The Handbook of Journalism Studies

The Handbook of Journalism StudiesJOURNALISM STUDIES
This handbook charts the growing area of journalism studies, exploring the current state of theory and setting an agenda for future research in an international context. The volume is structured around theoretical and empirical approaches, and covers scholarship on news production and organizations; news content; journalism and society; and journalism in a global context. Empha- sizing comparative and global perspectives, each chapter explores:
Key elements, thinkers, and texts• Historical context• Current state-of-the-art• Methodological issues• Merits and advantages of the approach/area of studies • Limitations and critical issues of the approach/area of studies • Directions for future research•
Offering broad international coverage from top-tier contributors, this volume ranks among the fi rst publications to serve as a comprehensive resource addressing theory and scholarship in journalism studies. As such, The Handbook of Journalism Studies is a must-have resource for scholars and graduate students working in journalism, media studies, and communication around the globe.
A Volume in the International Communication Association Handbook Series.
Karin Wahl-Jorgensen is Reader in the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media, and Cultural Stud- ies, Cardiff University, Wales. Her work on media, democracy, and citizenship has been pub- lished in more than 20 international journals as well as in numerous books.
Thomas Hanitzsch is Assistant Professor in the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich. He founded the ICA’s Journalism Studies Division and has published four books and more than 50 articles and chapters on journalism, comparative com- munication research, online media, and war coverage.
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION (ICA) HANDBOOK SERIES
Robert T. Craig, Series Editor
Strömbäck/ Kaid – The Handbook of Election News Coverage Around the World Wahl-Jorgensen/Hanitzsch – The Handbook of Journalism Studies
THE HANDBOOK OF
JOURNALISM STUDIES
Edited by
Karin Wahl-Jorgensen
Thomas Hanitzsch
First published 2009 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2009 Taylor & Francis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopy- ing and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The handbook of journalism studies / [edited] by Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and Thomas Hanitzsch. p. cm. — (ICA handbook series) Includes index. 1. Journalism. I. Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin. II. Hanitzsch, Thomas, 1969- PN4724.H36 2008 070.4—dc22 2008024854
ISBN10 HB: 0-8058-6342-7 ISBN10 PB: 0-8058-6343-5 ISBN10 EB: 1-4106-1806-4
ISBN13 HB: 978-0-8058-6342-0 ISBN13 PB: 978-0-8058-6343-7 ISBN13 EB: 978-1-4106-1806-1
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
ISBN 0-203-87768-3 Master e-book ISBN
v
Contents
Preface xi
Contributors xiii
I. INTRODUCING JOURNALISM STUDIES
1 Introduction: On Why and How We Should Do Journalism Studies 3 Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and Thomas Hanitzsch
2 Journalism History 17 Kevin G. Barnhurst and John Nerone
3 Journalism and the Academy 29 Barbie Zelizer
4 Journalism Education 42 Beate Josephi
II. NEWS PRODUCTION
5 News Organizations and Routines 59 Lee B. Becker and Tudor Vlad
6 Journalists as Gatekeepers 73 Pamela J. Shoemaker, Tim P. Vos, and Stephen D. Reese
7 Objectivity, Professionalism, and Truth Seeking in Journalism 88 Michael Schudson and Chris Anderson
8 Reporters and Their Sources 102 Daniel A. Berkowitz
9 Gender in the Newsroom 116 Linda Steiner
vi CONTENTS
10 Convergence and Cross-Platform Content Production 130 Thorsten Quandt and Jane B. Singer
III. NEWS CONTENT
11 Agenda Setting 147 Renita Coleman, Maxwell McCombs, Donald Shaw, and David Weaver
12 News Values and Selectivity 161 Deirdre O’Neill and Tony Harcup
13 Nature, Sources, and Effects of News Framing 175 Robert M. Entman, Jörg Matthes, and Lynn Pellicano
14 News, Discourse, and Ideology 191 Teun A. van Dijk
15 Rethinking News and Myth as Storytelling 205 S. Elizabeth Bird and Robert W. Dardenne
16 The Commercialization of News 218 John H. McManus
IV. JOURNALISM AND SOCIETY
17 Journalism and Democracy 237 Brian McNair
18 Journalism, Public Relations, and Spin 250 William Dinan and David Miller
19 Alternative and Citizen Journalism 265 Chris Atton
20 Journalism Law and Regulation 279 Kyu Ho Youm
21 Journalism Ethics 295 Stephen J. A. Ward
22 Journalism and Popular Culture 310 John Hartley
23 Audience Reception and News in Everyday Life 325 Mirca Madianou
CONTENTS vii
25 Development Journalism 357 Xu Xiaoge
26 Advocacy Journalism in a Global Context 371 Silvio Waisbord
