This introductory chapter lays the ontological and epistemological groundwork for this book, by providing a review of its key themes and concepts, and outlining the book’s theoretical and methodological position. More specifically, the book’s topic is introduced based on a number of data points from the contributing chapters. These point to the ubiquity of participation, engagement and collaboration, but also to the tension they potentially create, including in the context of newsmaking. To understand the key concepts in this central argument, two bodies of literature are discussed. We first delineate how we understand newsmaking, and focus on a number of recent changes in this domain that are relevant for our central argument, such as that newsmaking is increasingly engaging with a number of communities and professional stakeholders, and that user-generated content and audience feedback have become central. Second, the literature on participation, engagement and collaboration is reviewed, exploring how predominant these concepts have become in many realms of life, and how they are often related to democratic ideals. Subsequently, we argue for the relevance of a postfoundational perspective, and for the value of fieldwork approaches.
In this chapter, we investigate the impact of recent audience-monitoring tools on the (online) newspaper sub-editors’ task of crafting headlines. We zoom in on how metrics have become part of the newsmaking process and are now intrinsic to a larger foundation of more collaborative, participatory and engaging practices. Drawing on digital data and fieldwork, we analyse the back and forth between the sub-editors’ journalistic gut feeling, their awareness of ‘selling’ their brand ‘in the right way’, and the need to gain clicks. Relying on a linguistic ethnographic perspective (NT&T 2011), we address how sub-editors reflect on their changing professional routines. By investigating how the sub-editors’ aim to position themselves in tandem with their algorithmic tools is foundational to news media today, we shed new light on how the use of audience engagement metrics intertwines with long-standing journalistic practices and contribute to global debates on the politics of technology and online participation.
This chapter presents a discourse-analytical approach to a series of blogposts uploaded to the website of Brussels-based libertarian think tank between 2015 and 2018 in reaction to the controversy over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In these blogposts, economic experts and professionals reflect about how to successfully persuade the public of the case for free trade. We argue that these blogposts rest on two ultimately incompatible ontologies – one founded in economic science, the other based on a rudimentarily constructionist understanding of media and the public debate. The tension generated by the clash of these ontologies turns the blogposts into an interesting example of the negotiation of professional identities at a time when participation, collaboration and engagement are increasingly getting sedimented as the baseline for newsmaking practices.
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.
This paper shows the value that transdisciplinarity can add to media linguistics. It does so by analyzing – through a postfoundational lens – how journalistic writing changed during the last two decades, from the predominance of a writing mode that we have termed focused writing to a mode we have called writing-by-the-way. Large corpora of writing process data have been generated and analyzed with the multi-method approach of progression analysis to combine analytical depth with breadth. On the object level of doing writing in journalism, results show that the general trend toward writing-by-the-way opens new niches for focused writing. On a meta-level of doing research, findings explain why transdisciplinarity allows for deeper insights into the media-linguistic object of investigation.
The social dimension behind the (re-)production of news genre forms is examined in news reporting examples that present different discourse outcomes in the “postfoundational” social world for whom the prestige of news craft remains key (Cotter 2010). Stories in “legacy” journalism (New York Times) are compared with the San Quentin News, the oldest prison newspaper in the US (Drummond 2020). The SQN, while socially marginal, reflects central values of journalism in its story forms and demonstrates the direct link that media have with their audience. The NYT, while socially central, is itself becoming marginalized in the broader media context as traditional news stories assume less importance in everyday meaning-making. Together, they show how foundational discourse parameters shift or are reconfigured.
This paper shows that journalists are gradually taking greater advantage of social media and the interactional affordances it offers. This means, firstly, that journalists can benefit from social media not only by monitoring conversations, but also by participating in and initiating them. Secondly, journalists can not only collect information and identify sources, but also actively ask for them. Thirdly, journalists can not only distribute their work, but also market it and brand themselves. As these interactional extensions enable journalists to already engage with their audience during the newswriting, the paper concludes by discussing the potential of social media for improving the transparency of journalistic work and, therefore, for restoring a trusting relationship between the news media and their audience.
In this epilogue, we look back at the contributions to this volume which have shown how some newsmakers embrace the idea of collaborating while others are more cautious in reaching out. There seems to be, however, simply no avoiding participation. We explore whether this means giving up, or at least redistributing, control. In doing so, we also point to a lacuna in this volume, as it is invariably on journalists and other traditional newsmakers whom we focus, rather than those who fall outside traditional professional categories. We examine how stable the relationships in collaborative newsmaking really are and, zooming in on the ambivalent notion of collusion, how the contemporary design of newsmaking both enables positive participation and enforces unwanted forms of engagement. We conclude by reflecting on how participation, engagement and collaboration are impacting other fields of society. The chapter points to the need for critical reflection on the limits of participation and to new routes for further research.
