The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100–1800) presents: 2017 Change Program Collaboratory News Reporting and Emotions, 1100–2017 Image: ‘An American man reads from a newspaper with amazement the latest news on the Mexican war, surrounded by an attentive group of men’ (1899) By Richard Caton Woodville after Alfred Jones. Courtesy of the Trustees of the Wellcome Trust, London. Dates: 4–6 September 2017 In the last year, a number of television reporters made headlines after becoming emotional during live reports. BBC news anchor Kate Silverton was reduced to Venues: The University of Adelaide and tears while reporting on the aftermath of airstrikes in war-torn Syria. Following her the National Wine Centre, Adelaide emotional outburst, Ms Silverton took to Twitter to say that her job was to be inscrutable and impartial, “but I am also human”. The story about this crying Convenors: David Lemmings, anchor made it into several newspapers, with a number of readers commenting Amy Milka, Abaigéal Warfield online about whether or not they felt her behaviour was acceptable. Register via Eventbrite by Much like historians and judges, received wisdom expects journalists to be 31 August 2017 objective and impartial or, simply put, not emotional. This is not always the case, http://ow.ly/4V8i30eDNDv and perhaps it never has been. Increasingly, journalists acknowledge the emotional and ethical difficulties of their work, and the ways that emotions can be Inquiries: harnessed in reporting. This begs the question: How has the relationship between [email protected] news and emotion ebbed and flowed across time and space? Why has it changed? And where will it go in the future? KEYNOTE SPEAKERS • Professor Charlie Beckett (Director, POLIS, Media and Communications, London School of Economics) • Professor Karin Wahl-Jorgensen (Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University) • Dr Cait McMahon OAM (Director, Dart Centre Asia Pacific, Melbourne) • Dr Una McIlvenna (History, The University of Melbourne) 2017 Change Collaboratory Program MONDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2017 LOWER NAPIER BUILDING, LG28, THE UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE PUBLIC LECTURE Chair: Claire Walker, The University of Adelaide 6–7pm • DR CAIT MCMAHON OAM (Dart Centre Asia Pacific, Melbourne), ‘Journalists Impacted by Trauma – That’s News. Why Should We Care?’ Lecture to be followed by a wine reception TUESDAY 5 SEPTEMBER 2017 NATIONAL WINE CENTRE, ADELAIDE 8.45–9.15am Registration 9.15 –9.30am Welcome KEYNOTE 1 Chair: Amy Milka, The University of Adelaide 9.30–10.45am • Karin Wahl-Jorgensen (Cardiff University), ‘The Centrality of Emotion in Journalism’ 10.45–11.15am MORNING TEA PANEL 1: JOURNALISM TODAY: BETWEEN OBJECTIVITY AND EMOTIONALITY Chair: Merridee Bailey, The University of Adelaide 11.15am– • Helen Vatsikopoulos, ‘Objectivity in the Face of Genocide: How Emotion Impacts on Media Workers’ Roles in 12.45pm Reporting on the Rwandan Genocide of 1994’ • Penny O’Donnell, ‘Journalists Don’t Cry? Rethinking Journalism and Emotion in the Age of Employment Precarity’ • Mark Pearson, ‘A “Mindful Journalism” Approach to News and Emotion’ 12.45–1.45pm LUNCH KEYNOTE 2 Chair: Abaigéal Warfield, The University of Adelaide 1.45–3pm • Una McIlvenna (The University of Melbourne), ‘The Emotions of Performing the News in Early Modern Europe’ 3–3.30pm AFTERNOON TEA PANEL 2: EMOTIONS AT STAKE: JUSTICE AND EXECUTION IN NEWS MEDIA Chair: Una McIlvenna, The University of Melbourne 3.30–5pm • Abaigéal Warfield, ‘Emotions in German Witchcraft Neue Zeitungen’ • Carly Osborn, ‘Reading the Bodies of Newgate’s Seventeenth-Century Women’ • Steven Anderson, ‘Journalists and the Execution Scene in Colonial Australia’’ 7pm CONFERENCE DINNER, Hotel Richmond, Rundle Mall WEDNESDAY 6 SEPTEMBER 2017 NATIONAL WINE CENTRE, ADELAIDE PANEL 3: PASSIONS AND PERIODICALS: EMOTIONAL REPORTING IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NEWSPAPERS Chair: Katie Barclay, The University of Adelaide 9.30–11am • Jean McBain, ‘Retailing Rage and Fury: The Economy of Emotions in the Early Eighteenth-Century English News Press’ • Amy Milka, ‘Reporting Courtroom Emotions in Eighteenth-Century London’ • Russell Weber, ‘The Most Cruel and Inhuman Massacre: Emotions Rhetorics, Periodicals and Boston’s Massacre’ 11–11.30am MORNING TEA PANEL 4: EMOTIONS, DISASTER AND THE ENVIRONMENT Chair: Jane Mummery, Federation University Australia 11.30am– • Damien Bright, ‘Speaking Ill of the Living. Mass Extinction, Mass Mediation and the 2016/2017 Bleaching of the 12.30pm Great Barrier Reef’ • Sophie Buchan, ‘Capturing the Chaos: A Content Analysis of Emotion in Disaster News Images in the New Zealand Herald’ 12.30–1.30pm LUNCH KEYNOTE 3 Chair: Robert Phiddian, Flinders University 