Studying social control in Ethiopian newsrooms
This paper comes in relation to a PhD project where I study journalist identities in three Ethiopian news organizations: Ethiopian Television, Ethiopian News Agency and The Ethiopian Herald (national daily). All organizations are state-owned and are regarded as pro-government. The research aims to identify how professional identities are constituted and negotiated among news journalists in the three media houses. The main methodological approach is in-depth interviews with journalists over a 2.5 year-period, supplemented with newsroom observations. A core theory guiding the research is Warren Breed’s social control of the newsroom theory (1955). While Breed’s theory goes back to the conditions of post-WW2 American newsrooms, it has remained important as a reference work in much news production research ever since. This paper firstly discusses the relevance of Breed’s theory across decades and continents. Secondly, and equally interesting, it discusses which methodological approach to apply when researching social control and conformity/deviation in the newsroom. To this end, newsroom observation is contrasted with in-depth interviewing.
Publisert i Paper presented at the PhD seminar 'Media Production Studies', Lillehammer University College, 2008
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