The Literary Construction of Journalism Education : A Review of the Course Literature in the Nordic Academic Journalism Programmes

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The Literary Construction of Journalism Education : A Review of the Course Literature in the Nordic Academic Journalism Programmes © 2019 the Author(s) Published version Jaakkola, Maarit; Uotila, Panu Jaakkola, M., & Uotila, P. (2020). The Literary Construction of Journalism Education : A Review of the Course Literature in the Nordic Academic Journalism Programmes. Journalism Practice, 14(1), 84-103. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2019.1596037 2020 Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjop20 Journalism Practice ISSN: 1751-2786 (Print) 1751-2794 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjop20 The Literary Construction of Journalism Education: A Review of the Course Literature in the Nordic Academic Journalism Programmes Maarit Jaakkola & Panu Uotila To cite this article: Maarit Jaakkola & Panu Uotila (2020) The Literary Construction of Journalism Education: A Review of the Course Literature in the Nordic Academic Journalism Programmes, Journalism Practice, 14:1, 84-103, DOI: 10.1080/17512786.2019.1596037 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2019.1596037 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 22 Mar 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 570 View related articles View Crossmark data The Literary Construction of Journalism Education: A Review of the Course Literature in the Nordic Academic Journalism Programmes Maarit Jaakkola a,b and Panu Uotila c a The Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research NORDICOM, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden; b Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland; c Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland ABSTRACT This article investigates the course literature in the curricula of 12 major journalism schools at Northern European universities. This analysis of the course literature listed in documentation of bachelor programmes traces how journalism education institutions constitute their knowledge base on journalism. It is found that Nordic journalism students are required to read almost four books per study credit on average. Undergraduate academic journalism programmes are professionally oriented, and professional literature by non-scientific publishers occupies a major place in the course literature. A strong emphasis is placed on professional books written in the domestic language, with an average age of seven years. Though the Scandinavian languages show high degrees of similarities with each other, there is very little circulation of literature across the countries within the Nordic area. This analysis of the literature points to a relatively homogeneous educational culture with small differences and raises questions about the qualitative dimensions of instructional design. KEYWORDS Journalism education; bachelor’s degree; curriculum; course syllabus; course literature; Nordic countries Introduction Academic education is to be research-based, which means that teaching should always be based on the most up-to-date body of research. Journalism education, traditionally obliged to juggle between academic and professional objectives, distinguishes itself in various uses of academic research. During their academic studies, journalism students are expected to be able to process, assimilate and master large amounts of theoretical, mostly written, material. Even in the digital era, published literature that is carefully selected according to quality standards, pre-publication assessed, edited and re-edited, and–still most typically–printed, is the cornerstone of how academic research is mediated to university students. This means not only that literature selected for readings plays a normative role in constructing © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. CONTACT Maarit Jaakkola [email protected], maarit.jaakkola@tuni.fihttps://www.gu.se/english/about_the_ university/staff/?languageId=100001&userId=xjaama;http://www.uta.fi/cmt/en/contact/staff/maaritjaakkola/index.html JOURNALISM PRACTICE 2020, VOL. 14, NO. 1, 84–103 https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2019.1596037 the students’knowledge about journalism, but also that many of the biases found in academic journalism research concerning journalism, research and the world in general are passed on to the students through the academic literature. The most commonly debated biases include, for example, the structures of power in journalism seen, above all, in gender (Hardin, Dodd, and Lauffer 2006; Steiner 2017) and age (Josephi and Alonso 2018) structures, and in the middle-class overrepresentation among journalists (Djerf-Pierre 2007; Hovden, Nygren, and Zilliacus-Tikkanen 2016), as well as biases in the academic research itself, such as the American and European (Western) bias (Hanitzsch 2009). What journalism is, what it should be, and how it should be taught has been an ongoing discussion at journalism education institutions, invigorated by various changes in both the media and the higher education landscape. In these future-oriented discussions about the elements, skills and forms of journalism, the necessity of change often overshadows the question of what contents contemporary journalism education de facto includes across countries. Related to this, discussions on journalism education have typically focused on the larger structures of higher education systems (Nowak, in press) and identities of journalism students (Hovden et al. 2009; Hovden, Nygren, and Zilliacus-Tikkanen 2016), not to mention setting goals for future journalism education (e.g., Adam 2001; Drok 2012; Mensing 2010), more than the contemporary and actual contents of learning. Taking as its starting point these shortcomings in previous research, this article takes the curricula of journalism schools as its object of inquiry, asking what journalism students at academic institutions are currently required to read during their studies. The study of literature is intended to cast light on how journalism is conceptualised and framed by looking at the bodies of the course literature in a specific geo-cultural and educational area, here, the Nordic countries. Journalism education institutions inscribe their conceptions in the official documents of their course curricula and syllabi, which form the basis for how education unfolds in practice. Even if the implementation of the guidelines outlined in written documents varies according to individual teachers, community cultures and other, often contingent contextual factors, these documents are official statements that should reflect on a general level how the identity and object of action of an educational programme, both as a scholarly discipline and a professional area of practice, are defined and demarcated. By looking at the body of literature all graduates of journalism programmes are supposed to have read, we can draw some conclusions concerning the study programmes’body of knowledge. We study the literature lists of the course curricula and syllabi at academic institutions offering bachelor’s study programmes in journalism in Finland, Norway and Sweden. These countries–along with Denmark, exc luded from the analysis for reasons discussed in the methodology section–form a geopolitically and culturally interconnected area supported by common historical events and cultural exchange. The Nordic countries, with strong journalistic professionalism, state intervention, welfare-state ideology and high newspaper circulation and readership, adopt the same type of media system (Hallin and Mancini 2004) and journalism culture (Ahva et al. 2017; Hanitzsch 2007), supported by relatively similar systems of journalism education (Hovden, Nygren, and Zilliacus-Tikkanen 2016; see also Jaakkola 2018). It can thus be assumed that there is a high exchange between the countries and the journalism schools have similar profiles, proposing a stepping stone for further transnational comparisons. JOURNALISM PRACTICE 85 Despite close co-operation among Nordic journalism educators and recently growing scholarly interest in Nordic journalism education, empirical comparative analyses remain scarce (Hovden et al. 2009,2016). Most transnational approaches lack cross-country comparisons and treat different countries in their own descriptive chapters and analyses (see e.g., Fröhlich and Holtz-Bacha 2003; Hovden, Nygren, and Zilliacus-Tikkanen 2016; Splichal and Sparks 1994; Terzis 2009). Adopting upon the guiding principle of comparativeness, this study on course literature continues other analyses of bachelor’s curriculum course contents (Jaakkola 2019) and comparisons of journalistic classrooms and related pedagogy (Jaakkola 2018) in the Nordic countries. This separate analysis limited to course literature allows us to focus on choices that very clearly indicate the emphases in the understandings of what professional journalism is, which are heavily dependent on the literature available in countries. Course Syllabi and the Politics of the Production of Education The bachelor’s degree, in its current state, is the result of a political process launched in 1999. In that year, 48 European countries implemented reforms to make their education systems more compatible with each other to increase international mobility and facilitate transnational employability. The bachelor’s degree, an undergraduate degree of 180 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) that requires 3–4 years of full-time study, is defined by the EHEA’s qualifications framework (Bologna Working Group 2005; EHEA 2009). In the Nordic countries, bachelor’s programmes for journalism are three-year education courses that can be seen as the basic education to enter the journalism occupation (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] 2007,2013). In contrast to master’s programmes in journalism, bachelor’s programmes are generalist programmes centred on journalism, so they are typically referred to with the general term journalism, and their graduates are expected to have gained some degree of mastery with all media unless restricted by the programme focus. Bachelor’s programmes should cover most essentials for aspiring journalists, whereas master’s programmes are often more specialised, so these two types of programmes are less comparable with each other. This study focuses on generalist bachelor’s programmes. More specialised academic bachelor programmes (e.g., photojournalism and visual journalism programmes) are excluded from the analysis, although generalist programmes may offer individual courses also included in specialised programmes. Universities and non-university institutions in higher education may award bachelor’s degrees. According to the standards (Bologna Working Group 2005, 193), the bachelor’s degree should provide students with “demonstrated knowledge and understanding in a field of study that builds upon their general secondary education”, ensure they have the ability to “apply their knowledge and understanding in a manner that indicates a professional approach to their work or vocation, and have competences typically demonstrated through devising and sustaining arguments and solving problems within their field of study”. In the Nordic countries, standards are set by national laws on higher education and are governed by national educational agencies. According to UNESCO’s(2007, 10) model curriculum for journalism education, “professional practice”should account for 47% of bachelor’s programmes, “journalism studies”10% and “arts and science”43%. The majority of Nordic journalism school curricula appear to follow this model (Jaakkola 2018). 