COM 750: ADVANCED MEDIA THEORY (FALL 2013)
Sept. 26: Sociology of Journalism and News Decision-Making
Discussion Leader Summaries
By: Sindhu Manjesh
Zelizer, B. (2004). Taking journalism seriously: News and the academy: Sage Publications,
Inc. (Chapters 3 and 6 Distributed to Class).
CHAPTER 3: Sociology and Journalism
In this chapter, Zelizer outlines and expands upon the development of journalism as a
discipline of study within the tradition of social scientific research. He posits that the focus on
journalism was largely associated with sociology’s ascent in the academy. He starts by
placing the study of journalism in the historical context of US academia – an exponential
interest in journalism in the 1920, the explosion of the social sciences in the 1930s, the
subsequent rise of communication schools, and the co-option of journalism by these schools
as a sub-set area of study.
Zelizer divides his inquiry into three waves:
1) Early Sociological Inquiry: Journalists as Sociological Beings
2) Mid-Period Sociological Inquiry: Organizational Studies of Journalism
3) Later Sociological Inquiry: Journalistic Institutions and Ideology.
In each of these periods, his analysis is multi-layered, in that he approaches different aspects
of the study of journalism scholarship.
Before diving into these domains, he gives us an overview of the origins of sociology as a
discipline and the motive of sociological inquiry. He acquaints us with the discipline’s
functionalist and Marxist leanings and its cultural concerns (pp. 46). He states that
“sociological inquiry positions its target of analysis squarely within the network of
individuals engaged in patterned interaction in primarily complex settings.” (pp. 47)
Next, Zelizer takes us through the growth of the sociology of journalism in the US, UK, nad
Europe, touching upon important contributions in theory made by the Chicago School and the
Frankfurt School and influential scholars such as Robert Park, Wilbur Schramm, Paul
Lazarfeld, Joseph Klapper, and Todd Gitlin to name a few (pp. 48-51).
Early Sociological Inquiry: Journalists as Sociological Beings
In this section, Zelizer discusses different ways in which it was approached – as a practice, its
setting in larger society, its political economy, and asks whether it is a craft or a profession.
He further divides his study to encompass four areas:
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1)
2)
3)
4)
Gatekeeping, Social Control, and Selectivity Processes
Occupational Studies: Values, Ethics, Roles, and Demographics
Normative, Ritual, and Purposive Behavior
Effects Research
Gatekeeping, Social Control, and Selectivity Processes
Here, the concept of journalists as ‘gatekeepers’ – as those capable of blocking, adding, and
changing information – is discussed. He draws out attention to how gatekeeping can either be
idiosyncratic and subjective, a result of collective thought processes, or a tool of knowledge
control. He discusses the notion of social control in the newsroom as espoused by Warren
Breed (1955), where in the issues of power and adherence in a social organization, peermotivated behaviour, and production power-play are highlighted. He then guides us to the
seminal work of Johannes Galtung and Marie Ruge (1965) on gatekeeping, which gives us a
set of 12 criteria of what constitutes ‘newsworthiness’ and what goes into the likelihood of a
story making it to the headlines (pp.54).
Occupational Studies: Values, Ethics, Roles, and Demographics
In this sub-section Zelizer navigates the occupational settings in which journalists work, the
impact of that on what they produce, ethics, and how the demographics of the journalistic
community in a particular setting might affect the role of journalism in society (pp. 55-58).
Interesting here is the point about the differences in role-perception of journalists across
nationalities.
Normative, Ritual, and Purposive Behavior
Normative behaviour patterns of journalists, the rites and rituals by which they worked (based
on culture-specific contexts), and the role of journalists as ‘social constructionists’, where
they make meaning as opposed to consolidating influence are discussed in this section
(pp.58-60)
Effects Research
This discussion focuses on this tradition’s origins in the US, uses and gratification research,
and agenda setting theory (pp.60-62).