27 Covering War and Peace 386 Howard Tumber
28 Researching Public Service Broadcasting 398 Hallvard Moe and Trine Syvertsen
29 Comparative Journalism Studies 413 Thomas Hanitzsch
30 Towards De-Westernizing Journalism Studies 428 Herman Wasserman and Arnold S. de Beer
Author Index 439
Subject Index 443
Robert T. Craig
Although the origins of academic research on journalism can be traced to mid-nineteenth century Europe and work on this topic developed in several disciplines through the twentieth century, especially in U.S. schools of Journalism and Mass Communication during the century’s last sev- eral decades, in the perspective of the present moment journalism seems to have emerged rather suddenly on the international scene of communication research as a vibrant new interdisciplinary fi eld. The Journalism Studies interest group of the International Communication Association, formed as recently as 2004 with 50 initial members, at this writing is one of the largest, fastest growing. and most broadly international ICA divisions with over 500 members as of mid-2008. The Handbook of Journalism Studies, edited by Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and Thomas Hanitzsch, is thus a timely contribution that provides a benchmark assessment and sets the agenda for future research in this burgeoning area.
The editors’ introduction notes other signs of growth including several new journals and major books on Journalism Studies published in recent years. It must be acknowledged that much of what is here called Journalism Studies continues lines of research that have gone on for many years under the rubric of Mass Communication, but the shift to Journalism Studies represents more than just a new label for old work or the familiar process of a maturing sub-specialty spin- ning off from an overpopulated division. Rather, it marks a signifi cant shift of focus away from the functionalist tradition in which journalism has been studied primarily with regard to abstract functions of the mass communication process like gatekeeping and agenda setting. While these and other similar lines of empirical research, as represented by excellent chapters in this volume, continue to fl ourish and hold an important place, the frame shift from Mass Communication to Journalism Studies inverts fi gure and ground. As the central focus shifts away from abstract functions of mass communication and toward journalism as, in the editors’ words, “one of the most important social, cultural and political institutions,” then the normative, historical, cultural, sociological, and political aspects of journalism that were formerly overshadowed emerge as pri- mary concerns and redefi ne the intellectual context in which empirical studies are conducted.
The editors and authors contributing to this volume hail from 11 countries around the world and include leading scholars representing a range of disciplines. Thirty chapters review bodies of literature on diverse aspects of Journalism Studies as an academic fi eld, practices of news production, analyses of news content, the complex relations of journalism to society, and the global context of journalism research. Internationalizing the fi eld and developing a global per- spective on journalism institutions, extending research in traditionally marginalized institutions and practices, and connecting scholarship with journalism education and professional practice are appropriately emphasized by the editors as goals for the future.
THE ICA HANDBOOK SERIES
The ICA Handbook series is a joint venture between the International Communication Associa- tion and Routledge. It will be a series of scholarly handbooks that represent the interests of ICA members and help to further the Association’s goals of promoting theory and research across the discipline. These handbooks will provide benchmark assessments of current scholarship and set the agenda for future work. The series will include handbooks that focus on content areas, meth- odological approaches, and theoretical lenses for communication research.
We seek proposals from prospective editors of handbooks. We especially seek proposals that cross the boundaries of established disciplines and fi elds to address timely problems of interna- tional scope, not just representing different specialties but bringing them together collaboratively to address intersecting interests and research problems of broad interest. For example, such prob- lems might be formulated as topical concerns (e.g., globalization, virtual environments), theoreti- cal approaches (e.g., social cognition, critical studies), or matters pertaining to communication or communication research in general (e.g., methodological innovations, communication theory across cultures).
