{"title":"Mobilities, Immobilities and News Work: The New Normal of Award-Winning Journalists","authors":"Víctor Hugo Reyna","doi":"10.1080/21670811.2023.2195116","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><b>Abstract</b></p><p>During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the routines of face-to-face news gathering and newsroom interaction were severely disrupted by the new normal of physical distancing and remote work. So far, journalism scholars have addressed news production, performance, employment and mental health, among other topics, but not the mobilities and immobilities of journalists during this period. Taking this into account, this article studies the perceptions and experiences on the new normal of the award-winning news workers employed by digital-born or digital-only news organizations in the country that ranks fourth in the world in deaths of journalists from COVID-19, Mexico. Drawing on sociological perspectives on mobility and risk, as well as on semi-structured interviews, its emphasis is on their physical and virtual mobilities and immobilities. The analysis exhibits how different forms of capital enabled and disabled the movement of this population, and how this was mediated by risk. Its objective is not only to examine how did these news workers coped with the new normal, but to analyze how they exerted their journalistic and mobility capitals to alter their working conditions, professional practices and personal lives during the pandemic and beyond.</p>","PeriodicalId":11166,"journal":{"name":"Digital Journalism","volume":"28 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Digital Journalism","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2023.2195116","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the routines of face-to-face news gathering and newsroom interaction were severely disrupted by the new normal of physical distancing and remote work. So far, journalism scholars have addressed news production, performance, employment and mental health, among other topics, but not the mobilities and immobilities of journalists during this period. Taking this into account, this article studies the perceptions and experiences on the new normal of the award-winning news workers employed by digital-born or digital-only news organizations in the country that ranks fourth in the world in deaths of journalists from COVID-19, Mexico. Drawing on sociological perspectives on mobility and risk, as well as on semi-structured interviews, its emphasis is on their physical and virtual mobilities and immobilities. The analysis exhibits how different forms of capital enabled and disabled the movement of this population, and how this was mediated by risk. Its objective is not only to examine how did these news workers coped with the new normal, but to analyze how they exerted their journalistic and mobility capitals to alter their working conditions, professional practices and personal lives during the pandemic and beyond.
期刊介绍:
Digital Journalism provides a critical forum for scholarly discussion, analysis and responses to the wide ranging implications of digital technologies, along with economic, political and cultural developments, for the practice and study of journalism. Radical shifts in journalism are changing every aspect of the production, content and reception of news; and at a dramatic pace which has transformed ‘new media’ into ‘legacy media’ in barely a decade. These crucial changes challenge traditional assumptions in journalism practice, scholarship and education, make definitional boundaries fluid and require reassessment of even the most fundamental questions such as "What is journalism?" and "Who is a journalist?" Digital Journalism pursues a significant and exciting editorial agenda including: Digital media and the future of journalism; Social media as sources and drivers of news; The changing ‘places’ and ‘spaces’ of news production and consumption in the context of digital media; News on the move and mobile telephony; The personalisation of news; Business models for funding digital journalism in the digital economy; Developments in data journalism and data visualisation; New research methods to analyse and explore digital journalism; Hyperlocalism and new understandings of community journalism; Changing relationships between journalists, sources and audiences; Citizen and participatory journalism; Machine written news and the automation of journalism; The history and evolution of online journalism; Changing journalism ethics in a digital setting; New challenges and directions for journalism education and training; Digital journalism, protest and democracy; Journalists’ changing role perceptions; Wikileaks and novel forms of investigative journalism.