Journalism culture

Journalism culture is described as a "shared occupational ideology among newsworkers". The term journalism culture spans the cultural diversity of journalistic values, practices and media products or similar media artifacts. Research into the concept of journalism culture sometimes suggests an all-encompassing consensus among journalists "toward a common understanding and cultural identity of journalism."

There is scientific debate about the notion of a shared, worldwide journalism culture, whether such a common construct exists and can be found empirically. Several communication science studies were conducted for finding a hypothetic common Western journalism culture, a common European journalism culture, or even a common global journalism ideology. (cf. historical overview) Research into journalism cultures is especially helpful in analyzing assumed influences of globalization, indicated by world-spanning major media corporations, on individual media cultures and its worldwide standard-setting potency. In scientific literature, journalism culture is also called "journalistic culture", "news culture", "newspaper cultures" or "culture of news production".

A worldwide study on journalism culture conducted by Thomas Hanitzsch et al. between 2007 and 2011 encompassing 21 countries found that journalistic functions like detachment, non-involvement, providing political information and monitoring the government are perceived as essential journalistic virtues worldwide.

The four types of journalism cultures found in the Worlds of Journalism study through worldwide surveys of over 2100 active journalists regarding the "central areas of [journalistic] disagreement" (journalistic interventionism, distance to ruling powers, and their market orientation) are:

Compared to Southern, Eastern or less democratic countries like China and Russia, additional virtues like impartiality, the reliability and factualness of information and adherence to universal ethical principles are perceived to be of great importance for Western journalists. Additionally, the study found Western journalists to be less supportive of any active promotion of particular values, ideas or social change.

Western journalism culture is classified by a dominance of watchdog journalism with a tendency of more South-Western democracies like Spain additionally harboring a strong journalistic culture of "populist disseminator".

Especially in the 1990s "US government and media initiatives" have worked to establish a US-modeled "objective" press model in emerging democracies in South America and Eastern Europe. This move assumed "US-style journalism [to be] a natural and inevitable world model", yet current studies regarding journalism culture in Eastern European countries do not see a natural adoption of Western journalism standards. Instead, the establishment of a less objective and more entertainment- and audience-oriented journalistic culture driven by the countries themselves (e.g. "populist disseminator" journalism in Bulgaria) can be observed.

Within-country level journalism research in developing or emerging countries is described as lacking. This can either be explained with under-financed or non-existent research institutes within the respective countries or the neglect of certain research topics. Arnold S. de Beer, journalism researcher at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, is criticizing South African journalism research of the 90s and early 2000s as both too focused on areas like "public relations, marketing or other forms of corporate communication" and, on the side of the critical researchers, as having a too strong interest in journalism research of post-Apartheid specifics. This overpopulation with specific-interest studies created a deficit in South African conclusions about their own journalism culture.