Digital Journalism Studies the Key Concepts
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Digital Journalism Studies The Key Concepts FRANKLIN, Bob and CANTER, Lily <http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5708-2420> Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/26994/ This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published version FRANKLIN, Bob and CANTER, Lily (2019). Digital Journalism Studies The Key Concepts. Routledge key guides . Routledge. Copyright and re-use policy See http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive http://shura.shu.ac.uk <BOOK-PART><BOOK-PART-META><TITLE>The key concepts</TITLE></BOOK- PART-META></BOOK-PART> <BOOK-PART><BOOK-PART-META><TITLE>Actants</TITLE></BOOK-PART- META> <BODY>In a special issue of the journal Digital Journalism, focused on reconceptualizsing key theoretical changes reflecting the development of Digital Journalism Studies, Seth Lewis and Oscar Westlund seek to clarify the role of what they term the “four A’s” – namely the human actors, non-human technological actants, audiences and the involvement of all three groups in the activities of news production (Lewis and Westlund, 2014). Like Primo and Zago, Lewis and Westlund argue that innovations in computational software require scholars of digital journalism to interrogate not simply who but what is involved in news production and to establish how non-human actants are disrupting established journalism practices (Primo and Zago, 2015: 38). The examples of technological actants which that they offer embrace algorithms, networks and content management systems. Their broader concern is to create a research agenda with a “sociotechnical emphasis” which more fully emphasiseizes the role of technology in news production processes not by downplaying the role of human actors but by foregrounding “technologies and technologists as key aspects of study”..” Such an emphasis does not imply a technologically determinist view, however, since the technological actants are programmed by human actors who are “socially constructed” to meet journalistic, commercial, and technological purposes within news organizzations (Lewis and Westlund, 2014; sSee also Actor Network Theory).</BODY> <BACK> <REF-LIST><TITLE>Further readingKey sources</TITLE> Lewis, S. C. and Westlund, O.. 2014 “Actors, Actants, Audiences and Activities in Cross- Media News Work: A Matrix and Research Agenda” Digital Journalism 3(1): 19–37. Primo, A. and Zago, G.. 2015 “Who and What Do Journalism?” Digital Journalism 3(1): 38– 52.</REF-LIST> </BACK> </BOOK-PART> <BOOK-PART><BOOK-PART-META><TITLE>Actor Network Theory</TITLE></BOOK-PART-META> <BODY>Actor Network Theory (ANT) emerged in the 1980s through the work of Bruno Latour (1987). Concerned with examining technological innovation and broader sociotechnical processes, ANT emphasiseizes the historical context in which scientific innovations emerge and, significantly, it assigns agency to human and non-human actors in networks where non-human agents or actants include machines, animals, networks, texts and algorithms. Actors and actants are assigned equal agency and integrated into the same conceptual framework. John Law describes ANT as, <DISP-QUOTE>… a disparate family of material-semiotic tools, sensibilities and methods of analysis that treat everything in the social and natural worlds as a continuously generated effect of the webs of relations within which they are located. It assumes that nothing has reality or form outside the enactment of those relations. <ATTRIB>(Law cited in Banks, 2011)</ATTRIB></DISP-QUOTE> ANT is often counter posed to accounts of scientific development which that over emphasiseize the role of individual human actors while disregarding actants and their network context. Attributing the theory of gravitation to Newton, for example, ignores his social context, his scientific colleagues, his use and reliance on “Euclidean geometry, Kepler’s astronomy, Galileo’s mechanics, his tools, the details of his lab, cultural factors and environmental restrictions on him” (David, 2007), along with a host of other technical and non-technical elements which ANT would describe and consider closely. ANT has been “scathingly criticized” for: assigning agency to nonhuman actors; assuming that all actors are equal within the network: being anti-humanist; being managerialist; and representing the powerful while ignoring the impact of race, gender and class (Crawford, 2004).</BODY> <BACK> <REF-LIST><TITLE>Further readingKey sources</TITLE> Banks, D. 2011 “A Brief Summary of Actor Network Theory” Cyborology 21st December https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/12/02/a-brief-summary-of-actor-network- theory/ David, L., 2007 “Actor-Network Theory (ANT)” Learning Theories, 23rd March https://www.learning-theories.com/actor-network-theory-ant.html Latour, B.. 1987 Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.