The journalistic ideal in the context of agenda theories

Slavin Boris Fedorovich Doctor of Philosophy Professor; Institute of Journalism, Communications and Media Education; Moscow State Pedagogical University 109240, Russia, Moscow, Verkhnyaya Radishchevskaya str., 16-18 nivals@inbox.ru

Zarovniy Denis Andreevich Postgraduate student; Institute of Journalism, Communications and Media Education; Moscow State Pedagogical University 109240, Russia, Moscow, Verkhnyaya Radishchevskaya str., 16-18 deniszarovny@gmail.com

Introduction

The scientific study of journalism today increasingly formulates questions about the role of a professional in shaping the information landscape. On the one hand, E.L. Vartanova captures the important role of journalism as a driver of social development and an engine of democratic ideas ^{[1, p. 24]}. On the other hand, the position of journalism as an "engine" of social change is offset by a number of processes that are considered in new studies of agenda theories. E.G. Dyakova, within the framework of a view on the Agenda-setting theory, draws attention to the fact that the media are not able to impose their ideas on society, limiting the attention of the mass media only by building a structure of the importance of news and events ^{[2, p. 9]}.

Within the framework of a view of the media sphere, where each link in the chain (State — Media — Society) has the opportunity to formulate its own agenda (Political agenda — Media Agenda — Public agenda) ^{[3, p. 556]} we are faced with a conflict in which the functional role of journalism is transformed. And as a result, its values and ideological guidelines are no longer able to carry the same essential influence that the media attributed back in the early 21st century.

Against the background of an undeclared, but obvious correspondence opposition of these two views, one can see how the view of journalism as an object of scientific knowledge and professional reflection acquires a cognitive gap that does not fit into the established theoretical basis, where the media carry a monopoly on information and interaction with society within the framework of the formation of an information picture. Here it is important to present an alternative ideological pattern for a journalist, as well as to understand what motivates a modern journalist in his professional activity.

The role of the journalist and the media in the system of agenda theories

One of the determining factors in the popularity of agenda theories presented in the second half of the 20th century was the prescribed position of the media in relations with society and the state. The influence described by the researchers does not give an in-house view of the activity, but at the same time captures the leading role in the influence of a journalist on public opinion and the activities of the state. At the same time, each of the theories draws attention to its individual aspects of the formation of the agenda, which resonates with the fluctuating self-identification of a journalist: the media are not ready to ascribe to themselves a leading role both in the formation of their own political activity by the state, and in a position of real influence on society, where information can lead not only to positive aspects (education, enlightenment involvement in grassroots activism), but also to negative ones (the development of radicalism, the emergence of extremist and terrorist cells).

In their writings on the Agenda-setting theory, M. McCombs and D. Shaw place the media at the forefront of presenting the agenda to the public. Within the framework of the hypothesis, the journalistic team is given the power to build an information picture of the day, where the editorial board, independently determining the importance of events occurring over a certain period. By building a "paradigm of importance" within the framework of the format (newspaper stripes, program layout on TV or radio, the main page of an Internet resource), the media, focusing on their own principles, ideals and political views, direct the recipient towards their own ideological priorities. According to McCombs and Shaw, journalists thus form an idea of what really needs to be paid attention to in the life of society and the state, and what can be ignored.

In this case, trust in the media is built up of several factors: the political bias of the individual, interest in information on a specific topic, the inaccessibility of the layman to information of a "special order" that mystifies the topic (this may be expressed in special information presented by the media, such as insiders and information from unnamed sources). McCombs identifies the third aspect as a separate phenomenon — the representation of the importance of attributes, where the attribute plays the role of special information combined with the psychological situation of the audience. McCombs emphasizes the manipulativeness of this factor. The attributes of the agenda are based on stereotypes, fears, and associations. The role of attributes by McCombs himself is elevated to a special status, where their effectiveness is directly interrelated with the continuity of links between the media and society, the ability to "read" the request.

Within the framework of the idea of journalism as a business activity, it can be determined that such an element of building an agenda is expressed in exploiting public interest in topics, which leads to increased attention to the media. However, at the same time, the media risks starting to fabricate information and getting into its own information funnel. The research of the Palindrome agency becomes very indicative in this context: according to analysts, modern Russian media have become more likely to turn to "search traffic", that is, to make news and materials with an orientation for a specific thematic search by the audience ^[4]. Another demonstrative factor is the alternative Interfax Scan study, which presented the results of the information picture in Russia in 2022 ^[5]. In the year of the beginning of its military and the growth of military topics in the materials, the total number of news released by the Russian media during the year decreased by 7%. The drop in the number of materials on economic and business news is especially highlighted — the reduction is much stronger.

