What happens in newsrooms when young people no longer find news and journalism relevant for their daily lives? Or when populist attacks on media become more frquent and begin to undermine the traditional watchdog position media has held for decades? Our new project, “Watchdogs or activists? Meaningfulness of work in Finnish journalism,” tackles these questions especially from the viewpoint of rank-and-file journalists during the next few years.
Our aim is to examine the meaningfulness of work that Finnish journalists experience: What shapes it, where does it stem from, what kind of things may be undermining it. Our approach is qualitative as we will be collecting interview data, making use of the diary method, and shadowing our participants during their regular working days. We are interested in both the societal and organizational levels – what do public attacks on the credibility of media do to the experience of meaningfulness on one hand, and how an alignment (or a lack of it) between organizational values and an individuals own values contribute to the meaningful work?
Professor Mikko Villi acts as the project’s principal investigator; doctoral researchers Minna Koivula and Pinja Päivänen work in the project. The project is funded for the years 2023-2025 by the C. V. Åkerlund Media Foundation.
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