The concept of boundaries has become a central theme in the study of journalism. In recent years, the decline of legacy news organizations and the rise of new interactive media tools have thrust such ...questions as “what is journalism?” and “who is a journalist?” into the limelight.
Struggles over journalism are often struggles over boundaries. These symbolic contests for control over definition also mark a material struggle over resources. In short: boundaries have consequences. Yet there is a lack of conceptual cohesiveness in what scholars mean by the term “boundaries” or in how we should think about specific boundaries of journalism.
This book addresses boundaries head-on by bringing together a global array of authors asking similar questions about boundaries and journalism from a diverse range of perspectives, methodologies, and theoretical backgrounds.
Boundaries of Journalism assembles the most current research on this topic in one place, thus providing a touchstone for future research within communication, media and journalism studies on journalism and its boundaries.
The social power of algorithms Beer, David
Information, communication & society,
01/2017, Letnik:
20, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article explores the questions associated with what might be thought of as the social power of algorithms. The article, which introduces a special issue on the same topic, begins by reflecting ...on how we might approach algorithms from a social scientific perspective. The article is then split into two sections. The first deals with the issues that might be associated with an analysis of the power of the algorithms themselves. This section outlines a series of issues associated with the functionality of the algorithms and how these functions are powerfully deployed within social world. The second section then focuses upon the notion of the algorithm. In this section, the article argues that we need to look beyond the algorithms themselves, as a technical and material presence, to explore how the notion or concept of the algorithm is also an important feature of their potential power. In this section, it is suggested that we look at the way that notions of the algorithm are evoked as a part of broader rationalities and ways of seeing the world. Exploring the notion of the algorithm may enable us to see how algorithms also play a part in social ordering processes, both in terms of how the algorithm is used to promote certain visions of calculative objectivity and also in relation to the wider governmentalities that this concept might be used to open up.
Margolis aims for a ‘recovery of objectivity’. This may seem more suited to epistemologists or ethicists but Margolis saw reforming objectivity emerging from and contributing to his aesthetics and ...philosophy of art. My goal in this essay is to explain the connection of objectivity to aesthetics and then to offer some critical remarks which introduce an arguably richer version of objectivity, ‘pragmatic objectivity’. The introductory section explores Margolis’s motives for expanding aesthetics beyond its usual boundaries. Section 2 explores why artworks and selves are interdependent and artifactual, and how this prepares the ground for his recovery of objectivity. Section 3 considers Margolis’ more abstract, metaphysical context for objectivity, his modified relativism. At this point, Section 4 is able to lay out his revamped objectivity. Section 5 does the majority of this paper’s critical work: it explains why Margolis’ view might be considered a ‘pragmatic’ objectivity and advances some ways in which Margolis’ version might be filled in and extended. A brief conclusion identifies differences between the author’s and Margolis’ approach.
The Feeling of Numbers Kennedy, Helen; Hill, Rosemary Lucy
Sociology (Oxford),
08/2018, Letnik:
52, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article highlights the role that emotions play in engagements with data and their visualisation. To date, the relationship between data and emotions has rarely been noted, in part because data ...studies have not attended to everyday engagements with data. We draw on an empirical study to show a wide range of emotional engagements with diverse aspects of data and their visualisation, and so demonstrate the importance of emotions as vital components of making sense of data. We nuance the argument that regimes of datafication, in which numbers, metrics and statistics dominate, are characterised by a renewed faith in objectivity and rationality, arguing that in datafied times, it is not only numbers but also the feeling of numbers that is important. We build on the sociology of (a) emotions and (b) the everyday to do this, and in so doing, we contribute to the development of a sociology of data.
El presente trabajo estudia las relaciones entre el principio de objetividad de la Administración y el procedimiento administrativo en el Ordenamiento jurídico español. Para ello se parte de una ...reflexión general sobre el significado que tiene la procedimentalización de la actuación administrativa como exigencia derivada del principio de objetividad, puesto que tradicionalmente se ha venido considerando que la propia existencia del procedimiento administrativo es, en buena medida, una consecuencia de dicho principio. Sentada esta base, se analiza la imparcialidad de los responsables de la tramitación y resolución del procedimiento como presupuesto de la objetividad, las principales técnicas de integración de intereses públicos y privados en el y los informes técnicos y jurídicos y otras técnicas de adquisición de los fundamentos objetivos de la resolución del procedimiento.
