Professional Roles of Journalists of the Future: the View of Russian Educators

Section: Sociology of Journalism

The authors of the paper analyze the views of Russian journalism educators on the professional roles that journalists are to play in the future decade. The empirical data were collected as part of the global study “Journalistic Roles, Values and Competencies in the 21st Century: How Journalism Educators Across the Globe See the Future of the Profession”. The online survey was conducted under the auspices of the World Journalism Education Council (WJEC) in January-February 2021 with Russian educators from different regions of the country taking part in it as respondents. This paper focuses on the responses to two groups of questions: the reflections of educators about the typical tasks of professional journalists in the future and their view on key normative principles of neutrality and objectivity when fulfilling these professional tasks. The clustering of the ranked data makes it possible to figure out three professional roles that journalism educators expect in a ten-year term: objective disseminator, impartial investigator and social mobilizer. The authors suggest that these roles chosen by journalism educators for the careers of their students could be relevant in the future. However, they admit that this conclusion is debatable.

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