Who counts as a journalist?

For most of modern history, the answer seemed almost embarrassingly simple. A journalist worked for a newspaper, a broadcaster or a news agency; editors assigned stories, professional norms governed the work, and audiences knew more or less where journalism ended and entertainment, advertising, activism or rumour began.

That clarity is gone. Today, a breaking-news video may be filmed by a bystander, framed by an influencer, verified by a newsroom, amplified by an algorithm and discussed by millions before a professional reporter has filed a first paragraph. The old question has therefore become newly urgent. So has another: How can we compare journalism across countries, platforms and historical moments when the very object being compared keeps changing?

These questions formed the background to the FHSS–DCom Lecture Series symposium, “Journalistic Roles at the Margins: Rethinking Theory Beyond the Core”, held at Beijing Normal University–Hong Kong Baptist University. The event brought together Prof. David Nolan and Dr. Aljosha Karim Schapals, whose lectures approached the problem from two different but complementary directions.

Nolan addressed the challenge from the side of journalistic roles as they become visible in media output. Drawing on comparative research and the role-performance framework associated with Claudia Mellado, he examined how researchers can identify, operationalise and compare journalistic roles across media systems. His lecture raised a basic methodological problem: Can established comparative models still register the plurality, hybridity and uneven development of contemporary journalism without simply exporting Western professional ideals as universal standards?

Schapals began at the boundaries of the field itself. His lecture focused on digital-native media, influencers and other actors often treated as peripheral to journalism. Instead of assuming that journalism has a stable institutional centre and that such actors merely disturb it from outside, he asked how they reshape journalistic authority, legitimacy and professional boundaries. The margins, in this sense, are not simply where journalism becomes less journalistic; they may be where its future definitions are currently being negotiated.

The discussion that followed brought these perspectives into direct conversation: a view from the centre outwards, concerned with roles, texts and comparative patterns; and a view from the periphery inwards, concerned with new actors, platforms and competing claims to journalistic status. Participants included Dr Markus Heidingsfelder (moderator), Dr Jesse Owens Hearn-Branaman, Ms Dai Fei, Dr Hao Sun, and Professor Dr Holger Briel. Special thanks to Rainie (Yutong CHEN) for her outstanding organisational support and for helping to ensure the smooth running of both the symposium and roundtable.

What counts as journalism?

Markus Heidingsfelder (MH): Welcome, and thanks for being here. I’ll be moderating today’s symposium, and I’m especially excited about our two guests, because they’re working on closely related questions from very different angles. To my left is Dr. Aljosha Schapals from Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane—what I’ve learned is branded as “the university for the real world.” So you don’t prepare them for the fake world, which may be even more important.

Aljosha Karim Schapals (AKS): We considered that, but it already seemed rather overcrowded.

(laughter)

MH: And to my right is Dr. David Nolan, a journalism researcher at the University of Canberra.  What’s interesting is that, while they share a common set of concerns, they approach them from opposite directions.

David, you develop comparative frameworks to describe journalism: you look at how journalistic roles actually appear in news stories, how we can identify them, and how we might measure them. In other words, you start from the output side—roles, texts, and patterns across media systems. And Aljosha, you start from a different question: who even counts as a journalist today? You focus on digital‑native media, influencers, and other actors at what you call “the margins,” and you examine how they reshape journalistic authority and boundaries.

So we have, very roughly, a “center‑outwards” perspective and a “periphery‑inwards” perspective.  Let’s start with you, David. If we take “influence” as a key category—central to your work and to this whole discussion around “new spheres and platforms”—how does your framework deal with these actors? Are they journalists at all?  Who counts as a journalist?

David Nolan (DN): I’ve generally tried to avoid that whole “who is a journalist?” question in my work. I just don’t find it particularly useful. What I do find more interesting is asking: what counts as journalistic work? What does it actually look like in practice? How is it being done, and in what forms does it appear?  Because once you shift the focus there, the question of who is producing it—whether they qualify as a journalist or not—becomes less central. I don’t think that boundary has ever been very clearly drawn, and I don’t think it’s a particularly helpful question to start pursuing now. 

(laughter) 

So I’m not sure if that’s the box you thought I fitted into, but I’ve never really been interested in that question. 

MH: I’d definitely agree with that shift—from asking “who is a journalist?” to asking “what kind of communication is this, and how does it operate?” That makes a lot of sense to me. But even if we do that, we still need some way to distinguish a core of journalistic role performance from … well, other kinds of public communication, don’t we? So let me bring you in, Aljosha: if journalism isn’t something we can pin down with a clear‑cut “in or out” label, then where do you locate the boundary between what is journalism and what belongs at its periphery? And when you talk about a periphery, it sounds as if you’re still assuming some kind of center—so where is that, exactly? 

AKS: I don’t assume there is a center. I think many researchers assume there is still a center. And I think JRP— 

MH: —the Journalistic Role Performance project, which studies how journalistic roles show up in news across countries and media systems … 

AKS: Right, I think JRP is a good example of that, because JRP looks at journalistic roles mainly within legacy media, and much less outside legacy media. And that’s one of the big shortcomings of the project: it does a really good job of highlighting the roles that journalists enact in practice—but journalists working in mainstream media. It doesn’t really capture the range of roles we see outside that sphere.  So at the periphery, if that’s what you want to call it, or at the margins, there’s a real gap in the theory and in the broader project. That’s the gap David and I are planning to close—or at least to address—by contributing to the conversation. We’re going to ICA in June with a conceptual paper that revisits journalistic role performance theory and essentially argues that this gap needs to be closed. So there’s a direct link between empirical role‑analysis and re‑theorizing journalism under platform conditions. 

Jesse Owen Hearns‑Branaman (JOHB): Just to give some context: roughly a quarter of the data for the project comes from radio, and the online media are mostly legacy online outlets. They don’t include sites like The Daily Beast, or … 

DN: No, no, they don’t. That’s right. 

