The early beginnings or the first-wave of deprofessionalization of journalism can be traced back to routinization and ‘technicalization’ of journalistic work in the late 19th century, when not only commercial considerations of the marketplace demanded technical rather than intellectual skills, but – paradoxically – even the idea of ‘professionalism’ became an ideological force of media management to separate journalists from fellow newsworkers. Similarly to the first wave, the contemporary ‘second-wave’ deprofessionalization of journalism is linked not only to technological but also to broader social changes and re-conceptualizations of ‘journalism’, ‘newswork’ and related concepts/practices, as reflected in neologisms such as ‘produsage’ or ‘I-journalism’. I-journalism ranks journalism among those professions in which a sharp boundary between production and consumptions is vanishing and a new layer of ‘prosumers’ or ‘produsers’ is generated, consisting of that kind of users (e.g. of the web) who simulataneosly create (produce) and consume products (such as web contents). The Internet is not the primary cause of deprofessionalization in our time but it certainly intensified the process. New formats and genres of online communication have the potential of human / civic participation and emancipation, yet the possibility of participation and emancipation brought about by new communication technology has been once again misused – as it has been many times in history – to generate profit through direct exploitation of human consumption capability and transformation of leisure into working time at home. Journalistic ‘produsers’ (can) actually become unpaid workforce that economizes the amount of paid occupational labor in journalistic production process. This makes an impression of an increase in journalistic productivity, although the total amount of paid and unpaid labor and work intensity may in fact be even greater than before.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 33304413Using the methods of document analysis and in-depth interviews with journalists, editors and media planners , the authors analyse the three most visited Slovene news sites (24ur.com, Planet Siol and MMC RTV SLO) and the largest media agencies to examine: a) how these organisations are adapting to changing circumstances (particularly decreasing advertising revenues); b) how relationships between media organisations and advertisers are being transformed; and c) how is the availability of online audience metrics impacting the work process in newsrooms, relationships between different parts of news organisations (particularly the editorial and marketing of advertising space) and relationships between news organisations and advertisers. The contribution was presented at the fifth conference of the research network ICTS and society: The Internet and Social Media at a Crossroads: Capitalism or Commonism? Perspectives for Critical Political Economy and Critical Theory, Vienna, Austria, June 3 - 7, 2015.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 33395549Melita Poler Kovačič is a member of the editorial board of Digital Journalism (published by Routledge), a scientific journal edited by Bob Franklin, Professor of Journalism Studies at Cardiff University, UK. The editorial board includes internationally distinguished journalists and scholars of journalism studies. The journal provides a critical forum for scholarly discussion, analysis and responses to the wide ranging implications of digital technologies, along with economic, political and cultural developments, for the practice and study of journalism (http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=rdij20#.VtRjFk3bKpo).
C.06 Editorial board membership