ABSTRACT
Journalists across the globe claim a social status and role rooted in an occupational ideology, which shapes the production and agenda of news (Weaver, 1998; Weaver, Beam, Brownlee, Voakes & Wilhoit, 2007; Weaver & Wilhoit, 1986, 1996; Weaver & Willnat, 2012; Willnat, Weaver & Choi, 2013). However, journalistic professionalism is not a universal standard but something that “adapts itself to its cultural contexts related to nation and press system” (Berkowitz, 2011, p. 1). Indeed, as journalists around the world are socialized into their occupational practices and ideologies, they simultaneously self-legitimize their positions in different societies (Deuze, 2011). Notably, self-legitimization rituals become most evident in the ways in which journalists perform their roles. The concept “journalistic role performance” (Mellado, 2015) is helpful to examine how journalists perform their roles in different institutional and cultural contexts. It suggests that journalistic roles are shaped and reproduced in a specific cultural system and that journalists perform professional roles and manifest these roles in their news reporting.
