JournalismNow there's a real dilemma: the outside world has been recommended by algorithms, social platforms, short videos, but within the disciplineResearch methodologyThe evaluation system, the educational paradigm, has remained largely in the newspaper and television era. It's both a problem and an opportunity -- it's forcing the whole discipline to redefine what it's going to be, how it's going to be, who's going to evaluate it. Over the past year, from data news to media ethics, from journalism education to results-based evaluations, multiple directions have moved forward and the academic landscape is changing rapidly。
The system of disaster reporting and crisis transmission is dead
The "8-12" especially major fire explosion in tianjin port has become a classic example of crisis communication research. The accident revealed long-standing structural contradictions: the urban emergency response system required rapid, accurate and transparent dissemination of information, while the advocacy system placed greater emphasis on unity and positive guidance. The two logics work in parallel, with journalists and editors at the grass-roots level caught in the middle, neither fully grasping the full picture of the facts, nor having to be published within the prescribed time frame, which is highly arbitrary。
It has been pointed out by scholars that the ability to communicate urban crises cannot be enhanced solely by the professional qualities of journalists, but must be regulated and supported by systems. This is done by embedding scientific and professional communication into the emergency response system, by placing disaster reporting and crisis communication at the institutional level, by eliminating the current "who's voice is who's who's who's who," and by placing the real needs of the public first in the information dissemination process。
The media ethics every year
For the third year in a row, the journalist publishes the annual study on ethics in the media, 10 high-impact events from national cases are screened each year for thematic discussions. The core dispute in 2016 focused on four sets of contradictions: how the right to privacy and the right to public information are delimited, whether the pursuit of details by the person in question constitutes a violation, how to balance adequate reporting and avoiding secondary harm to the person concerned and how to pursue the truth without crossing the legal red line。
Such ethical case studies, which are regularly published by core professional journals, are of practical value in accumulating disputes in the media scattered around the regions into searchable and comparable systemic literature. For practitioners, it provides a point of reference for public discussions; for academic circles, it provides a vertically tracked data base for journalistic ethics research and helps to foster professional consensus between industry and academia。
Data news into deep water
With big data covering all walks of life, data news has moved from a small attempt to a mainstream industry. The number of relevant research papers has risen markedly since 2013, with topics extending from the initial visualized charts to political, economic and public health areas. At the same time, however, one analytical report noted that the results at this stage are still dominated by development and applied research, methodologically heavily dependent on case analysis and advocacy, and lacking statistical validation and theoretical modelling。
There is a clear call for data news research to go from the surface description of what we did, how we did it, to the deep question of why and under what conditions. This means introducing critical thinking, increasing the diversity of statistics and calculations, and moving beyond the reporting level of the project "we have made a data visualized product", without which the whole direction would lack a real theoretical contribution。
Quoting exposure to science shorts
An analytical study of external disciplines published in the news front reveals structural weaknesses in journalism research: the increase in interdisciplinary rates over the past five years has been accompanied by narrow references to disciplines of high value to journalism, such as sociology, psychology and computer science; old references and insufficient attention to external cutting-edge results; and numerous findings and few quotations suggest that the absorption of external knowledge in disciplines at the methodological level remains weak。
Another study on the history of news shows a different picture: since 1979, the volume of news history has risen dramatically, the research team has expanded, content diversity and thematic focus have advanced in parallel, and external funding support has improved significantly. Some researchers have attributed this shift toNew mediaAs a result of the shock, a large number of scholars, who were already deeply involved in traditional news history, turned to the new media, using old art as a new method。
Press education is shifting towards public communication
It has been suggested that the media industry is moving from a "news and information media" centered on traditional media, institutional media, to a "public information media" of professional media, platform media and complementarities from the media. This means that the overall paradigm of journalism education needs to be adjusted: journalism focuses on norms and skills, communication focuses on experience and methods, which combine not only principled knowledge but also empirical tools。
Rather than eliminating the most important "principle knowledge" of journalism education, this integration embeds the "empirical knowledge" of communication in a way that allows students to acquire the tools of data analysis, user research, platform mechanisms, while learning about writing and clearance. In a networked society, neither a reporter who only writes news nor a researcher who only does dissemination experiments is enough, but both lines go together。
The evaluation system is widening the path
In 2016, the chinese association of registrars added seven higher education institutes, zhejiang university, china university of science and technology and hunan university, among others, to serve as pilot outlets for national press awards. This step formally integrated academia into the national system of excellence in journalism, opening an institutionalized dialogue between the academic and industry communities. Previous academic and public information practice outcomes have been largely rated with cross-recognition mechanisms and a broader evaluation perspective。
During the same period, the journalism community also created several merit promotion protocols for research results, covering the entire process from the subject to the release of results. In addition to the emergence of cross-border topics such as the concept, drivers and characteristics of news games, the system for the study of the history of public opinion in china under interdisciplinary perspectives, evaluation criteria for the entire discipline are being published from a single text, expanding to a number of dimensions, such as methodological innovation, cross-border cooperation and public influence。
Finally, i would like to ask: in which direction do you think the next step in the data news study is to dig deep into the power structure behind the algorithm recommendations, or to go back to the fieldwork? You are welcome to share your views in the comment section, and if you find them useful, just say yes and forward them to your friends who are doing news dissemination research。
