Summary: Introduction to Journalism Studies – Readings
By Chantal Buursema
Week 1
Reading Lippman - The world outside and the Pictures in our Heads
Lippman’s book, Public Opinion (2002) is about the public opinion formation in citizens and the
impact of mass media on opinion formation. It had a huge impact when it came out.
Lippman: Our opinions are formed through our surrounding world. We digest information what we
see. We take it in and digest it. Everything we see, are actually pictures in our head.
Those features of the world outside define our public opinions. Whatever we see as pictures, we
retrieve the world to be like that.
The pictures inside the heads of these human beings, the pictures of themselves, of others, of their
needs, purposes, and relationship, are their public opinions. Those pictures which are acted upon by
groups of people, or by individuals acting in the name of groups, are Public Opinion.
“The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do.”
We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on
pictures made by himself or given to him.
“We can see how indirectly we know the environment in which nevertheless we live. We can see that
the news of it comes to us now fast, now slowly; but that whatever we believe to be a true picture,
we treat as if it were the environment itself. “
“At almost all other times, and even in war when it is deadlocked, a sufficiently greater range of
feelings is aroused to establish conflict, choice, hesitation, and compromise. The symbolism of Public
Opinion usually bears, as we shall see, the marks of this balancing of interest.
The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused
by his mental image of that event. That is why until we know what others think they know, we
cannot truly understand their acts. “
“It is the insertion between man and his environment of a pseudo-environment. To that pseudo-
environment his behavior is a response. But because it is behavior, the consequences, if they are
acts, operate not in the pseudo-environment where the behavior is stimulated, but in the real
environment where action eventuates.”
The bridge to journalism:
The analysis then turns from these more or less external limitations to the question of how this
trickle of messages from the outside is affected by the stored up images, the preconceptions, and
prejudices which interpret, fill them out, and in their turn powerfully direct the play of our attention,
and our vision itself.
Newspapers reflect and intensify the defective organization of public opinion.
“I attempt, therefore, to argue that the serious acceptance of the principle that personal
representation must be supplemented by representation of the unseen facts would alone permit a
satisfactory decentralization, and allow us to escape from the intolerable and unworkable fiction
that each of us must acquire a competent opinion about all public affairs.”
,Reading Wahl-Jorgenson - Journalism Studies: Developments,
Challenges and Future Directions
The discipline of journalism studies has matured and stabilized, while journalism as an object of study
has destabilized and become increasingly slippery. Aim of the article is to show what journalism
studies is about and where it should be going. A journey through the history of journalism studies.
4 different eras are featured:
9th and early 20th century: prehistory of journalism studies – normative research
o Scholars started thinking about news and its impact on society. “Journalism
must/should..”
1950s: empirical turn
o Increase look at social-scientific approaches. Not just what journalism should do, but
also look at its effect (on viewers).
1970s/1980s: sociological turn
o Sociology entered how we think about journalism. “What ideologies are prevalent in
journalism?”
1990s: international-comparative turn
o Going global. Comparing media systems across countries. “What happens in the US?”
/ war reporting etc.
The prehistory of journalism studies
Focus on Germany. Looking at journalism through a normative lens. Journalism scholars were
preoccupied with what journalism ought to be in the contect of political communication than with
the structures, processes, and practices of news production.
Short after, the interest began to switch to the production of news.
The emperical turn
Focus on learning journalism through simply doing it. That is why, in these time, the model did not
have a reflective or scholarly approach. More focus for experiments and surveys to understand the
workings of news media. While most research in this period was concerned with audiences and
media effects, the emerging field of journalism studies gradually turned its attention to “news
people” and their professional values, as well as to editorial structures and routines
The sociological turn
Journalism got mixed with sociology and anthropology. The focus shifted to a critical engagement
with journalism’s conventions and routines, professional and occupational ideologies and cultures,
interpretive communities, and to concepts related to news texts, such as framing, storytelling, and
narrative, as well as to the growing importance of popular culture in the news. Lots of qualitative
methodologies, ethnographic and discourse analytical approaches. This era also paved the way for a
view of journalism’s place in constructing and maintaining dominant ideologies.
The international-comparative turn
With the rise of the internet, there was increased globalization. If journalism itself is increasingly a
global phenomenon, its study gradually became an international and collaborative endeavor. At the
same time, journalism studies as a field underwent further institutionalization at the international
level. This institutionalization took place both within scholarly associations and among publication
outlets.
, Now: Multiplicity through fragmentation and diversification
Seeing journalism as discourse. There has been a turn to practice, which has also lead to a
revitalization of ethnographic research in the area. A third trend, finally, is the rediscovery of the
audience as a focus in journalism studies. Classic research has tended to focus on the practices and
roles of journalists and the features of journalistic texts for very pragmatic reasons. The
diversification and fragmentation of journalism studies can also be explained, at least in part, by the
fact that journalism as object of research has been destabilized and become increasingly slippery.
Challenges to journalism as institution
The digital era and Creative Destruction
o The digital era has radically altered the economics of news production, in a context
where “many still love the idea of journalism” but “not as many want to pay for it”.
While the “creative destruction” (Schlesinger & Doyle, 2015) wrought by the digital
era has posed a formidable challenge to traditional news organizations, the past
decade has also seen the consolidation of digital native news organizations, which
are now well embedded in the ecology of news (Buzzfeed etc).
Hybrid media ecology and the rise of fake news
o Social media—particularly Twitter—have made a significant contribution to shifts in
the news ecology, towards a “hybrid media system”, where traditional media are just
one of many voices. On the other hand, the ease of sharing information from a
variety of sources on social media has given rise to the emergence of “fake news”
Journalism and the Shelf Life of Democracy
o The linkage between news media and democracy which has been central to
journalism. But, a preoccupation with studying journalism in the narrow context of
its relevance for political life has limited our understanding of nonpolitical news
which has proven to be both popular and useful to audiences, such as lifestyle or
tabloid news. Second, the inextricable linkage of journalism and democracy is largely
a Western imposition. It neglects the fact that in many countries around the world,
journalism remains a central institution in the absence of democracy
Decline of trust in journalism
o Efforts at undermining the autonomy of journalism have contributed to further
erosion of public confidence in the news media and its authority around the world.
Challenges to journalists
Precarization (=bestaansonzekerheid) of journalistic labor
o Economical pressures have had significant consequences for journalists’ working
conditions
Participatory revolution
o Shift in relationship between journalist and audiences. Although the consequences of
this participatory revolution remain under discussion, there is no doubt that the
ability of audience members or “ordinary people” to contribute breaking news has
altered the logics of disaster and crisis reporting, and generated broader challenges
to journalism’s traditional gatekeeping role as well as relationships between
journalists and their sources
Negotiating Journalisms Boundaries
o At the same time, the emergence and increasing prominence of amateur practices
has occasioned significant “boundary work” on the part of journalists who are
anxious to defend their professional authority.
Journalistst safety
o More and more journalists get themselves into danger.
