ACADEMIA Letters Implications of COVID-19 Pandemic for Journalism Study: A Research Commentary Adamkolo Ibrahim, University of Maiduguri Introduction The most important direct and significant effects of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic are related to public health. However, the COVID-19 crisis also raises several critical questions for journalism research. Like scientists, journalists, individually and collectively must halt and look critically at what has brought them to this moment of journalism research and where they will be heading to in the future. This is because much of their working lives apparently have been tossed out of routine. So, like journalism practice, journalism research is also suffering from the hangover of the COVID-19 pandemic all around the world. However, two areas of journalism research stand out conspicuously and, therefore, deserve a consideration. These areas are the research purpose (encompassing the aims, goals and objectives of study), materials and methods (encompassing the subjects, objects and phenomena of study). By genuinely admitting the limitations, for example, in according too much attention to given materials of analysis at the detriment of others, or in the inability to build a stronger voice for the public as part of its intellectual goals, or striking out a new turn in the way data is gathered and analysed, journalism research agendas can be redirected to simultaneously be responsive and reflective in preparation for future uncertainties whilst the existing new-normal is accommodated and the ongoing crisis addressed. Journalism researchers may take the current situation not only as a convenient moment to switch to COVID-19 research and gather instantaneous data on journalism and news and on the move, but also as a call-to-action to reconsider the journalistic research responsibility ‘pandemically’, effectively and sustainably. Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Adamkolo Ibrahim, adamkolo@unimaid.edu.ng Citation: Ibrahim, A. (2021). Implications of COVID-19 Pandemic for Journalism Study: A Research Commentary. Academia Letters, Article 2411. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2411. 1 The Research Purpose As researchers, beginning with the purpose (aims, goals and objectives) behind our work calls for what we do. Even if normality eventually returns to us in much of our daily lives and intellectual routines, we should not take this opportunity to reflect on questions about our role and impact in the world; such questions that may seem different in the light of the Coronavirus crisis and the exceptionality it places on the importance and relevance of our work. Examples of such questions are: by and large, who do we do the research for? What does the research we do enable those people to do? In fact, why should anyone care about what we know? This last question draws on Nielsen’s (2018) stimulating critique of political communication a phenomenon Lewis (2020a, b) describes as “a call to arms that could be applied to communications research as a whole” (p.5), which resonates here with how we think about the future of journalistic research during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. As a matter of fact, it is necessary to improve both the reputation and viability of communication research (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2020). Besides developing a stronger public voice, journalism studies as a study field needs a more assertive place in the academia. Because, as a field, online journalism studies has reached a turning point in 2020, with a number of its oldest journals celebrating 20 years and its intellectuals and scholars spectacularly spreading their scientific research through publication more than ever before. Advancement is commendable; however, it fails to address some critical questions: “Where does journalism fit in the academia?” What is journalism for? Who is it for? The current crisis accelerates the need to consider what the next two decades of journalistic studies should produce in the standard sense. Although generally, successful journalism studies will prosper now and in the future both in the public arena and institutions of learning by becoming more externally engaged and intellectually relevant (Pate, 1992; Waisbord, 2019), at least, we may cooperate more broadly outside our sphere; certainly, beyond merely borrowing opportunistic concepts from other areas. We may consider what can happen when journalism researchers approach their materials of analysis (including journalists) less pessimistically but rather more optimistically as Lewis (2020a, p.6) and Tandoc et al., 2020) suggested. The Research Materials The physical and artifactual forms of journalism are referred to as “objects of journalism” by Rittner, Fuchs, Klatsky, and Kraut (2017) I prefer to term them ‘material’ to refer to actions directed to persons or things. When I say “what” and “how” I am referring to our current Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Adamkolo Ibrahim, adamkolo@unimaid.edu.ng Citation: Ibrahim, A. (2021). Implications of COVID-19 Pandemic for Journalism Study: A Research Commentary. Academia Letters, Article 2411. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2411. 2 research. The answer may seem clear enough. For instance, we may research journalism online by studying online journalism, such as that found on academic.edu, and since this is the sort of online journalism I look up on, I examine it as if I were an expert. In recent years, a lot of progress has been made toward defining the boundaries and obligations of journalism studies as a field of study within the discipline of communication, and even more has focused on the issue of online journalism studies (Appelgren et al., 2019; Lewis & Carlson, 2019; Stenson & Westlund, 2020). This debate is beyond this essay. My focus here is on journalism research with a focus on digital journalism. Therefore, we study journalism in all its forms. However, we should not emphasise some analytical materials or objects in isolation or use a cursory methodological approach in order to come to a proper conclusion. For example, we give more attention to “full-time” journalists as compared to “freelance” journalists, give more attention to the BBC, CNN or The New York Times as compared to more typical news organisations that struggle with far fewer resources, give more attention to survey and interviews as compared to experimental, phenomenological, digital methods, etc. All these new technologies may impact how journalists portray the news. We tend to focus on the journalistic “roles and identities” (and the like) to the detriment of a more “institutional view” of “who is actually producing, curating, and disseminating content [and how] social media amplifies those messages” (Kperogi, 2012; Lewis, 2020a, p.3). The COVID-19 storey should inspire journalism researchers to re-think their thinking about journalism. Now is the time to ask: How does the COVID-19 pandemic condition of chronic