Journalism's appeal to the public is in decline and the causes and remedies for this are debated in society and academia. One dimension that has garnered attention is that of journalistic norms and how they are performed; it has been proposed that a journalism based on a different, more transparent, normative base can better connect with citizens, compared with the current prevailing norm of journalistic objectivity. However, the opinions of citizens themselves have been remarkably absent and, in order to inform the debate, this study inductively investigates how citizens view and relate to the notion of good journalism. Drawing upon a theoretical framework of Bourdieu's concept of doxa, journalistic role performance, and social contract theory, this study is based on the results of 13 focus groups. The findings suggest that the respondents’ views about good journalism are quite in accordance with the traditional norms of the journalistic field; however, there is more emphasis on stylistic and linguistic qualities. Few calls are made for transparency. The results suggest that a remedy to the decreasing trust in news may not lay in the changing of norms, but rather in how already established norms and values of the journalistic field are performed.

The article presents a network analysis of 22,861,013 geocoded external hyperlinks, collected from 230 Danish, 220 Norwegian and 208 Swedish news websites in 2016. The analysis asks what the structural properties of the Scandinavian media systems—including its geography and ownership structures—mean for news outlets’ centrality within the hyperlinked news ecology. The analysis finds that whereas incumbent legacy media occupy central positions, about one third of the network is absent from the hyperlinked interaction, primarily local, independently owned newspapers. A multiple linear regression analysis shows that national distribution and corporate ownership correlates to network centrality more than other predictors. As brokers in the network consist of the large, legacy, capital-based news organisations, hyperlink connectivity is primarily characterised by proximity to the centres of power, corporate ownership, agenda setting incumbency and national distribution. 

One of the main debates within journalism research during the last decade has been the role of citizens as contributors or, conversely, as threats to the practice of journalism. While participation has been explored from many different theoretical, empirical, and methodological perspectives, one perspective remains noticeably underexplored – the perspective of the citizens themselves. Using social contract theory as a backdrop, this study draws on a representative survey (N = 2091) and focus groups (N = 82) in Sweden. The results show that although citizens do not bring up participation as an important element of journalism, they become more skeptical the more participation affects journalism. Furthermore, they expect journalists to moderate citizen contributions according to established journalistic standards. From the perspective of social contract theory, participation in journalism appears to be more of a problem than a benefit to citizens.

Attempts to define journalism are often normative in nature but do not add to our theoretical understanding of what journalism is. There is a need for journalism scholarship to recognize explicitly that journalism is a space in which participants are not equal—or even similar—in terms of status, influence, work tasks, and working conditions. This paper offers a theoretical model combining the field theory of Pierre Bourdieu with recent insights from the sociology of work in order to articulate how journalistic work is stratified across three dimensions: journalistic capital, resource access, and material security. These dimensions create a space in which to place different types of journalistic work in order to make sense of contemporary journalism.

Transparency has emerged as an ethical principle in contemporary journalism and is contended to improve accountability and credibility by journalists and scholars alike. However, to date, few attempts have been made to record the public’s views on transparency. This study enriches current knowledge by using data from an experiment, survey and focus groups in Sweden collected between 2013 and 2015. Overall, the results suggest that the respondents are not particularly moved by transparency in any form; it does not produce much effect in the experiments and is not brought up in the focus groups. While that is the key finding of this study, it should also be noted that various forms of user participation are evaluated negatively, while providing hyperlinks, explaining news selection and framing, and correcting errors are viewed positively. Implications for journalism practice and research are discussed.