</REF-LIST> </BACK> </BOOK-PART> <BOOK-PART><BOOK-PART-META><TITLE>Advertising</TITLE></BOOK-PART- META> <BODY>Until early in the new millennium, advertising revenues provided the life blood for all commercial media and constituted an essential resource to finance the researching, writing and distribution of news and other editorial content. By offsetting production costs, advertising also reduced the price of access to media for audiences. Across the 20th century, legacy media enjoyed expansive advertising revenues to fund their activities; advertising, for example, accounted for an average 80 per cent of local newspapers’ revenues and 100 per cent of the burgeoning free local newspapers (Franklin, 2006: 8). Advertising constituted the crucial element in the profitability of national, regional and local newspapers, delivering profits of 25– 35 per cent on investment; exceptionally high rates of return compared to many other industries; (Franklin, 2008: 13). But developments in digital media technologies disrupted (see disruption) this “advertising led” business model and created intensely competitive pressures for advertising revenues from news organisations publishing online, news updates on mobile devices, news aggregators such as Google News and micro blogging sites such as Twitter – and all this in the context of declining circulations and readers, as well as growing concerns with the legitimacy and credibility of news organisations and fake news (Chyi, Lewis and Nan, 2012; McNair, 2017; Starr, 2009: 28). These trends have been exacerbated and accelerated by the economic Commented [Q1]: Q: The year for “McNair, 2018” has been changed to 2017 to match the entry in recession beginning in 2007. Pew’s State of the News Media 2013 report optimistically the references list. Please provide revisions if this is incorrect. suggested that newspapers’ advertising revenues were “stabilizing but still threatened” despite a fall in print advertising for a sixth consecutive year and by a substantial $1.8 billion (8 per cent) in 2013. Measured by revenues, the newspaper industry in the USA has shrunk to 60 per cent of its size a decade ago (Edmonds, Guskin, Mitchell and Jurkowitz, 2013: 8). Despite this sustained decline in advertising revenues since the emergence of online news media, there seems to be no consensus within the academy or journalism industry about advertising’s role in resourcing a viable journalism or the consequences of declining advertising revenues for such a prospect. Picard, for example, celebrates the massively enhanced plurality of revenue sources which have replaced or supplemented advertising as news providers become “less dependent on any one form of funding than they have been for about 150 years” (Picard, 2016: 12–22). These multiple revenue streams include “readers and advertisers, events and e- commerce … foundations and sponsors, and from related commercial services such as web hosting” (Picard, 2016: 12–22). By contrast, Bakker argues that the much diminished revenues from advertising oblige news organizations to produce cheaper news content using “aggregation, content farms and Huffinization” which have given rise to a new “low pay and no-pay journalism” which is staffed by “part timers and amateurs” (Bakker, 2012: 627). One unequivocal trend since the decline of media reliance on traditional advertising has been the rapid growth of native advertising since the advent of online media, although this raises serious journalistic concerns about the proximity, independence and veracity of editorial when the “wall” between advertising and journalistic content collapses so totally (Lynch, 2018). Commented [Y2]: Typesetter: Please add 'and Sirrah' to this citation before the comma See also Native advertising</BODY> <BACK> <REF-LIST><TITLE>Further readingKey sources</TITLE> Bakker, P.. 2012 “Aggregation, Content Farms and Huffinization: The Rise of Low Pay and No-Pay Journalism” Journalism Practice 6(5–6): 627–637. Edmonds, R., Guskin, E., Mitchell, A. and Jurkowitz, M. 2013 “Newspapers: Stabilizing but Still Threatened” The State of the News Media 2013 PEW Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, http://stateofthemedia.org/2013/newspapers-stabilizing-but-still- threatened/ Franklin, B.. (Ed) 2008 Pulling Newspapers Apart: Analysing Print Journalism. London: Routledge. Lynch, L. and Sirrah, A. 2018 Native Advertising: Advertorial Disruption in the 21st Century News Feed. London: Routledge. Picard, R.. 2016 “Twilight or New Dawn of Journalism? Evidence from