Esleman Abay

BRICS Joirnalism: Reshaping the Communication Order

of BRICS journalists, reported earlier in two collaborative publications (Pasti

and Ramaprasad, 2015, 2018), using the ethical and epistemological analytic

techniques of the BRICS perspective as proposed by Albuquerque and Lycarião

(2018).Thus, respectively, we refrain from making normative comparisons within

and outside BRICS, and we do not use country evaluations of BRICS made by

non- academic,Western agents. The purpose is to situate interpretations locally,

within the historical legacies and current dynamics of journalism, including its

imported influences, in these countries. We selected journalists’ beliefs about pro-

fessionalism, functions of journalism and roles of journalists as variables to recon-

sider in this light because they comprise the essence of news. We also included

social media use because they provide a new venue through which journalists

practise their profession and deliver functions and roles, and is thus a new avenue

to journalistic freedom.

Historically, the ‘journalisms’ of BRICS countr ies have all been sites of liber-

ation movements, either against colonial Western powers (Brazil, India, China and

South Africa) or tsarist autocracy (Russia). Today, the journalisms of BRICS are

located in the relatively new conditions of their communist, post- communist, post-

colonialist and post- apartheid societies, which are part of the global economy and

have experienced the global trends of digitalization and liberalism. Contemporary

BRICS journalists combine, to different extents, their domestic understandings of

journalism, including emancipatory activities for marginalized populations, with

ideas and practices from other parts of the world.This mix of local perspectives and

global trends has given each country its own character, within which its journalism

and journalists are situated.

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242 Jyotika Ramaprasad and Svetlana Pasti

Localizing journalism studies

In our empirical study, we did not consider the BRICS countries as sites of raw

data to be analyzed through the prism of Western theory (Willems, 2014). First, we

started from the vantage point of these countries, using in- depth semi- structured

interviews that allowed journalists to voice their beliefs and provide researchers with

nuanced and organic viewpoints that a standardized questionnaire, employed within

a positivist framework and seeking a high level of generalization and universalizing

theories, cannot. Second, to accomplish this large study in a localized manner, we

adopted a committee approach,‘in which an interdisciplinary and multicultural team

of individuals who have expert knowledge on the cultures, languages and research

field in question jointly develop the research tools’ (Hanitzsch, 2008:101). As part

of this approach, researchers from BRICS collected and provided interpretations

of the data. And third, in this chapter, we conduct a place- based interpretation of

the data rather than compare it against any normative understandings of journalism

and its practices that might imply a hierarchy of countries in terms of their moral

positions in the profession.Thus, we do not compare one BRICS country with

another or one or more of the BRICS countries with Western countries and its

normative assessments.Together, these three research strategies constitute our ‘local-

ization’ approach.

Due to the genesis of communication and journalism studies in the West and

other factors, such as the primacy of English as the language of research and larger

opportunities for funded research in the West, journalism studies research has been

dominated by Western scholars and is unmistakably influenced by the Western

canon in terms of theoretical approaches, analytic methods and interpretive models

(Josephi, 2005). Western societies, particularly the United States, support private

ownership and task journalism with keeping the public informed and journalists

with staying sources of power, especially the government, so that journalism and

journalists may fulfil what it considers their primary function, that of sustaining

democracy.

Journalism in the service of democracy and, in the US, journalists as adver-

saries to government, both ensconced in a private ownership system:these then

have been the hegemonic normative underpinnings of considerable research in

journalism, from which vantage point global journalism practice and journalists’

beliefs and values have been, more or less, judged (Josephi, 2005; Nerone, 2013).

When other forms of journalism and its practice, and their differing relationship

with society, are identified in research results or in critical essays, they are generally

considered deviations and receive considerable resistance from Western scholars,

practitioners and commentators.

This Western bias impoverishes journalism studies research, depriving it of a

fuller understanding of journalists’ beliefs, views and practice, both within and out-

side the Western sphere. In a more general application beyond simply journalism

studies, but in a more specific reference to the European region, Miike (2010)

discusses the problems of Eurocentricism. According to him, Eurocentricism uses

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Localizing journalism studies 243

cultural origin to favour certain experiences; it essentializes all experience to the

European one. It thus ‘totalizes’, adding up everything to the European perspec-

tive, and ‘trivializes’, diminishing all else (Miike, 2010: 3). Today, this increasing

recognition and acknowledgement of Western bias has led scholars to call for

‘de- Westernizing’ or ‘internationalizing’ media studies (see, for example, Banda

etal., 2007; Breit, Obijiofor and Fitzgerald, 2013; Korkonosenko, 2015; Mano, 2009;

Thussu, 2009, 2013).

From the point of view of avoiding any type of ‘centrism’, be it Eurocentrism

(Miike, 2010), Asiacentricity (Miike, 2010) or Afrocentricity (Asante, 2007), BRICS

represents an ideal constellation, uniting different regional cultural centers (Europe,

Asia, Latin America and Africa), and thus eliminating a centre of domination. Thus,

the very fact of conducting a study of BRICS journalists by researchers from the

BRICS countries may be considered a joint act against normative frameworks.

Further, and more specifically, we question the normativity of Western ideas about

journalism, through our analysis of journalists’ beliefs about the qualities of a profes-

sional journalist, the functions of journalism and the roles of a journalist and their

social media use.

