Enhancing Emotional Climates in Collaborative Investigative Journalism:
Comparison of Virtual and In-Person Environments in Investigative Collaborations across the Global South and North
This new Kone Foundation project (2024-28) extends my previous research on collaborative investigative journalism across the U.S.-Mexico border. The main goals and methods of this Kone Foundation research project are explained below. More information - including description of data, publications, maps, and a blog - will be published as this project proceeds.
Introduction
While the watchdog role of investigative journalism is fundamental for the functioning of democracy (e.g. Schudson 2018), most media struggle to produce investigative journalism given how rigorous, slow, and costly this genre is. Collaboration with other media outlets, universities, think tanks, and NGOs helps newsrooms to share expenses and reach broader audiences to amplify an investigative story's impact (Carson 2021, 365). Cross-border collaboration carries the potential to implement a truly global perspective on the practice of journalism (Konow-Lund et al. 2019). However, in the Global North, journalistic collaboration has been limited due to distrust and wariness toward externally produced stories and the culture of competition between newsrooms (Birnbauer 2018). Following the digitization of information and new technologies enabling virtual collaboration, media outlets have finally and increasingly seized the opportunity to work together and with other organizations. Some of the most impactful investigative journalism currently comes out of collaborations (Stonbely & Siemaszko 2022, 8)
This important transition from single newsroom investigations to the collaborative model remains under-researched (Carson 2021; Carson & Farhall 2018; Lewis 2018). Even less research has focused on investigative collaborations in the Global South (Mesquita 2023; Mesquita & de Lima Santos 2021). Konow-Lund et al. (2019) observe that further research should explore whether the US-centric journalistic tradition presently being spread around the world via collaborations lacks sensitivity to other countries' traditions. Konow-Lund et al. (2019) also observe that there is little empirical research into how virtual newsrooms may affect international work relations, how journalists can learn to trust one another when they are not working in the same physical space, and how newsroom culture is affected by the use of online collaborative software. My previous research on collaborative investigative journalism across the U.S.-Mexico (Global North-South) border suggests that in virtual environments, investigators from the Southern side of the border refrain from expressing their critical views with their partners from the North. In-person collaborative environments, on the other hand, seem to mitigate global inequalities, allowing more space for critical voices from the South (see Cheas 2024 a-b). These important findings, based on content analysis and limited interviews with the collaborators, call for further research by means of in-depth interviews, digital and in-person ethnography, and participant observation. This Kone Foundation project takes on this mixed methodology to dig deeper into the limitations, and potential of virtual and in-person environments.
Moreover, this Kone Foundation project presents a novel approach to collaborative investigative journalism through comparison of emotional climates (de Rivera 1992) in virtual and in-person collaborative environments. Understanding emotions is important for understanding the dynamics of social groups (Salmela 2024). Emotional climate refers to what kind of emotions are typically experienced and expressed in the work environment, what kind of communal emotional rules (Hochschild, 1979) and affective practices (Wetherell, 2012) are related to experiencing and expressing emotions, and how emotions are regulated. The project also studies emotions such as shame, resentment, or envy, which may be felt but hidden in the virtual and in-person collaborative spaces.
The essential goal of the project is to understand how North-South power relations shape emotional climates in virtual and in-person environments and how emotional climates affect the quality of cross-border collaborative investigative reporting.
Geopolitical Rationale
This Kone Foundation project extends the geopolitical scope of my fore-mentioned previous research from the U.S.-Mexico border to the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (henceforth D.R.). In both contexts, I focus on cross-border collaborative investigative journalism exposing abuses against asylum-seekers and migrants, fleeing repression to the U.S. and to the D.R. This varied context helps to verify the consistency of the impact of virtual and in-person collaborative environments and other factors on the emotions experienced by the collaborators and identifying means for overcoming tensions.
These geopolitical contexts are interconnected in ways which allow for a meaningful comparison: in 2022, D.R. began building a wall on its border with Haiti, "inspired" by President Trump's wall on the US-Mexico border (Latin America Bureau 2022).
D.R. carries the burden of a colonized nation subsequently invaded by the U.S., all of which has affected the D.R.'s capacity to cater to its even much more impoverished and troubled neighbor Haiti. The U.S. has also consistently created constraints in the relationships between Mexico and its Southern neighbors by forcing Mexico to accommodate and deport asylum-seekers and migrants on its behalf. All the while, interventions by the U.S. in Central America are considered the primary cause of Central American forced migration (Andersen & Bergmann 2020). For all these reasons, investigative collaborations across both borders are likely to reflect tensions between the Latin American and the U.S. collaborators involved, ultimately reflecting global inequalities and U.S. hegemony.
