When Reporters Make the News: Narrated Role Performance During Colombia's Post-Conflict with the FARC Guerrilla Group

Abstract

Based on a qualitative analysis of 1,462 articles published during the six years of the signing of the peace agreement with the FARC guerrilla group, this study examines the roles that emerged from the journalist's narratives when their colleagues made the news. Specifically, we seek to understand how they redefined and negotiated their professional roles to survive in Colombia's complex and unsafe environment. The results of our analysis reveal four emerging roles: (1) resilient watchdog; (2) savvy expert; (3) crusader; (4) and community-embedded. The texts examined also reveal how journalists negotiated the agenda-building, since reporters were forced to limit on-site newsgathering, consult multiple sources, self-censor, and deal with the differential working conditions of metropolitan and local journalists as a consequence of risk. This study contributes to role theory by focusing on narrated roles of an insecure democracy from an inductive approach. It further introduces an innovative perspective to boundary work theory, since reporters’ boundaries have been challenged in new, often menacing ways, due to the world's longest-running internal conflict and transition to peace.