Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing... more Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
This article by the Digital Journalism Editorial Team surfaces with the explicit ambition to reas... more This article by the Digital Journalism Editorial Team surfaces with the explicit ambition to reassess the field of Digital Journalism Studies and map a future editorial agenda for Digital Journalism. The article dissects two important and closely interrelated questions: "What is 'digital journalism'?", and "What is 'digital journalism studies'?" Building on the commissioned conceptual articles and the review article also published in this issue, we define Digital Journalism Studies as a field which should strive to critically explore, document, and explain the interplay of digital and journalism, continuity and change, and further focus, conceptualize, and theorize tensions, configurations, power imbalances, and the debates these continue to raise for digital journalism and its futures. We also present a useful heuristic device-the Digital Journalism Studies Compass-anchored around digital and journalism, and continuity and change, as a guide for discussing the direction of the growing field and this journal.
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This chapter looks at WikiLeaks and other ‘Interloper Media’ (Eldridge 2013, 2014) to explore the... more This chapter looks at WikiLeaks and other ‘Interloper Media’ (Eldridge 2013, 2014) to explore the boundaries and identity dimensions of ‘being’ a digital journalist. Media technologies have long been connected with a disruption of journalism’s norms, and this disruption has been pronounced with digital technologies (Eldridge 2015). As much as technological shifts have allowed the form and function of journalistic products to change and develop, the way new actors are embracing these digital technologies have exposed a particular disruption around understandings of what a journalist is and how that too might be changing. In this disruption, the boundaries of journalistic identity have been irritated by outspoken claims of belonging from new actors such as Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Going beyond WikiLeaks, questions of journalism’s normative ideals, the domain of the ‘Fourth Estate’, and journalism’s role as a legitimating authority continue to be the focus of discursive reactions to a range of new media actors and their journalistic claims. As platforms, content, and media spaces where journalism occurs change at a rapid pace, questions of what it means to be a journalist are ever present. This chapter reflects on these debates to discuss whether a more expansive and flexible definition of a digital journalist can be developed. In identifying key elements of journalistic identity, this chapter will draw on the literature of ‘boundaries’ around that identity, steep these within a discussion of journalism’s self-defined profession and maintenance of its identity, and posit a definition of the digital journalist fit for modern media realities.
In our contemporary societies, our understanding of journalism rests broadly on two visions of th... more In our contemporary societies, our understanding of journalism rests broadly on two visions of the field. The first is based on journalists and how they understand their identities and their roles in societies. The second is based on what societies at large understand journal- ism to be, and what they expect of journalists. Such visions shape expectations of what journalism contributes to our social worlds and also how journalists see themselves as contributing. While historically these visions were crafted around traditional journalists and institutions, they have now been confronted by uniquely capable (and motivated) digital actors offering competing interpretations of both the internal and external visions of journalism. These actors adopt non-traditional approaches to gathering, verifying, and communicating information, and succeed in bringing information to public light. This leaves journalism research facing a challenge: How to make sense of new interpretations of these visions of journalism, and the new actors bringing them about.
Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing... more Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
This article by the Digital Journalism Editorial Team surfaces with the explicit ambition to reas... more This article by the Digital Journalism Editorial Team surfaces with the explicit ambition to reassess the field of Digital Journalism Studies and map a future editorial agenda for Digital Journalism. The article dissects two important and closely interrelated questions: "What is 'digital journalism'?", and "What is 'digital journalism studies'?" Building on the commissioned conceptual articles and the review article also published in this issue, we define Digital Journalism Studies as a field which should strive to critically explore, document, and explain the interplay of digital and journalism, continuity and change, and further focus, conceptualize, and theorize tensions, configurations, power imbalances, and the debates these continue to raise for digital journalism and its futures. We also present a useful heuristic device-the Digital Journalism Studies Compass-anchored around digital and journalism, and continuity and change, as a guide for discussing the direction of the growing field and this journal.
Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing... more Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
This chapter looks at WikiLeaks and other ‘Interloper Media’ (Eldridge 2013, 2014) to explore the... more This chapter looks at WikiLeaks and other ‘Interloper Media’ (Eldridge 2013, 2014) to explore the boundaries and identity dimensions of ‘being’ a digital journalist. Media technologies have long been connected with a disruption of journalism’s norms, and this disruption has been pronounced with digital technologies (Eldridge 2015). As much as technological shifts have allowed the form and function of journalistic products to change and develop, the way new actors are embracing these digital technologies have exposed a particular disruption around understandings of what a journalist is and how that too might be changing. In this disruption, the boundaries of journalistic identity have been irritated by outspoken claims of belonging from new actors such as Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Going beyond WikiLeaks, questions of journalism’s normative ideals, the domain of the ‘Fourth Estate’, and journalism’s role as a legitimating authority continue to be the focus of discursive reactions to a range of new media actors and their journalistic claims. As platforms, content, and media spaces where journalism occurs change at a rapid pace, questions of what it means to be a journalist are ever present. This chapter reflects on these debates to discuss whether a more expansive and flexible definition of a digital journalist can be developed. In identifying key elements of journalistic identity, this chapter will draw on the literature of ‘boundaries’ around that identity, steep these within a discussion of journalism’s self-defined profession and maintenance of its identity, and posit a definition of the digital journalist fit for modern media realities.
In our contemporary societies, our understanding of journalism rests broadly on two visions of th... more In our contemporary societies, our understanding of journalism rests broadly on two visions of the field. The first is based on journalists and how they understand their identities and their roles in societies. The second is based on what societies at large understand journal- ism to be, and what they expect of journalists. Such visions shape expectations of what journalism contributes to our social worlds and also how journalists see themselves as contributing. While historically these visions were crafted around traditional journalists and institutions, they have now been confronted by uniquely capable (and motivated) digital actors offering competing interpretations of both the internal and external visions of journalism. These actors adopt non-traditional approaches to gathering, verifying, and communicating information, and succeed in bringing information to public light. This leaves journalism research facing a challenge: How to make sense of new interpretations of these visions of journalism, and the new actors bringing them about.
This monograph addresses the question of how journalistic knowledge work, and in particular infer... more This monograph addresses the question of how journalistic knowledge work, and in particular inferential reasoning, as a process of uncertainty reduction is manifested in news texts. We argue this takes place both in and in-between news media within a community of practice. The main premise is that journalistic texts reveal communal processes of knowledge creation and it is within these texts that we see the contours of what we term an "inferential community." The backdrop to this, is that the digital (news) landscape, political developments, and global issues produce an environment rife with uncertainty. We focus on three contemporary cases around the current U.S. presidency. We are, however, not arguing that the processes we study are altogether new; journalists have always, alone or together, grappled with uncertainty. Rather, we present here a conceptualization based on the premise that current circumstances offer a window into the more fundamental processes of journalistic knowledge work based on inference.
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Papers by Scott Eldridge