Abstract
Is irrational risk-avoiding behavior related to news media’s heightened attention for the negative and exceptional? Based on the theoretical approaches of mediatization and cultivation, it ...is hypothesized how news media can present an overly negative and biased reality that can have a severe impact on society. Focusing on the case of travel accidents, we argue that a disproportional increase in news attention for low-probability high-consequence aviation accidents can distort audiences’ risk perceptions such that driving is inaccurately perceived as a safer transportation alternative to flying, with potentially harmful consequences. This study accordingly documents results from time-series analyses (1996–2017) on US media attention for aviation and road accidents related to real-world data on travel behavior and fatal accidents. The over-time patterns expose how news media follow their own mediatized logic and reality: Negative incidents—i.e., both aviation and road accidents—become more prominent in the news over time, rather than accurately reflecting real-world trends. Next, since air travel is statistically the safest transportation mode, disproportionate attention for aviation accidents is argued to especially create a problematic distorted worldview among audiences. Accordingly, findings show how more media attention for aviation accidents is related to relatively more road traffic and more fatal road accidents in the subsequent months. We conclude that the media’s systematic overrepresentation of rare aviation accidents can overshadow the more substantial risk of (long-distance) driving. This paper illustrates how a distorted media reality can potentially result in severe consequences in light of audiences’ ill-informed fear perceptions and irrational risk-avoiding behavior.
Journalists depend on two vectors of trust: the trust invested in them by their sources, and the trust invested in them by their end-users. For many years, trust has become a key issue in the ...articulation of the journalistic profession. This paper distinguishes between two traditional approaches to earn public trust: either through an emphasis on the ideal of objectivity, or by a sort of showing one’s cards: an explicit declaration of one’s subjectivity. Through a reading of Løgstrup, Derrida, and Deleuze, we argue that both positions are inadequate solutions to the problem of trust. In as much as subjectivity is continuously negotiated in interaction with the unknown and the uncontrollable, the poles of objectivity and subjectivity cannot define the narrative event without each supplementing the other. To escape from this impasse, we suggest a third approach: a hospitable journalism characterized by a hospitable attitude towards the uncontrollable and the strange, or unknown, which operates to make the individual more aware of herself and her place in the world. This invitation happens through a silencing of the self.
Anyone who was not in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of the city experienced the disaster as a media event, a flood of images pouring across television and computer ...screens. The twenty-four-hour news cycle created a surplus of representation that overwhelmed viewers and complicated understandings of the storm, the flood, and the aftermath. As time passed, documentary and fictional filmmakers took up the challenge of explaining what had happened in New Orleans, reaching beyond news reports to portray the lived experiences of survivors of Katrina. But while these narratives presented alternative understandings and more opportunities for empathy than TV news, Katrina remained a mediated experience. In Flood of Images, Bernie Cook offers the most in-depth, wide-ranging, and carefully argued analysis of the mediation and meanings of Katrina. He engages in innovative, close, and comparative visual readings of news coverage on CNN, Fox News, and NBC; documentaries including Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke and If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s Trouble the Water, and Dawn Logsdon and Lolis Elie’s Faubourg Treme; and the HBO drama Treme. Cook examines the production practices that shaped Katrina-as-media-event, exploring how those choices structured the possible memories and meanings of Katrina and how the media’s memory-making has been contested. In Flood of Images, Cook intervenes in the ongoing process of remembering and understanding Katrina.
Recent years have seen a dramatic growth in the study of frictions that individuals experience, especially in their interactions with the public sector, creating both the potential for new research ...opportunities and conceptual confusion. We seek to head off the latter by providing, in one place, a definition, description of the development, and comparison of four dominant conceptions of frictions: ordeal mechanisms, red tape, administrative burden, and sludge. In particular, we discuss the four concepts' definitions and use in terms of their objectivity, distributive effects, object and domain, and deliberate design. This article helps researchers to understand the overlap and distinctions between these concepts and the role of public administration in these different traditions. Comparisons of the different approaches' thinking also suggest opportunities for mutual learning.
This article develops the idea of an "emotional turn" in journalism studies, which has led to an increasingly nuanced investigation of the role of emotion in the production, texts and audience ...engagement with journalism. These developments have occurred in tandem with, and accelerated by, the emergence of digital and social media. Research on news production has shown that journalistic work has always taken emotion into consideration, shaping approaches to storytelling and presentation. However, the view of journalists as detached observers has rendered the emotional labor associated with news production invisible. Research on emotion in journalistic texts has highlighted the fact that even conventional "hard news genres" are shaped by an engagement with emotion. As studies on news audiences and emotions have shown, audiences are more likely to be emotionally engaged, recall information and take action when news stories are relatable. The affordances of digital platforms and social media have had a profound impact on the space for emotion. The expanded opportunities for participation have contributed to questioning traditional distinctions between news audiences and producers and have ushered in new and more forms of emotional expression that have spilled over into practices of news production.
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