Latest Publications
Reflections on Journalistic Role Perceptions in Belgium and Sweden: Strategies and Difficulties While Reporting on Refugees
Stefan Mertens, Rozane De Cock, Valériane Mistiaen & Sara Helmersson
October 2024
Link: 10.1007/978-3-031-65084-0_12
Book: Representations of Refugees, Migrants, and Displaced People as the ‘Other’
Publisher: Springer
Abstract
Role perceptions of journalists are no global monolithic professional features, but, as has been demonstrated by previous research, cultural differences between journalists operating in different countries are pronounced. These journalistic role perceptions form the central focal point of this study while zooming in on a highly debated news topic that has been covered intensely during the past few years: the so-called refugee situation. Our study uniquely combines survey results (N = 1267) with qualitative in-depth interview data (N = 30) collected among French- and Flemish-speaking journalists in Belgium as among Swedish journalists who have been reporting frequently on refugees. By exploring the challenges journalists experience while reporting on refugees, our results show that although in survey questions journalists from different regional origins express different role orientations, journalists from all covered regions express going through a similar process of negotiating their roles when reporting on refugees. The normative ideals of journalists can be strongly influenced by the concrete topic being reported on. Reporting on refugees follows its own logic. Journalists who report on refugees try to give concrete meaning to principles of both objectivity and empathy.
The social resonance of environmental media messages: a connectionist-inspired reception analysis
Pascal Verhoest, Joke Bauwens, Petrus te Braak & Marijke Huysmans
June 2025
Link: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05243-7
Journal: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Publisher: Nature
Abstract
This study examines the reasons why certain environmental messages are received negatively by some social groups and not by others. In particular, the study provides insights into the influence of fear appeals in environmental communication and explores how communication strategies can be optimised to encourage environmentally friendly behaviour. In contrast to many studies that adopt a linear perspective on media effects, this study analyses the reception of environmental information as an interaction between media representations and the socially situated cognitive representations of reality stored in recipients’ memories. To operationalise this approach, a method of reception analysis is proposed that combines thought elicitation, semantic coding and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). This method was used to assess the cognitive resonance of a minimal information condition and three differently framed newspaper-like articles on wastewater reuse in agriculture, which were randomly assigned to four panels with a total of 1040 participants. The results indicate that, independent of framing effects, these articles evoke different interpretations depending on the interplay between the media frames presented and the prior cognitive representations of different groups.