1.30–2.45pm • Charlie Beckett (London School of Economics),’ Engagement or Rampant Relativism? How Emotion is Shifting News to the Personal and Political’ 2.45–3.15pm AFTERNOON TEA PANEL 5: AFFECTING AUSTRALIANS: CAMPAIGNING AND CONSCIENCE Chair: Carly Osborn, The University of Adelaide 3.15–4:15pm • Michelle Phillipov and Jessica Loyer, ‘In the Wake of the Supermarket “Milk Wars”: News Reporting on Australian Farmers and the Power of Pastoral Sentimentality’ • Jane Mummery and Debbie Rodan, ‘Af-fact-ivity: Blending the Factual with the Emotional in Reporting on Animal Welfare’ 4.15–5pm Closing Roundtable abstracts ABSTRACTS: PUBLIC LECTURE ‘The Emotions of Performing the News in Early Modern Europe’ AND KEYNOTES Dr Una McIlvenna (The University of Melbourne) While the early modern period sees the beginnings of the printed news-book and newspaper, news was just as likely to be performed as read. Given the low rates of literacy in early modern Europe, song was a particularly effective medium of ‘Journalists Impacted By Trauma – information transmission, and news ballads were That’s News. Why Should We Care?’ sensationalist and provocative, encouraging a strong emotional response in their listeners. This talk looks not only Dr Cait McMahon OAM (Dart Centre Asia Pacific, Melbourne) at how music and performance have always been part of the selling of news, but how they encourage an audience to Dr McMahon OAM will present the current psychological believe the news they are hearing. Claims to both topicality research on journalists exposed to traumatic events, and and veracity are as old as news broadcasting itself, and those the emotional repercussions of such work. This research selling the news have always wanted us to trust them. I will be accompanied with examples of how media therefore outline in greater detail the figure of the street professionals have managed their emotions at the time of singer in the early modern period, usually an itinerant, potentially traumatic exposure and afterwards. McMahon marginal and often untrustworthy figure, in order to ask how will discuss self-care strategies that she teaches their physical appearance, social class and performance style journalists to maintain resilience in such circumstances. could have affected the emotional reception of the news. The presentation will also include examples of journalists’ self-censorship because of fear elicited through trauma I look at the logistics of such a profession – the specific reporting; the concept of moral injury as it relates to news locations, times and material conditions in which news gathering; and the importance of ethical reporting on singers operated – to ask how these aided or hindered the people effected by trauma. delivery of news songs. What did it feel like to perform, or listen to, a news song on the street in early modern Europe? Given the many factors operating against them in the busy urban environment, how could these singers possibly have ‘The Centrality of Emotion in been successful in delivering their emotional messages? Journalism’ Professor Karin Wahl-Jorgensen (Cardiff University) ‘Engagement or Rampant Relativism? This presentation is premised on the idea that emotion is How Emotion is Shifting News to the central to journalistic storytelling. It suggests that the role of the expression and elicitation of emotion in Personal and Political’ journalistic texts has long been rendered invisible by the Professor Charlie Beckett (London School of Economics) professional allegiance to liberal democratic ideals of objectivity and impartiality. In the wake of the success of various ‘populist’ political campaigns such as Brexit and Trump, there has been a moral By making visible the centrality of emotion in journalism, panic amongst mainstream news media, especially that of the we open up for a range of innovative research questions. liberal/Left. A rise in ‘fake news’, propaganda and hyper- First of all, an interest in emotion compels us to partisan publishing online has compounded this sense of a understand the routinised operation of the ‘strategic ritual disruption of political journalism in western liberal of emotionality’ – the institutionalised and systematic democracies. This has fed into fears of a structural shift in practice of journalists infusing their reporting with mediated deliberation, especially online. The accelerating news emotion (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2013). This, in turn, raises cycle, combined with fears of polarisation, filter bubbles and questions about how this ritual has evolved over time. increasingly subjective, relativist identity political discourse, is Secondly, it invites investigation of how different emotions, perceived as threatening traditional journalistic ideas of including anger, love and compassion,