MH: When you talk to these influencers, “newsfluencers,” and the people who challenge the idea of core journalistic values—when you listen to them, where do they draw the line, if at all, between what they do as influencers and what they do as journalists? 

AKS: My view is similar to David’s. For me, the key question isn’t who they are; it’s what they do. So it’s less about whether they self‑identify as journalists and more about what roles they fulfill in their daily professional practice.  If those roles are adjacent or comparable to journalism, then you can make the case that what they’re doing is essentially journalistic—even if they don’t adopt the label “journalist.” So the emphasis shifts from identity categories to role performance and functional equivalence. 

Roles, expectations, and erosion

MH: David, what defines a journalistic role for you? Or do you deliberately want to leave that open as well? 

DN: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I had something I wanted to pick up from what Aljosha said—we’ll come back to this—but let me just say: I’m very interested in how people mobilize the idea of what it means to be a journalist, and in the ways they do that in quite nontraditional ways.  Think about what we call alternative media. Traditionally, in media scholarship, alternative media often meant left‑wing, progressive, community‑based outlets—community radio, citizens’ media, that kind of thing. But now we’re seeing forms of alternative media emerging from the right. 

MH: Truth Social …

DN: Right, right. Platforms like Truth Social, or these very right‑wing sites that produce their own news and contest the boundaries of journalism by saying: “Mainstream media aren’t speaking truth to power. They are part of the power system. We are the ones speaking truth to power.” They appropriate the traditional language of journalism, but use it in a very different way.  So there are at least two things to think about here. One is: how are people taking up that traditional idea of journalism and enacting it in the present? And the other is: how are people seeking to radically change journalism while still drawing on the same discourses? That’s one of the really interesting dynamics at the moment.

My colleagues in Norway for example, who work on alternative media, make exactly this point: it’s a highly dynamic and contested space in terms of what counts as “alternative media.”  But coming back to role performance for a moment: when these actors claim to perform a watchdog role, a lot of what they identify as “power” is actually the mainstream media, not only—or not even primarily—government. They see media the way Trump talks about media. 

MH: The “enemy of the people.” 

DN: Exactly. The media are framed as elites, and they claim to speak for “the people” against these elite media. So they claim the watchdog role, but in a way that is very distant from how the watchdog role has traditionally been conceived in journalism or in legacy media. 

MH: What do you think about this Western‑centric normative assumption that journalism should fulfill a watchdog role?

AKS: I think it definitely applies in certain contexts, but it doesn’t apply in many others. 

MH: You did some research in Russia, for instance. 

AKS: That’s correct. We did some work on the opposition activist Alexei Navalny, looking at him as a peripheral actor. Without ever taking on the title of journalist, he produced short YouTube documentaries that were highly critical of the government.  And if you look at the visual style and aesthetics of how he presented “the news,” as it were—sitting at a long table in a suit, with a stack of papers in front of him and a glass of water—it really resembles broadcast TV journalism. Again, the key question is: is he a journalist? And I’d say, whenever we ask that, it’s crucial to focus on what he does functionally, rather than whether he labels himself a journalist or whether others perceive him as one.  So we should zoom in on what they do, rather than the title they carry. 

MH: And to follow up on that: the role of journalism as watchdog of the government, speaking truth to power—if you took that idea to China, some people might not agree. 

Authoritarian deliberation and “managed” watchdog roles

DN: Yes, but I do want to add something here. It’s a point I made this morning in my talk. I’m not trying to be defensive of JRP—we’re going to be quite critical of JRP in other respects—but to be fair, it’s not a normative framework. JRP isn’t advocating the watchdog idea. It’s measuring it. It’s not saying journalism should be watchdog; it’s asking whether this is a role journalists perform or mobilize in practice.  And that still matters. Whether you think watchdog journalism is desirable or not, it remains a meaningful empirical category. 

MH: You also have a category that captures when journalism supports the government, right? 

DN: Yes. 

JOHB: Each article can show how many roles—four, five? 

AKS: Six. 

JOHB: Six roles. So for each article, you assess how many of those six roles the journalist is performing. When we were training students to cover China, we had the watchdog role in mind, but in our examples there just wasn’t much watchdog journalism. 

DN: Not much watchdog, no. 

JOHB: But there also wasn’t much explicit mobilization either. If you think about the Communist press, you might assume its role is to mobilize people, but we didn’t see much of that in our samples. 

DN: But it’s not that Chinese journalism never performs a watchdog role. It doesn’t perform that role at the national level. You can have state media performing a watchdog function vis‑à‑vis local government authorities, but you wouldn’t see, say, central party media taking a watchdog stance against the national government. 

Hao Sun (HS): That’s true. I recently read an article on “authoritarian deliberation” in China. The main argument is that China has developed a form of authoritarian deliberation: citizens may be invited to discuss, criticize, or negotiate specific policy issues, but this participation remains constrained by the broader authoritarian system. 

MH: Yes, I know that one. It’s a bit older, right?

HS: From 2011. 

MH: Right. They argue the old model of “command authoritarianism” basically stopped working under conditions of market liberalization, they needed different mechanisms. 

HS: Exactly. My reading of their argument is that relying on top-down commands alone was no longer sufficient. To illustrate how this can work in practice, people may raise concerns about environmental problems, local development projects, factory pollution, land use, or conflicts between citizens, companies, and local governments. In these areas, public consultation, petitions, hearings, online discussions, or even protest-like pressure can sometimes influence policy outcomes. However, the authors note that these forms of participation do not necessarily extend to challenging the legitimacy of the central government or the rule of the Communist Party. The broader point is that deliberation can exist while remaining embedded in an authoritarian framework. In their account, this creates pockets of controlled criticism within a fundamentally non-competitive political system.

DN: And it’s interesting because this also allows the national government to learn by effectively letting others absorb the criticism and then adapting to it. It’s a very flexible way of managing legitimate dissent without opening itself to criticism that could undermine its own authority. 

