The J Word 5.3: Emotional News Gatekeeping

Scenes and sounds of conflict – from social media and online comments to news stories to the crisis of an airplane crash – may make for “good journalism” and set the scene for larger storytelling that journalism is known for. But what other social and cultural impacts do these kinds of stories and this kind of storytelling have? And what about the ordinary people who are caught up in them? How does what we might try to coin in this episode, the “emotional gatekeeping” of journalism shape the forms and functions of news? To answer these questions, we talk with Margareta Salonen at the University of Jyväskylä, in Finland, and Karin Wahl-Jorgensen at Cardiff University, in the U.K., about their coauthored pieces in Journalism Practice, Margareta’s on “conversational gatekeeping” and Karin’s on emotionality in news coverage of plane crashes.


Text Featured in this Episode:

Salonen, M., Olbertz-Siitonen, M., Uskali, T., & Laaksonen, S. M. (2022). Conversational Gatekeeping—Social Interactional Practices of Post-Publication Gatekeeping on Newspapers’ Facebook Pages. Journalism Practice, 1-25.

Boelle, J., & Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2022). Emotionality in the television coverage of airplane disasters. Journalism Practice, 1-17.

Produced and hosted by Robert (Ted) Gutsche, Jr.

Give feedback to the podcast on Twitter @JournPractice or email jwordpodcast@gmail.com