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232 Pages·2009·1.55 MB·English
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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 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. 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 © 2009 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or . reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. 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

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journalism, communication, and media studies, and will also be of interest to those in public affairs, Australia: ACER Press. Tremayne, M. (2004). facilitated through applications such as Last.fm and iLike. And, more of our.
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