University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 The Rise of Brand Journalism: Understanding the Discursive Dimensions of Collectivity in the Age of Convergence Kyung Lee University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Lee, Kyung, "The Rise of Brand Journalism: Understanding the Discursive Dimensions of Collectivity in the Age of Convergence" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1833. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1833 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1833 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Rise of Brand Journalism: Understanding the Discursive Dimensions of Collectivity in the Age of Convergence Abstract How does today’s convergence culture affect the communities that evolve in its wake when the hybridization of formerly distinct cultural forms, practices and professions is not only possible but actively promoted by various individuals, organizations and institutions? This dissertation answers this question through a study of one particular form of emergent collectivity – that uniting journalism and public relations under the label of “brand journalism.” It examines how this hybridization practice occurs, what it suggests about the existing communities of cultural producers, and how it changes the established power relations between different groups. It explains the processes through which a hybrid “interpretive community”--brand journalism--comes into existence, establishes its identity and authority as a collective, challenging the boundaries between existing communities. In particular, this dissertation studies the tensions over cultural authority, identity and discursive power that play into the rise of hybrid cultural practices by examining three sets of discursive qualities of the brand journalism community: 1) articulated vs.