aristotle university of thessaloniki faculty of economic and political sciences department of ...

77 Pages·2017·3.7 MB·English

by  Αντωνης Νταλαμπιρας

ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI
FACULTY OF ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT OF JOURNALISM & MASS COMMUNICATIONS
MA IN DIGITAL MEDIA COMMUNICATION & JOURNALISM
MA DISSERTATION :
Causes and Effects of the Journalist Job-Burnout
“Burnout in Greek Journalists during the years of Crisis”
Supervisor : Associate Professor Antonis Gardikiotis
MA Student : Elina Ntalampira
Thessaloniki 2017
Contents
Acknowledgements..............................................................................1-2
Abstract …..........................................................................................2
Introduction ….....................................................................................2-4
Job Stress...............................................................................4
1.1The notion of stress...............................................................5-7
1.2Definition of the work-related stress.....................................7-10
1.3How the work-related stress is created..................................11-16
1.4Effects and Symptoms of work-related stress........................16-18
1.5Stress Management................................................................18-23
Burnout Syndrome.................................................................23-24
2.1Historical Review of Burnout Syndrome..............................24-26
2.2Burnout Definition................................................................27-28
2.3Burnout Symptoms................................................................28
2.4The organizational and business cost....................................29-33
2.5The economic crisis in Greece..............................................33-34
2.6Dealing Burnout....................................................................34-37
2.7The theoretical models of burnout........................................38-41
Methodology..........................................................................41-42
2.8Aim of study..........................................................................42
2.9Methodological Tools............................................................42-43
3.0Questionnaire........................................................................42-44
3.1Procedure of Collection and Distribution.............................43-44
3.2Data Analysis Strategy..........................................................44-46
Findings/Results....................................................................46-61
3.3Analysis & Discussion........................................................62-66
Suggestions & Conclusions..............................................................67-69
Bibliography.....................................................................................69-72
Appendix...........................................................................................72-77
Acknowledgements

In the context of the postgraduate program entitled “MA in Digital Media, Communication and
Journalism” of the Department of Journalism and Mass Media Communications (AUTh), a thesis
was conducted with the following title : “Burnout in Greek Journalists during the years of crisis”. I
would like to thank everyone involved in carrying out this work because without their help it would
not be possible to contract it. In particular, I would like to kindly thank my supervisor Associate
Professor Antonis Gardikiotis for the advice and guidance he offered me during the preparation of
my premise.
I warmly thank Nikolaos Tsigilis for the comments and observations in order to complete this
study. Furthermore, I would like to thank everyone who helped and agreed to participate in the
research, offering some of their time to complete the questionnaire.
Finally, I owe a big thanks to my family and friends who supported me psychologically and
emotionally. *PS*: This work is dedicated to my former editor-in-chief of the newspaper 'To Vima',
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Dimitris Charalambous, who died at the age of 36, he is not with us anymore and I owe to him my
very first steps in journalism.
Abstract
The present study aims to provide an empirical research relating to the experience of burnout in
journalists of various specialties and mediums. The methodology adopted contains three main
elements: sampling the literature, screening the literature, and extracting data. Results indicate that
there is a very interesting transition in the role of journalism through the years of crisis. Women are
more vulnerable than men in burnout, while younger journalists are keen on leaving the profession
sooner than the older ones due to the tense working conditions and stress. The medium with the less
degree of depersonalization remains the radio because maybe we talk about the technological
advancements of the western world and civilization, while things in third world countries are
adverse. People have no so many choices for receiving information. What is lacking is
consideration of other role groups to broadcast news, such as camera-operators, rethinking of the
journalistic contribution and organizational behavior management. A range of methodological and
theoretical issues and future areas of research are discussed.
Key words: burnout, journalism, professional stress, personal life, organizational cost
Introduction
The concept of burnout appears more and more increasingly in all the workplaces during the
recent years and has particularly worried both the psychologists and sociologists as they have
recognized its important impacts on the individual, the job framework and generally the economy
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and production. Therefore, nowadays, there is strong scientific interest for the study of job burnout
syndrome in health care sector where the phenomenon is more tangible (Anagnostopoulos and
Papadatou, 1992). According to various studies, it has been known that the job burnout syndrome is
more common in some professions such as doctors and nurses. For this reason, the syndrome was
considered as the result of the daily contact with the human pain (Demir and al., 2003).
The term 'burnout' was used for the first time in 1974 by Freudenberger for the description of the
physical and mental symptoms of burnout in health professionals and generally in spaces where
close relationships are created between the workers and the people who are in their need
(Freudenberger, 1974). The job burnout syndrome represents the psychosomatic stress of an
employee and the exhaustion of his personal and mental stocks, in his effort for adjustment to the
daily difficulties, related to his professional activity.