86 M. JAAKKOLA AND P. UOTILA In general, a curriculum is a document identifying the core contents taught in a specific programme of an educational institution with the aim to direct and connect the work of teachers within an organisation (English 2000). Written curricula are formal agreements on what should be taught, how teaching should be carried out to achieve specific learning outcomes and how these outcomes should be evaluated. In addition to written and formal curriculum, hidden and taught (informal) curricula are either consciously or unconsciously adopted by local communities through socialisation into a workplace culture (English 2000). In general, it can be assumed that curricula are written to be allow flexibility for variation based on available resources and interests, which may give rise to hidden and informal curricula. Official, written curricula nevertheless are central, strategy-level documents that determine resource allocation. To accomplish goals, curricula are complemented by course syllabi and lesson plans. A syllabus is a document that communicates information about an individual course to, above all, students. The goal of a syllabus is to establish a shared understanding between the lecturer and students and among potentially many lecturers about the content, methods and policies of a given course. Like the curriculum, the syllabus is a specific textual genre with distinctive normative rhetorical characteristics but is more closely connected to the substance area of teaching and operates at a more concrete level of teaching methodology and learning contents (Afros and Schryer 2009; Nunan 1998; Robinson 2012). Journalism scholars typically have had less interest in syllabus design but have studied curricula in relation to journalism education, particularly curriculum development, priorities in teaching content, interactions with the industry and media environment and motivations from technological development (see e.g., Adams 2008; Blom and Davenport 2012; Castañeda, Murphy, and Heather 2005; Hirst and Treadwell 2011). Syllabi have a higher formal status than lesson plans, which set the outline of an individual lecture or describe the set of lectures that form a course or a course entity. Unlike syllabi, lesson plans generally are not officially acknowledged at any organisational level or made formally accessible to the wider public. Although the Nordic countries show high degrees of similarities in documentation for the structure and content of study programmes, differences exist, especially in the level of documentation for the course literature. In the countries studied, the course literature is included in either the curricula or the course syllabi. As summarised in Table 1, the literature is placed in the curricula in Finnish education programmes but the syllabi in Norwegian and Swedish programmes. The official status of course literature thus differs, making transnational comparisons difficult. The lower the official status of a document, the lower Table 1. The position of the course literature in Finland, Norway and Sweden. Country Curriculum Syllabus Course literatureTerm Revision Confirmation Term Revision Confirmation Finland (2), Finnish Tutkintovaatimukset Every 3rd year Faculty Opetusohjelma Every year Department In curriculum Finland (1), Swedish Examensfordringarna Every 3rd year Faculty Undervisningsprogram Every year Department In curriculum Norway (4) Studieplan Every 3rd year Faculty Emneplan Every year Department In syllabus Sweden (5) Utbildnings-plan, kurs-plan Every 3rd year Faculty Studieanvisning, studieguide Every year Department In syllabus JOURNALISM PRACTICE 87 are the levels of the organisational hierarchy of decision-making where decisions about changes to it can be made, and the more open to change the document is. The literature lists in the course syllabi thus more likely be revised than lists in the course curricula. Regardless of location, literature lists perform similar functions and are part of the relevant official recording of course content, which reasonably permits changing these lists. Needless to say, all journalism education institutions seek to update their course syllabi as they reflect how an institution follows its times and places itself in interaction with the industry. In the Nordic context, syllabi typically are produced the instructor responsible for the specific courses and are approved by the department or study programme head or a specific organ with pedagogical responsibilities at an institution. Curricula are usually written by instructors lead by the programme or department head and approved by the faculty. Regardless of status, both curricula and syllabi, however, encounter the same methodological difficulty: merely analysing the documents cannot determined whether the literature lists are followed, and courses are organised accordingly in practice. Local communities may develop cultures that differ significantly from the written documents. Pedagogical interventions in the classroom, which are often determined by individual educators, strongly influence how literature is recognised and used. Even if a lecturer follows the syllabus, there is no guarantee the students will too. Syllabi, therefore, are not indicators of the reality of journalism education but may reflect an ideal state of a course that leaves much discretion to teacher and