Guest Editors’ Note
 

Gregg A. Payne, Ph.D., Chapman University, Orange CA, USA
Guest Editor

and

Wenshan Jia, Ph.D., Chapman University, Orange, CA USA
Graduate Papers Editor

Introduction:

The call for papers for this edition of Global Media Journal asked for essays and research reports focusing on conceptual, theoretical, and empirical examination of relationships between gatekeeping and agenda setting in media content development, particularly with regard to artifactual influences exerted by political, economic, social, and structural conditions.

Among specific suggested topics were relationships:

• Among media structure, gatekeeping, and information quality and quantity.

• Between media and public agendas, and the implications for robust information dissemination

• Among media structure, gatekeeping, agenda setting, media content homogenization, and maintenance of the status quo

• Among media structure, gatekeeping, agenda setting, framing and priming

• Involving media content as a reflection of dominate ideology and hegemony

• Shifts in any or all of the above, observed or anticipated, with the continuing evolution of electronic technology, blogs or similar phenomena, and presumptive impacts on democratization.  Here it was suggested authors focus particularly on the theoretical, conceptual, and empirical utility of traditional gatekeeping and agenda setting perspectives in relation to emerging, non-traditional media.

The call produced the papers published here, together with a number of others that, for a variety of reasons, are not.

The stage is set by John Hatcher’s peer-reviewed study of 528 news items from 11 countries, exploring how anonymous and unnamed sources were used by journalists during the buildup to the Iraq War.  Hatcher finds that a quarter of all sources appearing in news items were not identified by name, and that the use of unnamed sources corresponded with a decline in oppositional perspectives.  Hatcher suggests such framing distorted a more complex and ambiguous reality that would have otherwise emerged. The findings raise questions about whether anonymous and unnamed sources serve the perceived whistleblower function in political discourse.

Four invited papers develop similar themes.

Ballesteros, Lujan, and Pedro explore in an interview with Vincent Mosco the political economy of communication.  Mosco discusses major structural features of the social system, which constrain the possibilities of using technology, media and communication in a genuinely democratic way. The interview provides an analysis of the importance of dialectics in social processes, agency and resistance

Cesar Garcia offers a holistic examination of  the relationship between nationalism and public opinion in Catalonia in contemporary Spain. The investigation takes into account the interaction of  climate of opinion, expectations, poll results, and political action.  The analysis suggests that successive Catalan governments and the political class have solidified their foothold in an emerging democracy by creating a climate of opinion that has encouraged the nationalist part of the Catalan population, concentrated proportionally in highest socioeconomic strata, to be actively involved politically.  At the same time, social problems of the Catalan working class, most resistant to nationalism, have been largely ignored, and that segment of the population marginalized.

David Dozier provides a critique from a public relations perspective of Payne’s recently published model of media content homogenization.  The model integrates several extant theories of media processes and effects into a single structural model predicting homogenous news content advancing elite interests.   Responding to one element of the model, the critique argues that public relations products offered media as news subsidies, and reflecting, either covertly or overtly, biases favoring political, economic, or social elites, are  counterproductive and ethically objectionable  It is suggested that the linearity of the model does not adequately address the emerging “shadow” model of news dissemination through digital, especially, social media. Though the model is concerned with news content, not technologies of dissemination, the critique nonetheless raises important theoretical and conceptual issues arising from  a pernicious ambiguity in the conceptualization of news.  Social media do not conform in either their content or conventions of production to traditional definitions of news.  Both theoretical  and empirical work in the area will be avoidably impaired, pending a disciplinary consensus about whether the notion of news is to be reconceptualized to account for such content, or whether such content is to be relegated to some other conceptual realm.

Among graduate-student papers, Olga Baysha examines media framing of the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict.  Volkmer’s argument that transnational communication technologies lead to the formation of a global public sphere provides a foundation for Baysha’s search for evidence of  public deliberation in U.S. and Ukrainian media coverage of the conflict. Several popular national dailies and weeklies are analyzed, as well as niche periodicals of diverse political orientations. The study shows that U.S. media predominantly blame Russia; Ukrainian periodicals distribute responsibility among Russia, Georgia, and the United States. Pro-Russian views, popular in Ukraine, are ignored by U.S. news outlets. The exclusion of pro-Russian views from U.S. public discourse leads not to mutual understanding, but to animosity on the part of pro-Russian Ukrainian media toward the United States.

In a separate study, Emily Polk analyzes the movement of oral and written storytelling practices to online digital storytelling. It is the first comprehensive case study of the globally-recognized Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS), focusing specifically on how the CDS model of digital storytelling contributes to sustainable social change while reflecting the media’s shift toward citizen-based journalism. The paper engages the complexities, limits and constraints of the participatory model as it informs digital storytelling.  It applies four theoretical community media approaches to the digital storytelling movement.  An analytical framework is advanced for understanding how these stories can be used to give a voice to the voiceless, raise awareness, increase education, and promote democracy.

The growing phenomenon of journalistic blogging in China is examined by Gongs-cheng and Ying.  This paper discusses differences in blogs in relation to vehicles on which they are posted.  It is argued that the content of public blogs is markedly different from that of newspaper blogs. The difference is attributed to newspaper platforms being influenced by the organizations to which they belong.

Finally, Lindita Camaj examines freedom of information in Kosovo. The study  analyzes the impact of international factors on the implementation of  Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation in Kosovo and explores how the legislation affects media access to information in a transitional society. The case of Kosovo suggests the influence of the international community is greater during the process of adopting FOI laws in transitional societies than it is in producing behavioral changes that accommodate the implementation of such laws. Three primary explanations are suggested: defective legislation attributable to the imitative nature of the FOI law; the lack of a democratic culture within local institutions; and organizational impediments to information transparency and access. Implications for media freedoms and professionalism are discussed.   

This multi-national analysis of issues suggested by the call for papers suggests a number of areas in which scholars and others concerned with free information flow and attendant implications for democratization might fruitfully labor.  It provides grounding as well for axiological consideration of normative standards imposed on media structure and content.

Throughout the process of producing this edition of GMJ, my colleague, Wenshan Jia, and I enjoyed the support of many, in particular those who assumed the additional burden in busy times of reviewing and reacting to submitted manuscripts.  We are greatly indebted to them. 

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