Jairo Alfonso Lugo-Ocando – författare

This book looks at how numbers and statistics have been used to underpin quality in news reporting. In doing so, the aim is to challenge some common assumptions about how journalists engage and use statistics in their quest for quality news. It seeks to improve our understanding about the usage of data and statistics as a primary means for the construction of social reality. This is a task, in our view, that is urgent in times of ‘post-truth’ politics and the rise of ‘fake news’. In this sense, the quest to produce ‘quality’ news, which seems to require incorporating statistics and engaging with data, as laudable and straightforward as it sounds, is instead far more problematic and complex than what is often accounted for.

This book looks at how numbers and statistics have been used to underpin quality in news reporting. In doing so, the aim is to challenge some common assumptions about how journalists engage and use statistics in their quest for quality news. It seeks to improve our understanding about the usage of data and statistics as a primary means for the construction of social reality. This is a task, in our view, that is urgent in times of ‘post-truth’ politics and the rise of ‘fake news’. In this sense, the quest to produce ‘quality’ news, which seems to require incorporating statistics and engaging with data, as laudable and straightforward as it sounds, is instead far more problematic and complex than what is often accounted for.

This authoritative handbook looks at the entire news cycle and provides a bridge between the theoretical and academic study of journalism and its actual contemporary practice. The book's main merit is that it brings theory and practice together, with contributors discussing these issues from different perspectives in a way that scholars, students, and practitioners can find useful in the study of journalism. The handbook is also unique as it undertakes an international scope across regions and cultures, both from the West and the Global South, while providing an overview which balances the (over-) emphasis on content in most academic approaches to journalism.The book is divided into four major parts: (1) Conceptual foundations, (2) Interlink between journalism as scholarship and journalism as practice, (3) Regions and cultures, and (4) The practitioner world. The first two sections lay down the foundation for section (3) which provides an overview of journalism practice in different regions and cultures. Section (4) includes contributions by practitioners in which they attempt to respond to some of the issues raised in preceding sections.This handbook will appeal to academics, practitioners, and professionals alike, who are interested in a better understanding of the academic study of journalism and its actual contemporary practice.