Political journalism in a hybrid media landscape: A Scandinavian policy perspective
Sigurd Allern
9 Hungary’s clientelistic media system
Péter Bajomi-Lázár
10 Political journalism in the Russian media system: Journalistic professionalization in the context of digital media
Elena Vartanova
11 Internet-led political journalism: Challenging hybrid regime resilience in Malaysia
Niki Cheong
12 Journalism in Myanmar: Freedom, Facebook and fake news
Tina Burrett
PART III
Pluralism, partisanship and populism in political journalism
13 The new populisms: A key dynamic of mediated populisms
Michael Higgins
14 The Renewed visibility of populism: are social media the culprit?
Delia Dumitrica
15 Strategies of alternative right-wing media: The case of Breitbart News
Jason Roberts and Karin Wahl-Jorgensen
16 Putin, partisanship and the press: Comparing Russian media reporting of Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal
Tina Burrett
17 Political journalism by other means: An African perspective
Herman Wasserman
18 What kind of Italy? The cultural battle waged by a European populist leader against Brussels
Paul Rowinski
19 Populist candidates in the age of social media: Media portrayals of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential bid in Brazil
Heloisa Sturm Wilkerson
PART IV
Public engagement in political journalism: Audience reception, interaction and participation
20 ‘How can you stand there and say you didn’t overspend and end up bankrupting this country?’ Power, propaganda and public understanding of the economy
Mike Berry
21 The resiliency of partisan selective exposure
Jacob L. Nelson
22 Digital media and the proliferation of public opinion cues online: Biases and vulnerabilities in the new attention economy
Andrew R.N. Ross, Andrew Chadwick, and Cristian Vaccari
23 Gate-watching and news curation
Axel Bruns
24 Walking the line: Political journalism and social media publicsMarcel Broersma
24 ‘Viral journalism’, is it a thing? Adapting quality reporting to shifting social media algorithms and wavering audiences
Anastasia Denisova
26 Reporting on white supremacy: challenges of amplification, legitimization and mainstreaming for political journalism
Tina Askanius and Sophie Bjork-James
PART V
Political agenda-setting, media effects and voting behaviour
27 Protecting the citizen: Political journalists as gatekeepers in the digital age
Darren G. Lilleker and Shelley Thompson
28 Media effects on perceptions of societal problems: Belief formation in fragmented media environments
Adam Shehata
29 Agenda-setting theory in a networked world
Jason A. Martin
30 Influencing the public agenda in the social media era: Questioning the role of mainstream political journalism from the digital landscape
Andreu Casero-Ripolles
31 The delegitimizing potential of Internet memes in political communication: A Case study of the 2020 US election
Andrew S. Ross
32 Telling tales: Gender and political journalism
Emily Harmer
33 The Role of audiences in television leaders’ debates and political journalism
Richard Danbury
PART VI
Political controversies: single issue politics, grassroots advocacy and campaigning in the news
34 Journalistic work in cultures of protest: A transnational review
Daniel H. Mutibwa
35 Who’s punching who? Examining advocacy reporting and commercial restraints in TV satire programming
Allaina Kilby
36 Pluralist public sphere or elitist closed circle? Elite-driven agendas and contributor ‘chemistry’ as determinants of pundit choice on a flagship BBC politics
James Morrison
37 The importance of space in photojournalists’ accounts of the anti-austerity protests in Greece
Anastasia Veneti, Paul Reilly, and Darren G. Lilleker
38 Scotland and period poverty: A case study of activists’ media and political agenda-setting
Fiona McKay
39 Continental drift: Historical perspectives on the framing of ‘Europe’ in the British press
Simon Gwyn Roberts
40 8M and the Huelga General Feminista, 2019-2020: feminist engagement with state, capital and Spain’s ‘clase política’
Stuart Price
Biography
James Morrison is reader in journalism at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. A former national newspaper journalist, his research interests focus on stigmatization and othering in media and political discourse. He is the author of the monographs Familiar Strangers, Juvenile Panic and the British Press, Scroungers: Moral Panics and Media Myths and The Left Behind.
Jen Birks is associate professor of media at the University of Nottingham, and co-convener of the Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group. Her research focuses on the role of publics and civil society in political media and communication. Her most recent monograph is Fact-checking Journalism and Political Argumentation.
Mike Berry is senior lecturer in the Department of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University. His books include The Media, the Public and the Great Financial Crisis and (with Greg Philo) Bad News from Israel. His research primarily focuses on how media impact public knowledge and understanding of social, political and economic issues.