Cross-Field Collaboration
In both border contexts, I focus on cross-field collaboration, which occurs when journalism organizations work with civil society organizations such as civic NGOs and/or universities in a way that goes beyond serving as sources or providing funding (Stonbely & Siemaszko 2022).
My previous research found that Mexican and Central American journalists are more prepared to conduct cross-field collaborations than U.S. journalists are. I argue that this is because Mexico and Central America are among the world's most dangerous regions for journalists, with activists and critical academics and artists also suffering from severely restricted freedom of expression. Security is an important reason for investigative collaboration (Konow-Lund et al. 2019). For centuries, Mexican and Central American journalists, activists, artists, and academics have collaborated in order to maximize safety by protecting each other in the investigative process. While the US media system has persisted with a strong emphasis on neutrality and objectivity, enforcing a boundary between journalism and activism, some of the most influential online journalists in Latin America specifically reject neutrality and objectivity in addition to embracing traditional norms of independence and fact-based truth-telling (Hanitzch et al. 2019). This Latin American example shows that "factual" and "activist" do not need to be mutually exclusive and can coincide in collaboration.
Journalists, activists, artists, and academics across regions of the Global North, including Finland, are currently suffering from politicians' and xenophobic institutions' efforts to restrict freedom of expression. Therefore it is important for us to learn from practices in regions of the Global South such as Latin America, where collaborative practices in investigative journalism have developed since long ago to overcome such restrictions.
However, my research so far also suggests that the leadership of partners from Latin America is often prevented by US journalists and scholars, who are either dominating the cross-border collaborations at the implementation level (Cheas 2024 a-b), and/or reinventing the wheel through the development of new collaborative models for investigative journalism, dismissing good practices already existing in Latin America (Cheas, in review).
Research Questions
This Kone Foundation project seeks to facilitate learning from investigators in the Global South by understanding how virtual and in-person collaborative spaces promote or inhibit the expression of emotions and identifying means for releasing tensions. The project pays particular attention to the role of artists involved in the investigative collaborations, contemplating the potential of art for emotional expression and for facilitating cross-border communication and collaboration.
The main research questions can be summarized as follows:
- What emotions are expressed and hidden in virtual and in-person collaborative environments across the Global South and North? What is the impact of the virtual and in-person environment on the emotional climate of the cross-border and cross-field collaborations and the quality of reporting?
- How do the emotional climates reflect geopolitical, socioeconomic, and other inequalities and power relations between the collaborators involved?
- How can emotional climates in in-person and virtual environments be enhanced through arts and other means in order to foster more mutual learning and genuine openness in cross-border and cross-field communication and collaboration?
Methods
The methods of this research include ethnography, participant observation, and interviews. Participant observation is a way to collect data in naturalist settings by ethnographers who observe and/or take part in the activities of the people being studied (Musante & deWalt 2010). Digital ethnography offers ways to understand both changing communication practices and the amplification of existing rituals and intimacies (Pink et al. 2016). I will observe both in-person and virtual investigative collaborations in order to examine the differences in the emotional climates between the two. I will conduct informal interviews as part of the ethnographic research as well as semi-structured interviews after the ethnographic stage. The purpose of the latter is to ask the participants about observations I have made during the ethnographic phase, as well as about their hidden emotions and how they would wish to improve their working environments. The interviews will take place in groups, subgroups, as well as individually, to also observe differences as to what issues the Northern and Southern partners choose to raise or not bring up in the presence of their collaborators with different backgrounds. The languages used in the interviews are Spanish and English; the interviewees will get to choose their preferred language.
The most fundamental principle of participant observation is that people have the right to know that they are the subjects of a research project (Musante & deWalt 2010). I will only engage in overt participant observation, meaning that the subjects being observed will be fully aware of the presence and purpose of the observer. Moreover, I will only observe collaborations and interactions whose participants have granted me explicit and prior permission to do so. I will only observe those sections of the investigative collaboration which do not involve treatment of any strictly confidential data, such as identities of asylum-seekers who have spoken to the journalists upon the condition of anonymity. Prior to the collection of the data, my proposal will be submitted for ethical review according to the guidelines of the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK).