Mötet mellan journalisten och vetenskapen : En kvalitativ fallstudie om vetenskapsjournalisters arbete med vetenskapliga källor

• Main Author: Johansson, Anna-Stina
• Format: Others
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper 2017
• Subjects: Journalism; journalist; source; Media and Communications; Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-137298

A science journalist has to depend on its sources during the working processes, as well as keeping a neutral stand in the matter. Therefore a journalists stand point during the research process is venerable and will determine the outcome of the study. With todays easy access to news thru smartphones, computers and a daly newsfeed, we need to know we can depend on journalists referring to scientific sources. Consequently the objective of this study is to view how science journalists reason around a scholarly source of interest, also in what ways they work with these sources in terms of staying close to the truth. This study will also compare the way journalists look at the working process, with the actual work practice of scientific sources. A qualitative case study was used, data has been collected by qualitative interviews and analysed with thematic analysis. Also theories about agenda setting, gatekeppers, valuation of news and theories of influence took place to help capture how scientific sources are used in a journalists working process.  This study shows that there is an ensemble between the journalists and what scientific sources they use, furthermore it shows that a journalists neutral view is a very crucial part of the working processes. It often happens to be a lead, who later breaks into news and on the way it lost its credibility, even though the journalist clams to use science as a prime source. Later in the interpretation it becomes clear that a journalist perspective on how a source should be used, often don’t cooperate with how its done in reality.