Rethinking journalism: Perspectives of roles, relevance

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Notions of life and death hold a prominent place in our metaphorical repertoires.As oppositional pairs go, there are few more stark and palpable, and this is probably why it’s not only tempting but also persuasive to present the claim for journalism’s worth in similar terms. If journalism is indeed the ‘lifeblood of democracy’ and all

If journalism is indeed the ‘lifeblood of democracy’ and all this implies, societies with an unhealthy press are evidently at risk. Pleas for solutions to improve journalism’s conditions therefore, tend to go hand in hand with doomsday scenarios about the broader losses for society if journalism-as-we-knowit should cease to exist. While such thinking may not always be put in austere terms,it is nonetheless a constitutive part of the discourse that surrounds journalism as well as the basis for many concerns over its future. Journalism has long and successfully claimed to be ‘the primary sense-making

Journalism has long and successfully claimed to be ‘the primary sense-making practice of modernity’ (Hartley, 1996, p. 12). While it has always been one sense-making practice among many interrelated others, its value to society has been and still is widely acknowledged, not least by journalists, politicians, and journalism scholars. In the course of its modernist professional project, journalism carved

 In the course of its modernist professional project, journalism carved out a specific place and function in democratic societies, fulfilling distinctive needs for citizens. This period, which took hold over the course of the twentieth century in much of the Western world, witnessed the rise of the mass press as well as the appearance of many of the paradigmatic claims about journalism’s value and necessity (Broersma, 2007), which still hold sway to this day. This was a time of grand theories and strong normative stances, and for the most part, such claims seemed laudable and worth striving towards, albeit challenging to realize in practice.

While admittedly fairly complicated and nuanced, it nonetheless remains that a key characteristic of this period was the appearance of durability and predictability when it came to many social institutions, forms of and approaches to knowledge (Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994), including those associated with journalism. However, as we move beyond modernity – late, reflexive, liquid, post- or otherwise – this stability is increasingly challenged. Public trust and reliance on the ‘expert’ forms and institutions that modernity helped create is now continually being re-assessed as people turn to emerging alternatives. In addition, the development of personal media devices, 4G telecommunications, and Web 1.0, 2.0 and(soon) 3.0 fundamentally disrupt previous patterns of information provision and circulation. With this backdrop, it is no wonder that the tenor of post-millennial discussion about the news industry has been characterized by an emphasis on change. Technological advancement and economic models are the typical culpritsidentified in terms of how they are disrupting journalism practice and the news,and impacting journalism’s ability – both positively and negatively – to deliver on its historical promises.

From rethinking to rethinking again
As we argued in the introduction to Rethinking Journalism, which can be seen as a precursor to this collection, such changes are not merely incremental or simply discursive; they are structural and strike journalism at its core. Whereas modernist discourses tend to anticipate change in terms of adaptation and subsequent progression, this now seems increasingly untenable (Broersma and Peters, 2013). Two intertwined trends have profoundly disturbed the relationship between journalism and its publics, who are, of course, also its customers. The de-industrialization of information and de-ritualization of audiences in contemporary digital media environments challenge not only what news is, but also what it can be.In this sense, the rise of the mass press in modernity was less about the inherent value of its sense-making properties as it was a result of the logic of industrialization being brought to information.
The ‘trick’ of journalism’s business model was getting mass audiences to pay for a product (through their presence as consumers for advertisers, members of the tax and licence-fee-paying public, or actively via subscriptions), which often contained little information they needed and which they couldn’t see in advance. However, the product as a whole, ‘the news’, performed a host of worthwhile informative and social functions that became part and parcel of daily life. It did everything from conveying information about current affairs,social issues, weather reports, and where to find jobs and housing to providing topics for conversation, putting one in touch with one’s community, and structuring and giving meaning to everyday life. In short, journalism connected audiences within democratic market societies. With the decline of mass media monopolies,this industrial logic of journalism seems to be outdated, its core functions for people gradually eroded (Broersma and Peters, 2013)
Read the full paper here:  rethinking_journalism_again_towards_a_fu
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