From an alternative point of view, there is also a different view of the agenda, which is expressed in the Agenda-building theory. The hypothesis was proposed in 1971 by Roger Cobb and Charles Elder. Released a year before the work of McCombs and Shaw, the theory of "agenda building" implements public opinion into political reality. Unlike Agenda-setting, the authors care more about the citizens' request to voice their problems, bringing the paradigm of democratic politics under the argumentation. Elder and Cobb use the term "agenda" in their own interpretation: to refer to a common set of political disagreements that will be considered as part of a range of legitimate issues that deserve policy attention. The authors highlight the systemic and institutional narratives of the day, including contrasting them with each other.

In the context of this theory, the media can be called an element of state control. In the place where, within the framework of the Agenda-setting theory, the mass media have full control over information flows, in the Agenda-building theory, the journalist directs his professionalism, which can be expressed in skillful communication with society through specialized tools, to help the authorities and the implementation of contacts between society and political actors. The media in this system are losing their subjectivity. They are moving away from the classical democratic understanding of the media as the "fourth branch of government", merging with the real political leadership. On the one hand, this can negatively affect the prospects of the profession, whose role is reduced to the administration of websites, TV channels or newspapers. At the same time, we can draw attention to the fact that the implementation of such an approach neutralizes the real possibility of manipulation of society by unscrupulous media.

In 1988, E. Rogers and J. Dearing distinguishes three types of "agendas" ^{[3, p. 556]}. By presenting political (or state), public and media news in their own system, researchers bring the entire theory of the agenda to the most differentiated form, where each actor of relations is able to formulate his own picture of the day. In this system, journalism acquires a special role, which can be compared with the position of the media in the Agenda-setting theory, but at the same time, the presence of alternative branches of the agenda, a journalist potentially cannot abstract from society and the state.

The theory of "echo chambers" also awards a different role to a journalist, which captures the special specifics of building relationships in society based on the principle of information engagement. Implying that groups of people are able to independently separate into separate communities on the principle of "friend or foe", we see a new form of information consumption culture. The event itself, if presented according to the theory of the agenda, becomes not a mechanism for building a paradigm of importance, but rather a tool for screening out alternative opinions that are not suitable for the representation of a separate group in relation to a particular aspect of life. The role of a journalist in this regard is changing dramatically: from an "objective narrator", which he is represented in classical theory, a media worker becomes either a free servant of the audience's request, requiring, if not information with a specific semantic direction, then at least clearly sharing the ideological principles of a separate community. At the same time, an important factor in working with such audience groups is the competition of a professional with the algorithms and mechanics of social networks.

Against this background, an important trend is Mediascop, which records the transition in 2022 of the audience consuming news from television to social networks, specifically to Telegram ^[6]; ^[7]. If more than 20% of TV viewing falls on TV series, then modern messengers are increasingly becoming a source of daily news for many. So already in May 2023, Mediascop records that 41% of the messenger's audience logs into Telegram every day. This was especially influenced by the change in the media landscape after the start of the SVO: if the average daily coverage of Telegram by February 2022 was 22%, then by March 2023 this figure had increased to 42%. The trend towards personalization of telegram channels is becoming important in this aspect. Market analysis shows that most channels gather around themselves an audience that is somehow interested in information from personalities (including 30 channels according to the results of the first quarter of 2023, the channels of journalists Yuri Podolyaki, Vladimir Solovyov, Anatoly Sharia, military officers Evgeny Poddubny, Semyon Pegov and Alexander Sladkov, as well as military analysts) ^[8].

This trend highlights the reality of the emergence of the "echo chamber" effect within the modern media field. This is also emphasized by the functionality of messengers, which have already taken their place in the information market. However, the issue of changing ideals of a journalist today also becomes important. Should a journalist unite the public and the audience around his personality? What idea can he convey to the public? How can the role of a journalist in relations with the state be revealed? And how does the ideal of a journalist transform in the new realities?

The Ideal in journalism: objectivism, subjectivism and morality

The tendency for disputes around the subjective and objective in journalism is growing with the emergence of new contexts. This is reflected both in the opinions of professionals and researchers who raise the question of the ideal in journalism. One of the most common ideas about the journalistic ideal is the idea of objectivity, freedom of speech and a responsible approach to working with information — this is what students are presented at Russian journalism schools as a standard. In addition, T. N. Vladimirova and V. A. Slavina represent humanity, high moral principles and democratic values among the important features that bring a journalist closer to the ideal ^[9]. However, in contrast to this understanding of the ideal, the concept of subjectivity of journalism arises. The trends presented above for the development of social networks as a tool for personalizing the information space indicate the tendency of this phenomenon, and at the same time the haunting consequences. E.L. Vartanova also speaks about this nature of modern media, emphasizing that with the advent of social networks, a journalist loses his monopoly on information ^[10].