grants much influence to situational factors. Literature used in higher education is not adapted to pedagogical use the same way it is at lower levels of education. Students in higher education have, and are encouraged to seek, direct access to original works of research. The use of “unfiltered”academic research in the study programme is often regarded as a characteristic of theoretical and academic orientation of the programme, and a way to hone the students’academic skills. In addition, there are academic textbooks and readers summarising the research of certain fields of study which are more adapted to pedagogical purposes. Another side of course literature, even in academic institutions, is the professional literature. Professional literature refers to textbooks, above all, in news reporting, information search, journalistic methods and techniques, as well as professional identity. They are not only intended to mediate practical and even tacit knowledge about the occupation to students, but also pass on ideas about societies and basic concepts of democracies. This is why it has previously drawn much more scholarly interest than the course literature that comprises of academic works; journalism textbooks have aroused discussion because of their alleged impact through naturalising and maintaining biased social structures (e.g., Hardin, Dodd, and Lauffer 2006; Hardin and Preston 2001; Parks 2019,2018; Starck and Wyffels 1990). As knowledge concerning digital reporting is rapidly becoming obsolete, textbooks are increasingly available online. Both the academic and the professional forms of course literature have undergone a two-stage selection process. First, the publishers of research and textbooks have selected the content to be published. Second, journalism schools act as gatekeepers with regard to what is mediated to the students and future professionals. Producers of literature selected for course content are thus legitimised producers of knowledge, holding the power to provide important frameworks that will eventually be translated into social reality by the future professionals. This marks the critical role of course literature and why it matters. 88 M. JAAKKOLA AND P. UOTILA Research Questions Our point of departure for the analysis is the intent to answer the question of what Nordic journalism education institutions officially require their students to read in bachelor programmes. It is believed that one answer can be found in the mandatory literature in the journalism curriculum. Resulting from collegial and organisational negotiations, the literature can be expected to generally reflect institutions’consensus on what journalism is and who is legitimised to produce it. Despite the possibility for pedagogical interventions and other factors to influence the learning outcomes, as discussed, the course literature is students’and aspiring professionals’source of appropriate, up-to-date theoretical and practical knowledge about journalism. The research question thus is proposed: what literature do the major academic programmes in journalism include as mandatory reading in their bachelor curricula? We are interested in three aspects that, based on previous literature on the Nordic journalism education, reflect central dimensions of the Nordic journalism education system: first, in the volume, origins, and circulation of the course literature; second, in the academic and professional orientations that can be seen in the choice of literature; and, third, in the Inter-Nordic exchange between the national institutions. With these three dimensions, we want to determine whether there are differences between countries, or some country-specific common characteristics. More in general, as the topic has not previously been studied, we want to explore the role of course literature in journalism courses and, particularly, determine how the theory/practice divide is reflected in this literature. Finally, as the Nordic region’s education systems have relatively homogeneous characteristics, and due to their geographical and cultural proximity, a high degree of mutual interdependence and exchange is expected. In all, the bodies of literature are expected to pinpoint basic characteristics of the Nordic academic journalism education system, and add to our understanding of how the programmes are interconnected. The literature is examined for its language, publisher, author’s gender, country of publication, form of publication and year of publication. This information enables investigating the geo-cultural undercurrents of the study programmes and casting light on which instances and persons in society are regarded as legitimate knowledge producers. The main research is thus broken down into more specific questions: (1) From where does the course literature originate: from which countries and publishers in which form and written by whom? (2) In which language is the course literature published? Is there a Nordic exchange? (3) How old is the course literature currently used? These questions–the origin, form, age and language of the literature–are all manifestations of the underlying structures of knowledge production in journalism education and are discussed separately in the empirical section. We initially wanted to explore the disciplines and subareas of journalism on which the literature draws, but we rejected this question because many publications in education have used multior interdisciplinary approaches and a range of different types, methods and approaches of journalism, making it impossible to reliably categorise them with content analysis. By analysing these basic structural dimensions, we still aim to determine what types of knowledge producers serve the education of