Biographical Transitions of Journalists in the Age of Affective Media

At Cardiff University in Wales, at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture, a conference on the Future of Journalism took place last week, on 11–12 September, where we presented the results of our research on affective media. Mojca Pajnik presented a paper, co-authored with Maja Breznik and Rok Smrdelj, on the biographical transitions of journalists in the context of global and local transformations of the media. The paper explores how affective governmentality, as well as the capital, institutional, and discursive projections of journalism, structure journalistic professionalism and what kinds of emotionalization strategies journalists enact when they enter the profession, persist in it, face difficulties, and, in some cases, also exit from the profession. Based on biographical interviews with journalists in Slovenia, the analysis examines career choices marked by passion for the profession, dedication to journalistic work, as well as confrontations with frustration and burnout in an increasingly profit-oriented media industry. The study further shows how feelings of “love for the profession” generate conditions in which journalists adapt to precarious models of media production, while also developing various forms of resistance and shifting the boundaries of these models.