Andrew Chadwick and Simon Collister (2014) "Boundary-Drawing Power and the Renewal of Professional News Organizations: The Case of the Guardian and the Edward Snowden NSA Leak" International

Boundary-Drawing Power and the Renewal of Professional News Organizations: The Case of the Guardian and the Edward Snowden NSA Leak

Andrew Chadwick and Simon Collister

andrewchadwick.com@andrew_chadwick

APSA Political Communication Section Preconference, The George Washington University, August 27, 2014

simoncollister.com@simoncollister

Andrew Chadwick and Simon Collister (2014). ‘Boundary-Drawing Power and the Renewal of Professional News Organizations: The Case of the Guardian and the Edward Snowden NSA Leak’ International Journal of Communication 8: 2420–2441.

Download: http://j.mp/IJOC-Snowden-2

Undisclosed locations, June 2013

Boundary-drawing power

By boundary-drawing power we mean the capacity of an organizational actor to reconfigure the context of its own actions by using resources and strategies that are intrinsic to itself but which also involve interfacing with other actors in a hyper-networked environment.

Digital Media, Journalism, and Power

The Narratives

Institutional Decline?

Institutional Decline?

•Decentralization and diffusion of the production of socially-useful information•Hypercompetition and compressed news cycles•Audience fragmentation•Erosion of older business models•Decline of civic role•Transition from “trustee model” to “market model”•Erosion of professional identities and elite gatekeeping practices•Rise of semi-automated digital content and the “algorithmic audience”

Institutional Adaptation and Renewal

Institutional Adaptation and Renewal

•Rebirth of journalism and reconnection with civic mission through the rejection of a previous era of relative insularity and elitism•New optimism: “networked journalism” (Beckett, Jarvis); “news-making assemblages” (Anderson); “hybrid media system” (Chadwick); “social discovery” (Newman); and even the “fifth estate” (Newman, et al)•The “former audience”•Integration of new digital online activist networks in news production•New norms for journalists: “mutual journalism”; “data journalism”•And older professional practices evolve through symbiosis

Boundary-drawing power

•Older studies of “boundary work” in professions•Emerging research on boundary work in journalism (Lewis; Carlson)•Ethnographic work on bloggers, online activists, and professional journalists: boundary-drawing, boundary-blurring, and boundary-crossing (Chadwick)•Hybrid news spaces, both institutionally-anchored and free-floating, can provide an organizational focus for networked action.•Go beyond the “expulsion” and “protection of autonomy” approaches

Boundary-drawing power

The Guardian displays an approach to boundary work that expands and extends the conventional limits of contemporary news-making into the complex, heterogeneous, and hybrid spaces of the networked media environment. In ceding professional journalistic ground in some areas, while renegotiating and extending it in others, the Guardian is able to exert boundary-drawing power to strengthen its position and retain control of its own destiny.

From WikiLeaks to the Snowden Leak

A partial rejection of the WikiLeaks model

Integrating newer online news norms

Managing our “source”

While collaborating with others

Interfacing with distributed online networks

While occupying the center

Strategic Action

•Exploiting reserves of professional investigative experience•Legal expertise•Crafting news for maximum clarity and news value•Personalized narratives and human interest angles•Timing for impact on political actors and competitor media organizations•Exploiting connections with political and bureaucratic insiders and other professional journalists•Secret cultivation of a source in trusted environments•Use of still-prestigious publishing mechanisms (printed newspaper) and historical genres of investigative prowess

• Use of social media by journalists, to curate, promote, and intervene in hypercompetitive news environment

• New genre of the “live blog” to position the news organization’s web page in a hybrid curatorial-yet-agenda setting role at the center of a story as it unfolds

• Strategic management of interdependent relationships with distributed networks of globally nomadic online activists and advocacy groups

• Extraordinary #AskSnowden live chat

Occupying the Center: Tweeting, Live Blogging, and Live Chat

Boundary-drawing power

This is not, however, a case of the uncomplicated revival of older newspaper media logics. Rather, it is a process of strategic and considered renewal—of sense making, learning, and system building. It is about the construction of systemic resources—social relations and technologies—by groups of actors who are then able to capitalize on a system’s capacities and affordances.

Andrew Chadwick and Simon Collister (2014). ‘Boundary-Drawing Power and the Renewal of Professional News Organizations: The Case of the Guardian and the Edward Snowden NSA Leak’ International Journal of Communication 8: 2420–2441.

Download: http://j.mp/IJOC-Snowden-2