‘For Your Information’ – The Impact of Freedom of Information Legislation on Journalism Practice and Content in Western Australia and Sweden

Abstract

This thesis examines what impact the vastly different Freedom of Information (FoI) regimes in Australia (specifically Western Australia) and Sweden have on journalistic practice and content in the two countries. While there is extensive literature on FoI itself, very little work has been done on the extent to which FoI is utilised as a journalistic tool to obtain information, how it is used, and what impact, if any, it has on the end product – the published stories. The project comprises three separate studies. Two of the studies deal with journalistic practice based on FoI use in two newsrooms (one radio, one newspaper) in Perth, Western Australia and two comparable newsrooms in Karlstad, Sweden. The third study is a content analysis of the two newspapers in the project. \n \nThe first chapter outlines the background and compares the different approaches to FoI in Western Australia and Sweden. The chapter also puts the two FoI Acts into perspective by providing an international overview. Chapter two describes the overall methodology of the project and explains its rationale. Chapters three, four and five detail the methodologies behind each study and present the findings. Finally, in the conclusion, the most important findings of the project are summarised and future areas of study are identified.

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