The journal Journalism has just published a bunch of brand new article as online-first version on their website.

In an article titled Digital watchdogs? Data reporting and the news media’s traditional ‘fourth estate’ function, Tom Felle of City University London writes about accountability journalism and the use of digital data. Journalists are more and more using digital data as an investigative tool to report on issues to hold governments to account. Felle has conducted a series of interviews with 26 data journalists in 17 countries to examine the impact of digital data on the role of journalism as the “fourth estate”.

Tom Felle’s article can be found here (abstract public).

Alexandra Herfroy-Mischler of Hebrew University of Jerusalem studies the role of journalism (especially press agencies) during and after the Holocaust transitional justice process. She has studied the justice process (1995–2002) and the 11 years following it (2002–2013), and how the media on the one hand discusses historical narratives and on the other re-alignes the narratives with updated historical data.

Herfroy-Mischler’s article can be read here (abstract public).

In Statistics and the media: A statistician’s view Kevin McConway of The Open University wonders how statisticians could or should interact with journalists. Although the pessimistic view of the relationship suggests that statistics exist in news only to create credibility of the story, McConway suggests that we should educate readers and journalists more – and claims we should remain optimistic about the position of statistics in journalism.

Read McConway’s article here (abstract public).