ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a theoretical analysis for understanding journalistic practices in restrictive contexts. Through the configuration of the concepts of the journalistic field, journalistic capital, and journalistic habitus, it explains why journalists behave in certain ways in the Iranian context. The analysis builds on a combination of Bourdieu’s framework with a model of multiple influences on news work based on the news sociology approach, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of both strands of theorizing. The combination of Bourdieu’s model and a news sociology perspective provides an effective taxonomy for the analysis of distinct forces shaping journalistic practices, which range from the micro level of journalists’ power and dispositions, through the meso level of news organizations positions, to the macro level of the political field. This chapter situates Iranian journalism within the broader patterns of journalistic cultures across the globe, with a particular focus on more restrictive settings. It discusses to what extent what happens in Iran reflects the processes that underlie journalistic practices in other countries.
