ORCID Profile
0000-0001-5860-1675
Current Organisations
University of Groningen
,
Taylor & Francis Group
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Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 12-09-2022
Abstract: A growing amount of scholarship on lifestyle journalism and role conceptions has shown its relevance in the context of consumption cultures and societal changes. However, the existing literature has tended to focus on countries with relatively prosperous economies, neglecting to explore those with greater socio-economic inequality. Likewise, scholarship has offered some insight into what audiences expect of political journalists, but we know little about expectations of lifestyle journalism. Exploring role conceptions and expectations in socio-economically unequal societies gives rise to the question: How may social class shape these? To examine this, our study draws on 22 in-depth interviews with lifestyle journalists and three focus groups with audiences from different class backgrounds in South Africa. Findings suggest that lifestyle journalists’ awareness of class disparity and the country’s history of racial segregation and oppression shapes their roles in three ways. First, journalists expressed strong support for roles typically associated with political journalism, albeit interconnected with lifestyle roles. Second, journalists acted as ‘ responsible’ cultural intermediaries, mediating the worlds of luxury and inequality. Third, journalists expressed a strong role orientation toward providing aspiration, as did audience expectations, indicating a level of congruence. Applying a Bourdieusian framework, we argue that lifestyle journalism allows audiences who live under ‘conditions of scarcity’ and who have been conceptualized as having a ‘taste of necessity’, to perform a ‘ taste of aspiration’. We suggest a need to reconceptualize scholarship’s approach to studying journalistic roles by moving beyond a politics-lifestyle binary, and to more closely examine the role of aspiration in lifestyle journalism.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 24-10-2019
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 07-10-2021
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2019
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 13-11-2022
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 23-09-2023
DOI: 10.1177/14648849221125702
Abstract: Scholarship has pointed to an artificial hierarchy between political and lifestyle journalism that is rooted in norms and values stemming from Western-liberal thought. Within this distinction, lifestyle journalism has been subordinated as occupying a marginal or peripheral position in the field. Yet, how journalists perceive this distinction has rarely been studied empirically. This study draws on concepts of ‘boundary work’ and ‘othering’ to examine how political and lifestyle journalists discursively reinforce and contest boundaries and hierarchies. Through semi-structured interviews with 22 lifestyle and 26 political journalists and editors in South Africa, we show that political and lifestyle journalists engaged in both intra-field (self-)expansion, and (self-)expulsion and (self-)othering, by evoking several boundary markers. Boundaries were reinforced through gendered discourses, autonomy ideals, claims to specialization and accessibility in news beats and presentation, beliefs about political journalism’s preservation of humanity, and greater risks to safety of political journalists. Boundaries were challenged by politicizing lifestyle journalism and popularizing political journalism, providing a counter-narrative to political journalism’s negativity, and treating lifestyle journalism as economically beneficial.
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2021
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 21-10-2022
Abstract: While scholarship has studied the boundary discourses of (quasi-)journalistic actors on social network sites, how audiences perceive these boundaries and engage with these interlopers’ work has been examined far less frequently. Drawing on 11 focus groups, this article explores how audiences construct boundaries by examining and comparing their expectations of content creators on Instagram, YouTube and blogs, with traditional journalism and journalists. Findings show audiences expect journalists to embody established, normative journalistic values, largely excluding content creators from this field. Audiences’ expectations of content creators reveal a more nuanced picture, which includes expectations of authenticity and transparency, engagement, and quality, slow content. Interpreted against broader debates in journalism, we argue that they reveal implicitly journalistic values and expectations, thus blurring normative boundary distinctions. Furthermore, audiences feel an increase in market orientation among both journalists and content creators leads to lower connection and perceptions of credibility, thus further disrupting boundaries.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 29-07-2023
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2021
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Sandra Banjac.