The trends of modern media presented in the article (such as focusing on search traffic and attracting an audience through aggregators and alternative platforms) once again emphasize the importance and relevance of this phenomenon. In this system, finding an opportunity to implement objective work with information is already becoming not just an ideal, but the professional quality of the media, its main distinguishing feature in comparison with non-professional resources, which most often represent communities or groups in messengers and social networks. If we turn to professional opinion about the modern ideal of a journalist, then we can notice assessments that overlap with academic opinion. Dmitry Butrin, deputy editor—in-chief of Kommersant Publishing House, calls the modern ideal of a journalist a "speech before death" or an emotional statement that rejects any responsibility and social conventions - in ancient Greece such a speech was called parresia ^[11]. As an example, Butrin himself cites gonzo journalism as a phenomenon of a subjective view of an event and, as a result, work within the framework of journalistic genres, but "in the first person".

It is important to note that such a discussion and trends demonstrating a serious shift in the issue of ideals do not lead representatives of the profession and scientists away from the path of the classical understanding of journalism. Although the growth of the role of the subjective in the profession is noticeable, nevertheless, the moral principles and professionalism that prescribe a journalist to be as thorough as ever in working with sources and news still work. At the same time, it is difficult to deny that subjectivism is increasingly coming to the fore in the work of a journalist today.

The ideal of subjectivity in journalism is considered by the example of S. Stinsen's philosophical views. In particular, based on the works of Kant, Foucault, Sartre, Marx and many other philosophers, he captures the correlation of genres in relation to philosophical ideas. For example, dividing subjectivity into moral, political, existential and fragmentary, he distributes not only journalistic materials, but also specific features of the approach to journalism as a professional activity. The importance of this differentiation can be concluded in an obvious conclusion: the subjectivism of a journalist is not something extraordinary that must be denied at the professional level. The personal opinion or moral principles of an individual author should not be censured, but rather the opposite. Stinsen concludes that journalists, editors and journalistic institutions may need to be more aware of how they see the world themselves and how this affects their reporting, as well as communicate more with their sources and audience in order to fully understand what is important for the audience and sources ^{[12, p. 44]}. In particular, this conclusion is based on another fabrication: that the subjective is an integral part of an objective view of what is happening. The author, referring to the thoughts of E. Sayer, fixes that ignoring subjectivity by adopting an objective and, therefore, detached position — untouched by emotions and values — means that the author misses important aspects of reality about which he wants to say something ^{[12, p. 41]}.

An important part of Stinsen's thinking is the search for a model of subjectivism that is necessary for modern journalism. Since subjectivity is possessed not only by a journalist, but also by sources, the audience, and the state, the researcher believes that a modern author should strive for meso-universalism, that is, the development of group subjectivity, in accordance with the ideas of Marx and Geigel ^{[12, p. 44]}. In contrast to this, he puts the idea of Kant's macro-universalism as a thought that is losing relevance against the background of the development of social networks and online communities.

Conclusion

It is worth noting the obvious intersection between the ideas of agenda-setting and Agenda-building theories and the ideals of journalism represented in both Russian and Western discourse.

The problematic of the subjective in journalism does not prevent us from building logical principles of the work of modern mass media, however, a serious breakdown of the "classical" understanding of journalistic creativity is taking place. The idea of a professional author in the media as an objective observer has faced a serious contradiction, which has been introduced by technological progress and the development of the Internet. The decentralization of the information flow, the loss of monopoly on information and tabloidization due to the emphasis on emotions in the news, characteristic of non-professional media and the yellow press, dictate their own rules in the field of great competition of media resources (including from the point of view of commerce).

As a solution to this problem for a journalist, researchers from different sides offer similar mechanisms for understanding professionalism. From the point of view of the agenda theorists, the journalist appears to be the main communication node between the state and society. The ideas of scientists researching the journalistic ideal focus on the moralization of journalism, as well as reducing the influence of the subjective on the realization of professional activity.

By fixing the general narrative of these two trends, it is possible to formulate a general view of journalism as, first of all, an important public activity, the main point of orientation in which is the reaction of society to the work of the media. The effectiveness of the media can be expressed in the obvious metrics of the media itself (citation, public attention and alternative media), and in personalized ones (popularity of specific speakers and authors whose media image is associated with a particular media). The success of a media product entails the opportunity to "set" the agenda, and then the development of meso-universal ideas that can unite viewers into a real community. This works both to realize the ideal kind of journalist who is able to realize the leading professional goal — covering problems and important events — and to strengthen his own role as a link between society and the state in accordance with the theories of the agenda.

An important issue that should be brought to the attention of the scientific community within the framework of this discourse is the responsibility of the media or a particular journalist for his audience, which is already being thought about by researchers of the theory of the agenda. In this context, we can safely say that the topic of the connection between the journalistic ideal and the issues on the agenda is a serious interdisciplinary topic that can not only see a completely new level of the problem of modern journalism, but also offer unexpected methods to solve it.