Journalism and Inclusion in the Network Age

Singapore.
I'm afraid in the battle between lunch and the second plenary, lunch won out, so I'm skipping Ien Ang's keynote at ICA 2010, and jumping right to the first of the post-lunch sessions. I may miss some of those as well as I've got a few meetings in the afternoon, but we'll see how we go. We start the afternoon with a paper by Wiebke Loosen from the fabulous Hans-Bredow-Institut in Hamburg, whose interest is in the relationship between journalism and its audiences. One of the key issues here is the change in the sender/receiver relationship - always a complicated and paradoxical relationship (journalism provides a service and needs an audience, but that audience plays a subordinate role - journalists are often oriented more towards their colleagues than towards audiences).

However, this was true especially for the mass communication era, and the asymmetry between journalists and audiences no longer exists to the same extent. The sociological concept of inclusion may be useful here: inclusion examines how societal subsystems include an individual's involvement, and examines the role in which a person is included (e.g. professional, participant, audience - a citizen reporter, for example, fills a secondary professional role).

Greater inclusion inherently undermines the journalistic gatekeeper monopoly, which is based on the asymmetry between professionals and audiences; the ability by journalists to include the audience simply as audience is declining. So, how does professional journalism integrate participative elements into its coverage and work routines, how are they used by audiences and users, what expectations (and expectations of expectations) do they have of each other, and how do journalistic and audience participants influence each other?

Wiebke's project employs a heuristic model which examines - from the respective perspectives of journalists and audiences - the inclusion performance (for journalists: forms of participation, products and outputs, and work processes and routines; for audiences: participatory practices, degree of community orientaton) and inclusion expectations (journalists: attitudes towards the audience, journalistic role perception, and strategic relevance of audiance participation; audiences: motives for participation, evaluation of own influence). Differences in performance ponit to the level of inclusion; differences in expectations highlight the inclusion divergence.

These will be tested through case studies in conventional and online newsrooms. It is likely that the study will find that the relationship between professionals and audiences is not immutable, and that there is a high expectation of change.

Technorati : ICA 2010, gatekeeping, gatewatching, inclusion, journalism, mass media, participation
Del.icio.us : ICA 2010, gatekeeping, gatewatching, inclusion, journalism, mass media, participation