Submission to the Future of the Media Commission (original) (raw)
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Changing practices of journalism
2011
Those who consider democracy as a fundamental principle for society have to monitor carefully the status of journalism. As we trust our elected politicians to represent us and our core interests in policy-related issues, we also attribute journalists a core position within that process. Journalism provides the necessary information to citizens to form opinions and to take decisions. Journalism is therefore a key element in democratic societies since journalists have the moral and ethical duty to provide correct and relevant information, and to analyze factual information in context within a critical perspective. In that perspective, the media as representatives of the Fourth Estate, have the obligation to monitor public affairs and to make sure that political or business elites do not cross the borders of their power. In addition to these tasks and functions, as Peter Dahlgren succinctly adds, the democratic role of journalism should even go beyond the information provision and watchdog function: 'It must also touch us, inspire us and nourish our daily democratic horizons' (Dahlgren 2009: 146). In recent years, the journalistic field was challenged by a number of critical developments, among which the ongoing diffusion of interactive technologies, digitization of messages and convergence of media formats are clearly some of the most crucial ones. According to new media proponents, interactive media applications clearly democratize representation by making it a more direct relationship: as citizens gain access to inexpensive communication technologies the gatekeeping monopoly once enjoyed by editors and broadcasters is waning (Gurevitz et al. 2009; Coleman 2005). The Internet has indeed shifted communication to a much more personalized level, and both media and politicians are forced to address more channels in order to compete for the attention of a more fragmented audience, as well as target their messages to more fragmented groups than ever before. Therefore, the new media applications could be called the Fifth Estate, since they possess several key distinctive and important characteristics such as the ability to support institutions and individuals to enhance their 'communicative power' with opportunities to network within and beyond various institutional arenas, and the provision of capabilities that enable the creation of networks of individuals which have a public, social benefit (e.g. through social networking websites) (Dutton 2008). At the same time, however, although there are major changes in the consumption of news and information (Meijer 2006; Mindich 2004; Jenkins 2006), a large majority of the public in many European countries still counts on traditional and professional media for information on political, cultural, economic and societal issues. Indeed, the Internet may have admitted an impressive number of alternative information channels, and the public may have been attributed with more access than ever before to participate in the news production cycle, but traditional journalists in traditional news media still keep their role as main gatekeepers (Domingo et al. 2008). Dynamics of Journalistic Professionalization: Who Are the Professional Journalists Then and Now? Any observer of recent developments and challenges in the media sphere, who keeps a detached and
The potential of journalists to build a habit of participative and informed political discussion between government and citizens and between citizens and citizens has been eroded by a breakdown in trust between citizens and journalists. This breakdown is in part due to journalists being seen as experts favouring other experts as sources and marginalising the views of citizens – not just in relation to the covering of events but also in the investigation of possible solutions to public problem solving. This mirrors technocratic and expert-driven tendencies in government which further alienate citizens from the political process. This essay uses three theoretical frameworks – democratic professionalism, public journalism and deliberative democracy – to explore the effects of expert-driven professionalism both in the state and in journalism and the implications of this approach for the relationship between journalists and citizens. It proposes that a shift in the way journalists consider their professional role could lead to a re-assessment of the political work of journalists and the political work of citizens and build new habits of participation and discussion in the political process of communities.
The Journalistic Field in a Time of Mediatization
The rise of digital technologies is having a profound impact on the practice and profession of journalism. As a consequence, scholars from a variety of disciplines have fashioned unique but complimentary perspectives to help explain the nature and significance of this transformation. Field theory is a prominent lens through which media sociologists have viewed the dynamics and transformations surrounding the practice and profession of journalism. More recently, communications scholars have developed theories of mediatization to explain the transformations brought about by the ubiquity of media throughout social life. While Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory offers a well-developed toolkit to address the dialectical relationship between structures and practices, its treatment of technology and conceptualization of the field are arguably less well suited to explain the convergent, hyper-mediated nature of contemporary social relations. By contrast, more recent theories of mediatization of...
Advancing Journalism and Communication Research: New Concepts, Theories, and Pathways
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 2020
This Special Issue tackles the important challenge of engaging with and advancing theoretical and conceptual debates on current and future direction of journalism and communication studies in a rapidly changing media landscape. As the global digital ecosystem reconfigures empirical realities in media and communication (Carlson & Lewis, 2015; Örnebring et al., 2018; van Dijck, 2013; Zelizer, 2004), established analytical frameworks for media production and professional practice, as well as for media circulation and representation, cannot be taken for granted anymore. In fact, changes in media landscapes associated with globalization and digitization demand new conceptual frameworks and call for reflexive understandings of what changes and what persists in professional practice, media industries, and journalistic cultures more widely. Most importantly, globalization has exposed the Western bias of much of the field's theoretical and conceptual work (Gunaratne, 2010; Willems, 2014), which privileges and universalizes Western media, journalism practices, and politics. With Westerncentrism reproduced over generations of scholars, the inequality between "the West" and "the rest" has divided our disciplinary viewpoint between the theory-producing West and the empirically testing "rest of the world" as a matter of deviation from standard models. The normalization of this hierarchical divide is the first assumption that this special issue challenges. Alongside changes associated with globalization, digitization has destabilized much of what is taken for granted in journalism and communication studies, including theories and concepts that have unproblematically reproduced assumptions about the hegemony of legacy media, journalistic practice as a clearly defined professional practice, and the uncompromising divides between media professionals and audiences (
Engaging the media intellectually: a fraught but necessary activity
This article looks at three moments of interface between academics/intellectuals/ experts and the news media and argues that the fraught interactions between these parties go much deeper than just different styles of operation. It argues that the 'professional frame' as a method of engagement with the media is inadequate and that to draw attention to the discursive and interpretive powers of journalism, two subjects could be activated that have currency in both academic work and in journalistic circles. These two points of commonality are the concern around what constitutes "public" and the processes of narrative and storytelling. a.garman@ru.ac.za garmana@hse.pg.wits.ac.za 083-4095591 1 To start, an anecdote: