YRKESROLLER I RULLNING En komparativ kvantitativ studie av frilansjournalisters och anställda journalisters inställning till att arbeta med informations-, kommunikations- och PR-uppdrag

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to compare employed journalists’ and freelance journalists’ attitudes to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments. Our research questions are:  What are the attitudes to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments among employed journalists and freelance journalists?  Why are journalists willing or not willing to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments?  What impact has the labour market on the attitude to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments?  Has the professional journalistic identity any impact on the attitude to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments? To answer the questions we used different theories about the labour market and also described the journalistic ideals and the relation between information, communication, PR and journalism. Our intention was to reach general conclusions, and we decided that the best way to answer our questions was to do a quantitative study. Therefore we made an online survey. This was also the most time- and resource-efficient way. It was sent to all reporters who worked at local stations in public service radio or public service TV. It was also sent to all reporters who worked in the daily press in the same towns as mentioned above. The survey was also sent to all the freelancers in the freelance catalogue in the same towns as above. Our survey was sent to 1158 journalists in Sweden, 566 journalists answered the survey. The results show that freelancers are more positive to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments than employed journalists, although journalists overall are more positive than negative. The freelancers are positive to these types of assignments mainly because of economic reasons. The employees, on the other hand, have a positive attitude mainly because this kind of business provides more work opportunities. The different attitudes of the two groups of journalists can be explained with the differentiation on the labour market. Among the employees the jobs are becoming fewer and the freelancers have a harder economic situation. A clear majority of the freelancers are willing to work with these assignments even at the same time as journalistic assignments. Among the employees, on the other hand, most of them are not willing to work with both kinds of assignments simultaneously. Furthermore, the study shows that journalists who have experience of information-, communication- and PR-assignments also are more positive than others. The results show as well that the journalistic ideals that are associated with the profession overall are strong. They are stronger among the employees than among the freelancers. The freelancers are willing to work with information-, communication- and PR-assignments regardless of what ideals they agree with. The employees are more positive to these kinds of jobs if they to a larger extent agree to the ideals that today are less associated with the profession.