For more information about this series, contact:
Robert T. Craig ICA Handbook Series Editor Department of Communication University of Colorado at Boulder 270 UCB Boulder, CO 80309-0270 303-492-6498 voice 303-492-8411 fax [email protected]
or
xi
Preface
The book that you now have before you is a product of the conviction that we should care about journalism and its study. We should care about journalism because it’s central to democracy, citizenship, and everyday life, and we should care about journalism studies because it helps us understand this key social institution. We are not alone in holding this conviction: Journal- ism studies is one of the fastest growing areas within the larger discipline of communication research and media studies. As indicated by a serious, though not altogether coherent body of academic literature and ongoing scholarly work, the study of journalism has matured to become an academic fi eld of its own right. We felt that the arrival of journalism studies ought to be both celebrated and solidifi ed, and to honor this ambition, The Handbook of Journalism Studies was conceived as a gathering place for the varied lasting and emerging preoccupations of scholars in the fi eld. This handbook therefore bears witness to the rapid and exciting developments within this important area of research, as well as its complexity, richness and promise in terms of theory and research. We hope the book can boost the intellectual foundations of journalism studies, providing the reader with an overview of journalism as a dynamic fi eld of study across its diverse epistemological, theoretical and methodological traditions.
The Handbook of Journalism Studies sets out to comprehensively chart the fi eld and defi ne the agenda for future research in an international context. It is our hope that the handbook, when taken as a whole, provides a sense of journalism research on a global scale, covering not just the dominant Anglo-American traditions but also looking beyond this context, to Africa, Latin America, continental Europe, and Asia. Although we have sought to make journalism studies a broad church in including 30 different chapters, each covering an impressive breadth of subject matter, we do not claim to survey every key area and tradition of scholarship in journalism stud- ies. We had to make tough choices about what we were able to include and, regrettably, what to leave out. Needless to say, it would be impossible to do complete justice to a rich, dynamic and ever-emerging fi eld of research in only one volume, however bulky, and we are reassured that journalism studies continues to be a productive scholarly community where the debates that echo in this book and those we have been unable to refl ect continue with unabated fervor. What we do hope is that The Handbook of Journalism Studies will be a useful compendium resource for anyone trying to get a sense of an academic fi eld of inquiry and its past, present and future. We intend for the book to provide the starting point for further discussion and debate among scholars and students in communication and journalism studies.
The book is structured around a critical engagement with key theoretical and empirical tra- ditions, fi elds of inquiry and scholarly debates in journalism studies, laid out by the foremost experts in each area. Beginning with four introductory chapters which outline more general is- sues in the fi eld, the organization of the book refl ects the aim of covering the broad contours of journalism studies. The volume contains four thematic sections, covering scholarship on news production and organizations, news content, journalism and society, and journalism in a global context. Within these sections, each chapter provides a systematic and accessible overview of the
xii PREFACE
state of scholarship and defi nes key problems, but also advances theory-building and problem- solving, and identifi es areas for further research.
Editing this book and working with some of the most renowned scholars of our fi eld has been a pleasure and a privilege, but it would not have been possible without the help and dedica- tion of many committed people. We would therefore like to express our gratitude to all contribu- tors for their excellent chapters. We would also like to thank Linda Bathgate from Routledge and the series editor Robert T. Craig for their helpful comments on the fi rst draft of the proposal and their help during the editing process. We are especially indebted to Hong Nga Nguyen “Angie” Vu who did an exceptional job in proofreading all chapters. Karin would like to thank colleagues in the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies for their support and advice, and Jacob Wahl-Byde for his arrival in the middle of this project, adding both endless joy and chaos. Thomas would like to thank colleagues in the Institute for Mass Communication and Media Re- search at the University of Zurich for their patience and support during the editing stage of the book.
xiii
Contributors
Chris Anderson is completing his doctoral studies in communication at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, New York. His research focuses on new media technologies, journalistic authority and the position of journalism within the sociology of the professions. He has contributed chapters to a number of books, including The Media and Social Theory (Rout- ledge, 2008), The International Encyclopedia of Communication (Blackwell, 2008) and Making Our Media (Hampton Press, 2008).
Chris Atton is Reader in Journalism at the School of Creative Industries, Napier University, Edinburgh. His research into alternative media is interdisciplinary, drawing on sociology, jour- nalism, cultural studies, popular music studies and politics. His books include Alternative Jour- nalism (Sage, 2008, with James Hamilton), An Alternative Internet (Edinburgh University Press, 2004), Alternative Media (Sage, 2002) and Alternative Literature (Gower, 1996). He is currently researching the nature of distributed creativity in avant-garde and experimental music; the cul- tural politics of post-punk fanzines; and audiences for community media in Scotland.