JOHB: There’s also an article about gatekeeping in the party press that makes a similar point. For example, suppose a city has a problem with trash and recycling, and the government decides it needs to reform waste sorting, recycling, composting, and so on. Once that becomes a policy goal, journalists can start talking about it.  It’s framed as something wrong that needs to be fixed. If the government wants it fixed and journalists also say it needs to be fixed, watchdog‑type stories about the problem are not only permissible, they’re useful—they’re more likely to get through the gate if they align with government priorities. 

DN: Although that raises the question: is that watchdog journalism, or is it loyal‑facilitator journalism? 

AKS: For me, the main issue isn’t so much whether these categories are too normative. My critique of JRP is that its six roles may be too narrow to encompass everything journalists are doing. It often feels as if you’re forced to put something into a particular box, even though, in practice, it’s much more complex.  These days, journalists are not only thinking about what they write or whether they’re holding someone accountable. They also have to consider factors like: will this story generate enough engagement? Will people click on it? Will the metrics be sufficient to satisfy my editor? So there are all these additional layers of decision‑making that extend beyond the classic role set. 

DN: The infotainment role does give you some room for that, though. 

AKS: I was thinking more of journalists’ personal branding strategies—the way they factor in metrics, social media presence, and so on. So even though the framework is useful, I think it needs updating. 

JOHB: Because everything is also a personal branding strategy now. Do they have their socials next to their name? Are they linking to their web profiles? 

AKS: Yes, exactly. In the questionnaire, there’s a simple item asking whether there is a link to the journalist’s X/Twitter profile or their Instagram profile, for instance. As Jesse says, that’s the only question that really looks at the individual level as opposed to the broader organizational level. 

Trump, roles, and the erosion of expectations

MH: Do you also work with role performance data yourself, Aljosha? 

AKS: To some extent, yes, though not as extensively as David. 

MH: From your perspective, are traditional social roles losing their binding force? For instance, some observers argue that Donald Trump doesn’t really inhabit the conventional presidential role. Do you think developments in pop culture have contributed to a broader preference for authenticity over role performance, and maybe even shifted expectations from sincerity toward authenticity?  There’s empirical work and commentary suggesting that younger audiences privilege “relatable” influencers, unscripted content, and visible imperfection over polished, role‑consistent celebrity performances, and they interpret that as authenticity. 

JOHB: Although they’re still performing authenticity. 

MH: Of course. But is the classic role performance—the commitment to a role, the inside honestly backing up the outside, which Hans-Georg Moeller calls sincerity—eroding across different social domains, not just in journalism? 

DN: It’s interesting, right? I mean, just take Trump. A lot of people—well, you know, I just referred to Trump as “Trump,” but if I were a Trump supporter, I would call him “President Trump.” And you hear that line a lot—and it’s true, he is the president. So it’s not wrong to call him President Trump, but still …  And part of the reason they insist on that title is legitimacy and role. There’s a kind of social legitimacy he’s still claiming. There’s a reason Trump wanted to be president. It’s not only that it enriches him—though it does; he can monetize it in all kinds of ways. But I do think that what’s happening there is this: you could say he’s rejecting the role, or you could say he’s trying to transform the role, to redefine it in his own image. And that’s a very scary thing. It suggests that roles aren’t simply “eroding,” they’re being actively re‑coded. 

MH: If you look at what function roles have in society, you could maybe say that they stabilize certain expectations, right? 

DN: Yeah. 

MH: And you expect from a president to act presidential. I think people still do. Just like you expect a journalist to act in this or that way. 

DN: Exactly. And I find some of what I was talking about earlier—right‑wing actors contesting journalistic roles—quite disturbing. Because we do need certain shared ideas around which we construct societies. If you undermine everything, then you lose your history.  Now, that’s not to say history wasn’t itself a construct of power. I’m not claiming that. And I’m not someone who believes in a golden age and says, “Oh, there used to be this wonderful era of journalism, and now everything’s gone to the dogs.” But I do think there are elements in journalism’s history that come out of struggle—struggles in which journalism was shaped not just by employers, or by the economy, or by politics, but also by resistance to those forces. Those struggles established sets of rules, norms, and forms of autonomy that were hard won.  So the idea of just throwing all that out of the window because of some populist fantasy—I find that quite disturbing and problematic. 

MH: To support your point, you could even say that journalism was, in a sense, born during the French Revolution, when for the first time in history, speaking truth to power became a mass‑mediated practice.

JOHB: Not the American Revolution? 

Holger Briel (HB): Well, pamphleteering “against the authorities” is already a feature of the English Civil War and other 17th‑century conflicts. I still don’t think that this will protect journalism from being questioned and criticized. And I think that already happened very powerfully—what I was just thinking of is the 1970s, for instance, with “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live, Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo journalism. These aren’t full‑frontal attacks on journalism, but they are a kind of gentle prodding. 

DN: Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert—doing the same thing, right? 

HB: Absolutely. From the French Revolution onwards, these people will make fun of you—and rightly so, I think. But that doesn’t take away from the force of serious argument. They are saying: there’s some serious stuff going on here. I don’t think that’s what they’re attacking. They’re attacking the surplus silliness that sometimes surrounds journalists.

JOHB: Yeah, so that’s an interesting question. If you say there’s a difference between being a journalist and doing journalistic things, then those comedy news shows are doing journalistic things. 

DN: Yeah. 

JOHB: If you watch what they talk about, it’s exactly the same topics CNN or other outlets cover. Except they lighten it up and add jokes. And then there’s John Oliver—that’s basically long video essays about different social topics, but with jokes. It’s journalistic.  Roles, functions, ontology and epistemology

DN: Okay, okay. I want to pause for a moment and make a point, if I may. Because we’re talking about this idea that something is journalistic if it performs the functions of journalism. So we’re doing a kind of ontology–epistemology move here: to talk about roles is to talk about epistemology, about how people talk about, categorize, and know journalism. To talk about functions is to talk about what journalism is.  But then you have to ask: does ontology exist without epistemology? Do we really have some basic core journalistic functions that exist “out there” as a kind of real touchstone against which all theorizing takes place? I don’t think so.  I think what’s happening is that the functions of journalism have been defined historically and are being continually redefined. So this conversation we’re having about who counts as a journalist—I’m not interested in settling that as a definition. What I am very interested in is the ongoing conversation about what counts as journalism. Because that conversation matters. It shapes what we actually get. It shapes what people do, and it shapes what people accept as journalism. So the struggle over “what journalism is” is itself constitutive of journalism’s function. 

