Pignard-Cheynel, Nathalie

2022-4-22, Pignard-Cheynel, Nathalie, Salerno, Sébastien

Our study provides an in-depth understanding of how young audiences (18-25 years old) are exposed to news and misinformation and how they attribute credibility to both types of content. It also advances journalistic practices in the fight against misinformation by producing digital formats and narratives with a visual focus adapted to young audiences. Our study covers six focus groups with 44 participants in four Swiss cantons and extended by 12 interviews conducted between 2019 and 2020. The participants were exposed to misinformation, fact-checking content produced by online news media, and original journalistic productions in line with the first results of the research and specially created by journalism students.

2021-9-23, Pignard-Cheynel, Nathalie, Standaert, Olivier, Sebbah, Brigitte, Amigo, Laura

This communication discusses the results of an international research project investigating how local media outlets develop initiatives to empower their relationships with their audiences. Conducted in the European French-speaking landscape (France, French-speaking Switzerland and Belgium), this research is part of a twofold questioning at the heart of Journalism Studies, that is 1) to what extent new technologies are able to modify these relationships (Barnes 2016) and 2) how journalists can address the problem of news avoidance and the decline of trust in news (Reuters Institute 2019). We focus on local news media, particularly concerned by issues of proximity and links to the audience, since they position themselves as key players in the weaving of social ties in a given geographical space (Hess & Waller 2017; Jenkins & Nielsen 2020). A crowdsourcing campaign with local media outlets from France, Belgium and Switzerland allowed us to identify around 550 initiatives over the last 2.5 years. The full list can be consulted online at: https://www.unine.ch/ajm/recensement-linc. On this basis, we inductively created a typology of 26 types of initiatives according to their purpose (editorial/commercial) and their format (reader café, editorial conference, crowdfunding campaign, etc.). We then categorized the editorial initiatives in order to highlight the degree of audience integration in the editorial process, ranging from the most “passive” to the most engaging kinds of relationship (observation – dialogue – consultation – contribution- co-creation). Among the 550 initiatives, 110 of them specifically focus on actions undertaken by local news outlets during the Covid-19 pandemic. This very particular context allowed us to highlight specific modalities of engagement with audiences, in particular initiatives that foster solidarity and mutual support between people and those that develop social links within the local community (e.g. during lockdowns). This shows local media capacity to play new or less prominent roles in recent years, that have been revived during this exceptional situation. We then conducted 45 in-depth interviews (Kaufmann 1996; Demazière and Dubar 1997) with staff members in charge of these initiatives in 10 media outlets from the three markets studied. This allowed us to study how these attempts to reach out to audiences are integrated into pre-existing processes. We sought to determine if they correspond to temporary fashions or deeper organizational transformations. Our results show that these initiatives are implemented according to strategies and means that vary greatly depending on the type of media. Journalists justify their deployment for equally varied reasons: commercial purposes (strengthen audience loyalty, attract new subscribers) rub shoulders with editorial concerns (to better understand audiences, evolving with the public’s uses). At their most advanced stage, reflections gathered during the interviews echo the moving epistemologies of journalism, especially in times of crisis (Ward 2018). Journalists discuss the very purpose of local journalism through the complex and shifting power relations between the newsrooms and what they try to define as their “audience(s)”: At the heart of this issue, we find the tensions between the willingness to support/represent/act for local communities and the more normative roles of journalism (Hanitzsch & Vos 2018; Standaert et al. 2019), as well as the (in)dependence of the journalists on their audiences.

