張時健

Shih-Chien Chang

去技術論、新聞工作、新聞工作自主性、勞動過程研究、數位新聞技能

deskilling thesis, news work, journalist’s autonomy, labour process study, digital news skills

數位時代新聞工作者的勞動條件不良，似是通說。長期關注新聞勞動過程的研究者，常應用「去技術論（deskilling thesis）」來解釋，認為這是新聞機構剝奪工作者的智識性技能、社交性技能與自主性，令其易被替換、工作外包而可節約勞動成本，而記者再學習數位技能未能改變此一趨勢。因此本研究提問：智識性技能、社交性技能、自主性、數位技能，以及去技術化安排等變項，是否對新聞勞動條件具解釋力，以及這些能力等變項之間的關係。

本研究根據2023年年中針對臺灣新聞工作者發放的問卷，分析發現：新聞工作者的智識性技能是對工作者自評的勞動條件有關鍵性的解釋力，而智識性技能較佳者傾向不認同勞動條件合理。另一發現則是進階資料處理技能較佳者在自主性與智識性技能上的表現較差，但傾向認為勞動條件合理；本地非全職工作者與全職工作者之間，在技能項目與勞動條件的面向上均沒有顯著差異。根據上述分析結果，本研究進而探討新聞勞動過程研究應用「去技術論」的適用性，並提出新聞勞動可能與文化勞動類同：工作者自主與專業追求使其陷於不利勞動條件，而為資本所利用的可能。

The legacy news media has been experiencing business turmoil ever since the rise of the Internet, resulting in its digital transformation. The impact of this digital turn on news practice has led to shifting job skillsets and changing working conditions. Some researchers have argued that modern journalists are more multi-skilled than their predecessors. Among their expected new skills, data management is especially needed for situations of information-overload. The literature has focused on working conditions, arguing that journalists have lower job satisfaction and worse job security than before. Accordingly, a question arises: In today’s digital era, what skills are relevant to a journalist’s working conditions? To answer this question, a survey of Taiwan journalists was conducted in mid-2023.

Examining journalists’ skills and working conditions, research has employed the labor process theory and generated fruitful outcomes. The deskilling thesis is especially relevant here to explain a journalist’s unsatisfied working conditions under a skill-downgrading environment. Generally speaking, news production workflow is standardized and divided into sequential parts for individuals to take that aim at improving their efficiency and productivity. To secure authority over journalists, news organizations are making the knowledge and skills of news practice centralized where individuals are assigned trivial tasks separately. Therefore, individuals have less bargaining power against the management that they could be substituted easily by non-professionals. In the long run, practitioners’ autonomy and active thinking are not required, because they should follow top-down directions to fulfill their duties. This is understood as ‘the separation of conception from execution’, or the main argument of the deskilling thesis. Cohen is one key researcher with several articles and books focusing on this topic (Cohen, 2018; Cohen & de Peuter, 2020). She argued that the digital turn of news media has forced journalists to take more meaningless assignments with worse conditions.

Researchers in Taiwan have illustrated similar scenarios where journalists suffer from tedious tasks, poor payment, and intense workflow. Liu & Lo (2017) used survey data to conclude that Taiwan journalists’ higher turnover intention is caused by job burnout and work overload. Wang (2013) found that the market entry for newcomers is much lower than a professional journalist’s status, and benefits are shaky. Liu (2018) argued that digital tools prolong a journalist’s working hours and intensifies the work pace. Liu’s (2006) used the deskilling thesis to prove that newspaper journalists are hardly able to maintain autonomy and authority over their own production and products, because of the digital turn of the newsroom.

This paper presents whether a journalist’s skill level is relevant to working conditions. Within the frame of the deskilling thesis, skills are composed of three aspects: intellectual, social, and digital. Autonomy and deskilling strategies are also taken into consideration. Working conditions, as the dependent variables, include pay satisfaction, work affordability, and work pressure. The study also evaluates employment status to understand if non-full-time workers differ from full-time employees when these variables are considered.

A survey of Taiwan journalists was conducted in mid-2023. Applying a snowballing sampling strategy, members of the Association of Taiwan Journalists (ATJ) completed the questionnaire first and circulated it within their professional community. In total, 474 valid responses were collected for further data analysis.

The analysis results reveal that journalists who have better intellectual skills display lower pay satisfaction, worse work affordability, and higher pressure. Social skills and autonomy positively correlate to some working conditions. Those with better data processing skills have lower autonomy and lower levels of intellectual skills. Non-full-time workers have no statistically significant difference in most variables when compared to full-time employees. Deskilling strategies are mostly not relevant to changes in working conditions.

The data analysis results are not fully consistent with the presumptions under the deskilling thesis, which argues that low skill-level workers likely have poor working conditions. One notable difference is journalists whose job needs entail more intellectual efforts have worse working conditions. As autonomy positively relates to intellectual skills and working conditions, this likely suggest that journalists share similar professional characteristics with cultural workers who actively pursue challenging missions with creativity and unshakeable autonomy. The low relevance between typical deskilling strategies and working conditions implies management might not rely on these strategies to discipline a journalist’s work. The findings echo other critical arguments about the deskilling thesis. Burawoy and Wright (1990), for example, suggested that deskilling methods are not practical for creative labor management.

As the findings indicate that a journalist’s data processing skills negatively correlates to their intellectual skills and autonomy, it is possible that some employees specialize in data-related tasks while others focus on ordinary journalistic work. This scenario has been suggested by researchers, whereby data experts were queried to understand journalists’ work in a digital environment (Cools et al., 2023). For individuals, specializing in data-processing could be an either-or option in their professional job.

The findings herein are limited to understanding the relationship between journalists’ skills and their working conditions. A full explanation of their working conditions needs a well-established model. Thus, follow-up research could look into the literature on human resource management for further analysis of the topic.