AKS: I totally agree. To come back to your earlier question about whether these roles are eroding: for me it’s more a question of whether those six roles are even complete. If we actually took the Journalistic Role Performance framework and extended it to non‑mainstream actors—to actors at the periphery of news, whatever we want to call them—I think we would see roles emerging that aren’t part of the current framework.  So yes, I think the framework needs updating. And I also think that has consequences for how we teach journalism at universities. 

MH: That’s a good point—we have to come back to that later: in what ways can your work help us redefine our curriculum? You made a case today—and I meant it when I said it—that the great, late Habermas would be happy with your results, your findings. Public service, right? To what extent is this idea of public service still relevant? What happens on the platforms—are they doing a public service? Does that fit into this framework? 

AKS: Do you mean the actors? 

MH: The influencers. 

AKS: I think if and when they do something that holds powerful people accountable—if they perform a watchdog function, for instance—then yes, that is a public service.  Innovation, influencers, and co‑optation

MH: And what kind of transformation do you see coming from these margins right now? This reconfiguration of journalism—are they transforming the field, or stepping out of it altogether? How would you conceptualize that shift? 

AKS: I think they’re increasingly influential. And precisely for that reason, I think it’s increasingly indefensible—for JRP, for example—to only look at, say in Australia, ABC, SBS, The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald. Some of these influencers attract far more traffic than mainstream media. People engage with them a lot more—especially young people, particularly in the context of political campaigning. That’s why you suddenly see politicians filming TikTok videos in their backyard, and so on. 

MH: David, when I followed up on my question during your talk today, you said, “Well, that’s a comment”—when I was criticizing the extent to which the BBC is biased in its coverage of the war in Gaza. I’m asking because in alternative media I see people like Professor Mearsheimer, the American political theorist. He’s not normative and he’s not moralizing; he is very cold, looks at structures. And precisely for that reason, he doesn’t appear in mainstream media. He appears in my TikTok feed, but not in mainstream outlets. He’s a persona non grata—seen as anti‑Israel, anti‑morality. So would you agree that mainstream media—this is why we’re talking about the BBC—may have a kind of problem with high morality? 

DN: Yeah, yeah, sure. But these platforms aren’t institutions in the way the BBC is an institution. I mean, you can criticize the BBC; you can’t really criticize Facebook as an institution in the same way … 

HB: The moral expectations we have of these platforms start much lower than the expectations we have of the BBC. 

DN: Yeah, but … I’m just coming back to this idea, because I’m working on another research project at the moment that looks at diversity practices in news organizations. It’s about how people from diverse backgrounds—Indigenous, LGBTQ, transgender, and so on—have tended to be marginalized in newsrooms, discriminated against, or reduced to representing “their” group.  Addressing diversity has often been quite traumatic. People go in with high expectations of being able to make change, and then they end up being exploited, demeaned, and having bad experiences. Now, this might sound like it’s not connected to what we’re talking about, but I was thinking of an example: a young woman who worked in mainstream media in Australia—places like the ABC—who has now left those organizations and works for a site that runs primarily through social media called “Missing Perspectives.”  The whole point of that outlet is to generate the kinds of stories she wanted to produce—and was promised she’d be able to produce—when she was hired as a “diverse” media worker in mainstream news. She’s a peripheral actor in the sense that she has literally stepped outside mainstream institutions in order to contest the terms of journalism imposed on her and to produce a form of journalism that runs counter to that.  And I think we’re seeing a lot of that—from all sides, progressive and non‑progressive alike. 

AKS: Right, yes, definitely. And it’s not as if mainstream media are static or unaware that the industry is changing. You mentioned the BBC; another UK example would be Channel 4 News. They have a YouTube section called Channel 4 News Shorts, mostly explainer content by younger presenters, deliberately produced in vertical format to be easier to consume on a mobile phone.  So it’s important to stress that mainstream media are not immune to these changes—or unaware of them. In Australia, for instance, our public service broadcaster, the ABC, has an “ABC Creative Fund” where they recruit social media influencers to help them engage younger audiences. That’s important, and it’s often overlooked in these conversations. So mainstream institutions are not just losing ground; they are also trying to re‑internalize peripheral logics.  China, anti‑China narratives, and loyal‑facilitator roles JOHB: I was wondering: is something similar happening in China, with CCTV and other organizations doing more on social media? 

HS: Yes. I met a student today who works for People’s Daily English. Their team produces content for the organisation’s own TikTok and YouTube accounts.

JOHB: But it’s not influencer content as such—more short‑video content. 

Dai Fei (DF): I looked at Zhejiang Radio and Television Group  (浙江广电), for example. They actually have what they call a matrix. The first layer is influencers: they try to cultivate in‑house individual hosts as influencers, as celebrities. They call them “ID.” The second layer is the content that proves popular among these IDs, which they then bring up into the institutional channel. So, as far as I know, traditional Chinese legacy media already support these individual accounts that don’t look like they’re associated with them. You wouldn’t know they’re actually affiliated with legacy media. 

AKS: And to briefly bring in a German example, which I’m sure many of you will know: there’s the German TV host Susanne Daubner from ZDF. She’s a classic institutional journalist in a very traditional broadcast news format—a textbook anchor, essentially. She now has her own TikTok channel. I don’t actually know whether that’s officially approved by her employer or whether it’s her own project, but she delivers news on TikTok, rapping the news in a hip‑hop style.  Regardless of whether people like it or not, I find it incredibly innovative. Young audiences are watching it, and they keep watching it—she’s still doing it, so if it weren’t working she probably would have stopped long ago. For me, it illustrates some of the innovation that’s happening, and also some of the personal‑branding dynamics I mentioned earlier. 