2021-3-4, Marty, Emmanuel, Pignard-Cheynel, Nathalie, Sebbah, Brigitte

Notre présentation porte sur l’analyse de la participation des lecteurs-contributeurs à travers le dispositif de live blogging, ou couverture en ligne et en direct sur le web d’un événement. Ce travail porte spécifiquement sur le live réalisé par lemonde.fr durant « l’affaire DSK » en mai 2011. Ce travail a fait l’objet de deux publications, que nous souhaitons présenter conjointement pour restituer le cheminement méthodologique qui a été le nôtre. Le premier volet consiste en l’analyse d’un corpus relatif aux premières 24 heures (sur 40) de cette couverture et composé de deux documents : le flux du live et l’ensemble des mes­sages soumis par les internautes dont une infime partie seulement a été publiée (1%). L’analyse comparée des deux facettes de cette participation nous conduit à analyser la place de la parole ordinaire des internautes dans la production journalistique en interrogeant le processus de modé­ration journalistique de la participation et la manière dont elle contribue, aux côtés des postures énonciatives des internautes, à construire une identité de « public » du live. Cette démarche qualita­tive, consistant à identifier manuellement les contributions des internautes en fonction de leur registre d’expression, a ensuite été prolongée par une analyse lexicométrique du corpus exhaustif des messages soumis et du live publié. L’approche comparative est alors mobilisée au moyen du concept opératoire de « cadrage médiatique de la participation », pour interroger la représentativité topique du live publié vis-à-vis de l’ensemble des contributions, articulée à l’analyse des registres d’expression précédemment mise en œuvre. Par la présentation successive de ces deux approches sur un même objet, nous souhaitons montrer comment méthodes qualitatives et quantitatives d’analyse des discours de la participation en ligne peuvent s’articuler et s’éclairer mutuellement.

2020-10-8, Pignard-Cheynel, Nathalie

2022-2-4, Salerno, Sébastien, Pignard-Cheynel, Nathalie

The Covid-19 pandemic spread in Switzerland and with it, misinformation and conspiracy theories (Loomba et al. 2021). Adherence to misinformation and conspiracy theories may have increased the difficulties associated with the coronavirus crisis (Enders et al. 2021). Negative effects on mental health due to media exposure have been established (Wang et al. 2020). Some beliefs led to risky behavior and violence in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic (Vincent 2020). The growth of conspiracy theories seems to find fertile ground in situations of fear and mistrust (Shahsavari et al., 2020). What were the sources of information, the scale of exposure to misinformation, and their psychosocial effects during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic? Which social and political characteristics were most affected by misinformation about Covid-19? How does the Covid-19 reveal the socio-political situations of different countries? To study information sources, as well as trust in different information channels and sources, exposure to and reception of misinformation, we relied on a questionnaire survey conducted in Switzerland and seven other countries/regions (Canada, USA, England, Belgium, Hong Kong, Philippines, New Zealand) between May and June (N=8806) and in November (N=9027). The results of our study show that adherence to false beliefs, as well as low trust in authorities, may have negatively influenced the psychological reaction of respondents during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. The level of anxiety increased between the first and second waves, with a lower level for Switzerland compared to other countries.