According to Maslach and Jackson (1986), it is a syndrome that consists of three sub-dimensions:
a) The emotional exhaustion which is manifested by a negative distancing from the others and the
work, b) the depersonalization of the self and the other, and c) the sense of reduced personal
achievements namely the fall in capacity and productivity at work. This leads the person to have a
feeling of failure by creating difficulties and effects in areas of everyday life, such as the work,
family, physical and mental well being (Maslach and Jackson, 1986).
Finally, job burnout is associated with a variety of dysfunction markers, such as the depression,
tension, stress, body and relationship problems constituting an aggravating factor for mental health.
With respect to the organizations and frameworks, the employee does not anymore demonstrate
dedication, productivity and creativity (Antoniou, 2006). In addition, the environmental factors of
labor related to job burnout syndrome systematically are emerged as the most significant and
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include the workload, the high stress levels, the conflicts with colleagues, bosses or clients. Also,
the social support taken by the workers from their superiors, the satisfaction from their job, the
balance between work, family and personal development are factors associated with the occurrence
or not of the job burnout. Further developing agents of job burnout are the sense of control and
autonomy, the insufficient study time, the education in communication skills, the organizational
support and the adequate staff and fees (Pappa et al., 2008).
Chapter 1 :
Job Stress
Stress is simply a fact of nature-forces from the outside world affecting the individual. In general,
stress is associated with external and internal factors. The external factors include the physical
environment, the relationships with others, the family and all the situations -challenges, difficulties,
expectations- that we face on a daily basis. The internal factors determine the ability of our body to
respond and deal with the external pressure. Furthermore, they affect the ability of a person to
handle stress including the nutrition, the general health, the emotional well-being and the amount of
sleep and rest he gets (www.medicinet.com).
In the following section, at first is made a presentation of the concept of anxiety nowadays and the
definitions that have been given so far. Then, there is a reference to the dimensions of work-related
stress and the factors responsible for its creation, internal and external, the various symptoms and
consequences for the worker, the family and the organization. The chapter is concluded with a
report to the responses of the work-related stress by the individual itself and the business in which it
works.
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1.1 The notion of stress
The anxiety is an unpleasant feeling, appearing in risky or problematic situations, generally in very
difficult ones. Stress can have psychogenic origin or may be consequence of a physical disorder.
Moreover, it depends on cognitive and emotional processes, person's lifestyle and his perceptions.
Each person has a certain degree of stress, which is considered as normal under certain
circumstances. In some others, however, the increased stress is related with less action and bad
health ( www.psixi.gr/agxos.htm l ).
According to Kandas (1995), the human in various stressful situations he experiences cannot use
the normal mechanisms for the reduction of anxiety, with flee, attack or control -as animals react
under similar conditions; since most sources of anxiety are out of our control or their treatment
involves the creation of new anxiogenic situations due to the rules that regulate our social life. “The
stress arises from man's relationship and interaction with his environment. It can be defined as the
pressure exerted by the environment to the subject. The impact degree of these conditions that cause
stress sources varies from person to person. This influence is determined by the subjective
perceptions of a person in terms of the seriousness of the situation and its potential for tackling”
(Kandas, 1995:32).
“The stress is considered as a state of agony, anxiety and uncertainty. It is experienced as mental
stress, which in turn is defined as a common human experience which is characterized by a fear of
expectation for some unpleasant events in the future” (Anagnostopoulos and Papadatou, 1999:184).
As a defense mechanism and mental state, stress has got a multi factorial basis. Originally, it was
considered as a reaction of every living being under external threats, which is characterized by
transient changes in the normal body functions. A threatening stimulus, depending on its intensity
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and nature, causes many negative emotions such as anxiety, panic and anger. It may also cause
obsessive thoughts, restlessness, poor concentration and other cognitive deficiencies. Other
symptoms include partial awkwardness in movements, hyperactivity or social isolation.
The stress intensity depends not only on the external stimuli but also the endogenous factors (e.g.
personality, experience from previous stressful events, which totally act to the experiencing of a
new threat or the way each person perceives and faces the external stimulus). (Anagnostopoulos and
