ABSTRACT
Has technology changed journalism to positive or negative effect? The praise for technological advances and their enrichment of journalism have been accompanied by lamentations over the role of technology in impoverishing the news. While journalism seems to benefit from technological developments in news gathering (digital and smaller cameras, digital voice recorders, convergent technology), distribution (the internet, satellite), and exhibition (the world wide web, colour print, mobile phones), there is also a sense that technology is responsible, partially or wholly, for a devaluation of journalistic standards – amateur bloggers who do not adhere to practices of fact-checking, deadlines that become shorter or even continuous because the internet is “always on”, sloppier writing, and more inaccuracies. The essays in this section, while hopeful, seem mostly to converge on the
idea that technology does more to impoverish journalism than enrich it. Julianne H. Newton suggests that “technology appears to be changing journalism more for negative effect than positive” (p. 78, of this book). Mark Deuze, though cautious, is perhaps more optimistic as he makes the case that trends caused by new technologies open up “creative affordances for individual journalists”; at the same time, however, they potentially restrict journalists’ editorial autonomy (p. 93, of this book). How justified is the pessimism being voiced here? It is worth stepping back momentarily to consider the landscape against which technology’s ascent in journalism has been implemented. Looking at the relationship between journalism and technology from a his-
torical perspective nearly a decade ago, John Hartley helped us understand that the two domains have always been inextricably intertwined with each other.1 Modern journalism was born of the necessity to streamline journalistic processes – news gathering, news interpretation, and news distribution – we ended up outsourcing them to specialists, the journalists, who could devote time and energy specifically to gather information deemed relevant for the community. Over time the public increasingly became reliant on what Hartley called “representative journalism.” It is representative because the public granted the journalistic community permission to represent the public and its right to communicate. However its development produced a gap between
the ability to read and the ability to write, with journalists taking over the ability to write, particularly in public, and maintaining that right over time as journalism evolved into new forms. Now is the time to ask how this situation has changed with current advances in technology. Has new technology made old constraints obsolete? Is it true, as Ian Hargreaves has argued, that now “everybody is a journalist”? If it is, then what is left of the meaning of journalism? In that the three essays in this section invite us to rethink the meaning of
journalism in the face of technological changes, we need to consider what we mean by journalism – its process, its people, or the news itself? Two ways to address this question are fruitful in light of the essays – journalism as an institution and journalism as a set of principles and values. Looking at journalism as an institution suggests addressing the enduring
rules and constraints that shape journalism and how technology affects them. What changes occur when new technology and its social practices are layered on top of already proven, legitimized and institutionalized practices? When refracted through the lens of the institution, journalism is most often seen as an institution in decline. It tries to catch up with technology but is forced to do so within the organizational constraints of the newsroom and the institutional ecology it operates in. The first essay by Pablo J. Boczkowski illustrates the problem of incorporating technology within the institutional tensions of the existing journalistic organizational field. Boczkowski helps us understand how the longstanding practice of monitoring competitors, accelerated by technology, has changed qualitatively. Coining the term, he argues how technology and the market have produced a trend that nobody actually chooses to practice but that nobody can afford not to practice. Information transparency and the increased mimicry it produces have powerful implications for the normative role of the media in providing a healthy and diverse public sphere. A second way to think about journalism is as a set of principles and values.
Here the exercise reconceptualizes what journalism can and should be, given the new technological constraints and affordances. How would journalism look if we could reinvent it from the bottom up in present time, current technology in hand? In the second essay, Julianne H. Newton engages us in exactly this kind of thought experiment by regarding the brain – and by extension, journalism – as a technology. Arguing that journalism has not benefited enough from advances in cognitive neuroscience and media ecology, Newton calls for a “journalism in the time of the new mind,” which would actively twin the “practices of reporting and conveying information of significance to human perception, survival and decision making” together with “unprecedented opportunities to understand how the brain makes use of information it perceives” (p. 74, of this book). Noting that the space in which journalism operates is being taken over by competitors in persuasion, advertising and entertainment, who exploit an understanding of the new mind to reach
audiences, Newton contends that journalism needs to do the same, leaving aside its moral high ground enough to reconceptualize journalism as a technological system run and processed by new minds. Lastly, Mark Deuze balances a vision of journalism as an existing institution
and as a set of principles and values when he explores the implications of new technologies on the agency of individual journalists and their work. Noting how technology both supercharges and accelerates existing practices, Deuze considers how it also opens windows for new kinds of “journalistic acts” – acts that are in themselves journalistic but are not necessarily performed by those whom we traditionally regard as “journalists”. Focusing on the individual, Deuze sensitizes us to a broadened and changing definition of who is a journalist and identifies factors that contribute to this trend. Does technology impoverish or facilitate journalism? If seen through the lens
of journalism as an institution, Boczkowski demonstrates that journalism is struggling to come to terms with the new media environment. Seen as a set of values and principles, Newton points to a vast field of opportunities that technological advances present on which journalism has yet to capitalize. Deuze suggests that technology has raised critical questions about the changing role of the individual in today’s field of journalism. What all three essays in this section show is that technology is at the heart of a reorientation of power and knowledge, where incumbents and new players are seeking to redefine and reinterpret the meaning of journalism. Using technology as a frame for understanding journalism allows us to reflect on what journalism can be and raises normative questions about what journalism should be. The three essays are important contributions in starting to address these questions that have become once again urgent to ask in the new media environment.
