The Current State of Journalism – The Trend of Bulvarization of News Genres in Opinionforming Periodicals

The conversion of the media sphere in recent years has been defined, among other things, by the apparent transformation of the formal and content structure of news genres in the press. Opinion-forming periodicals, whose primary principles should be factuality, objectivity, and characteristic logic and conceptual approaches, are forced to adapt to new media trends, such as bulvarization. For this reason, there is a need for a detailed examination of the phenomena of bulvarization in the news genres of serious periodicals with the aim of updating and reevaluating the findings to date on this issue. This scientific study therefore focuses on identifying bulvarization elements present in opinion-forming press, respectively in news journalism. Specifically, this involves reflecting on the thematic (content) focus of individual journalistic texts with regard to specific bulvarization characteristics (narrativity, emotionality, dramatization, simplification, etc.) in connection with the discussed issue of bulvarization in the selected research material – extended news from selected opinion-forming periodicals (the daily newspapers Pravda and SME). The theoretical basis of the presented study further defines key concepts, such as the medium – the press, news genres, or the phenomenon of bulvarization. Mapping and detailing the signs of bulvarization in news articles from opinion-forming periodicals is the focus of the following case study. Similarly, in the context of the issue of bulvarization tendencies in today’s journalistic practice, we consider that the authors of individual linguistic expressions largely use elements of narrativity and dramatization, simplification/trivialization of topics, thereby pointing to current trends and the state of journalistic practice in the Slovak media environment. In the order to confirm this assumption, we apply qualitative content analysis and appropriate logical-conceptual procedures. The aim of this study is to expand scientific knowledge in the field of media studies relating to issues of bulvarization in opinion-forming periodicals in the form of theoretical-empirical reflection.