By NICOLE BLANCHETT
Journalistic Role Performance Project, an international effort, plans to look at 3 sources on 4 platforms to update early pandemic results
How journalistic roles are performed in Canada is a topic of hot debate, encompassing everything from coverage of Gaza to crime statistics. Such debate is happening in a journalism landscape where cuts just keep coming, newsrooms – particularly local — keep closing, Canadian news is blocked on Meta, journalists are facing increased harassment and accusations of bias, controversy over allocation of government funding swirls, and audience trust is dismal, with the potential to get even worse without careful use of burgeoning AI.
This is all having a destabilizing effect on an already shifting industry, but it also provides for a dynamic backdrop for the third wave of the Journalistic Role Performance Project, which in Canada is being funded by the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The next phase of this international study brings together researchers from 59 countries in the Global North and South, sharing a common methodology.
Data for the previous wave of JRP was gathered during the height of the COVID pandemic, so we’ll be taking a look at changes in how journalistic roles are present six years later. We’ll start collecting data in January of 2026.
As with the last wave of the study, there are six different journalistic roles we’ll be analyzing:
- The watchdog, where journalists protect public interest by monitoring/challenging those in positions of power;
- The interventionist, where the journalist’s voice is part of the story and they might even act as an advocate;
- The civic role, where journalists help the audience understand how they’re affected by political decision-making and processes;
- The service role, related to providing tips and advice or “news you can use;”
- The infotainment role, where the focus sometimes shifts more to entertaining than informing the audience;
- The loyal facilitator, where journalists support the narratives of ruling governments or powerful people.
Read the rest of this article on the J-Source website, where it was originally published.