future journalists and how the courses’theoretical bases are constructed. JOURNALISM PRACTICE 89 Using the national level as the point of comparison may overlook differences among higher education institutions with very different profiles and degrees of academic qualifications and orientations. Nevertheless, national-level comparisons can be justified as the higher education systems in these countries establish educational ecosystems intended to cater to the demands of the local workforce. Comparing academic institutions and excluding professionally oriented educational institutions, such as universities of applied sciences and university colleges, from the analysis, therefore, can be expected (considering all the reservations discussed later) to give a general overview of the anatomy of the course literature in the official educational design. Data and Method For a systematic review of the course literature (see e.g., Bryman 2016), we employed basic techniques for content analysis of documents. The sample consisted of the curricula of academic bachelor’s programmes in journalism (180 ECTS) in Finland, Norway and Sweden during the academic year, 2017–2018. The unit of analysis was one recorded item of the literature. Such a publication could be a book, article, report, online material (e.g., a database), compilation of materials published under the same title or an equivalent published entity. These were referred to as titles, and altogether, the data included 847 titles. Denmark was excluded from the study as it has a somewhat different journalism education landscape than the other three Nordic countries. Fröhlich and Holtz-Bacha (2003) made a distinction between academic and non-academic journalism education at universities. Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish journalism education belongs to the academic strain, whereas Danish journalism education shows more similarities with the Dutch and Italian tradition providing journalism education by institutions devoted exclusively to journalism. In fact, Denmark, the Netherlands and Italy are the only European countries to rely on this instructional setup almost exclusively (Fröhlich and Holtz-Bacha 2003). The Danish bachelor programmes, called professionsbachelor, are more extensive in their volume (240 ECTS), similar to Finnish studies at universities of applied sciences. In addition, unlike in Finland, Norway and Sweden, journalism education in Denmark does not directly lead to a bachelor’s degree but must to be supplemented with study of additional academic content. Due to these structural differences, Danish schools were excluded from the analysis. The institutions in the data (N= 12) are described in Table 2. These institutions are the major–i.e., the most established and prestigious–journalism schools at the universities in the Nordic region. To identify the most relevant journalism schools, we turned to the Nordic Cooperation Committee for Journalism Education (nordiska samarbetskommittén för journalistutbildning) whose members include academic journalism education institutions in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden (see http:// nordiskjournalistutbildning.org). Almost all the schools selected also belong to the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA), an organisation of 61 institutions in 24 countries (see http://www.ejta.eu/general-information). The institutions accepted as members of these networks can be said to consist of the major journalism education institutions at universities in their countries, support standards of professional and academic journalism training in their countries’official languages and educate a notable number of journalists, who have nationwide impact. Polytechnics (also called universities of applied sciences and university colleges) were excluded from the sample as their objective 90 M. JAAKKOLA AND P. UOTILA Table 8, that the majority of the course literature used in Nordic journalism education is written in domestic languages, or the official and national languages of educational programmes’national contexts. Sweden’s national language is Swedish, while in Norway, there exist two variants of the official written language of Norwegian, nynorsk and bokmål. Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish, and the journalism programmes in these two languages are delivered separately, so we distinguish Swedish and Finnish journalism education from each other. Both the origin and the language of the literature confirm that there is very little circulation of literature for learning purposes among not only the Nordic (Finland, Norway, Sweden) but also the Scandinavian (Norway, Sweden) countries. Students attending journalism programmes have to master the national language of the country in which education is mostly delivered. Even if students in these countries presumably are able to understand the other Scandinavian languages, non-domestic literature typically was chosen. This strong preference for domestic literature reflects that the production and reception of journalistic content is, to a large extent, based on local conditions and communities’dominant languages. Local professional cultures are supported by the national law and ethics, as evidenced by questions such as copyright issues that differ even within the Nordic region (Jørgensen 2014). Indeed, to take a concrete example of these differences, publication of digital images of art in journalistic work is allowed by the Finnish Copyright Act but prohibited under Swedish law. 2 Even if students are socialised into their immediate geo-cultural environment, the cultural exchange in journalism can be lively given the relative flexibility of the journalistic occupation, allowing