Interventionist and Detached Types of Watchdog Journalism in Investigative Media Projects

Section: Modern Journalism: Subjects and Issues

The digital media environment provides opportunities for the development of quality journalism, including investigation as a concentrated expression of professional practices, standards and values. New investigative tools and models are emerging. Investigative projects presented exclusively in the online sphere are becoming widespread. However, their empirical analysis is not sufficient in academic literature. The purpose of this study is to determine how these new actors in the journalistic field play the watchdog role of the media. The author of the paper relied on the theory of journalistic roles and the concept of watchdog journalism. Although the idea of the universality of journalistic roles has been questioned in literature, the author proceeds from its methodological applicability to the study due to the specifics of the selected media projects, coming from a desire to perform a watchdog function. The methodological basis of the study is C. Mellado’s approach. The division of watchdog journalism into interventionist and detached types is taken into account. The empirical base of the research was formed by the websites of investigative nature such as Re:Baltica, Bivol, Frontstory. The degree of expression of the criteria of detached and interventionist orientations of watchdog journalism was identified. Special features of the embodiment of the indicators in the texts were outlined. The results of the study show that the projects contain signs of watchdog journalism of both interventionist and detached types and that a high intensity of journalistic control predominates.

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To cite this article: Agnistikova O.I. (2022) Interventsionistskiy i otstranennyy tipy «storozhevoy zhurnalistiki» v rassledovatel'skikh mediaproektakh [Interventionist and Detached Types of Watchdog Journalism in Investigative Media Projects]. Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta. Seriya 10. Zhurnalistika 6: 130–148. DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.6.2022.130148