Project-Based Journalism. What International Aid Does to Media (Jordan, Tunisia)

This article looks at contemporary transformations in journalism through the lens of international support to media. The aim is to understand what this phenomenon says about the journalistic profession and what it does to the profession. The main hypothesis is to demonstrate that this assistance contributes to the emergence of a ‘project-based journalism’. The author proposes a comparative analysis of this phenomenon based on a research conducted in Tunisia and Jordan among digital media that receive grants from international organisations. The article contributes both to the sociology of journalism, by analysing the changing boundaries of the profession and its dependence on other social groups (in this case, aid actors), and to the sociology of the international, by proposing a localised and comparative analysis of a certain form of transnational public action. The study sheds light on the process of bureaucratisation of journalism as a result of foreign aid, and the spread of an entrepreneurial logic within newsrooms, all dynamics that vary according to the way in which journalists appropriate this aid.