Sample

To implement data collection, two provincial and two major cities from each

country in the BRICS coalition were selected: In Brazil, Brasilia, Rio de

Janeiro, Vitoria, Juiz de Fora; in Russia, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg,

Petrozavodsk; in India, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune; in China, Beijing,

Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and, in South Africa, Johannesburg, Cape Town,

Durban and Port Elizabeth.The study included both traditional media (print,

radio and television) and, at the time, the rising online news media.To accom-

modate local conditions, where purely online news outlets were small in number

or non- existent, news portals and online versions of traditional news media were

included; this was the case for India and South Africa.

Parameters that were common across the countries were as follows:journalists

were selected from a spectrum of media types (television, radio and so on), of media

ownership (private, mixed and state, i.e., government owns more than 50 per cent

of direct or indirect assets, as applicable), and of influence (quality, i.e., influential

in public life, and popular, i.e., having a large audience). Here, too, local consid-

erations were important: for example, while the Brazilian team defined quality

news vehicles as those having the highest impact on the political agenda, the South

African team defined them as community media.

Altogether, with a few exceptions, 24 news outlets were selected from each cap-

ital city and 12 from each provincial city, with two journalists from each major/ pro-

vincial city outlet. The final sample included 729 journalists from the five BRICS

countries as follows:487 capital and 242 provincial city journalists, and 484 offline

and 245 online journalists. The in- depth interviews began in December 2012 and

were completed by the end of January 2015.

BRICS Media : Reshaping the Global Communication Order?, edited by Daya Kishan Thussu, and Kaarle Nordenstreng, Taylor &

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244 Jyotika Ramaprasad and Svetlana Pasti

In the in- depth interviews, journalists were asked to narrate the three main

qualities of journalistic professionalism, the functions of journalism as an institution,

and the roles of journalists who have their own agency.These variables provide us

with an opportunity to highlight the localizing approach we adopt in this chapter.

They comprise the essence of journalism and thus are often the target for norma-

tive reductionism and evaluation. Journalists were also asked to address their social

media use given its relative newness at the time of the study and the opportunities

it provides journalists to gather and deliver news even in restricted contexts, and

thus allows for new freedoms.

The BRICS perspective as an exercise in localizing

For a localization perspective to work, it is important to consider epistemologies.

Kivikuru (2009) mentions an example of an epistemological shift, influenced by

Western narratives about journalism, which took place over time in communi-

cation research in Africa, a shift from development to democracy as a primary

value. In the face of such narratives, some important strategies to consider in jour-

nalism studies research include using place- based epistemologies of journalism that

are derived inductively from the local context in the interpretation of findings

(Wasserman and de Beer, 2009).

In an exercise relevant to our adoption of a localizing approach in discussing

findings, Albuquerque and Lycarião (2018) explored the potential of BRICS to

provide an alternative to the Western normative perspective adopted often in inter-

national media studies. They suggested that BRICS is a ‘performative category’, i.e.,

a heterogeneous group of countries, diverse in their historical, political, economic

and cultural conditions, but united ‘by a common struggle for recognition’ in a US-

centered neoliberal world order that is characterized by Western hegemony. BRICS

embodies the idea of a future where the global order is not unipolar, i.e., one

that is not dominated by any one country or an alliance of countries (de Coning,

2016). For Albuquerque and Lycarião, this ‘collective project’ or ‘common agenda’

translates into a ‘BRICS perspective’ (2018:2878), one that explores the impact of

the unipolar world order on academic research and, in doing so, offers an analytic

strategy comprising ethical, epistemological and methodological aspects. Such an

analysis makes manifest the premises of mainstream international media studies

research and provides an alternative interpretive mode, which in our view echoes

in some aspects the localizing model we have adopted.

From the ethical viewpoint, the BRICS struggle is ‘against similar ways of

thinking and acting that establish and sustain status difference and economic and

political inequality’ (Downey, 2008:70). Essentially, this viewpoint, which finds

value in the diversity of the BRICS countries, calls for a multipolar approach in

international media studies rather than using normative comparison with a uni-

polar ideological order.Thus, according to the ethical aspect of the BRICS per-

spective, it is imperative to avoid an interpretive strategy that places countries in

BRICS Media : Reshaping the Global Communication Order?, edited by Daya Kishan Thussu, and Kaarle Nordenstreng, Taylor &

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Localizing journalism studies 245

a hierarchy that considers some countries as ‘less’ than others. In essence, no one

country should be held up as the virtuous model.

The epistemological aspect of this analytic strategy positions itself in opposition

to the approach in much international media studies research that uses the premises

and data mostly from non- academic agents, such as Freedom House, whose roots

often lie in neoliberalism. It ‘emphasizes the political biases lying behind the data

presented by these agents’ (Albuquerque and Lycarião, 2018:2884). The strategy’s

methodological angle ‘considers the countries under analysis from a relational per-

spective and explores other units of analysis existing [at the] supranational and

… infranational [levels]’ (ibid.:2882). In a relational approach, countries are not

analyzed in isolation ‘as existing apart from other societies’, and the analysis explores

the countries’ relationship with supranational and infra-national units in terms of

power asymmetry and thus influence of the more powerful on those in the per-

iphery (ibid.: 2883). Supra- national institutions are mostly Western transnational

sites that are often neoliberal in their orientation and, due to their power advan-

tage, are able to influence research agendas. Infra- national institutions are within-

country elite groups that perpetuate in- country colonization of sub- elite groups.

