[ecrea] CfP: Media & Journalism journal devoted to Journalism and Corruption

CfP: Media & Journalism journal devoted to Journalism and Corruption | 
Deadline: January, 30, 2015.

Media & Journalism journal opens a call for papers to be featured in the 
issue dedicated to Journalism and Corruption under the Project 
"Political Corruption in the Media: A Comparative Perspective" (FCT PTDC 
/ CVI-COM / 5244/2012). This call will be open until January 30, 2015, 
and accepts articles written in Portuguese, Spanish and English. The 
publishing guidelines are available here and articles must be sent to 
(cimjmedia /at/ gmail.com).


This call for papers is launched within the project "Political 
corruption in the media: a comparative perspective" and is led by Isabel 
Ferin Cunha (researcher in media analysis and Political Communication, 
Main Researcher in project Journalism and democracy acts (ERDF/FCT, 
POCTI/COM/2002/443. The team includes several researchs with experience 
in the coordination of previous projects backed by FCT and other 
investigation institutions. The head researcher has supervised the 
master’s deree thesis of the author of the book Political Scandal in 
Portugal. Maia produced a master on Preceptions of Corruption. Serrano, 
Gonçalves and Cabrera have extensive experience on media analysis and 
Political Communication.


Knowledge of political corruption in the media and social networks from 
a comparative perspective has great social and scientific relevance both 
in Portugal and in the other countries included in the project. 
According to the 2011 Eurobarometer, 97% of the Portuguese believes that 
corruption is the major problem in the country. Inquired for national 
surveys, the Portuguese claim that their impressions are based on the 
media. Studies conducted by [SoTr08] on perceived corruption have 
concluded that the Portuguese form their opinion based on the media. 
Official figures evidence that the number of corruption trials is low 
when compared to the perception of corruption obtained through the 
media. Those works do not include the study of corruption in 
mediacoverage.The project Political corruption in the media: a 
comparative perspective aims to fill in this gap. It is a pioneering 
study whose innovative approach consists of: 1. the study of political 
corruption in traditional media and in its electronic editions; 2. 
studies on social networks, particularly political blogs; 3. its 
comparative perspective regarding four countries from the 
Iberian-American-African sphere (Brazil, Mozambique, Spain, Portugal). 
In those countries, we shall analyse a set of political corruption cases 
that have received nation-wide coverage. The corpus will be identified 
by each partner and the methodology to be used shall be similar to that 
of the Portuguese project. It shall focus on the coverage of political 
corruption cases with major impact and international partnership, which 
occurred during the period from 2005 to 2010. During this period, the 
country has had two elections: for Parliament and for President of the 
Republic. Among the candidates to both elections there were politicians 
mentioned in political corruption cases. Portugal has been, since March 
2011, under a program of international financial assistance, whose 
guidelines provide for reforms that can open opportunities for 
corruption, especially given the strong promiscuity between public and 
private interests.Thefinancial and economic crisis has also resulted in 
very negative consequences to the media,generating dependence on 
official or semi-official sources and sensationalism. Political 
corruption is understood as the abuse of power for one’s own benefit 
perpetrated by democratically elected officials, during or after the 
exercise of public functions. It involves a diverse range of crimes 
committed by current and former political agents, which occur mainly 
along the lines of four typical situations: while competing for 
political duties, during the exercise of public duties, while 
legislating and ruling, as well as after stepping down from office, 
while maintaining certain functions in the party and political fields. 
Political corruption tends to articulate the domains of politics, 
economy, justice and media (BlE02). The methodological strategy of our 
research covers both a structural dimension and an operational 
dimension. The former addresses the outline of media and political 
systems of each individual country included in the project, in light of 
the work by [HaMa04]. The analytical instruments are, in this dimension, 
documental and statistical research and semi-structured interviews with 
media, politics and justice professionals. The operational dimension 
consists of an analysis of the apparent content of selected media, 
through quantitative and qualitative content analysis, completed with 
interviews to journalists who have done work on corruption cases. In 
order to pursue an analysis of blogs, we shall resort to new tools and 
methodologies provided by Web 2.0.

The project shall produce data on the national contexts of the countries 
involved. It shall also contribute to the development of new methods of 
linking social sciences and humanities, including comparative studies on 
media and journalism in the Iberian region and the Portuguese-speaking 
world, for the first time covering the social networks, including blogs, 
in order to produce conclusions on their influence in the traditional 
media. The results of this research will enable us to design training 
and awareness-raising programs in accordance with a scientific basis, 
aimed at journalists, local officials, judiciary agents and political 
players from the participating countries.


Please see the site: 
www.https://politicalcorruptioncimj.wordpress.com/literature-review/
http://www.cimj.org/http://www.cimj.org/


Patrícia Contreiras
Investigadora no Centro de Investigação Media e Jornalismo (www.cimj.org)
Researcher at Center for Media and Journalism

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