International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Journalism culture can generally be defined as “a particular set of ideas and practices by which journalists legitimate their role in society and render their work meaningful” ( Hanitzsch 2007 , 369). Such an understanding allows seeing journalism as a cultural phenomenon that is permanently being reconstituted and reaffirmed through a number of culturally negotiated professional values and conventions that operate mostly behind the backs of the individual journalists. Very closely related to the analysis of journalism cultures is the concept of news culture . The major difference is that news cultures are generally understood more holistically, including aspects of media systems and political communication cultures as a whole and in their historical contexts (→  Political Communication Culture ; Political Communication Systems ). In their meticulous comparison of western media systems, Hallin and Mancini (2004) , for instance, argue that national journalistic cultures are most profoundly shaped by their respective political context. Important factors are political parallelism and the degree and nature of state intervention. Political parallelism – that is, the extent to which the media system reflects the major political divisions in society – drives political advocacy and journalistic partisanship (→  Party–Press Parallelism ). And by means of regulation and intervention, the ... log in or subscribe to read full text