The methodological approach has some degree of overlap with the ethical and

epistemological approaches in that, first, it refers to the moral hierarchy of virtuous

and not, which is created in country- comparative media research when the ana-

lysis adopts methodological nationalism, i.e., treats a country as a homogeneous

unit to be normatively compared with other units, and, second, suggests researchers

pay attention to asymmetrical power relations that allow non- academic Western

organizations to influence research agendas.

Implementing localized interpretation

This chapter uses Albuquerque and Lycarião’s (2018) ethical and epistemological

analytical facets for localizing reflection on some results of the BRICS journalism

study. It is able to engage with its methodological analytic approach only insofar

as it overlaps with the ethical and epistemological facets; analyzing results from the

supra- and infra- power relations perspective is outside the scope of this chapter.

To implement the ethical aspect, we deconstruct the existing stereotype of non-

Western countries as lagging behind the West, by training our reflection out of

Western normativity. From the epistemological point of view, we generate new

knowledge based on empirical evidence from our study rather than use non-

academic,Western organizations as the only arbiters of authoritative knowledge.

We describe the new opportunities for journalistic freedom in BRICS that are

emerging in the era of social media, rather than rely on the ‘ready- made knowledge’

of the freedom rankings created by Freedom House (FH), whose measurements are

influenced by Western ideas of freedom and are not free from bias (Steiner, 2016;

Fonte and Gonzalez, 2018). According to Albuquerque and Lycarião (2018:2882),

‘Possibly, no other agent has been as influential in [objectifying a Western- centered

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246 Jyotika Ramaprasad and Svetlana Pasti

moral order] as FH, whose Free Press Index has been ubiquitously employed as

having a self- evident value, despite evidence about its methodological flaws (Becker,

2003), political bias (Gianonne, 2010), and institutional ties with the US govern-

ment (Tsygankov and Parker, 2014)’.

Social media in news making

Other than South Africa, the BRICS countries today have all become world leaders

in terms of the number of Internet users (Worldatlas, 2018).When we conducted

interviews with journalists in 2012– 2015, the number of Internet users in the

BRICS countries was much smaller, but these four countries were still among the

top ten Internet users. China occupied the first position, India the third place, Brazil

the fifth and Russia the sixth place (Internet Live Stats, 2014).

An analysis of news- making practices reported by BRICS journalists confirms

that social media has become a new tool in the everyday work of these journalists.

The commonalities and differences among the countries were as follows:in Brazil,

India and South Africa journalists relied solely on global social media, i.e., US tech-

nical inventions with economic and political domination in the Internet market,

whereas in China and Russia journalists used both global media and domestic

media (WeChat, Weibo,VKontakte), which also became global later.

A majority of journalists in Brazil and South Africa shared a preference for the

three global social media giants:Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. In both Brazil

and South Africa, the most convenient way to access social media and consume

and share information was mobile phones (Wasserman etal., 2018:52). In Brazil,

almost all respondents (97 per cent) had their own social media profiles (Paiva,

Guerra and Custodio, 2015:20). The majority of journalists in Brazil assessed social

media positively as a new tool at work but some also noted ‘the danger of false

information’ and ‘the need for surveillance of information supplied by the user’.

Some wished ‘for stronger regulation to meet the challenges of the virtual world’

(Wasserman et al., 2018:57). In South Africa, almost all the journalists regularly

used such social media as Facebook and Twitter in their work.At the same time,

some online journalists were concerned that Twitter was a threat to their positions

because it enabled ‘people to remain abreast of the news without having to con-

sume formal, online media’ (ibid.:59).

Access to the Internet in India was also mostly mobile driven; newsrooms had

unlimited access to the Internet and journalists had smartphones. In the words of

two Indian journalists respectively:‘It is a changed world; reporters are filing stories

from their phones’ and ‘it is a new age wherein stories are already being done at

one tenth of the cost with the help of mobile phones’ (Vemula etal., 2018:163).

India was the only country whose journalists used WhatsApp as one of their

main tools to gather news and immediately transmit it to the news desk or to pub-

lish it on their media site. Journalists appreciated the integration of social media

with news media because it facilitated gathering information and communicating

with sources, and also promoting their media outlets and themselves in the public

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Localizing journalism studies 247

sphere of the Internet (ibid.). In Hyderabad, an online journalist suggested the term

‘explanatory journalism’ to describe journalism that emerges from such integration

of social media with newsmedia:

We can embed tweets about what someone is saying. So now the whole idea

of calling someone, going to a person, and getting his quote is not necessary;

you can just embed the person’s tweet or hyperlink to older stories related

to the person, which makes it all the more credible. For example, get the

Prime Minister himself and put his quote.You can take his tweet and embed

it to your story. All these possibilities are there where news becomes more

accessible, and the idea that we have of explanatory journalism can happen

smoothly.

