Good Journalism for a Post-Growth Society

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session is Yu Ling, whose focus is on news acceleration in China. This relates to the idea that news time in journalism has accelerated; this is part of the broader social acceleration in late modernity, and may be in conflict with the human pursuit of a good life: it threatens the resonance relationship between humans and the world they live in.

Journalism has a role to play in this; social mediatisation means that journalism has replaced religion and contributes to alienation and relationlessness. By contrast, good journalism should serve as an information intermediary for resonance relationships between people and their world. This also requires greater attention to news consumption practices.

Key dimensions here are temporal alienation, spatial alienation, and news alienation – how can these be addressed? This cannot simply be solved by ‘slow journalism’, but needs to address the objective and subjective cultural characteristics of journalism. A cultural orientation towards adaptive growth is important here, establishing triangular resonances between journalism and the world, journalism and the user, and the user and the world. Journalists as intermediaries sit at the centre of this resonance triangle.