Live blogs can’t handle the truth? A contemporary cross-cultural consideration of transparency and procedural justice
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1402Keywords:
Live blogs, open justice, legal professionals, transparencyAbstract
Reporting from trials using live blogs to continuously inform readers about courtroom events have rapidly become an established part of legal life and are often assumed to fulfill demands of open justice. However, a deep sociolegal understanding of how legal professionals perceive live blogs as affecting procedural justice is currently missing, as is a thick understanding of what transparency means to legal professionals. As more detailed knowledge on contemporary transparency will contribute to understanding the acceptance and resistance to open justice and specific reporting formats, this study focuses on the interlinking of legal professionals, transparency and live blogs. A qualitative cross-cultural approach finds that legal professionals consider Bentham’s tenets to be partially transformed, in particular regarding the original truth function. Rather than enabling truths, legal professionals perceive live blogs as a threat to truths. Nevertheless, live blogs are considered to provide good enough transparency in relation to specific jurisdictional contexts.
Downloads
Metrics
Downloads:
13(5)_Flower_OSLS 161
XML_13(5)_Flower_OSLS 16
References
Aberbach, J.D., and Rockman, B.A., 2002. Conducting and Coding Elite Interviews. PS: Political Science and Politics, 35(4), 673.
Administration of Justice Act 2019b, chapter 2, §32, stk. 3; §182. Courts of Denmark.
Adminstration of Justice Act 2019a, chapter 1, §18. Courts of Denmark. Witness
Allan, S., 2006. Online News: Journalism and the Internet. Open University Press.
Bachmaier, L., 2019. Rights and Methods to Challenge Evidence and Witnesses in Civil Law Jurisdictions. In: D.K. Brown, J.I. Turner and B. Weisser, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Processes. Oxford University Press.
Balbi, G., and Magaudda, P., 2018. A History of Digital Media: An Intermedia and Global Perspective. New York: Routledge.
Barrett, J., 2011. Open Justice or Open Season? Developments in Judicial Engagement with Social Media. Queensland University of Technology Law and Justice Journal, 11(1), 1–8.
Bartels, L., and Lee, J., 2013. Jurors Using Social Media in Our Courts: Challenges and Responses. Journal of Judicial Administration, 23, 35–57.
Bauman, Z., 2007. Konsumtionsliv. Göteborg: Daidalos.
Bentham, J., 1843a. Bentham’s draught for the organization of judicial establishments, compared with that of the national assembly. In: J. Bowring, ed., Works of Jeremy Bentham. Edinburgh: William Tait.
Bentham, J., 1843b. Principles of Judicial Procedure. In: J. Bowring, ed., Works of Jeremy Bentham. Edinburgh: William Tait.
Bernzen, A.K., 2018. The court and the camera: should privacy be a concern in court reporting? Journal of Media Law, 10(1), 37–48.
Biber, K., 2013. In Crime’s Archive: The Cultural Afterlife of Criminal Evidence. The British Journal of Criminology, 53(6), 1033–49.
Biber, K., 2018. Dignity in the digital age: Broadcasting the Oscar Pistorius trial. Crime, Media, Culture, 15, 401–22.
Birbili, M., 2000. Translating from one language to another. Social research update, 31, 1–7.
Blumer, H., 1959. Symbolic Interactionism. Englewoods Cliff: Prentice-Hall.
Boas, S., 2020. Følg sagen mod Nedim Yasars formodede drabsmænd. BT [online], 20 January. Available at: https://www.bt.dk/krimi/foelg-sagen-mod-nedim-yasars-formodede-drabsmaend
Bogoch, B., and Peleg, A., 2014. Law in the age of media logic. In: K. Lundby, ed., Mediatization of Communication. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Bosland, J., and Townend, J., 2018. Open Justice, Transparency and the Media: Representing the Public Interest in the Physical and Virtual Courtroom. Communications Law, 23(4), 183–202.
Carroll, B., 2014. Writing and Editing for Digital Media. London: Routledge.
Charmaz, K., 2006. Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. London: Sage.
Danmarks Domstole, 2023. Ret Godt at Vide [online]. Copenhague: Domstolsstyrelsen. Available at: https://retgodtatvide.dk/
DR Audience Research Department, 2021. Media Development 2021. Copenhagen: DR Medieforskning.
Ericson, R.V., Baranek, M.P., and Chan, J.B.L., eds., 1991. Representing Order: Crime, law, and justice in the news media. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR). Rome, 4 November 1950.