(ibid.:165)

Both India and China had the largest number of young journalists (age 18– 29) in

the BRICS group. In India, 52 per cent of journalists in traditional media and 63 per

cent in online media were between 18 and 29years old. In China, these percentages

were 69 and 71 per cent respectively. Both countries also had a high post- 2000

generation workforce. In China, ‘95 per cent in both traditional and online news

media’ and in India ‘80 per cent in traditional news media and 93 per cent in online

news’ were from this generation (Pasti and Ramaprasad, 2016:21). These journalists

grew up with new technology and thus could easily introduce it into their work; in

fact, due to this technology, journalism became a very attractive and easy occupa-

tion for them. One Indian journalist observed how quick and easy it was for young

journalists to do their job:‘The other day Iwas covering an event and Isaw this guy

recording everything that the speaker was saying and it was automatically converted

into a Word file, and there was nothing much for him to do except maybe editing’

(Vemula etal., 2018:166). In Beijing, a reporter at a radio station said that new media

were a symbol of the future orientation of the media industry:‘New media integrate

various forms such as texts, pictures, audio, and video, so it is able to grow compre-

hensively to attract audiences’ (Ramaprasad etal., 2018:36).

In contrast to journalists in Brazil, India and South Africa, a majority of

journalists in Russia used both global (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn)

and domestic social media (VKontakte and Livejournal). Some Russian journalists,

both in the capitals and the provinces, made diversified use of different social media.

In Yekaterinburg, the respondents noted:‘VKontakte for personal communication,

Facebook for work’. Asimilar explanation was given by a St. Petersburg journalist:

Initially, the idea of any social networks was … people [communicating]

among themselves; [thus] a person must have one account to communicate

with friends …. [and for journalists] to publish events from [their] life and

profession– another account … Let’s say you don’t call [by phone] to take a

comment, but take it through Facebook.

[by asking your information source for a comment]

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248 Jyotika Ramaprasad and Svetlana Pasti

Facebook only came to Russia in 2008, when the domestic social network

Vkontakte, initiated in 2006, had already begun to win an audience. According to

Konradova, Vkontakte became popular among young users because of its multi-

media content, while Facebook turned out be ‘more politicized and functioned as

a platform for liberal and democratic opposition’, which was mainly concentrated

in large cities in Russia (Konradova, 2020:67– 68).

The use of social media in Russia for journalistic work also differed by type of

city (metropolis and province) and its specific urban environment. For example,

in Petrozavodsk, a small city far removed from Moscow, journalists preferred

VKontakte, which had both audiences as well as sources for journalists. In St.

Petersburg, most online journalists used VKontakte, Facebook and Twitter, and

half of the traditional media journalists used VKontakte, and some used Twitter

and Facebook.

Unlike some South African journalists, who considered social media as com-

petition, Russian journalists did not believe that social media could compete with

traditional media or online news media.They argued that social media were used

mostly for communication, not for producing journalism. For example, a Russian

journalist said that social media ‘could serve as a source of information exchange

and for exchange of some links’; i.e., only as a tool in a journalists’ work. Another

spoke more specifically:‘I take it as a news feed, where Ican find the links, but no

more, because these media certainly do not replace traditional ones’ (Wasserman

etal., 2018:58).

Similar to Russian journalists, journalists in China also used both global

(Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn) and domestic (WeChat,Weibo, QQ,

Renren and Douban) social media, but they considered domestic social media more

important. It must be noted that Chinese journalists mentioned nine popular social

media altogether.This was two to three times more than the number of social

media that journalists mentioned in other BRICS countries. In essence, Chinese

journalists are well informed from various sources. This finding characterizes a

Chinese journalist as curious and dynamic in searching for information, likely out

of necessity, but still an indication of resourcefulness in finding independent sources

of information (those international social media officially blocked by the govern-

ment) to supplement the information from the domestic social media that are con-

trolled by the government.

Indicating how Chinese journalists used the banned global social media in their

work, Simons etal.write:

[the] authorities are clearly content to turn a blind eye to media practices

that breach the rules but are recognized, in other respects, as serving markets

and facilitating business activity. Many international news sites and social

media platforms are blocked in China. However, four interviewees had it

as an explicit part of their work duties to ‘leap over’ the Great Firewall of

China to gather international news.These reporters used VPNs as part of

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Localizing journalism studies 249

their job descriptions …. These kinds of jobs existed across both Party outlets

and quasi- private media enterprises. Even those journalists who did not have

access to international news in their job description routinely used VPNs.

The Great Firewall of China was for them and, they assumed, most of their

educated audience, an inconvenience rather than an effective restriction on

the free flow of information.

(Simons etal., 2017:233– 234)

From an epistemological perspective, this finding from interviews with Chinese

journalists gives us pause with regard to the evaluation of the freedom of journalists

in China by Freedom House, which ranks China as a non- free country in terms

of freedom of the Internet (Freedom House, 2019). As mentioned above, Freedom

House is not a neutral arbiter in assessing the freedom of the press in the world and

its role in international media research is to strengthen the centrist position of the

West. Its critics tirelessly draw attention to its neoliberal political bias (Giannone,

2010; Sapiezynska and Lagos, 2016; Steiner, 2016; Fonte and Gonzalez, 2018) and

methodological flaws (Bollen, 1986; Becker, 2003; Coppedge etal., 2011).