low back pain and “structural” disparities and inequalities surrounding income, career status and race affect the career a doctor should choose. How could emerging changes in the media, society and higher education sector enable us to overhaul what we emphasise in our research? We should think about three materials of analysis to get started. These questions are not new (e.g., see Nielsen, 2016, 2020; Pate, 1992; Pickard, 2017; Wahl-Jorgensen, 2020). The Coronavirus crisis is causing us to become more aware of the weaknesses in our field. First, news is a subject that has been dominated by “media management and economics” or the political-economic of the media, but relatively neglected in journalism research (Lewis, 2020a, b). The second issue is news consumption. News organisations saw a loss of advertising revenues. However, they also saw an increase in news traffic because people sought to follow rapidly moving developments related to COVID-19 infection rates, lockdowns and “expert guidance” (Nielsen, 2020, p.4). Thirdly, we understand that although journalistic research often overemphasises journalists, it also sometimes underestimates their experiences. Examples of these scenarios include any crisis, conflict or trauma experiences (e.g., see Nielsen, 2020). Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Adamkolo Ibrahim, adamkolo@unimaid.edu.ng Citation: Ibrahim, A. (2021). Implications of COVID-19 Pandemic for Journalism Study: A Research Commentary. Academia Letters, Article 2411. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2411. 3 Conclusion The most important direct and significant effects of the COVID-19 crisis are related to public health. But the pandemic has also raised a number of important questions for social sciences and intellectuals on the issue collectively (Lewis, 2020a, b). In hundreds of studies across the disciplines, there is a focus on Coronavirus research that is likely to overshadow the last fundamental focus in social sciences: the sudden fascination with “fake news”, all the misinformation raised by Trump’s 2016 and 2020 elections, Brexit and the ensuing political upheavals between the United Kingdom and the European Union, and the rise of related populism in many parts of the world. A research turn can indicate responsiveness and readiness; however, it can also be overdone. The race to study “fake news”, for example, has led to a disproportionate focus by scholars on something that represents a minute part of the information ecosystem (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2020). Even well-intentioned sudden turns can create problems because researchers hastily apply outdated theories to emerging circumstances very easily; thus, taking the research ecosystem backwards rather than forwards (Tandoc et al., 2020; Wahl-Jorgensen, 2020). The challenge is for researchers to be responsive and reflective simultaneously. The proportionality during the COVID-19 crisis includes the recognition of persistent problems and patterns like the enduring challenges to social inequalities and environmental health and the need to further internationalize journalism research approaches. For example, news increasingly serves the interests of the rich and politicians tremendously while underserving the poor, particularly in this age of subscription or pay-per-view model with public financing (particularly regarding public news media like the BBC), even as there are growing imbalances between resource-rich news media and resource-poor ones (Lewis, 2020b). As these gaps in the ‘post-pandemic’ economy worsen, what should journalism research say about this, particularly in a more cross-disciplinary approach and more publicly engaged way? Another permanent issue is the relative inclusiveness within scholarly fields that are overwhelmingly dominated by North American and Western European scholars (Tandoc et al., 2020; Waisbord, 2019). However, this commentary argues that normalizing the adoption of digital methods such as Zoom and teleconference technology, and action research data collection and analysis can have a tremendous positive impact on journalism research methodology as we reduce barriers to “connection and community” through a more easily accessible intellectual and scholarly conversation and method of data collection and analysis. In any case, as the COVID-19 crisis changes the way we live and work, it should also lead us to think about what we are doing as scholars and what we hope to achieve. We may take the current situation not only as an Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Adamkolo Ibrahim, adamkolo@unimaid.edu.ng Citation: Ibrahim, A. (2021). Implications of COVID-19 Pandemic for Journalism Study: A Research Commentary. Academia Letters, Article 2411. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2411. 4 appropriate moment to collect fast-moving data on news and journalism, but also as a call to reconsider our research service, project and methods in a larger and more sustainable logic. Nevertheless, the research integrity must always be maintained, without giving in to the whims of politicians nor the profit interests of enterprises while ignoring the most important research purpose, materials and methods. References Appelgren, E., Lindén, C.-G. & van Dalen, A. (2019). Data journalism research: Studying a maturing field across cultures, media markets and political environments. Digital Journalism, 7(9), 1191-1199. De Maeyer, J. (2016). Adopting a ‘material sensibility’ in journalism studies. In T. Witschge, C. W. Anderson, D. Domingo & A. Hermida (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of digital journalism (pp. 460-476). New York, NY: SAGE. Kperogi, F. A. (2012). The evolution and challenges of online journalism in Nigeria. In E. Siapera & A. Veglis (Eds.), The handbook of global online journalism (pp. 445-461). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Lewis, S. C. (2020a). The objects and objectives of journalism research during the Coronavirus pandemic and beyond. Digital Journalism (online). doi: 10.1080/21670811.2020.1773292 Lewis, S. C. (2020b). What is communication research for? Wrestling with the relevance of what we do. In M. Powers & A. Russell. (Eds.), Rethinking media research for changing societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nielsen, R. K. (2020). “What will the Coronavirus pandemic mean for the business of news?” Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/risjreview/what-will-coronavirus-pandemic-mean-business-news. Nielsen, R. K. (2018). No one cares what we know: Three responses to the irrelevance of political communication research. Political Communication, 35(1), 145-149. Pate, U. A. (1992). 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Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Adamkolo Ibrahim, adamkolo@unimaid.edu.ng Citation: Ibrahim, A. (2021). Implications of COVID-19 Pandemic for Journalism Study: A Research Commentary. Academia Letters, Article 2411. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2411. 6