professionals to act as correspondents and freelancers in other countries. It can also be assumed that in journalism education, students learn about neighbouring countries through student exchanges and biand multilateral courses arranged within the context of Nordic cooperation. However, statistics on the student exchange programme Nordplus Higher Education indicate that Nordic student mobility has steadily decreased over the recent decades (Melin, Terrell, and Henningsson 2015, 51), and students increasingly go farther away than neighbouring countries (European Commission 2016). However, short visits to neighbouring countries have increased since the introduction of the so-called express mobility in 2016, permitting exchanges with a minimum duration of one week (Melin, Terrell, and Henningsson 2015, 51). Age of the Course Literature The relatively rapid changes in the media industry have placed the re-definition of journalism and journalistic theories on the research agenda of journalism studies and in the Table 8. Languages of literature. Country Domestic Scandinavian English Total N%N%N%N% Finland (3) 58 28% 51 32% 72 40% 181 100% Finland, Finnish (2) 55 60% 0 0% 37 40% 92 100% Finland, Swedish (1) 3 a 3% 51 57% 35 39% 89 100% Norway (4) 141 87% 2 1% 20 12% 163 100% Sweden (5) 406 82% 6 1% 83 17% 495 100% a Finnish. JOURNALISM PRACTICE 97 journalism curricula. The publication year was available for every title, so we were interested in how journalism education has been able to keep its literature up to date or, in other words, how old the course literature used in each country was. Journalism education, especially the traditional form transmitting industry information and practices from experienced professionals to newcomers in in an unquestioned, static form, has been strongly critiqued and contrasted with the entrepreneurial model seeing journalism as more processual and open-ended (Drok 2012; Mensing and Ryfe 2013). Table 9 shows that the literature used in the Nordic journalism programmes is nearly 7 years old on average (N= 785). In all the countries, domestic literature (understood literature published in the national and study-programme language as opposed to Englishlanguage or international literature) seems to be more quickly adopted in the curricula than international literature. In Finland, the average age of literature was probably higher as the curricula with the literature lists are revised only every three years. It is also possible that in the smaller language area of Finnish, the circulation of literature in a more limited market is slower as new titles in niche markets cannot be published frequently, if at all. It seems that despite frequent revision of the literature lists, few changes have been made. There seems to be a relatively stable core body of literature. Discussion The anatomy of the course literature in bachelor journalism programme curricula, to a high extent, is prone to change, and it might be dangerous to draw definitive conclusions that the next curriculum revision round might make invalid. However, as many titles included are classics read by many generations of students, some stability can be seen. The analysis of the age of the literature also indicates that the literature is renewed rather slowly. Beyond the recorded literature, teachers in many schools frequently ask students to become acquainted with journalistic pieces, such as news articles, radio and television programmes and online and multimedia work. Sometimes, these materials are mentioned in the course descriptions, but they are likely to be delivered without being mentioned in the curriculum. It is worth noticing that readings in the journalism study programmes may include a wide range of such grey literature, which is more replaceable and subject to changes due to teaching staffand their preferences. The findings indicate that journalism seems to be tightly bound by local conditions, including the local language, professional practices and structural frameworks of professionalism, law and ethics. The literature in the course syllabi displays no ambitions to create border-transcending understandings of journalism in the Nordic area; in contrast, Table 9. Average age (AA) of the course literature (in years). Country AA in total AA of scientific titles AA of professional titles AA of domestic literature AA of international literature Finland 8.3 (N= 176) 7.9 (N= 75) 8.6 (N= 94) 8.1 (N= 55) 8.4 (N= 71) Norway 6.8 (N= 163) 6.3 (N= 11) 6.8 (N= 148) 6.7 (N= 141) 7.4 (N= 20) Sweden 6.3 (N= 446) 8.8 (N= 82) 6.3 (N= 281) 5.8 (N= 358) 7.9 (N= 82) Average 6.8 (N = 785) 8.2 (N = 168) 7.2 (N = 523) 6.9 (N = 554) 8.0 (N = 173) 98 M. JAAKKOLA AND P. UOTILA the international English-speaking scene receives heavier emphasis. It is evident that to some extent, the choice of literature reflects teachers’personal interests and, therefore, strong local emphases on journalism education. The choice of literature indeed seems to be highly influenced by geographical proximity. For instance, books by local academic staffare typically preferred in the individual lists, so the profiles of the teaching stuffoften strongly influence the choice of literature and contribute to a national emphasis. The literature was also produced within locally offered education as lectures may have constituted the foundations of published articles and books. The repetition of some titles contributes to cumulative learning but indicates that they are included several times. In each country, some local classic textbooks can be identified as core learning material used in a number of courses. These books are often written by senior scholars and regularly revised and reprinted. They are used as entrance examination literature and often have a methodological nature, describing a particular journalistic practice. 