Who is a good journalist? Evaluations of journalistic worth in the era of social media

Papanagnou, Vaios (2021) Who is a good journalist? Evaluations of journalistic worth in the era of social media. Journalism. ISSN 1464-8849

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Abstract

In this article, I enquire into the ways that journalists understand their identities and values now that social media dominate the routines of networked newsrooms. My approach is grounded on a Discourse Theory framework within which journalism emerges as a symbolic practice constituted through the discourse of its practitioners. Drawing additionally on pragmatic sociology, I understand journalists as reflexive practitioners who discursively attribute value to various orders of worth in order to evaluate their own identities. Taking the British news organisation The Guardian as my case study, my analysis of 10 newsroom interviews demonstrates how journalists develop a series of evaluations in order to identify themselves. My findings confirm a shift in the ways that journalists evaluate themselves, which is today associated with a new valorisation of networking. This shift towards networking, however, does not destroy long-standing journalistic values. It is ultimately their institutional identities that journalists re-invent through social media, and it is according to their institutional expertise that they evaluate themselves as professionals. In conclusion, I argue that, whilst journalists reaffirm their disdain for the financial rewards of the market, by embracing social media networking they expose themselves to the influence of capitalist markets.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2021 The Author
Divisions:	Sociology
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting
Date Deposited:	19 Jul 2021 11:03
Last Modified:	16 Nov 2024 04:54
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/111054

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