Papadatou, 1999). Despite the interdisciplinary interest, the notion of stress creates several
difficulties, as there is not a generally accepted theoretical background from all the researchers, so
each of them introduces his own terms for understanding the phenomenon.
According to Papadopoulos (1994), anxiety concerns some “emotional situations of arousal and
intensity and is often a harrowing condition of distress. Characterized by the widespread impression
of a large risk -more or less real, physical or mental and just conscious- to which one feels
weak”(Papadopoulos, 1994:18). Another definition says that “stress is a peculiar experience of high
internal distress, caused by a vague internal threat, which having particular object cannot be avoided
by the person and it is overwhelmed” (Economou, 1994:86).
Clegg (2001) presents stress as “an emotional state (fear, anxiety, insecurity etc.) either transient
and low intense, so is considered as normal, or persistent and high intense, when perceived as
pathological (e.g. anxiety neurosis symptom), which arises as anxious anticipation of imminent
danger or evil or generally unsatisfactory situation and has specific physical and behavioral traits
(e.g. changes in the autonomous nervous system)” (Clegg, 2001).
However, it should be noted that there are many ways to define stress but perhaps the most
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appropriate definition is the one that approximates stress like body response against a claim. Based
on this approach, stress should not be seen and avoided as something negative by definition. This is
a normal reaction of the body to external and internal requirements or even risks and the objective
of this is to help the organism to react (Hofmann 2003, in www.stress.org). If these capabilities can
respond to such a requirement, so that the person can cope with this challenge, the stress is
acceptable. But when the man considers this challenge exhausting, the stress is harmful.
In this sense, therefore, stress represents on the one hand the challenges that stimulate the life
interest, and on the other it refers to the conditions under which people are organically or
psychologically unable to meet the requirements of the environment, fact that leads to depression in
the one of two levels.
Finally, we should clarify that the term of stress is not necessarily of emotional nature. For
instance, stress can cause excessive labor, heat, cold and serious injuries or pains. As anxiety is
named any condition that makes the body mobilize the sources of energy and consume more of it
than in normal situations (Christodoulou, 1982).
1.2 Definition of the work-related stress
One of the environments in which the man moves and operates for the longest period of his life, is
the professional. Nowadays, in the industrialized society we live, the highest proportion of people is
working thus they devote a significant part of their time at work. This is enough to push and stress
them. Most of workers live to work rather than work for a living. They miss the point and interest of
their job while they forget the real reason of working. The new technology, which is supposed to
give us more time for leisure, longevity and happiness, in fact loaded people with higher pressures
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and made our working week more 'big' than ever.
However, the workplace is a confirmation of both the social and professional human capacities.
Unfortunately, we live in a time where one tends to prevail and defeat his colleague thus developing
the individualistic competition. The result of this competition is the swelling of anxiety. “The
stressful conditions may vary in intensity, duration and complexity. These are combined with the
individual personality, sturdiness, experiences and the assessing of the situation's gravity leading to
a series of reactions in physiological, mental and emotional level” (Manos, 1997:224). The
professional stress can be seen as the situation in which stressful conditions are accumulated. Those
are related to work or stress emanating from a particular occupational situation. The work-related
stress is a phenomenon of our time and simultaneously one of the greatest health problems both
mental and physical. Recent studies indicate that one in three people have problems with work-
related stress (www.stress.org).
The work-related stress is according to Beehr and Newman (1978) “a state of interaction between
the work-related factors and the employee, which is experienced as a threat and through it is
differentiated the physical and psychological function of people, departing of normal”(Beehr and
Newman, 1978, in Assimomiti, 2007:92). When the working conditions are experienced as stressful
and threatening, the person activates the immune system and either is adapted to, placed on or
allowed to escape from them. He is often absent from work and shows aversion to the tasks or even
abandon his condition (Grevias, 1991).
Stress is a factor that affects very significantly whether the worker performs his job well and what
the quality of the result is. Because of its complex nature, the effects of stress are very important.
Too much professional stress can lead to burnout. According to Kanda (1995), certain professions
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