Journalism and Citizenship: New Agendas in Communication

232 Pages·2009·1.55 MB·English

by  Zizi Papacharissi

Journalism and Citizenship
Journalism is in the middle of sweeping changes in its relationships with the
communities it serves, and the audiences for news and public affairs it seeks to
address. Changes in technology have blurred the lines between professionals
and citizens, partisan and objective bystanders, particularly in the emerging
public zones of the blogosphere. This volume examines these changes and the
new concepts needed to understand them in the days and years ahead.
With contributions from up-and-coming scholars, this collection identifies
key issues and paves the way for further research on the role of journalism in
today’s world. It will appeal to scholars, researchers, and advanced students in
journalism, communication, and media studies, and will also be of interest to
those in public affairs, political science, and government.
Zizi Papacharissiis Professor and Head of the Communication Department,
University of Illinois-Chicago. Her research focuses on the social and political
uses of newer media, and has appeared in New Media & Society, Harvard Journal
of International Press & Politics, and the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic
Media, among other journals. She is currently working on The Networked Self,
an edited volume on online social networks, and A Private Sphere, a monograph
volume on contemporary and digitally enabled modes of civic engagement.
New Agendas in Communication
Roderick Hart and Stephen Reese, Series Editors
A Series from Routledge and the College of Communication
at the University of Texas at Austin
This series brings together groups of emerging scholars to tackle important
interdisciplinary themes that demand new scholarly attention and reach
broadly across the communication field’s existing courses. Each volume stakes
out a key area, presents original findings, and considers the long-range implica-
tions of its “new agenda.”
Interplay of Truth and Deception
Matt McGlone and Mark Knapp
Journalism and Citizenship
Zizi Papacharissi
Understanding Science
LeeAnn Kahlor and Patricia Stout
Political Emotions
Janet Staiger
Media Literacy
Kathleen Tyner
Journalism and Citizenship:
New Agendas in
Communication
Edited by
Zizi Papacharissi
A Volume in the New Agendas in
Communication Series
First published 2009
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Journalism and citizenship: new agendas in communication / edited
by Zizi Papacharissi.
p. cm. —(New agendas in communication series)
Includes index.
1. Online journalism. 2. Internet—Social aspects.
3. Internet—Political aspects. 4. Web publishing.
5. Media literacy. 6. Convergence (Communication)
I. Papacharissi, Zizi.
PN4784.O62J66 2009
070.4—dc22
2009004355
ISBN 0-203-87126-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–80499–X (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–415–80498–1 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–87126–X (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–80499–8 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–80498–1 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–87126–3 (ebk)
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiv
Contributors xv
Introduction: Toward a (New) Media Literacy
in a Media Saturated World 1
DAN GILLMOR
PART I
Journalism’s Evolution in the Era of the
Active Audience 13
1 Journalism, Citizenship, and Digital Culture 15
MARK DEUZE
2 The Citizen is the Message: Alternative Modes of Civic
Engagement 29
ZIZI PAPACHARISSI
3 Institutional Roadblocks: Assessing Journalism’s Response
to Changing Audiences 44
WILSON LOWREY
vi Contents
PART II
The Public’s Relationship with Digital Content 69
4 Producing Citizen Journalism or Producing Journalism for
Citizens: A New Multimedia Model to Enhance
Understanding of Complex News 71
RONALD A. YAROS
5 Information Surplus in the Digital Age: Impact and
Implications 91
HSIANG IRIS CHYI
6 Blogs, Journalism, and Political Participation 108
HOMERO GIL DE ZÚÑIGA
7 The Many Faced “You” of Social Media 123
SHARON MERAZ
PART III
The Impact of the Citizen as Mass Communicator 149
8 What the Blogger Knows 151
DONALD MATHESON
9 “Searching for My Own Unique Place in the Story”: A
Comparison of Journalistic and Citizen-Produced Coverage
of Hurricane Katrina’s Anniversary 166
SUE ROBINSON
10 Mapping Citizen Coverage of the Dual City 189
LOU RUTIGLIANO
Index 206
Preface
Zizi Papacharissi
Journalism and Citizenship: An Uneasy Alliance
The relationship between journalism and citizenship is symbiotic, though not
always synergetic. Journalism is enabled by the democratic emphasis on free-
dom of speech, free will, and collective decision-making. Journalism can func-
tion within or without democracy; in dictatorships or monarchies, journalists’
coverage of abuses of power is typically instrumental in cultivating democratic
resistance. Journalism is based on democratic values, but can thrive with or
without democracy. The argument can be made that journalism becomes more
central to a society, and possibly more potent, the more directly it is connected
to serving a democracy, its polity, and its people. On occasion, this may occur in
the absence of democracy. Association, the coming together of people for a com-
mon purpose, presents the opposite of monarchy, and in a democracy, is facili-
tated by the press.
It is via associationthat citizens are able to perform their democratic duties,
and the press has been instrumental in providing citizens with the information,
venues, and tools needed to associate freely and for the common good of a dem-
ocratic state. Journalism is perceived by many as synonymous with democracy
(Carey, 1995; de Tocqueville 1835/1840; Dewey, 1927; Lippmann, 1922),
although as Schudson (2008) cleverly points out, most philosophical works on
democracy tend to leave journalism out of the picture. Even those who engage
the press in discussions of democracy are careful to specify the circumstances
under which journalism functions optimally for a democracy. Ambivalent
about the merits of freedom of the press, de Toqueville had found the American
Press too de-centralized, commercial, and editorial to be truly powerful.
Lippman (1922) had hoped to task journalists with the democratic charge of
creating and relaying a pseudoenvironment of events that might be too remote or
complex for ordinary citizens to experience and comprehend. Essential as this
pseudoenviroment was to maintaining an informed public, Lippman (1922)
maintained reservations about the ability of the average individual (including
journalists) to obtain perfect information, process it impartially, and engage in