2021-9-8, Amigo, Laura, Pignard-Cheynel, Nathalie

In response to the current context of citizens' “crisis of faith in journalism” (Zuckerman, 2017) and of disruption of news media economic models, news organizations are exploring innovative ways to reconnect with audiences (Jenkins & Nielsen, 2018). They seek to adapt to their expectations of horizontal information and of a dialogue-based relationship, rather than a one-way lecture format (Deuze, 2007); a momentum amplified by the web participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006). For local news media, proximity to the audience is an essential feature, since they position themselves as key players in the weaving of social ties in a given geographical space (Hess & Waller, 2017). However, little attention has been paid to study how these expectations and changes in the news ecosystem are affecting local news media -in comparison to national outlets- (Nielsen, 2015). This paper discusses the results of an international research project investigating how local news organizations in French-speaking Europe (Belgium, France and Switzerland) try to rebuild a trusted relationship with their audiences. The first phase of the project consisted in the elaboration of a database of initiatives launched by radio, television, press or digital-only media concerned by the perimeter of our study and aiming to reinforce the links with their audiences. The research team carried out an inventory of initiatives no matter what their nature was (economic, editorial, communicational, etc.). This work was completed by a participatory form in order to gather as many initiatives as possible. From February 2019 to December 2020, we listed 550 media's initiatives. The analysis consisted of manually coding each initiative based on a double inductive categorization referring to two research questions. What are the recurring formats of the media's initiatives towards audiences? We classified them in 26 formats according to their main characteristics (editorial conference, subscribers' club, crowdfunding campaign, etc.). What role is assigned to the audience and what is the extent of its involvement, particularly in the editorial process? We identified 5 different levels of audience involvement (observation, dialogue, contribution, consultation and co-creation). Our work builds up on previous research on participatory journalism, defined as the overall process of audience engagement with journalists in the construction of news (Paulussen et al., 2007; Thurman & Hermida, 2010; Singer et al., 2011). It aims to offer a complementary view to the studies on the resistance of journalists to release control over the editorial process (Hermida, 2011) as well as on organisational difficulties against this approach. Thanks to its longitudinal perspective, our research highlights the rise (before the Covid-19 pandemic) of initiatives that not only allow participation but also dialogue and transparency in the news building process. It also shows that initiatives launched during the pandemic foster solidarity between people and development of social links within the local community. More broadly, the results shed light on the rise, in French-speaking Europe, of engaged journalism, defined as practices integrating a regular and more horizontal link with audiences, even taking into account their expectations and needs, as well as committing in a reciprocal relationship with them.

2021-1-22, Pignard-Cheynel, Nathalie

2021-10-21, Pignard-Cheynel, Nathalie

2021-5-13, Van Dievoet, Lara, Pignard-Cheynel, Nathalie, Standaert, Olivier, Ballarini, Loïc

One of the many challenges that journalism education faces in today’s changing news environment is the rise of the influence of infomediaries (Smyrnaios, 2017) - amongst which the GAFAM - and their algorithms. Social networks algorithms in particular can be considered as “actants” in news work (Lewis and Westlund, 2015). Their influence on the distribution and visibility of news is a challenge for media and journalists. They have an impact on what the audience sees and in doing so, can have an impact on both the formation of opinions amongst the audience and the economic health of news media. The public finds itself trapped in a “filter bubble” and the media are facing a “filtered audience”. If it wants to address current challenges, journalism education has to take these new actants into consideration. But how can these issues be effectively integrated into a university program ? How can journalism students be lead to apprehend the impact of algorithms on news consumption and distribution ? Can a learning by doing approach enable a better understanding of the issues at stake ? This communication discusses a teaching experiment on Facebook and Instagram algorithms conducted three years in a row (2017, 2018 and 2019) by the authors together with journalism students in three universities from Belgium, France and Switzerland. The experiments consisted in the creation of new Facebook (2017 and 2018) or Instagram (2019) profiles managed by the students during a four to six weeks period. Each profile had to follow a list of news media and adopt a conduct coherent with a pre-defined ideal-type (an interest in conspiracy theories, a political tendency or a passion for sports news, for example). The students were then encouraged to test both general hypothesis and their own hypothesis on how the Facebook algorithm works in relation with news media content distribution. The students recorded their observations and screenshots of their newsfeeds in a virtual notebook. At the end of the experiment, feedback sessions were organized allowing teachers and students to compare their results and confront them with scientific literature and position papers. First, we propose a qualitative analysis of questionnaires and focus groups held with the students at the end of the first experiment in order to understand their strategies and to assess the educational outcomes of the experiment. Then, we analyse further developments of the experiment in 2018 and 2019 as well as the limitations and challenges we faced. The results of the analysis bring to light that the educational device enables an awareness amongst the students. They acquired a much more detailed and personal knowledge of these mechanisms by being directly confronted with them. If the findings about the algorithms were partly known, they weren’t the main focus of the experiment. It was rather a question of finding a way of making students apprehend the issues raised by these new “actants” and the impact they have both on their own daily uses and on the journalistic field.

2020-11-12, Carlino, Vincent, Pignard-Cheynel, Nathalie