MH: Why not? You could dance or sing the news … 

DF: Role‑playing—they do a lot of role‑playing. 

MH: There we go again: role. 

DN: Okay, okay. I want to jump in with a slightly more critical point. Because, you know, we can all get pretty excited about innovation. And I do think these are fascinating cases. You’ve got the ABC, Chinese TV, and similar outlets extending their reach by appropriating what used to be a kind of “self‑media” economy in China and reabsorbing it into a state media economy. So they extend their reach and reinforce their traditional power. In Australia, for example, at the last election, influencers were brought into the space of political debate and discussion at Parliament House. They opened up that space so that influencers could be invited in. I think the Democrats did something similar before the last election in the US, so the Australians were riffing a little bit off that model.  But this raises some interesting questions. Many of these influencers are very good at expressing opinions or making entertaining content about news. What they often don’t have, though—Susanne might be an exception—is the skill set that comes with doing the hard work of journalism: scrutiny, reading documents, doing background research, all the things that actually make up journalistic practice. They don’t necessarily have that professional training or those professional skills.  When governments bring such people in and feed them the same material they give to journalists, they do it quite self‑consciously as a PR exercise, as a way to connect with the young people whose support they want at election time. In that sense, they can present this as innovation and “cool” outreach, but they’re also using it to extend their power—just as ABC or CCTV extend theirs. So we have to ask: is this really challenging the status quo, or is it using new tools to further entrench it? 

MH: So they’re not living up to the role of journalists? 

DN: I think that’s where an important debate comes in, and it connects back to the question of public service. I’m not calling for hard boundaries about who counts as a journalist. But at the same time, I do think certain functions need to be performed if a society is to work well. One of those is ensuring people are well‑informed about what is going on. If the people doing this work lack the skills, knowledge, and capacities to perform those functions, it isn’t sustainable. 

AKS: I’m a bit critical of that. I think that framing is too simple. 

DN: Of what I just said? 

AKS: Yes. 

DN: I’m sure it probably is.

(laughter) 

AKS: Not all journalists are equal, and the same goes for influencers. I’m sure some of them fall into the PR trap—if that’s the case, I would prefer that they didn’t. But there are definitely influencers who raise important issues that mainstream media never covered. I don’t want to put journalists into one box, but I also don’t want to put influencers into one box. 

DN: I agree, I agree. 

JOHB: And how much journalism is really about digging deep, reading documents, doing that sort of thing? That’s super marginal. 

DN: Sure. 

JOHB: It’s a very specialized niche. Even The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times only have a handful of people doing that. 

DN: Right, but that’s the kind of journalism we lionize. “It’s Woodward and Bernstein—that’s what journalism is!” 

MH: Investigative! 

DN: Exactly. And I agree. I don’t think investigative journalism is dead in mainstream institutions. What I think is dying is the everyday scrutiny: court reporting, covering local government, that kind of “boring” work that actually requires significant resources. Investigative journalism still lives “front of house”—organizations are willing to spend money on it because it’s good PR for their brand. But a lot of the smaller, routine work news organizations used to do is being underfunded. I take your point that the deep‑digging investigative work is a relatively small part of journalism. But I still worry about how we sustain the functions we need from journalism. So, returning to my earlier point: there’s still a set of questions about how we sustain the things we require journalism to do. I accept the criticism and admit my framing was a bit simplistic, but I do think the question is valid. 

AKS: Yes, and there’s one more point I want to make. It’s important to recognize that not all influencers are “pure” influencers. Many of the people now working as influencers—or running digital journalism start‑ups—used to be journalists in mainstream media. Because of the crisis in journalism, they were laid off, and they had to find new revenue streams to keep doing the work they love, even outside institutional newsrooms.  So that adds nuance: not all influencers lack exposure to journalistic professionalism. Many actually came out of mainstream media but can’t sustain a career there anymore. They’re looking for new sources of income. Media organizations like the ABC are now offering those through schemes like the Creative Fund. So I can completely understand their rationale. 

Hybrid identities and platform logics

HS: I have a question about these peripheral actors. From what we’ve discussed, a lot of what they do is, to some extent, genuinely journalistic work. They gather information, interpret cultural material, translate it for audiences, and shape public understanding. But I’m curious about how they identify themselves. Do they see themselves primarily as journalists, as influencers, as content creators—or as some mix of these?  It seems possible that many operate in a hybrid space, where they partially adopt journalistic norms while fully embracing the logic of platforms and social media: visibility, engagement, algorithms, personal branding, audience cultivation. In that sense, their professional identity may be fundamentally ambiguous. They produce content that looks like journalism, but the conditions under which they work are shaped more by platform culture than by traditional media institutions.  It reminds me a bit of debates about professional video game players. Some audiences see them as legitimate athletes because of the skill, discipline, and competition involved. Others see them primarily as influencers or entertainers whose success depends on streaming culture and online popularity. I think a similar tension might exist here: these actors occupy a space …  

AKS: That’s a really good question. In my research, I look explicitly at self‑identification: what is their own sense of professional identity? We do that through interviews—asking them things like: “Do you identify as a journalist? What do you actually do? Talk me through your work.” But we don’t rely only on interviews. We also examine their mission statements. If they have a digital journalism start‑up, for example, we go to their website, click on “About Us” or “About Me,” and see how they describe themselves. If they don’t have a website, we look at their public profiles on Instagram or other platforms for how they talk about themselves. What’s really interesting is that, in many mission statements, they present themselves as disrupting the entire journalism game, even the entire industry. They say things like: “We’re doing things completely differently. Mainstream media ignores this—we’re transforming everything.”  But when you interview them and ask why they do what they do, what motivates them, it’s remarkable how closely their narratives align with traditional notions of journalism. They say things like: “It’s crazy what’s going on in government; someone needs to bring this to people’s attention and hold those people accountable.” If you compare that to the traditional watchdog role, the overlap is striking. So there’s a real disconnect between their professional self‑description and their narrative motivations, which are often very close to classic ideas of journalism. 