competent decision-making. Dewey’s (1927) model of journalism evolved
viii Preface
beyond Lippmann’s (1922) transmission oriented approach, to one that specif-
ically outlined the ways in which journalism enabled the audience to become
informed and involved citizens. Even though Dewey (1927) was more hopeful
than Lippmann about the prospect of a “Great Public,” and journalism as com-
munication enabling this “Great Community,” he expressed reservation about
the role of elites and commercially imposed hegemony interfering with the
objectives of public journalism. Carey (1995) channeled this idea of public
journalism to a contemporary context, and characterized the concepts of
democracy and journalism as overlapping and serving the same end: an intelli-
gent and informed community of citizens. But of course, his argument also paid
attention to the role economic and socio-cultural forces, as well as technology,
play in adjusting the ways in which journalism connects with citizens.
But scholars are trained to analyze the world around them, and to then sketch
out ideal models, and there is an operative difference between the ideal roles
assigned in a democracy, and the conditions under which these roles may be
optimally performed. In Six or Seven Things News can do for Democracy,Michael
Schudson (2008) listed the following seven functions journalism has served in
democracies: informing the public, investigation, analysis, social empathy,
public forum, mobilization, and the latest one, publicizing representative
democracy. Complex social, cultural, political, and economic conditions affect
the ability of journalists to perform these functions, frequently and sometimes,
inadvertently, disconnecting journalists and citizens further. For instance, the
“dumbing down” of the public, the tabloidization of news, and the focus on info-
tainment de-emphasize the democratic function of the press to inform, analyze,
and serve as public forum for discussion (e.g., McNair, 2000). The professional-
ization and subsequent commercialization of the news further distances
reporters from the public (e.g., Benson & Neveu, 2005; Bourdieu, 1998). These
trends build on growing public cynicism and distrust of the media (Cappella &
Jamieson, 1996; Entman, 1989; Fallows, 1996a, b; Patterson, 1996), which
compromise the social empathy and informative/investigative functions of the
press. Finally, web-related innovation enables direct citizen intervention to the
media agenda, reifying citizen journalists, and thus rendering making the dem-
ocratic space upon which citizens and journalists interact more “porous”
(Blumler & Gurevitch, 2001), pluralistic (Bimber, 1998), and directly repre-
sentative (Coleman, 2005). Online technologies create alternative ways
for mobilization, public discussion, and news coverage that frequently leave
journalists confused about their own place in a dormant public sphere.
The socio-cultural context that journalists and citizens inhabit outlines and
complicates the paths on which journalists and citizens intersect in a contem-
porary democracy. In July of 2007, a group of scholars from around the world
convened at the College of Communication, in the University of Texas at
Austin, to participate in a two-day conference titled “Journalism and
Citizenship: New Agendas.” The goal was to collectively contemplate how
technology has changed the role of journalism in society, in the first in a series
Preface ix
of academic conferences featuring up-and-coming scholars studying the most
important issues in communication. All of the conference participants con-
tributed a chapter to this volume.
The chapters in this volume examine the intersections of journalism and cit-
izenship in the present tense, informed by past practices and with an eye to the
future. The contributors to this volume evaluate the confluence and tensions
between journalism and citizenship from a variety of perspectives. Dan Gillmor
kick-starts this volume by arguing against a model that employs journalism’s
past in order to predict its future. Placing the emphasis on citizen media, he
sketches a media landscape on which citizen and commercial media emerge as
complements and not substitutes to each other. In this landscape of the present,
the question, per Gillmor, is not “Who is journalist,” but rather, “What is jour-
nalism.” Within this context, Deuze, Papacharissi and Lowrey consider
processes of stability and change, as journalism evolves to cater to an audience
equipped with the ability to consume and produce media content. Mark Deuze
sketches out the theoretical boundaries of newer modes of citizenship and jour-
nalism. Accepting that the contemporary citizen is “monitorial,” he argues for
a “liquid” journalism that best serves this citizen. The basis of this relationship
is removed from a perfect information premise; a tradition that conceives
informed citizens as the end-goal and journalism as the means to that end
within contemporary democracy. Journalism beats to the drum of democracy;
albeit a networked democracy, resting on a journalism that becomes enabler
and amplifier of conversations of varying content and potency.
Operating from a similar set of assumptions, Zizi Papacharissi focuses on the
citizen within this model, who, in this abundance and multitude of information
retreats to a private sphere, from which this complex and information-filled
democracy may be managed. Stepping back from public spaces, the citizen
returns to a (frequently domestic) private sphere of activity, equipped with
tools that enable, but do not guarantee engagement. It is from this private
sphere that the contemporary citizen scans information, deliberates, lurks in on
political conversation, becomes engaged, produces, consumes, or rejects media
content, and elects to enter the public sphere again (or not). As the citizen
tends to civic duty in solitude, (s)he is alone, but not lonely; isolated, yet con-
nected at the same time. The citizen is fully poised to become active, but
whether activity follows depends on socio-cultural structure.
In an environment of ongoing change and instability, attention must be
heeded to the processes of stability and stasis. Wilson Lowrey examines the
forces at work behind journalism’s complicated relationship with the public,
explaining both journalistic tendencies to preserve norms and traditions and
tensions emanating from human agents both within and outside the media
organization. Lowrey argues that change is a function of both socio-cultural
structure and human agency, but is best effected through an understanding of its
polar opposite, stasis. It is through this understanding of inability to change that
the divide between news media and audience may be re-conceptualized, and it