Fangen, K., 2005. Deltagande Observation. Malmö: Liber Ekonomi.
Fein, S., McCloskey, A.L., and Tomlinson, T.M., 1997. Can the Jury Disregard that Information? The Use of Suspicion to Reduce the Prejudicial Effects of Pretrial Publicity and Inadmissible Testimony. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 1215–26.
Findlay, L., 2015. Courting Social Media in Australia’s Criminal Courtrooms: The Continuing Tension between Promoting Open Justice and Protecting Procedural Integrity. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 27(2), 237–46.
Flower, L., 2023. Constructing clickable criminal trials: framing trials and legal professionals in digital news reports. Emotions and Society, 1–19.
Flower, L., and Ahlefeldt, M.S., 2021. The criminal trial as a live event: Exploring how and why live blogs change the professional practices of judges, defence lawyers and prosecutors. Media, Culture & Society, 43(4), 1480–96.
Garcia-Blanco, I., and Bennett, L., 2018. Between a “media circus” and “seeing justice being done”: Metajournalistic discourse and the transparency of justice in the debate on filming trials in British newspapers. Journalism, 22(1).
Gerbner, G., 1979. Trial by Television: Are We at the Point of No Return. Judicature, 63(9), 416–26.
Goehler, R.M., Dias, M.L., and Bralow, D., 2010. The Legal Case for Twitter in the Courtroom. Communications Lawyer, 27(1), 14–17.
Gubrium, J.F., and Holstein, J.A., 1997. The New Language of Qualitative Method. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hall, S., 1974. Deviance, Politics, and the Media. In: P. Rock and M. McIntosh, eds., Deviance and Social Control. London: Tavistock.
Hall-Coates, S., 2015. Following Digital Media into the Courtroom: Publicity and the open court principle in the information age. Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies, 24, 101–39.
Hans, V.P., and Dee, J.L., 1991. Media Coverage of Law: Its Impact on Juries and the Public. American Behavioral Scientist, 35(2), 136–49.
Harvey, W.S., 2011. Strategies for conducting elite interviews. Qualitative Research, 11, 431–41.
Holstein, J.A., and Gubrium, J.F., 1995. The active interview. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Jaconelli, J., 2002. Open Justice: A critique of the public trial. Oxford University Press.
Janoski-Haehlen, E.M., 2011. The Courts are All a Twitter: The Implications of Social Media Use in the Courts. Valparaiso University Law Review, 46(1), 43–68.
Johnston, A., and Wallace, A., 2015. Tweeting from Court: New Guidelines for Modern Media. Media Arts Law Review, 20(1), 15–32.
Johnston, J., 2018. “Three phases of courts” publicity: reconfiguring Bentham’s open justice in the twenty-first century. International Journal of Law in Context, 14, 525–38.
Karlsson, M., 2011. The Immediacy of Online News, the Visibility of Journalistic Processes and a Restructuring of Journalistic Authority. Journalism, 12(3), 279–95.
Keyzer, P., et al., 2013. The courts and social media: what do judges and court workers think. Judicial Officers’ Bulletin, 25(6), 47–51.
Krawitz, M., 2013. Stop the Presses, But Not the Tweets: Why Australian Judicial Officials Should Permit Journalists to Use Social Media in the Courtroom. Flinders Law Journal, 15, 1–39.
Kvale, S., 1997. Den kvalitativa forskningsintervjun. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Lambert, P., 2011. Courting Publicity: Twitter and Television Cameras in Court. Oxford: Bloomsbury Professional.
Lyon, D., 2001. Surveillance Society: Monitoring everyday life. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Lyon, D., 2002. Surveillance studies: Understanding visibility, mobility and the phenetic fix. Surveillance and Society, 1(1).
Marder, N.S., 2012. The Conundrum of Cameras in the Courtroom. Arizona State Law Journal, 44, 1489–574.
Mason, P., 2000. Lights, Camera, Justice? Cameras in the Courtroom: An Outline of the Issues. Crime Prevention and Community Safety, 2, 23–34.
McKay, C., 2015. Video Links from Prison: Court “Appearance” within Carceral Space. Law, Culture and the Humanities, 14(2), 242–62.
Moore, S., 2018. Towards a Sociology of Institutional Transparency: Openness, Deception and the Problem of Public Trust. Sociology, 52(2), 416–30.
Moore, S., Clayton, A., and Murphy, H., 2019. Seeing justice done: Courtroom filming and the deceptions of transparency. Crime, Media, Culture, 17(1).