Freedom House assesses Internet freedom using the following three cri-

teria:obstacles to access, restrictions on content and violations of user rights. It is

clear that authoritarian rule in China will affect the level of political rights, and the

civil and journalistic freedoms in the country, but these measures do not allow for

the opportunities that are opening up in China due to new conditions for China’s

integration into the world market and international communication, i.e., the digit-

alization and globalization of Western and Chinese social media. Freedom House

considers the official ban on Facebook and Twitter in China as an obstacle to access,

but it does not assess how this ban actually works in practice, and in the process

indirectly provides a picture that underestimates the use of social media for jour-

nalistic work by Chinese journalists. It is common knowledge that virtual private

networks (VPNs) make it possible to bypass the firewall and get access to Google,

Facebook, Twitter and other sources in China, though this has become more diffi-

cult in recent years.

In today’s digital world without borders, Chinese journalists are globalizing

through these informal practices of using global social media platforms (Facebook,

Twitter,YouTube, Instagram, etc.), which provide room for alternative opinions.

These journalists look for alternative ways to create a space of autonomy and make

professional choices about sources of information and the nature of their use in

the context of their own situation with regard to their relations with government.

In other words, how journalists work in the non- Western context has its own

dynamics of formal and informal practices. We may surmise that by regularly using

these global social media as alternative sources of information and communication,

Chinese journalists gradually legitimize them as the norm in their professional

practice. Our analysis counters the stereotype of Chinese journalists as being com-

pletely unfree and totally controlled in their journalistic work.

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250 Jyotika Ramaprasad and Svetlana Pasti

Core qualities of a professional

To analyze journalists’ beliefs about professionalism, we examined journalists’

perceptions of (1)the three core qualities of a professional, (2) the key functions

that journalism as an institution should fulfil and (3)the key roles that journalists

who have their own agency should perform (see Table14.1). The answers from

journalists about functions and roles did not differ much but they are presented

separately in the text below to highlight the few differences in how they see insti-

tutional functions versus journalists’ roles.

The BRICS journalists showed similarities in their understanding of the key

qualities of a professional but differed in the hierarchy of these qualities. For

journalists of Brazil and India, the moral qualities of honesty and sincerity were the

most important in defining a professional journalist. For them, these qualities lead

to an understanding of a journalist as a trustworthy person. Such prioritization

TABLE14.1 Three core qualities of professional journalists

Country Cities:

Metro (2)

Provincial (2)

Quality 1 Quality 2 Quality 3

Brazil Brasilia/

Rio de Janeiro

Juiz de Fora/

Vitoria

Honest, sincere/

independent,

not prejudiced,

not corrupt/

good writing and

technical skills

Honest, sincere/

competent/

knowledge of

subjects

Competent,

knowledge of

subject/ ethical

in general and

in profession/

multitasker

Good writing

skills

Courageous,

stubborn

Ethical

Russia Moscow/

St. Petersburg

Yekaterinburg/

Petrozavodsk

Skills in gathering,

analyzing,

writing, and using

technology/

experience in

profession/

generally erudite

and scholarly

Skills in gathering,

analyzing,

writing, and using

technology/

generally erudite

and scholarly

Ethical/

objective

and honest/

competent in

subject

Honest and

sincere/

ethical

Communicative

managerial skills

Competent in

subject

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Localizing journalism studies 251

of the moral qualities of honesty and sincerity among journalists in Brazil and

India is perhaps due to the cultural- historical tradition of development jour-

nalism that included reducing inequalities and making the lives of ordinary people

better; enabling social change is among the professional expectations from these

journalists.

In Brazil, professional journalism has been democratized through the strong

tradition of alternative journalism in the form of community media, which are

non- profit institutions with ‘the widespread participation of ordinary people in

production, decision- making, and management … designed to meet the interests

of local communities – especially social, ethnic, sexual, or religious minorities’

(Bosch, Paiva and Malerba, 2018:196). In India, working towards social change is

part of the ethos of journalism, encoded in various journalistic codes of ethics.1

Indian journalists indicated that all qualities apart from honesty can be learned

Country Cities:

Metro (2)

Provincial (2)

Quality 1 Quality 2 Quality 3

India New Delhi/

Hyderabad

Kolkata/ Pune

Honest and sincere/

unbiased, ethical

Truthful/ honest/

balanced/

unbiased/ ethical

Independent/

good writer/

educated

Hardworking/

dedicated/

committed/

impartial/

empathetic/

sensitive

Competent,

knowledge of

subject

News-

orientation/

integrity

China Beijing/

Shanghai

Guangzhou/

Wuhan

Good writer/

objective/ curious

Competent,

knowledge of

subject/ ability to

judge news values/

social interaction

ability/ interview

skills

Ethical in

general and

in profession

Ethical in

general and

in profession

Competent,

knowledgeable

about subject/

independent

Independent/

good writer/

generally

erudite and

scholarly/

courageous/

gritty/ rational

South

Africa

Johannesburg/

Cape Town

Durban/

Port Elizabeth

Independent

Unbiased

Not corrupt

TABLE14.1 Cont.

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252 Jyotika Ramaprasad and Svetlana Pasti

and developed in everyday practice, but the existential choice between honesty

and dishonesty is one that everybody makes alone, and it is exactly this inner

choice that shapes a person’s ethical values.Thus, Indian journalists considered

technical skills, competence and knowledge of the subject and even independence

as secondary.

