ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how journalists’ sense of their social roles might – or might not – be reflected in the news that they produce. It defines what social roles are and are not and seeks to understand how social roles become – or don’t become – institutionalized. The chapter examines the place of the public in journalists’ understanding and performance of their roles and how social roles have changed, particularly during the digital age. Scholars have generally aimed to theoretically group and combine discourses about roles into more parsimonious categories. A monitorial role is like the neutral and disseminator roles already mentioned, but also includes a watchdog mentality – that is, monitoring for current and future problems or wrongdoing. The Journalism Studies literature has long wrestled with the social roles that journalism plays in a society. The articulation of journalism’s social roles, as already noted, happens in dialogue – or anticipated dialogue – with non-journalistic actors.