HS: Do their audiences have similar expectations? How do audiences see these influencers?  

AKS: I haven’t done audience research on that yet, but I think it’s important to consider. I’d love to explore it more in future work. 

JOHB: The audience might be more passive. People just stumble upon the content while scrolling. The algorithm surfaces it—they don’t necessarily subscribe. 

HS: I’m not sure. They leave a lot of comments; they really get into discussions. 

DN: I agree. They’re often more engaged than regular news audiences. They’re quite active and more directly connected to producers. 

JOHB: Influencers have to pay attention to their feeds and reply to comments. 

HS: Yeah. 

JOHB: I don’t think CNN people who are trying to act like influencers are doing that. 

DN: No, no. There was a moment, maybe in the early 2010s, when journalists were expected to go “below the line” and engage with their audiences. It lasted about two or three years, and then organizations said, “We don’t have the resources to support this.” Plus, journalists got tons of abuse. It became a legal and ethical risk for companies to require their employees to engage there. 

HB: That’s why many of them moved their engagement to Facebook, for example. Facebook has its own rules, and you’re less likely to have a “dirty” comment environment, because some of that gets filtered out. 

Anti‑China narratives, sourcing, and loyal‑facilitator roles

MH: There are so many points I’d like to come back to. I shouldn’t have gone after the BBC; I should have talked about German media. Let me just share my experience here in China. When I arrived, I suddenly noticed a very strong anti‑China narrative in German mainstream legacy media, while alternative positions were mostly present in alternative media and on TikTok. There seems to be a kind of silent consensus or agreement.  And I have the impression that journalists in Germany who openly advocate for China or write something positive about China would go against their editors’ expectations and seriously risk their careers. That seems to be part of the role that’s defined in German media. Have you done any research on this? 

DN: You mean on how China is represented? 

 MH: On writing about China. I’m friends with Der Spiegel correspondents who have been here. Some of them wanted to report on China in a more positive light, and their editors in Hamburg said: “No way, we need to stick to a specific narrative.” 

DN: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know why I’m being cast as “the role performance guy” again …

(laughter) 

MH: It’s in your CV! 

DN: True. But at the same time, I’m a media sociologist with a background in journalism studies, and I do think about why we get the journalism we get. On the anti‑China narrative: we see something similar in Australia. There’s a strong institutional anti‑China discourse that gets amplified by the press.  If you ask why, a lot can be explained by sourcing. When journalists report on domestic politics, they tend to get a range of views because they’re mediating a contested national arena. But as we know from classic work—think of Lance Bennett or Daniel Hallin—when it comes to foreign affairs, journalists tend to defer to government. They rely heavily on official sources and government positions. So if the government is hostile or suspicious toward China and keeps telling a story that focuses on human rights abuses and stereotypes—without much engagement with the complexity of “really existing” China—that narrative gets reproduced. It’s reproduced because that’s the routine mode of journalistic production. When covering China, the first instinct is to go to the foreign office or foreign ministry, interview an official, and get the “line” on China policy. They don’t necessarily question it. It gets folded back into their existing norms and ideas about China, inherited from the news culture they work in, and it goes unchallenged. 

JOHB: I’ve just co‑written a paper on exactly that, comparing US press coverage of Xi Jinping over a ten‑year period. Coverage shifted dramatically with presidential China policy. Under Obama, who was more conciliatory, coverage was much more positive; under Trump, when he became very hostile, the tone flipped. There’s another chapter on the UK: there’s a “golden period” with Peter Mandelson talking up China, everything is great—and then the line shifts and coverage follows. 

MH: But that dynamic doesn’t necessarily apply to influencers.  AS: I have to say, I don’t work much on the China narrative specifically. 

DN: But there is a lot more interesting stuff online about China than in mainstream outlets. 

AKS: I just want to echo David. I moved to Australia ten years ago, and one of the first things that struck me, watching and reading the news, was how strong the anti‑China hostility was in the press. As someone who had just arrived, I was genuinely puzzled. I didn’t understand why they were doing it. And as David said, right‑wing politicians feed talking points to Murdoch‑owned outlets, talking down China, and those talking points are often taken at face value. 

MH: So how do you deal with that in your methodology? 

DN: I don’t think the methodology itself has a specific problem here. As I described in my lecture this morning, the role‑performance approach is not just about ideals; it’s also about material influences, routines, and sociological factors shaping journalistic products. We can relate those to how roles get performed. In this case, journalists are essentially performing a loyal‑facilitator role when they cover what they see as national‑interest issues. 

AKS: And they’re also doing what their editors—and the owners of right‑wing media—expect them to do. 

DN: Exactly. 

Methods: surveys, interviews, and observation

JOHB: That brings us back to what Anilesh asked you this morning: is a quantitative project like JRP enough, or do we also need to talk to journalists? 

AKS: I remember picking up that point during the talk. Obviously, the first idea is: why not interview them? But interviews have problems too. One is social desirability: journalists may tell you what they think is the appropriate thing to say. That’s one limitation.  Surveys have another issue: they can oversimplify, forcing people into boxes—tick this or that role—even though reality is more complex. One alternative, which is still imperfect, is newsroom observation: participating in editorial meetings or literally sitting behind journalists as they produce news.  That’s challenging as well. From a methods perspective, access is hard, and it’s not efficient to just sit and observe. You might keep a field diary and take notes on what you see, but none of these methods are perfect. The best way forward is probably to combine them—to let different methods work in conjunction. 

MH: Are you both overestimating individual actors? 

DN: Overestimating? 

MH: Yes. Instead of focusing on the structures they’re embedded in? 

DN: No, I don’t think we’re only looking at individuals. We’re looking at outcomes. 