Moran, L.J., 2012. Every Picture Speaks a Thousand Words: Visualizing Judicial Authority in the Press. In: P. Gisler, S.S. Borella and C. Wiedmer, eds., Intersections of Law and Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mulcahy, L., 2010. Legal architecture: Justice, due process and the place of law. London: Routledge.
Nygren, S., 2020. Liverapportering från Wilmarättegångens sista dag. Aftonbladet [online], 16 juni. Available at: https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/RRkgVa/liverapportering-fran-wilmarattegangens-sista-dag
Ohlsson, J., 2021. Mediebarometern 2020. Gothenburg: Nordicom/Gothenburg University.
Packer, C., 2013. Should Courtroom Observers Be Allowed to Use Their Smartphones and Computers in Court? An Examination of the Arguments. American Journal of Trial Advocacy, 36, 573–95.
Resnick, J., 2013. The Democracy in Courts: Jeremy Bentham, “Publicity”, and the Privatization of Process in the Twenty-First Century. NoFo: An Interdisciplinary Journal or Law and Justice, 10, 77–119.
Rodrick, S., 2014. Achieving the Aims of Open Justice – The Relationship between the Courts, the Media and the Public. Deakin Law Review, 19(1), 123–62.
Schofield, P., 2006. Utility and Democracy: The political thought of Jeremy Bentham. Oxford University Press.
SFS. 1942:740. Rättegångsbalken. Stockholm: Swedish Ministry of Justice.
Small, T.A., and Puddister, K., 2020. Play-by-Play Justice: Tweeting Criminal Trials in the Digital Age. Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société, 35(1), 1–22.
Smith Fullerton, R., and Jones Patterson, M., 2021. Murder in our Midst: Comparing Crime Coverage Ethics in an Age of Globalized News. Oxford University Press.
Sturges, J.E., and Hanrahan, K.J., 2004. Comparing telephone and face-to-face qualitative interviewing: A research note. Qualitative Research, 4(1), 107–18.
Taneja, H., et al., 2012. Media consumption across platforms: Identifying user-defined repertoires. New Media and Society, 14(6), 951–68.
Taylor, C., 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.
Thompson, E., 2011. Does the Open Justice Principle Require Cameras to be Permitted in the Courtroom and the Broadcasting of Legal Proceedings. Journal of Media Law, 3(2), 211–36.
Thurman, N., and Walters, A., 2013. Live Blogging – Digital Journalism’s Pivotal Platform? A Case Study of the Production, Consumption and Form of Live Blogs at Guardian.co.uk. Digital Journalism, 1(1), 82–101.
Transparency International, 2020. Corruption Perceptions Index 2019.
Twining, W., 1985. Theories of Evidence. Bentham and Wigmore. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Van Dijk, J., 2020. The Digital Divide. Cambridge: Polity Press.
van Rees, K., and van Eijck, K., 2003. Media repertoires of selective audiences: the impact of status, gender, and age on media use. Poetics, 31(5–6), 465–90.
Wahl-Jorgensen, K., Bennett, L.K., and Cable, J., 2017. Surveillance Normalization and Critique. Digital Journalism, 5(3), 386–403.
World Values Survey Association, 2020. World Values Survey Wave 7.
Wu, J., et al., 2022. Virtual meetings promise to eliminate geographical and administrative barriers and increase accessibility, diversity and inclusivity. Nature Biotechnology, 40(1), 133–37.
Youm, K.H., 2012. Cameras in the Courtroom in the Twenty-First Century: The U.S. Supreme Court Learning from Abroad. Brigham Young University Law Review, 2012(6), 1989–2032.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Lisa Flower
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
OSLS strictly respects intellectual property rights and it is our policy that the author retains copyright, and articles are made available under a Creative Commons licence. The Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution No-Derivatives licence is our default licence, further details available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 If this is not acceptable to you, please contact us.
The non-exclusive permission you grant to us includes the rights to disseminate the bibliographic details of the article, including the abstract supplied by you, and to authorise others, including bibliographic databases, indexing and contents alerting services, to copy and communicate these details.
For information on how to share and store your own article at each stage of production from submission to final publication, please read our Self-Archiving and Sharing policy.
The Copyright Notice showing the author and co-authors, and the Creative Commons license will be displayed on the article, and you must agree to this as part of the submission process. Please ensure that all co-authors are properly attributed and that they understand and accept these terms.