This introductory chapter lays the ontological and epistemological groundwork for this book, by providing a review of its key themes and concepts, and outlining the book’s theoretical and methodological position. More specifically, the book’s topic is introduced based on a number of data points from the contributing chapters. These point to the ubiquity of participation, engagement and collaboration, but also to the tension they potentially create, including in the context of newsmaking. To understand the key concepts in this central argument, two bodies of literature are discussed. We first delineate how we understand newsmaking, and focus on a number of recent changes in this domain that are relevant for our central argument, such as that newsmaking is increasingly engaging with a number of communities and professional stakeholders, and that user-generated content and audience feedback have become central. Second, the literature on participation, engagement and collaboration is reviewed, exploring how predominant these concepts have become in many realms of life, and how they are often related to democratic ideals. Subsequently, we argue for the relevance of a postfoundational perspective, and for the value of fieldwork approaches.
In this chapter, we investigate the impact of recent audience-monitoring tools on the (online) newspaper sub-editors’ task of crafting headlines. We zoom in on how metrics have become part of the newsmaking process and are now intrinsic to a larger foundation of more collaborative, participatory and engaging practices. Drawing on digital data and fieldwork, we analyse the back and forth between the sub-editors’ journalistic gut feeling, their awareness of ‘selling’ their brand ‘in the right way’, and the need to gain clicks. Relying on a linguistic ethnographic perspective (NT&T 2011), we address how sub-editors reflect on their changing professional routines. By investigating how the sub-editors’ aim to position themselves in tandem with their algorithmic tools is foundational to news media today, we shed new light on how the use of audience engagement metrics intertwines with long-standing journalistic practices and contribute to global debates on the politics of technology and online participation.
This chapter presents a discourse-analytical approach to a series of blogposts uploaded to the website of Brussels-based libertarian think tank between 2015 and 2018 in reaction to the controversy over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In these blogposts, economic experts and professionals reflect about how to successfully persuade the public of the case for free trade. We argue that these blogposts rest on two ultimately incompatible ontologies – one founded in economic science, the other based on a rudimentarily constructionist understanding of media and the public debate. The tension generated by the clash of these ontologies turns the blogposts into an interesting example of the negotiation of professional identities at a time when participation, collaboration and engagement are increasingly getting sedimented as the baseline for newsmaking practices.
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.
This paper shows the value that transdisciplinarity can add to media linguistics. It does so by analyzing – through a postfoundational lens – how journalistic writing changed during the last two decades, from the predominance of a writing mode that we have termed focused writing to a mode we have called writing-by-the-way. Large corpora of writing process data have been generated and analyzed with the multi-method approach of progression analysis to combine analytical depth with breadth. On the object level of doing writing in journalism, results show that the general trend toward writing-by-the-way opens new niches for focused writing. On a meta-level of doing research, findings explain why transdisciplinarity allows for deeper insights into the media-linguistic object of investigation.
The social dimension behind the (re-)production of news genre forms is examined in news reporting examples that present different discourse outcomes in the “postfoundational” social world for whom the prestige of news craft remains key (Cotter 2010). Stories in “legacy” journalism (New York Times) are compared with the San Quentin News, the oldest prison newspaper in the US (Drummond 2020). The SQN, while socially marginal, reflects central values of journalism in its story forms and demonstrates the direct link that media have with their audience. The NYT, while socially central, is itself becoming marginalized in the broader media context as traditional news stories assume less importance in everyday meaning-making. Together, they show how foundational discourse parameters shift or are reconfigured.
This paper shows that journalists are gradually taking greater advantage of social media and the interactional affordances it offers. This means, firstly, that journalists can benefit from social media not only by monitoring conversations, but also by participating in and initiating them. Secondly, journalists can not only collect information and identify sources, but also actively ask for them. Thirdly, journalists can not only distribute their work, but also market it and brand themselves. As these interactional extensions enable journalists to already engage with their audience during the newswriting, the paper concludes by discussing the potential of social media for improving the transparency of journalistic work and, therefore, for restoring a trusting relationship between the news media and their audience.
In this epilogue, we look back at the contributions to this volume which have shown how some newsmakers embrace the idea of collaborating while others are more cautious in reaching out. There seems to be, however, simply no avoiding participation. We explore whether this means giving up, or at least redistributing, control. In doing so, we also point to a lacuna in this volume, as it is invariably on journalists and other traditional newsmakers whom we focus, rather than those who fall outside traditional professional categories. We examine how stable the relationships in collaborative newsmaking really are and, zooming in on the ambivalent notion of collusion, how the contemporary design of newsmaking both enables positive participation and enforces unwanted forms of engagement. We conclude by reflecting on how participation, engagement and collaboration are impacting other fields of society. The chapter points to the need for critical reflection on the limits of participation and to new routes for further research.