For journalists of South Africa, the primary quality of the professional was inde-

pendence, followed closely by being unbiased and uncorrupt in that order.This pri-

ority for independence in the value hierarchy of professionalism can be explained

in the context of the relatively recent post- apartheid media freedoms, wherein the

memory of the past is still acute in society and the profession, and where ‘local

journalists safeguard their professional independence’ and believe ‘that there should

never be a time when government can control access to either the Internet or pol-

itical and entertainment content’ (Ndlovu, 2015:124).

The journalists of China and Russia were similar in how they defined their

priorities. At the top were the professional values of technical mastery, compe-

tence, erudition and knowledge of the subject. It appears then that these journalists’

understanding of the profession leaned towards the rational and administrative

rather than the emotional. The moral qualities of honesty and sincerity, and being

ethical in general and in the profession, were second for them to professional

and technical skills. This hierarchy may be related to the structure of the field or

the lingering effects of this structure, i.e., the status of journalism in society, one

that is subordinated to political power and works on the whole as an appendage of

the state machine at the four structural levels of media systems established since the

Communist time:national, regional, city and local media. Freidson (1988) provided

a similar assessment at least for Soviet professionals who, he indicated, did not have

economic freedom or freedom from state ideology, but did have authority over

technical expertise.

In all BRICS countries, except Russia, journalists included independence as a

key quality of a professional. In today’s Russia, many journalists both agree with and

acquiesce to the notion that the media serve either party/ state interests or com-

mercial interests and sometimes even serve state interests in private media, in the

conditions of the post- Soviet quasi- media market and gradually tightening state

control over the media, the Internet and civil society. For example, the Foreign

Agent Law that came into force in 2012 resulted in the closure of many non-

governmental organizations and required them to refuse foreign funding under

threat of closure. Since 2017, this law has also become applicable to the media. In

the opinion of the Chairman of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, Alexei Simonov,

‘Today, Russian media are formed by two opposite vectors:on the one hand– a

sense of their own dignity and on the other hand– money. [Media] where dignity

wins [are decreasing]’. Simonov believed that only 10 to 15 per cent of the media

have refused to resort to servility. For example, in Moscow this group included only

Novaya Gazeta, radio EkhoMoskvy, Vedomosti and Kommersant (A. Simonov, personal

communication, 19 October 2017).

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Localizing journalism studies 253

Key functions of journalism

In response to our question on the three key functions that journalism should

fulfil, BRICS journalists indicated providing information as the most important

function but with different nuances. Brazilian journalists spoke about ‘informing

with objectivity’, and Indian journalists about ‘provide right [accurate] informa-

tion’, phrasing that implied the moral quality of being honest. In Russia, China

and South Africa, however, journalists did not add an evaluatory phrase, while

Indian journalists did not limit the main function of journalism to a single

function. For them, it also included enabling communication between people and

institutions, providing cognitive fodder for people, educating, regulating for soci-

etal order, engaging in activism in the vein of empowering people and working

on social justice.That is, for them journalism is something more than just pro-

duction of news, it is seen ‘as a resource to drive development’ (Ramaprasad etal.,

2018:27). For this reason, perhaps, Indian journalists did not prioritize the com-

mercial functions of journalism. Indian journalists were also an exception in the

BRICS group in that they did not mention ‘entertainment’ as one of the three

key functions of journalism. While not as all- encompassing as in India’s case, the

service orientation was present among journalists from the other countries as evi-

dent in their (and Indian journalists’) mention of the function of enlightening and

educating the public.

Investigative journalism, akin to watchdog journalism, seeking to keep politics

and business accountable to society, was not very popular among BRICS journalists.

Only in the metropolitan cities of Brazil and the metro cities and provinces of

South Africa did journalists consider investigative journalism as one of the key

functions of journalism. Indian journalists did not mention this function at all. Both

communist China and post- communist Russia do not have a deep tradition of and

conditions for investigative journalism as it is understood in the West:‘to discover

information of public interest that somebody is trying to hide’.2 Investigative jour-

nalism may be permitted by the authorities for certain liberal publications in certain

cities, for example, in Moscow or in Guangzhou.

Key roles of journalists

Journalists’ perceptions about their key roles were not too dissimilar to their

beliefs about the functions of journalism. Thus, BRICS journalists were unani-

mous in indicating that disseminating information was the journalist’s main role,

with nuanced differences. Brazilian journalists used the phrase ‘report objectively’,

whereas Russian, Chinese and South African journalists stayed with ‘provide

news’, and ‘inform the public’. In India, journalists put ‘educate and enlighten’,

‘protect people and society’ and ‘work towards social justice, to be watchdog’ on

an equal footing with the role of informer, in that they considered all of these as

main roles.

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254 Jyotika Ramaprasad and Svetlana Pasti

In South Africa, a key role was to ‘empower community’, in Brazil, it was

to ‘provide service to society’, and in Russia and India, it was ‘to help people’

and to ‘engage in activism’. In Russia, journalists saw themselves as ‘teachers’,

‘enlighteners’,‘moderators’ and ‘providers of communication between society

and power’. The state- owned media journalists of China and Russia were similar

in their perception of journalists as intermediaries between the government and

society, a perception emanating from the service status of the journalism profes-

sion in the social structure of these societies, wherein state media journalists are

trustees of the authorities. These journalists receive information from government

agencies to inform society, but they also inform the government about the needs

and aspirations of the people. In the interpretations of Chinese journalists, their

role is to be ‘a bridge between the government and the public’, but also to be a

‘supervisor’, a ‘public opinion guider’, a ‘social order maintainer’, a ‘social observer

and rational thinker’, a ‘social progress promoter’ and an ‘opinion expresser’.

