Risks and opportunities with blogging and micro-blogging from a journalistic perspective – Thoughts on blogging, truth, motivation and self-sanitation

Digital technologies have helped change the situation for people living in countries where governments extend extensive control and censorship of massmedia, or where journalists are at risk. (Tufekci, Z. 2017): “[B]ecause of the dangers involved in producing and publishing journalism in Latin America, some of the most important “journalism” has been produced by social organizations, such as indigenous NGOs, that can provide at least some protection for sources publishing critical news” (Mutsvairo, B., Bebawi, S., Borges-Rey, E. 2019: xxii)

Blogging and social media have become crucial for development organizations across the world. It is used for communicating their work, and raising money for their organization.  Now, as mentioned, the blogs and social media accounts of NGO’s and other institutions, can be an alternative way of journalism in countries where the journalistic work is threatened. However, it is important to remember that these are not journalists.

In Sweden, there is a journalistic, ethical framework which is self-sanitary. Journalist news outlets choose to enter this framework, so that they can get reported if they report falsely or don’t respect someone’s integrity, for example. (Stenholm, 2003) A recent example shows Hallands Nyheter being condemned for an article about a young woman being raped. The decision states that the article could be interpreted as being in favor of the rapists, quoting his hearings a lot and pointing to the uncertainty of what actually had happened. (De Vivo, 2023)

On social media, one could post as insinuating texts about this as one would like. If I were to blog about this happening, or talk about it on social media, I could get angry comments and responses from my followers, but that’s about it. If I were an influencer, perhaps companies would cancel our cooperation, and I would lose income – but I would need to make a big faux pas for that to happen. It could then be argued that my motivation for being somewhat ethical was merely financial, and not coming from a moral standard.

And even though development bloggers (within the scope of different blogs mentioned by Denskus above) can claim to write and post with a journalistic framework in mind, this is without the journalist self-sanitary system, which can get problematic. Especially when those bloggers are from NGOs or other organizations who are in need of donations.

Take the example of an examination made by Swedish journalists on the show “Kalla Fakta” (translated: Cold Facts). They found people who had been interviewed by UNHCR, and who later became poster people for campaigns to raise money for the organization – without these people knowing or having given their consent. Even worse: Afterwards, UNHCR tried to save face by discrediting the news that were published in the show. Kalla Fakta could though easily prove how their stories were correct, since they had followed the journalistic way of work and checking sources. (Kalla Fakta, 2023)

Another example is the Syrian refugee campaign by UNICEF. Etem (2020) shows, in a truly eye opening paper, how UNICEF, in cooperation with an advertising agency, slightly manipulated the stories of children refugees, to make them more, shall we say moving, to their audiences. Etem shows how UNICEF and other institutional agents have control over Syrian refugee children’s narrated memories, and how these children’s stories fell under the authority of the production crew. The fabricators in turn would eliminate some parts of the story, exaggerate or even fabricate parts of it. This, as Etem states, shows how institutional agents have strategic communication goals that in this case shifted from serving Syrian refugees, to increasing social media metrics and international prestige. If I, as a journalist, did this – I would get reported. But again: I would have no motivation for altering the story, since my sole goal is to tell the true story, with all its complexities.

However another interesting point is that journalistic news outlets could be argued as one of these institutional agents who control the story of these Syrian refugee children, and personal blogs and social media accounts as a way of changing these perspectives in line with what Denskus (2019) argued. But those issues would need a blog post of their own.

These are two examples of organizations which can claim to make a journalistic-esk kind of work on their social media channels, but with an agenda. For a journalist, the agenda is simple: Tell the truth, as impartial and fairly as possible. I saw a quote once, regarding being a journalist: “If someone says it’s raining outside, and someone else says it’s not, your job is not to quote them both. Your job is to look out the bloody window and see if it’s raining or not.” Unfortunately, I do not know the source of the quote, but it has stuck with me.

For these organizations, the agenda is a bit different: Awaken feelings for the people reading the posts, make them engage, and: make them donate. This comes with the risk of manipulating the material, ever so slightly, in a way that a journalist would not.

The responsibility of the journalist is to say the truth, or as close to the truth we can get. Social media channels who share news and discuss them, do not have the same responsibility. We could claim that they do, but there are no real repercussions if they simply – lie. I believe we can see the results of this repercussion-free lying within journalism as well. Politicians lie widely in public service channels, without the journalist questioning the facts of what they are saying, as a recent interview in Swedish public service showed, where the lies of the politician being interviewed were so intricate that the journalist fumbled with his questions. (Ahlstöm, 2023) I see this as a result of the notion of truth being more and more loose.

We need then, address what Scott, Writch and Bunce (2023) calls “humanitarian journalists”, who are seen as activists by some and therefore are sometimes discredited by traditional news outlets. Briefly these can be defined as journalists who work in the borderlands between journalism and activism, and who focus their reporting on humanitarian issues. Scott, Writch and Bunce (2023) claims that these humanitarian journalists (as well as humanitarian news outlets) are important when it comes to covering under-reported crises, i.e. humanitarian crises that most news outlets tend to ignore. Their way of tending to marginalized voices, can widen the perspectives given in news outlets. Much as Denskus (Denskus & Papan, 2013, Denskus 2019) argues that blogs can.

I believe that there are no completely objective ways to be a journalist – since we are all subjects with different experiences and cores of value. Every angle, every yes or no to a story, every quote cut, is a result of this, combined with current norms within the industry. Humanitarian journalists are simply more focused on other subjects. Scott, Writch and Bunce (2023) addresses this, too. The subjects of their study did not question the notion of impartiality, likely because it is central to both journalist and humanitarian fields. However, they address the fact that these norms have been critiqued for “constructing a false equivalence between different perspectives in situations of gross injustice […] and of helping to mask the influence of journalists’ own implicit world views.” (Scott, Writch and Bunce 2023: 114).

These days, the importance of being impartial as a journalist has become crucial – so much so that it sometimes borders on absurd – speakers of the war in Gaza get disinvited to public service-programs, simply because they discussed the conflict on their social media-accounts (Källén, 2023). However, perhaps it is necessary – due to the many, shall we call them manipulated truths, des- and misinformation on social media channels and fake news outlets.