ABSTRACT
Richard Ericson et al.’s central contention is that the analysis of deviance and control news offers key insights into the process of understanding how cultural workers – journalists and news sources – reproduce order in the knowledge society. With respect to researching the news, what is most striking about their approach is their strong support for ethnographic method. Studying the production and products of deviance and control news is a fruitful vehicle for understanding how cultural workers reproduce order in the knowledge society. Researching deviance and control news in the broadest sense helps us to understand news workers, assumptions about organizational order, social order, and processes of social change. It reveals how reporters work in concert with others whose job it is to police organizational life, symbolically constructing the moral boundaries of stability as well as the reform politics of change.