Conclusions

Our aspiration in this chapter was to gain new insights in the understanding of

the evolution of BRICS journalism as a profession and practice by problematizing

BRICS journalism as a new territory for localizing journalism studies. The chapter

took the approach of understanding BRICS journalists’ beliefs about aspects of

their work from a distributed perspective rather than from a reductionist view-

point, providing details and interpretations at the local level and avoiding normative

comparisons and the use of Western measures of freedom. Specifically, our localiza-

tion perspective drew considerably from Albuquerque and Lycarião’s (2018) analyt-

ical frames, the ethical, epistemological and methodological, of which we adopted

the first two.

From an ethical angle, one that links the BRICS perspective to the struggle

for recognition in a world dominated by ways of thinking and action that posit

status difference, we presented evidence of BRICS journalists’ Internet and social

media use as being diverse, serving journalists within their particular time and

space in each country, without inferences of better and worse. BRICS journalists

have successfully globalized and adapted to the era of social media; social media

are their new work tool in news- making, and are used for their work- related and

personal communication, as well as for various other purposes depending on their

situation.

Journalists’ use of social media was heterogeneous, with both cross- and within-

country differences. In particular, the differences in use of global versus domestic

social media among BRICS countries seem to be somehow politically conditioned,

separating those countries with an experience of communism– China and Russia–

from those without– Brazil, India and South Africa. Possibly, this difference speaks

to the political will of China and Russia to have a certain sovereignty over the

global Internet, including their domestic social media as part of their national

Internet sovereignty.

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Localizing journalism studies 255

Using the ethical point of view in our analysis of journalistic perceptions of

professionalism, we hold none of the variety of models we found as a norm. In

Russia and China, technical expertise/ competence was an important character-

istic; in Brazil and India, the understanding of professionalism was driven by moral

requirements to be honest and sincere. In South Africa, journalists prioritized qual-

ities such as independence, lack of bias and lack of corruption.

These priorities of professional qualities reflect specific professional cultures

formed in specific historical contexts and contemporary circumstances.As

indicated earlier, the journalisms of these countries have all been sites of liberation

movements against either colonial Western powers (Brazil, India, China and South

Africa) or tsarist autocracy (Russia) but, at the same time, have absorbed some of

the ideas prevailing in their society, as well as some ideas exported from Western

countries. If some journalists espoused professional orientations similar to those of

Western journalists, it is not evidence that these journalists and their countries are

better than the other BRICS journalists.

From an ethical perspective, our findings on the functions of journalism and

the roles of journalists are also presented without any normative comparisons that

would place certain BRICS countries as superior to others.The palette of these

local models from information disseminator, educator, enlightener, critical thinker

and watchdog to public opinion guider, social progress promoter, intermediator

between society and power and engaged activist includes both those that are close

to Western models of journalism and those that are distant. This diversity indicates

a wealth of professional cultures that amalgate the histor ical and the contemporary,

the local and the global.

In our epistemological analysis, we acknowledge the diversity of views about

the use of social media, and we particularly consider the use of social media by

journalists in China and note how Freedom House’s assessment of Internet freedom

there does not take into account actual practice. Freedom House’s approach stems

both from the method itself and from the neoliberal political bias of this NGO

funded by the US government, with many of its prominent officials, at a personal

level, having close ties with the US national security apparatus (Tsygankov and

Parker, 2014). In sum, the patterns of liberalism are not able to discern the emer-

ging spaces and dynamics of freedom in a communist society. Chinese journalists

reported regular use of global social media in their work despite the formal ban on

them. While in China, formal controls are in place, everyday practice is often based

on the complex interplay of formal and informal rules, and skillful strategies to try

and maintain professional autonomy in the conditions of political control (Jian and

Liu, 2018).

The epistemological analysis of what professionalism means to BRICS

journalists indicates the diversity and richness of professional models of jour-

nalism deeply rooted in their history of domestic traditions but also Western

influences idiosyncratically translated into their own cultural context, models that

have at different times responded to the challenges of time and circumstance in

their societies. To understand the different professional cultures of journalists in

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256 Jyotika Ramaprasad and Svetlana Pasti

the BRICS countries, we should remember the history of their journalism and

their society.

Historically, in the communist countries, Russia and China, journalism was

conceived as the political function of the party and formed as the mouthpiece

of the government for building a new communist classless society idealized as a

kingdom of equality and justice for everybody. Journalism was supposed to work

as a well- functioning mechanism of the party and state machinery to help build

this classless society of equal opportunities for people. That is, technical mastery of

the occupation was important for journalists while the communist party and the

state took care of ideology. This understanding, one of the features of the profes-

sional culture of journalists formed in communist times when journalism was only

a state service, remains today and legitimizes journalists’ wish to perform the roles

of being an intermediary between government and society and of promoting social

order. Lenin’s 1901 political testament for media, ‘a newspaper is not only collective

propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organizer’, remains in

force (Lenin, 1901). In China, the party/ state tradition of being a mouthpiece for

the communist party and the people (Pan and Lu, 2003) is alive today in the pro-

fessional mindset of Chinese journalists (Ramaprasad etal., 2018).

