Maarit Jaakkola is a Doctor of Social Sciences (Journalism) working as the Co-Director at the Nordic Information Centre of Media and Communication Research Nordicom at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. She is also an Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication (JMG) at the University of Gothenburg.
Jaakkola's research is located at the intersection between media, culture and learning. In her research, Jaakkola is searching for connections between professional and non-professional media production, public and informal pedagogies, as well as cultural-studies approaches, preferring comparative studies in the Nordic region.
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Background
Maarit Jaakkola defended her doctoral thesis The contested autonomy of arts and journalism: Change and continuity in the dual professionalism of cultural journalism at the University of Tampere in 2015. She holds a Licentiate's and a Master's degree in Social Sciences and a Master's degree in Philosophy. She is also a trained journalist and teacher and has a professional diploma in educational management.
Previously, Jaakkola worked as a journalist for the national daily Helsingin Sanomat and Finnish Press and Photo Agency STT. She has also worked as a teacher and head of the media programme at Finnish upper secondary schools specialised in media and communication. Furthermore, Jaakkola has professional experience as a press officer and teachers' educator.
Research interests
Jaakkola's research is focused on different aspects of specialised journalism such as cultural journalism, as well as journalistic professionalism, cultural intermediation, cultural produsage and digital pedagogies. Further areas of research include the signature pedagogies of journalism education, media and information literacy and e-learning.
Recently, Jaakkola has been studying the Nordic journalism education from a comparative perspective, cultural journalism in the Nordic countries and vernacular reviewing on YouTube, Vimeo and Instagram.
Forthcoming publications
Jaakkola, M. (2020). Young Voices, New Insights? Child Reviewers as Vernacular Reviewers of Cultural Products. In N.N. Kristensen, U. From & H.K. Haastrup (Eds.), Rethinking Cultural Critique: New Voices in the Digital Age. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Other activities
Currently, Jaakkola is the editor-in-chief of NordMedia Network, a digital platform for Nordic media researchers. Jaakkola is also the book reviews editor of the international scientific peer-reviewed journal in media and communication research, Nordicom Review. In 2016–2018, Jaakkola was the editor of Nordicom Information, an academic journal of media and communication published in 1979–2018 in English and Scandinavian languages.
Jaakkola is involved, among other things, in the following network activities:
- The Nordic Collaboration Committee for Journalism Education, chair
- Media and Information Literacy and Innovative Teaching Methods Laboratory (MIL+LAB), an Erasmus+ cooperation project between four universities around the Baltic Sea, board member
- EU Kids Online, the Swedish national research network, coordinator
- The Media & Learning Association, board member
- UNESCO's Media and Information Literacy Expansion (MILx) Research and Development Consortium, member
- Member of the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal Kulttuurintutkimus (Cultural Studies)
- The Swedish Film Institute, member of the Council of Film Pedagogy
- Local Journalism for All Network at Lindholmen Science Park, member
- The National Library of Sweden, member of the group of legal deposit and strategic collections within the Forum of national library cooperation and development (–2020)
Jaakkola is also working as a Lecturer in Journalism at Tampere University in Finland.
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