ABSTRACT

To look beyond the core imagination of the journalistic field and to consider interlopers emerging from the periphery is to engage with the way journalism has evolved in modern societies as something socially anticipated and something socially constructed, where certain dominant narratives of journalism have reinforced an idea of what journalism is, or at least what it should be. Semi-autonomous in nature, loosely defined in practice, the journalistic field is shaped by such contestations over what it is to belong to the field, and according to whose judgements. Contests over what it is to be a 'journalist' and do 'journalism', and how such determinations are made, are not straightforward. What has not developed steadily at pace with people's witnessing of digital change and their endeavour to make sense of it are the ways in which they conceptualize the journalistic field. This includes gaps in determining how new types of digital actors can also fit within understandings of the journalistic field.