AKS: The output. 

DN: Right—the outcomes of structures, individuals, and their interactions. Some critics say JRP is too human‑centred and can’t deal with things like AI. But it can, because it does not only look at human beings as “role performers.” It looks at influences on content, and the actors can be human or non‑human.  That said, I agree with Aljosha that we shouldn’t rely only on that methodology. Role‑performance analysis, taken in isolation, is not enough. Without context, without other sources of data or observation, you’re missing too much. Even in the talk I gave this morning, to explain our findings we had to go back to the content itself: what do these patterns actually mean? How can we go deeper, qualitatively, and think about context and content? The numbers don’t represent timeless roles; they represent roles as performed at this moment, in these specific institutional settings. 

AKS: A snapshot. 

DN: Exactly. So you have to grapple with all of that.  Reflexivity: academic roles and material constraints

MH: Do you ever problematize your own role? You’re not journalists; your role is research and education, and you study the roles of others. Do you reflect on that? 

AKS: You mean our position as researchers? 

MH: Yes, your role performance as researchers and educators, compared to journalists, given that they serve different social functions. 

DN: I do think about it a lot. Do I “problematize” it? In a way, yes—but I’d only be worried if what I was doing was simply critiquing journalism from above. That’s not what I do. I’m not some all‑knowing academic looking down on supposedly clueless journalists. I’m interested in their own understandings and in providing a perspective that can enter into dialogue with those understandings.  I bring certain kinds of expertise; they bring others. I’ve worked with journalists, co‑authored pieces with them. So I think it’s crucial to avoid that trap, but it’s also important to keep asking the question. 

AKS: When I think about my own roles, I see two main ones in my professional life: teaching and research. One thing I always try to do in my teaching is ensure that it is informed by my research so that both roles work together. And if you take that as a starting point, it really raises the question of how we teach the next generation of journalists—which I know you want to return to. 

MH: Yes, at the end, when we wrap up, we’ll need your advice. 

AKS: Don’t count on me. (laughs) As a researcher, I’m constantly trying to “check in” with myself, to understand where I’m coming from. A good example is when I started researching alternative media or peripheral actors. The dominant narrative at the time was quite negative: “It’s all amateur; it can’t be taken seriously.” As a researcher, you have to be aware of such narratives and avoid being overly influenced by them.  At the same time, you also have to avoid going too far in the opposite direction—just praising them: “Isn’t it great that we have these alternative media, doing everything better than legacy media?” So I see my role as twofold: as a teacher, making sure teaching is research‑informed; and as a researcher, constantly checking in with myself about my own position. 

DN: I want to add a second dimension to that. In both our answers so far, we’ve been talking about how we ethically perform our roles as academics—how we make peace with what we do. But if you think in terms of role‑performance analysis, we don’t assume journalism is simply the enactment of ideals or ethical frameworks; we see it as the product of material influences.  We have to look at universities in the same way. We can’t imagine ourselves sitting outside the world of material influences, calmly commenting on a world that is shaped by them. We’re just as materially influenced as everyone else. So we have to account for that and reflect on how it shapes our work—what we do, what we might want to resist, and what we might not be able to resist.  We operate in institutional contexts that impose structural pressures: to do certain things, achieve certain metrics. We’re not just free individuals. 

HB: There goes the ivory tower. 

MH: If I can call this the ethos of self‑reflection—what you described as “checking in with yourself”—then maybe a collaboration between the two of you would be a good way to strengthen that, to gain more awareness of where you’re coming from and of your blind spots. 

AKS: As it happens, we’re presenting together at ICA in Cape Town next month. 

MH: Wonderful. Good. I have one big question before we close the session: What is the function of journalism? David, maybe you go first. If there is such a thing—after all, the “function” is also a construct. 

The function(s) of journalism

DN: That’s too big a question for me. I’m not sure I want to be that guy. But there is a book called The Journalism Manifesto by Barbie Zelizer, Pablo J. Boczkowski, and C. W. Anderson.

MH: Yeah, they ask how journalism can win back trust, find its footing again …

DN: Right. It’s very much a book about defining what journalism should be. 

MH: So what kind of function does it serve in society? 

AKS: I can go first if you like … 

DN: No, no, I can answer. In some ways, JRP actually does answer that question to a large extent. It identifies journalism as providing information, offering opinion, occasionally engaging in scrutiny and watchdog work, facilitating power as well as holding power to account, providing entertainment, and giving people ways to navigate everyday life through knowledge—and, at times, through mis‑ and disinformation. Journalism performs a lot of functions, and these are historically developed. 

AKS: I broadly agree. I’d say: journalism informs and educates, but also—often neglected—it entertains. It has to be engaging, especially if you think of US late‑night shows, which deliver political information in an entertaining and accessible way. 

MH: And it’s therapeutic. Given how absurd the situation can be—we talked about this earlier—mass media can’t fully match that absurdity, but these formats can. 

AKS: I often wonder about people who feel completely disconnected from politics, who don’t want to engage or feel entirely disenfranchised. If they consume infotainment content, I still prefer that over them consuming no political information at all. I keep asking myself: what’s the alternative? 

JOHB: I think the function is to produce content that attracts audiences for advertisers. That’s part of its material function. If it doesn’t do that, it doesn’t exist. 

DN: Yes, that’s part of its material function. But I’m going to be a bad guest and say I disagree with Jesse. I think that’s a somewhat over‑cynical view of journalism. 

JOHB: Thank you, I’ll wear it like a T‑shirt. 

DN: It’s not totally wrong—that is part of journalism’s function. But I also think journalism performs many other functions. We still need to ask: which functions are socially important? Because without journalism, we’re in trouble. You might think a lot of journalism is just rubbish designed to deliver eyeballs to advertisers—and much of it is. But there are still aspects of journalism that are as important to people as good healthcare, clean water, and decent conditions for collective life. Journalism has become part of the conditions of modern life. We need to keep talking about what those conditions are and what role journalism plays in them. I think that’s crucial. 