3 These books are important to providing common concepts and vocabulary for journalist students who may later work together. The literature from global Anglo-American markets basically originated from three sources. First, the largest group was international classics in journalism and communication theory, original research with great impact, or handbooks summarising strains of research and practice. Second, the English books and articles comprised scholarly literature written by researchers from the home institution of or the same country as the international research audiences. Third, the English material comprised the newest international professional literature that dealt with, above all, digital journalism in data (-driven) and robot journalism. It thus seems that while the basics of the course literature were provided by domestic works, the complementary readings were found in the international output instead of literature from neighbouring countries. Ideas for Future Research This study was specifically focused on and adapted to the Nordic region. However, comparisons of course literature, and course content in more general terms, could be expanded to include more diverse countries and regions. As many of the previous studies related to the curricula have focused more on curriculum development and system differences, the comparative approaches to curriculum content are an aspect to advance within studies on journalism education. The academic literature in the curricula may enable fruitful comparisons of educational programmes at different levels. They, for example, indicate the degree of study programmes’ theoretical or academic orientations, as shown in our analysis, to trace differences between countries or regions. In this respect, indices such as the amount of reading per ECTS enable comparability among the study programmes within a discipline, and even across study programmes in different disciplines with similar professional profiles. The balance between national or regional and international literature is an issue that may more widely reflect the positioning of study programmes towards international markets. As highlighted throughout the analysis, close readings of syllabi and curricula provide information about an official set of standards but not necessarily the state of education and so should be placed in their broader context. The characteristics and uses of the literature should be studied in greater detail with a more qualitative approach. For JOURNALISM PRACTICE 99 example, an ethnographic study or focus group interviews on the pedagogical use of the literature would add to our knowledge about the mediation of literature to the students (cf. Hardin, Dodd, and Lauffer 2006; Besser, Stone, and Nan 1998). Conclusion The choices of course literature in a journalism study programme, or learning materials in higher education in general, are seldom considered in discussions of the sociology of education, and this study intended to initially fill this gap. This article examined certain quantifiable dimensions of the literature lists of the course curricula and syllabi in the leading Nordic bachelor’s journalism programmes: the literature’s age, volume and circulation, its academic and professional orientations, and the Nordic exchange in it. It was found that the course literature is revised at different paces at different institutions and in different countries, with the average interval in the Nordic journalism education institutions being quite long at seven years. The professional book is the dominant form of reading in the journalism programmes, amounting to 60% of the literature titles on average. The programmes draw on an established body of domestic literature, combining it with literature written in English for international audiences, but do not make use of literature from neighbouring countries. With regard to the rapid changes in revising curricula, changes in literature should be monitored with longitudinal analyses to track patterns and changes over time. Along with the gradual “eventisation”of learning, the role of written material may also be dissolving. Instead of the closed-form books and articles, learning material will increasingly migrate and split up into online platforms, including open-ended visual and audiovisual, processual and gamificated material (for example, online courses [e.g., MOOCs] and open educational resources [OERs], see e.g., D’Antoni 2009), which has to be taken into account when examining the entire body of resources and learning materials on which the educational programmes draw. Notes 1. The facts about Norway in this paragraph were communicated in email dated 3 October 2018 from Inger Helene Frivik, with the secretariat of the Norwegian Union of Journalists (Norsk Journalistlag). The facts about Sweden in this paragraph were communicated in email dated 4 October 2018 from Inger Johansson, with the secretariat of the Swedish Union of Journalists (Svenska Journalistförbundet). 2. Finnish Copyright Act (2015, English translation), https://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/ 1961/en19610404_20150608.pdf. Swedish Act on Copyright in Literary and Artistic Works (2013, English translation), www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/se/se124en.pdf (Accessed 21 September 2018). 3. In Sweden, these works were Reporter (2009) and Intervjuteknik (Interview Technique, 2007) by Björn Häger, as well as Grävande journalistik (Investigative Journalism, 2010) by Nils Hanson and Källkritik (Source Criticism, 2013) by Thorsten Thurén. 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