ABSTRACT
This chapter explores current debates on how to define both digital journalism and digital journalism studies. Digital journalism is a phenomenon and practice of selecting, interpreting, editing, and distributing news about public affairs, it is linked to digital technologies and has symbiotic relationship with its audiences. The chapter argues it is important to see digital journalism studies as an interdisciplinary field in its own right, rather than as a sub-field of journalism studies that could reinforce a journalism-centric approach rather than the broader interplay between news, digitisation, and diverse actors in society. However, digital journalism studies scholars have covered some objects of inquiry much more thoroughly than others, which raises questions about what mechanisms are at play. This chapter introduces an analytical framework to analyse the dynamic and mutual relationship between the academic field and its object of inquiry, a framework consisting of the dimensions society, sector, and scholarship. The chapter further makes a contribution by linking these dimensions to four key mechanisms that help advance knowledge into why digital journalism studies scholars pay much more attention to some topics of inquiry than others. These mechanisms are: 1) Issue (in)visibility, 2) Pro-innovation bias, 3) Path dependency, and 4) Addressability.