HB: I was thinking of the phrase “social cohesion.” That used to be a major function of journalism. I don’t think it plays that role anymore. 

JOHB: But in China, journalism still seems to serve social cohesion. 

Teaching journalism after the center

MH: So, to end, I have a question for both of you. Let’s start with Aljosha. If we take your research seriously, do we now have to teach influencing? In other words, which roles and skills should a modern journalism curriculum focus on, if it wants to prepare students not only for traditional newsrooms but also for these new actors at the margins? And let me add: my students never read traditional newspapers. They get all their information from TikTok and social media. 

AKS: I love that question, and I honestly think about it all the time. To answer it, I wouldn’t say we should simply teach “influencing.” I think we need to teach entrepreneurial skills—entrepreneurial journalism.  For me, that includes several things. It includes personal branding: building a professional brand for yourself. It includes business skills: how to start your own venture, for example. So, yes, influencing is part of it, but you also need a wider set of entrepreneurial skills.  Whether that should be a standalone module or embedded in existing units is an open question. As far as I know, there’s already a degree in entrepreneurial journalism—that’s how important this has become. And there’s another point: in Australia, the foundational journalism textbook that first‑year students use is from 2016. A lot has changed since then, and I find it increasingly hard to justify using that book. If I were a first‑year student and my lecturer gave me a 2016 textbook as my main guide, I’d ask: why? So I’ve pitched the idea of a new journalism textbook to a publisher, and it’s now under contract. 

DN: Are you writing it? 

AKS: I’m editing it—I’m the lead editor. And I will come back to you, because I want you to be part of it. So yes, I think about this constantly. It needs updating. I think the curriculum should include production skills and business skills, but also teach students how to produce content and then package, repackage, and recycle it for different formats and platforms. Each platform has its own logic, and what you produce has to fit those logics. 

JOHB: Then we should turn the “convergent journalism” class into “entrepreneurial journalism.” 

MH: We should send you our curriculum and ask for your input. 

AKS: Do we get paid for that? 

DN: That’s exactly the question I would ask. These are the material constraints we work with! 

MH: And of course this also touches the question I asked earlier: the role of educators and researchers, and the role of journalists as entrepreneurs who brand themselves. The same applies to you as researchers. 

AKS: Yes, I’m constantly told I need my own website—and I still don’t have one. 

MH: Okay, final question for David—he’ll hate me for this, because it relates to roles. Please reformulate it in whatever way works for you. If we think less in terms of tools and more in terms of roles, which new roles do you see emerging that journalism education should explicitly prepare students for? Are we talking about journalists as curators, creators, community managers? And what does entrepreneurialism mean in practice for how we teach? 

DN: That’s a really interesting question. To be honest, my answer to the specific way you framed it is: I’m not sure. Which isn’t very helpful. 

MH: I think that’s actually a very good answer!

DN: But I do think journalists have to adapt to a world where they’re no longer the primary source of knowledge. Traditionally, journalism sees itself as producing knowledge and informing the public. 

MH: No—that’s the scientists. 

DN: Well, journalists translate experts, but they still produce the narratives. Now, a lot of people are doing that kind of knowledge work, often better than journalists in certain niches. So journalists either need to engage much more effectively with others who produce knowledge—to manage those relationships and connections—or they need to specialize and go deep in particular areas.  I don’t think the generalist journalist will have an easy future. I just don’t think the industry will continue to be structured that way. There’s a second part to your question about education. Returning to the role‑performance framework, I think two things are crucial. First: what does it mean to be a journalist? What is your role? What are you supposed to be doing? Journalism education should push students to think deeply and continuously about that. A good journalist regularly and critically reflects on their role. We need to give students conceptual resources and frameworks to help them do that.  Second: what are the structural conditions you will face as you try to enact that role? How will you navigate those conditions in realistic ways, without slipping into naïve idealism or total despair …

MH: Or cynicism. 

DN: Exactly. And much of what Aljosha has said about entrepreneurial journalism relates to that: these are practical, material skills that need to sit alongside the critical capacities that journalism education aims to cultivate. 

AKS: So in short, it’s both theory and practice. 

DN: I should have just said that.

(laughter)

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Selected recent publications

Aljosha Karim Schapals
Schapals, A. K., Riedlinger, M., Montaña-Niño, S., & Rednikin, A. (2026). Shining light on “dark science”: Mapping the field of science watchdog journalism. Media and Communication, 14, Article 12392. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.12392
Bartleman, M., Schapals, A. K., & Dubois, E. (2026). Generative AI and the new landscape of automated journalism: A systematized review of 185 studies (2012–2024). Journalism and Media, 7(1), Article 39. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia7010039
Avides Moreira, V., Hendrickx, J., & Schapals, A. K. (2026). “Talk to me as a friend!”: How teenagers prefer their newsfluencers on social media. Journalism and Media, 7(1), Article 19. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia7010019

David Nolan
Wang, H., Wan, C., & Nolan, D. (2026). “Journalism is dead”? Digital press criticism and challenges to media legitimacy in China. Chinese Journal of Communication, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2026.2630317
Márquez-Ramírez, M., Jackson, D., Mellado, C., Nolan, D., Matthews, J., Quinn, F., & Zhao, X. (2026). Journalistic role performance in global sports news: Comparing the stability and scope of the “toy department” thesis in 36 countries. Communication & Sport, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/21674795261428575
Mothes, C., Mellado, C., Boudana, S., Himma, M., Nolan, D., McIntyre, K., et al. (2025). Spurring or blurring professional standards? The role of digital technology in implementing journalistic role ideals in contemporary newsrooms. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 102(1), 88–119. https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990241246692

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Transcript: Markus Heidingsfelder. Layout and design: Kathy (ZHANG Lian)

Visual materials: AI-generated images created with Perplexity; screenshots and visual references sourced from publicly accessible internet materials, identified through Google image searches (“news influencers”, “influencer journalist”, “China-bashing Western media”).