Kevin G. Barnhurst is Professor, Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Chi- cago. His studies of news consumption and critical analyses of journalism include The Form of News: A History (Guilford Press, 2001), with John Nerone, Seeing the Newspaper (St. Martin’s Press, 1994), and many other articles and book chapters. He has been LSU Reilly Visiting Fel- low; Distinguished Fulbright Chair, Italy; Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard; Visiting Scholar at Columbia University; and Senior Fulbright Scholar, Peru.
Lee B. Becker is a professor and Director of the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research at the University of Georgia, Athens. His research focus- es on a variety of topics, including news work, the interface between the journalism labor market and educational and training institutions, and the evaluation of media performance. His most re- cent book is The Evolution of Key Mass Communication Concepts (Hampton Press, 2005), edited with Sharon Dunwoody, Douglas M. McLeod, and Gerald M. Kosicki.
Daniel A. Berkowitz is Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa. His main areas of research are in sociology of news, and media and terrorism. He is the editor of Social Meanings of News: A Text-Reader (Sage, 1997) and has published articles in Journalism, Journalism Studies, International Communication Gazette, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Communication, as well as chapters in Media and Politi- cal Violence (Hampton Press, 2007) and in Media Anthropology (Sage, 2005).
S. Elizabeth Bird is Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida. Her books include For Enquiring Minds: A Cultural Study of Supermarket Tabloids
xiv CONTRIBUTORS
(University of Tennessee Press, 1992), Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture (Westview, 1996) and The Audience in Everyday Life: Living in a Media World (Routledge, 2003). She has published over 50 articles and chapters; she is currently editing a book on the anthropology of news and journalism.
Renita Coleman is Assistant Professor at the University of Texas in Austin. Her research fo- cuses on visual communication and ethics. She is co-author of the book The Moral Media: How Journalists Reason About Ethics (Erlbaum, 2004, with Lee Wilkins), and has published articles in numerous journals including Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Com- munication, and Journalism Studies. She is associate editor of the Journal of Mass Media Ethics. She was a newspaper journalist for 15 years.
Simon Cottle is Professor of Media and Communications and Deputy Head of the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University, Wales. His latest book is Glob- al Crisis Reporting: Journalism in the Global Age (Open University Press, 2009) and recent books include Mediatized Confl ict: Developments in Media and Confl ict Studies (Open Univer- sity Press, 2006) and The Racist Murder of Stephen Lawrence: Media Performance and Public Transformation (Praeger, 2004). He is the editor of the international Peter Lang series Global Crises and Media.
Robert W. Dardenne is Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. He co-authored The Conversation of Journalism (Praeger, 1996) and authored A Free and Responsible Student Press (Poynter Institute for Media Studies, 1996). His articles, book chapters, and newspaper op-ed pieces center on various aspects of news con- tent, practice, and history. As a Fulbright Lecturer, he spent 1999–2000 teaching and lecturing in China and has consulted with leading print media and lectured in Nigeria. He worked 12 years as reporter and editor in newspapers and magazines.
Arnold S. de Beer is Professor Extraordinary in the Department of Journalism, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He is managing and founding editor of Ecquid Novi: African Journal- ism Studies and director of the Institute for Media Analysis in South Africa (iMasa). De Beer edited Global Journalism (Allyn & Bacon, 2004, 2009), with John C. Merrill and authored or co-authored journal articles and book chapters published in the US and the UK on topics such journalism education in Africa; media and democracy, as well as and media and confl ict. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Global Mass Communication.
William Dinan is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Strathclyde Glasgow, where he teaches undergraduate courses on media and society, and postgraduate classes on the Masters programme in Investigate Journalism. He is an editorial board member of SpinWatch and has recently co-authored a monograph on the history of Public Relations, A Century of Spin: How Public Relations Became the Cutting Edge of Corporate Power (2008) and co-edited a volume on PR titled Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy (2007, both Pluto Press, with David Miller).
Robert M. Entman is J.B. and M.C. Shapiro Professor of Media and Public and International…