Faculty of Humanities/Communications

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Context of Blogs in Brazil History of Blogs and Journalism in the Brazilian Case: From Resistance to Colonization News Blogs: Reconfiguring Journalism? Blogs, Journalists, and News Organizations: Tensions, Symbiosis and/or Independence? Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes References IntroductionContext of Blogs in BrazilHistory of Blogs and Journalism in the Brazilian Case: From Resistance to ColonizationNews Blogs: Reconfiguring Journalism?Blogs, Journalists, and News Organizations: Tensions, Symbiosis and/or Independence?ConclusionAcknowledgementsNotesReferences

This article is concerned with the crisis in Greek journalism and with the potential for critiques to lead to a renewal. Drawing on the pragmatic sociology of critique and using the notion of critical juncture, it argues that the role played by critiques coming from journalists themselves has been overlooked. Such critiques, emerging organically from the field, open up new opportunities and feed into practices and new journalistic initiatives. Documenting the state of journalism in Greece, the empirical part of the article traces three critiques developed by the 'rank and file' of journalism: the critique of decline, which suggests the construction of a new regulatory body that will oversee journalistic practice, ethics and standards; the critique of the creative force of the crisis, which suggests that journalism adopts the logics of new media, including collaboration, sharing and witnessing; and the radical critique, which seeks to rehabilitate journalism through placing it in the midst of society and removing it from the business of selling news. The latter critique has led to the formulation of some radical new journalistic co-operative projects. While the success of these critiques, and the ideas they contain, depends on how they become articulated with broader socio-political, economic and technological developments, their formulation and circulation in the field is crucial as it helps shape post-crisis journalism from the bottom up.

The rise of the network aspects of journalism in the context of social media such as Twitter, and the increased importance accorded to community building and maintenance as well as to reciprocity, point to the need to take into account the affective part of journalistic labour. This refers to these aspects of journalistic work that are linked to the creation of networks and communities, to interactions with readers and the forming of bonds between journalists and their readers. An analysis of the affective labour of journalists on Twitter, we argue, is necessary in order to understand the potential and ambiguities of this part of their labour. Based on a set of in-depth interviews with Twitter journalists, this article found three main repertoires of affective labour: the organic relations repertoire, which points to the increasing importance of authenticity as a means of establishing credibility on Twitter; the temporal repertoire; and the repertoire of responsibility. The importance of the affective labour of journalism is found in its biopolitical productivity. The development of an organic relationship with followers, the emergence of stronger bonds between core groups that then become communities, the extension of care and help to the network, are all evidence of the importance of this biopolitical productivity and point to the construction of a new and potentially more radical sociopolitical role for journalism. However, this potential is ambiguous insofar as these elements contain unresolved tensions and ambiguities. These include the trade in selves and the associated commodification; the re-formulation of time, especially its diachronic dimension, as accumulation of social capital; the role of reciprocity and responsibility in reproducing inequalities; and care as care for only those deemed deserving. These ambiguities severely undermine and limit the potentials of affective labour, pointing to the need to develop a purposeful political project for unleashing the power involved in this aspect of journalism.