Chapter 4
“If it wasn’t absolutely true, it couldn’t be published”
On boundaries in collaborative journalism
Engaging audiences and collaborating with elite members
of the public (e.g. scientists) have become increasingly important in
newsrooms across the globe (Harbers
2016). In this chapter, we zoom in on collaborative journalism
(in which journalists work together with non-journalists) with a
postfoundational lens. We present a case in which a newspaper, university
and environmental government agency set up a citizen science project on air
quality in a Western European country. This chapter offers a thematic
analysis of three retrospective interviews with key players, which were
conducted at the end of seven months of ethnographic fieldwork behind the
scenes of this citizen science project. We demonstrate how collaboration
plays out in (re)defining the boundaries of the cultural spaces of media,
science and politics as they are constructed by our informants.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Media-science-politics relationship
- Mediated issue development
- Credibility contest
- The case
- Methodology
- Profiles of the interviewees
- Findings
- The journalist
- The professor
- The department head of the environmental government agency
- Conclusion
-
Notes
-
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