The Story Behind the News : Informal and Invisible Interactions between Journalists and Their Sources in Two Countries

Sammanfattning: Journalists encounter some of their sources only episodically, while relationships with other sources involve several social contexts and roles. The political beat, where both reporters and sources have years of experience in the field and interact on regular basis, and where opinions can turn into news, is an arena where relationships and interactions play a special role.  This study explores how formal and informal relationships between journalists and their sources are reflected in the news-making in Lithuania and Sweden. How do journalists and sources negotiate their social and professional roles in their relationships with each other?  This PhD thesis consists of an introduction and five articles. Theoretically, the study follows the process model of journalistic roles and discusses autonomy vs. adaptation between journalists and sources both when it comes to role conception and role performance. How do journalists and sources think about their relationships with each other (articles 1 and 2)? How do they use these relationships in practice (articles 3 and 4)? What motives guide the journalists‘ interactions with sources in different relational contexts (article 5)?The analysis of the role conception of this study is based on 43 qualitative interviews with journalists covering the national politics in two countries: Lithuania and Sweden. The data on the role performance consists of reconstruction interviews that cover 517 interactions between journalists and their sources in these countries. The results indicate that up to half of all sources who contribute to the media content stay invisible. Also, at least one-third of sources influencing the content are connected to the journalist with closer than purely formal social ties. Formal and informal and visible and invisible forms of interaction between journalists and sources presuppose different roles these sources get to play in the news-making process. These aspects of sourcing the news are a significant part of the journalistic routines despite the country context. The study concludes that while distance between journalists and sources is a normative condition to achieve autonomy, social relationships come into play when navigating the competitive environment. Professional and social roles can complement, overlap or be used interchangeably in journalist-source interactions, since sourcing the news is not only a professional practice but also a social practice between human agents who adapt to each other and the expectations from the environment.  Informality and formality can drive each other, as informal solutions from journalists and sources emerge as a response to the formal structural constellations that are coordinating and professionalizing the government communication. Prevalence and reliance on different social ties in a certain context, therefore, could be a variable in studies of journalism and political communication culture.