This paper explores the limitations of using algorithmic management on gig platforms in the Swedish basic service sector. We critically examine how the behaviour of all three actors in the triangular relationship between worker, platform and client deviated from the logic of app-based competitive bidding over the allocation of work; each being agential in bypassing the algorithmic management to engage in out-of-app activity. Our findings suggest the utility and limitations of algorithms differ between sectors of the gig economy. Crucially, the paper contributes to debates on gig worker agency by introducing the concept of opportunistic agency in the analysis of worker non-compliance. In focusing on more instrumental motivations for out-of-app activity our analysis offers a critical perspective on the pervasiveness, omnipotence and universality of algorithmic management.

This study is based on an online survey administered to Swedish journalists in 2021 about the perceptions of their mobility practices in their news work. Findings showed that the role of mobility remains fluid for journalists in Sweden. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted some aspects of their movement with their newsgathering and reporting but existing mobility practices that were in place prior to the pandemic have remained. The implications of this study on the wider journalism field are discussed. 

This article presents a study of how and to what extent gig workers in Sweden experience a mediatization of work. We contend that previous mediatization research has assumed extensive and unified effects of mediatization, and that previous gig work research has focused on users of large-scale, transnational platforms. We conducted a set of qualitative, semi-structured interviews (N = 28) with Swedish users of four different gig apps (all produced by very small companies active only in Sweden). We analyzed their experiences of mediatization along five dimensions: extension, substitution, amalgamation, accommodation, and datafication. We found that our respondents had much more varied, far less all-encompassing, experiences of mediatization than indicated in previous research. We also found respondents' experiences clearly framed by the smaller size of the local, Swedish gig work companies.

This essay argues that there are overlooked yet important journalistic beliefs, norms, rules and practices regarding, aesthetics, automation, distribution, engagement, identity, and proximity that could be a part of formalized codes of ethics. There are four reasons why these should be formalized. First, making the implicit normative dimensions explicit allow for a shared understanding of journalism, cutting across institutional borders. Second, it promotes a more unified and homogenized understanding of journalism across the institution based on those shared explicit norms (normative isomorphism). Third, it reduces the fuzziness of these codes and sharpens their functions as boundary objects, simplifying the negotiation between journalists and audiences. Fourth, and finally, these implicit codes might be an untapped resource that could make journalism better connect with citizens and increase its legitimacy. The paper offers two main contributions to journalism studies. First, it shows that elements of journalistic practice and culture that seem disparate in fact play similar institutional roles, forming boundary objects as sites of tension where codes are negotiated by different actors. Second, systematizing these informal codes into the style of traditional codes of ethics renders them more visible and could help journalism scholars understand the uneven formation and evolution of journalistic norms. 

This paper shows that Thelma Berlack Boozer (1906-2001) was the first Black person to hold professorial rank in a School of Journalism at a US university (not Dr Armistead Pride, as has previously been assumed). The School of Journalism at Lincoln University (MO) appointed her Associate Professor and Acting Director in 1942. She held these posts until 1944. The paper examines her appointment at Lincoln and discusses why scholars have mostly forgotten her contributions to HBCU journalism education. 

The idea that journalism should be independent is foundational to its contemporary understandings and its role in democracy. But from what, exactly, should journalism be independent? This book traces the genealogy of the idea of journalistic autonomy, from the press freedom debates of the 17th century up to the digital, networked world of the 21st. Using an eclectic and thought-provoking theoretical framework that draws upon Friedrich Nietzsche, feminist philosophy, and theoretical biology, the authors analyze the deeper meanings and uses of the terms independence and autonomy in journalism. This work tackles, in turn, questions of journalism’s independence from the state, politics, the market, sources, the workplace, the audience, technology, and algorithms. Using broad historical strokes as well as detailed historical case studies, the authors argue that autonomy can only be meaningful if it has a purpose. Unfortunately, for large parts of journalism’s history this purpose has been the maintenance of a societal status quo and the exclusion of large groups of the population from the democratic polity. “Independence,” far from being a shining ideal to which all journalists must aspire, has instead often been used to mask the very dependencies that lie at the heart of journalism. The authors posit, however, that by learning the lessons of history and embracing a purpose fit for the needs of the 21st century world, journalism might reclaim its autonomy and redeem its exclusionary uses of independence.