Ethnographic Communication Analysis: Documenting Journalists at Work - Dr Helen Sissons

Dr Helen Sissons from the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

How journalists construct the news that the public consumes is of paramount concern to democratic societies. The 2016 US election, the Brexit referendum, the protests over racism and the Covid pandemic all illustrate the negative impact on democracy of “fake news” and misinformation. International studies show that most people still read, watch or listen to news, but very few know how their news is made: how decisions about covering a story are taken, skills applied, sources used, language chosen.

Further, the professional actions and interactions that result in our news mostly occur in private, in face-to-face meetings or in conversations over the telephone or online and are hidden from traditional researchers.

In an effort to increase understanding of “how” journalism is done, I visited three national newsrooms in New Zealand in 2017 to video-record journalists at work. I was given unparalleled access to document how journalism is practised and how the challenges facing today’s news workers are discussed and confronted.

The study’s approximately 300 hours of video ethnographic data offer an accurate verbal
and non-verbal record of the interactions observed and give fresh empirical insights into how news stories are constructed and disseminated. At a time when there is public confusion around the validity of sources of information, especially at election time, understanding how those working in traditional mainstream news navigate the requirements of accuracy across multiple platforms is of significant importance.

This paper discusses the background and provenance of the methodology used in this study, and how it adapted aspects of existing and earlier approaches to be specifically tailored for the study of professional interactions as they happen in often fraught, fast moving situations. It argues an important advantage of video is the density of data (DuFon, 2002) including an accurate non-verbal as well as verbal record, which can be replayed as often as is needed during the analysis stage.

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