Browsing by Subject "Journalism studies"
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Item Our News, For Us, From Us: Social Identity and Rural News and Information(2022-07) Mathews, NickThis dissertation explores how rural residents obtain news and information that is salient in their everyday lives and what guides their evaluations of their choices. Utilizing 40 in-depth interviews with residents of Nelson County, Virginia, this study finds, participants express a rejection of the weekly newspaper that has covered the county for almost 150 years and an acceptance of a location-based Facebook group that serves as a supplement, if not an outright replacement, to the traditional news organization. The participants perceive the weekly news organization to be “not local” on three levels — the organizational level, the content level and the journalist level. Participants express that they want their news and information to be about them and from them, meaning from a person who lives in the county, is engaged in the county and cares about the county. Alternatively, participants turn to a location-based Facebook group, created by county residents, moderated by county residents and sourced by county residents. Participants perceive the Facebook group content is useful news and information, meaning real-time, immediate tools for daily living. They also value the democratic nature of the platform, how everyone potentially can have a voice. Theoretically, drawing from social identity theory, rural social identity and collective psychological ownership, I argue that participants perceive “local” as “ours,” or a “shared sense of ownership.” In this vein, the participants do not perceive the county news organization is “ours.” In response, I conclude that news organizations should strive toward a theoretical notion of Our Good Neighbor.Item The Tension Between Professional Control and Open Participation: Journalism and Its Boundaries(Taylor and Francis, 2012) Lewis, Seth C.Amid growing difficulties for professionals generally, media workers in particular are negotiating the increasingly contested boundary space between producer and user in the digital environment. This article, based on a review of the academic literature, explores that larger tension transforming the creative industries by extrapolating from the case of journalism—namely, the ongoing tension between professional control and open participation in the news process. Firstly, the sociology of professions, with its emphasis on boundary maintenance, is used to examine journalism as boundary work, profession, and ideology—each contributing to the formation of journalism’s professional logic of control over content. Secondly, by considering the affordances and cultures of digital technologies, the article articulates open participation and its ideology. Thirdly, and against this backdrop of ideological incompatibility, a review of empirical literature finds that journalists have struggled to reconcile this key tension, caught in the professional impulse toward one-way publishing control even as media become a multi-way network. Yet, emerging research also suggests the possibility of a hybrid logic of adaptability and openness—an ethic of participation—emerging to resolve this tension going forward. The article concludes by pointing to innovations in analytical frameworks and research methods that may shed new light on the producer–user tension in journalism.