In former colonial countries, journalism faced a struggle for independence from

colonizers who long imposed their own media agenda, disregarding the interests

and rights of the local population. Journalism was part of the struggle for justice

and liberation from the oppression of the colonialists. Moral strength was on the

side of the oppressed; they maintained the truth and they won. This historical and

genetic memory of the power of truth and justice lives in the current generations of

journalists and influences their values and choices in work.Thus, for Brazilian and

Indian journalists, professionalism was understood and reflected as a moral ethos

that helps to fulfill the mission of goodness and justice that is beyond just a role or

function. In South Africa, it is the recent history of apartheid that is one explan-

ation for the journalists’ ranking of independence as the primary quality of the

professional, followed closely by lack of bias and corruption; these would be most

relevant for journalism’s participation in the current challenges of democratization

in the country.

Our epistemological analysis of functions and roles is similar to the analysis of

professionalism in that these too are rooted in the historical and cultural know-

ledge systems of each country. The BRICS journalists were similar in their feelings

of proximity to people and their desire to help people to understand the world and

to get a picture of the day, but in some countries they also provided help to those

who had specific complaints about an injustice at work or poor service provided

by a company, and responded to requests for help from citizens in difficult life

situations.

Journalists differed by country in their relationship with the authorities, accepting

roles from watchdog and critic to functioning as a bridge between the govern-

ment and the public.These self- perceptions of journalistic roles are based on ideals,

practices and traditions of journalism in the respective countries. Some of the roles

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Localizing journalism studies 257

identified by BRICS journalists are similar to the values incorporated in develop-

ment journalism. In the West, this journalism is considered to be a journalism of

‘as you [the government] say’, but for many in the developing world, it references

the idea of journalism in the service of social justice issues. While neoliberalism has

entered the media markets of BRICS, these journalists do not rate highly the com-

mercial function of media– entertainment.

As a final exercise, we asked BRICS journalists to identify the three most

important socio- political changes that their country needed to enable journalism

to perform its functions. BRICS journalists were more or less in solidarity in their

answers.They said that their country needed ‘more democracy’ and more ‘media

and economic independence’ (see Table14.2).

BRICS countries also differed in their answers, indicating the specific current

problems in each country, solving which would also help to strengthen democratic

development and protect journalism. For example, journalists in Brazil spoke about

the need ‘to end corruption and oligopoly’, while journalists in Russia, India and

China saw the need ‘to increase political competition’ in their countries. In China,

journalists also wanted changes that would ‘protect the rights of journalists’; in India,

TABLE14.2 The three most important socio- political changes journalists believe are

needed for journalism to perform its functions

Country Cities:

Metro (2)

Provincial (2)

Change 1 Change 2 Change 3

Brazil Brasilia/

Rio de Janeiro

Juiz de Fora/

Vitoria

Ensure media

and economic

independence

Ensure media

and economic

independence

Reform

legislation

Require

diploma

End corruption and

oligopoly

Foster appreciation

of professionals

Russia Moscow/

St. Petersburg

Yekaterinburg/

Petrozavodsk

Have more

democracy/

ensure media

and economic

independence

Have more

democracy

Have socialist/

liberal values

Nothing to

change/ensure

media and

economic

independence

Have developed and

civilized society

with culture of

mutual respect/

increase political

competition/

compliance with

the laws/ have

openness among

authorities

Ensure media

and economic

independence

(continued)

BRICS Media : Reshaping the Global Communication Order?, edited by Daya Kishan Thussu, and Kaarle Nordenstreng, Taylor &

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258 Jyotika Ramaprasad and Svetlana Pasti

changes that would ‘provide access to the government’, and in Russia, changes that

would create ‘openness of the authorities’. Only in India, journalists noted that ‘the

literacy rate in the country should be increased’ and that ‘people should support

the media in issues that will assist (journalists) to solve issues with the government’.

On a final note, in the world of media today, digitization and the advent of

social media have made the dichotomy of ‘center- periphery’ less and less rele-

vant in its traditional understanding of physical proximity to and distance from a

centre of power, because distance and borders are disappearing in this digital world.

Further, according to Xiang (2017), the changes in global leadership are creating

a horizontal rather than vertical configuration of power so that, instead of centre-

periphery, we now have centre- semi- periphery- periphery, in which China occu-

pies a semi- peripheral position. The 56th Munich Security Conference introd

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Localizing journalism studies 259

a new term,‘Westlessness’, to describe current trends in the world and the role

of the West in a new era of great- power competition (Munich Security Report,

2020). International journalism studies would do well to stay away from normative

comparisons, irrespective of which country or region takes the centre position if

‘Westlessness’ indeed occurs.

Notes

1 http:// presscouncil.nic.in/ Content/ 62_ 1_ PrinciplesEthics.aspx; www.unesco.org/ new/

fileadmin/ MULTIMEDIA/ HQ/ CI/ 4.%20India%20AINEC%20code%20of%20

ethics.pdf.

2 https:// dictionary.cambridge.org/ dictionary/ english/ investigative- journalism.

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Esleman Abay

BRICS Joirnalism: Reshaping the Communication Order

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