Similarly to the first wave of deprofessionalization of journalism, which can be traced back to routinization and ‘technicalization’ of journalistic work in the late 19th century, the contemporary ‘second-wave’ deprofessionalization of journalism is linked not only to technological but also to broader social changes and re-conceptualizations of ‘journalism’, ‘newswork’ and related concepts/practices, as reflected in neologisms such as ‘produsage’ or ‘I-journalism’. I-journalism ranks journalism among those professions in which a sharp boundary between production and consumptions is vanishing and a new layer of ‘prosumers’ or ‘produsers’ is generated, consisting of that kind of users (e.g. of the web) who simulataneosly create (produce) and consume products (such as web contents). The Internet is not the primary cause of deprofessionalization in our time but it certainly intensified the process. New formats and genres of online communication have the potential of human / civic participation and emancipation, yet the possibility of participation and emancipation brought about by new communication technology has been once again misused – as it has been many times in history – to generate profit through direct exploitation of human consumption capability (in advertisement) and transformation of leisure into working time at home (creating content that indirectly enable the exploitation of human consumption capability). Journalistic ‘produsers’ (can) actually become unpaid workforce that economizes the amount of paid occupational labor in journalistic production process.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 33304413The paper analyses the media coverage of the atypical political protest that have been named “all-Slovene people’s uprising”, which took place in last quarter of 2012 and first quarter of 2013. The study focuses on framing of protests and (de)legitimation of established politics in prime time television news and current affair programs in Slovenia during the uprising and investigates following research question: (1) how did television news and current affair programs frame protests through the selection and placement of information sources; (2) how did the established political actors (either as sources of information or through their own channels of communication) try to acquire the consent of citizens in the context of the protests; and (3) how did the established political actors (either as sources of information or through their own channels of communication) respond to protest activities of the new social movements?
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 33395805The paper analyses theoretical discussions, focusing on controversies in conceptualizations of social movements. While some argue that new epistemologies are needed to capture the innovations of new social movements, other views in contemporary literature are sceptical of such approaches and propose parallels with civil society movements and citizens’ initiatives from the past. Questions addressed in this paper include inquiries about what is a movement, what constitutes it, when does a movement emerge and why are movements as non-institutional actors relevant for contemporary societies. In the last decade literature on movements has devoted a visible attention to the role of new information and communication technologies, the web in particular, and has pointed to its central role in constituting movements and keeping them in operation. One strand of literature is enthusiastic over the role of the new media that are believed to offer revolutionary potential for horizontal communication and action while the other strand points to the limits of online communication arguing against the dispersed, individualized and controlled communication online. The paper addresses the raised issues and questions on the example of the recent feminist and LGBT movements in Slovenia that were active during the uprising, from 2011 to 2013. These movements have historically been among the most visible in the Slovenian and larger Yugoslav context, and have also been recognized by recent research as those showing some interesting and possibly new elements of development of a movement. We explore the thinking and acting of movements, including their communication strategies, especially the role of the web, based on interviews conducted with actors (in spring 2015) who were visible during the uprising period.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 1074029