Journalism Degree Motivations: The Development of a Scale

The newsroom is a powerful influence in a journalist’s identity formation. Research has yet to verify the socializing impact of academia. This research utilized the quantitative survey method applying it to undergraduate journalism students (n = 798) to assess how academic status relates to students’ degree motivations, life values, and technology use. The results show advancement is related to variations in perceptions of some degree motivations, which include perceiving journalism as a path to write and fame, but life values were not significantly different. The implication of this study suggests that academia may not have much impact on certain perceptions and behaviors.

Based on a survey of 4,393 journalism students in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, this study provides muchneeded comparative evidence about students' motivations for becoming journalists, their future job plans, and expectations. Findings show not only an almost universal decline in students' desire to work in journalism by the end of their program but also important national differences in terms of the journalistic fields in which they want to work, as well as their job expectations. The results reinforce the need to take into account national contexts when examining journalism education across the globe.

This mixed-methods study using a national, random sample of journalism students explores their motivations for majoring in journalism and conceptions of the roles of journalists. It showed many similarities among students today and yesterday and some differences between students and professionals. Students' ranking of the importance of roles compared to professionals showed no significant correlation. They still recognize the same four main roles of journalists, but rank them in a different order and define them differently. These future journalists see 'soft news' as being on equal footing, if not more important, than traditional 'hard news'. They consider it fair game for journalists to join the conversation about important issues of the day. They see citizen journalists as not only taking over more of the adversarial duties of journalists but also increasing the amount of information and opinion that people have access to, making the interpretive role of journalists more necessary as someone needs to sift through all this information and let people know what is valid. Suggestions for educators are discussed.

This article presents a comparative analysis of the pre-professional journalistic cultures of Ecuador, Cuba and Venezuela focused the aspects that motivate students of Journalism and/or Social Communication to pursue these careers and their expectations and professional experiences. In the fieldwork, 1273 students from 21 universities enrolled in Journalism and/or Social Communication were surveyed during the first semester of 2016 (Cuba = 383, Ecuador = 500, Venezuela = 390). A sample that has a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of less than 5. The results indicate that students in Ecuador, Cuba and Venezuela, although they do not have professional experience in the area -with the exception of Cubans-and acknowledge their doubts about the job security offered by the profession, have journalism as the main professional option for their future and, specifically, television. The regression analysis shows that in general terms only occupational safety (B = -0.108, p <0.001), vocation (B = -0.083, p <0.01) and gender (B = 0.079, p <0, 05) have a significant influence on the perspectives of personal development of the students in the three countries, F (6, 1190) = 19.455, p <0.001, explaining 8.5% of their variance.

Being a journalist is one of the impetus of studying journalism and mass communication in Indonesian higher education. This paper focuses on understanding students' motivation in relation to their expectation for their future job and their understanding toward the current media situation. A convenient survey was conducted to 462 journalism and mass communication students in 11 universities through out Indonesia. The surveys explore questions regarding fields of their future career as well as the desired media and communication institutions. Questions about motivations and reasons were also brought forward. Survey results indicate that personal goals are as important as societal goals for journalism and communication students in their motivation to study journalism. Students valued having a secure job and having autonomy in their work are as important as the prestige of the profession or intention to help nation building. The fact that the vibrant freedom of press in the world's third largest democracy that has nurtured idealistic values of press is not the main driving factor for them to become journalist.

Journalism today appears to have a peculiar fascination for young people in search of careers. This study is about the driving motivation for high school students to pursue a career in journalism. It further determined if the students are aware some of the challenges inherent with the journalism profession. The snowball sampling was used to get data. 200 high school students in Sunyani Municipality in the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana were randomly selected and interviewed face-to-face and via phone. It was observed among other things that though majority of the respondents plan to pursue a career in journalism, they did not know that journalists are poorly paid and under-re-sourced. Moreover, it was recommended among other things that schools should start publishing newspapers to serve as " learning avenues " for students who aspire to be journalists.

Being a journalist is one of the impetus of studying journalism and mass communication in Indonesian higher education. This paper focuses on understanding students’ motivation in relation to their expectation for their future job and their understanding toward the current media situation. A convenient survey was conducted to 462 journalism and mass communication students in 11 universities through out Indonesia. The surveys explore questions regarding fields of their future career as well as the desired media and communication institutions. Questions about motivations and reasons were also brought forward. Survey results indicate that personal goals are as important as societal goals for journalism and communication students in their motivation to study journalism. Students valued having a secure job and having autonomy in their work are as important as the prestige of the profession or intention to help nation building. The fact that the vibrant freedom of press in the world’s third largest democracy that has nurtured idealistic values of press is not the main driving factor for them to become journalist.

Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 2014

Based on a survey of 4,393 journalism students in Australia,

The book provides insights into the students’ perspective on journalism education at universities in South East Europe (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Serbia). The main objective of the survey was to analyse the attitudes of students on the system of journalism education and to give an answer to the following questions: What motivates a student to pursue an education in journalism? To what extent are students satisfied with the learning conditions? What are their recommendations for study program improvement?

Media Asia, 1989