Mid-Period Sociological Inquiry: Organizational Studies of Journalism
According to Zelizer, this wave that progressed from the 1960s onwards looked toward broad
organizational settings as a way to examine the patterns of interaction among journalists. The
ethnography of workspaces and organizational theory are in focus here. News is explored as a
manufactured organizational product (pp.63) and Edward J. Epstein’s ‘News from Nowhere’
(1973) – where he suggests that organizational and technical constraints managed the making
of news – is cited (pp. 63).
Later Sociological Inquiry: Journalistic Institutions and Ideology
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Zelizer says that these studies located the force of ideological positioning outside journalism,
where it worked in tandem with other institutions. “Journalists thus came to be increasingly
considered agents of a dominant ideological order external to the news world itself.” (pp.69).
He discusses scholarship around the institutions of journalism, the notions and role of
ideology vis-à-vis journalism, Gramsci’s construct of hegemony with regard to journalists (as
agents who secured agreement by consensus rather than by forced compliance), the Glasgow
University Media Group’s contributions to the sociological inquiry of journalism (pp. 74),
and the political economy of journalism with a discussion on Noam Chomsky and Edward S.
Herman’s ‘Manufacturing Consent’ (1988).
In conclusion, Zelizer proposes that sociological inquiry “reduced journalists to one kind of
actor in one kind of environment. It was up to other disciplinary frames to complicate that
picture.” (pp. 80) He moves on to exploring other scholarly prisms through which journalism
has been studied.
Discussion Questions:
1) Is journalism a discipline or practice?
2) Who is a journalist?
3) Should journalism be viewed as a verb or a noun?
CHAPTER 6: Political Science and Journalism
In this chapter, Zelizer invests himself and us in exploring the constructs of political science
theory vis-à-vis the scholarship on journalism.
He opens with a decided statement: “When compared with other scholarly views on
journalism and journalistic practice, the perspective offered by most scholars in political
science has been decidedly normative.” (pp. 145). He explains that this scholarship examines
journalism through a vested interest in the political world and touches upon the concept of
journalism as the government’s fourth estate.
Key here are concepts of mediated democracy, mediacracy, mediated political realities,
media politics, all derived from the assumption of interdependency between the political and
journalistic worlds.
Zelizer takes us back to the work of Walter Lippman (1914, 1922/1960, and 1925) and his
concerns with the journalist’s role – he called upon them to act as experts in mediating the
information that the wider public received. Citing Denis McQuail, (1987), Zelizer posits that
this school of thought was pre-occupied by normative standards – how the world of
journalism ought to operate in conjunction with certain political systems.
Zelizer devotes a significant section of this chapter (pp. 146-150) to the evolution of political
science research into journalism – from the study of government in ancient Greece, to
Tocqueville’s formulations on the effect of the press on public opinion in France and
America, to the “sound-bite age” of politics and journalism.
Zelizer outlines three directions of research or typologies in political science scholarship on
journalism:
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1) The “smallest picture” – between a journalist and source.
2) The functioning of journalism’s intersections with the political world, taking into
account actors and audiences.
3) Large-scale typologies of interaction, which attempted to describe possible operating
traits for journalism under different political orders.
In discussing journalistic models and roles through the prism of political science theory,
Zelizer draws our attention to the three models of journalism in democratic systems that
Schudson (1999) outlined (pp. 154):
1) The market model (in which journalists gave the public what it wanted).
2) The advocacy model (in which journalists transmitted political party perspectives).
3) The trustee model (in which journalists provided the news citizens needed to be
informed participants in democracy).
In discussing journalistic roles in this scholarship, Zelizer cites Bernard Cohen (1963), who
established a typology that separated the journalist’s “neutral role” from the “participant
role”. (pp.155)
In subsequent sections, Zelizer explores the scholarship on freedom of expression (pp. 157),
and the evolving ties of journalistic and democratic systems and how journalism affected
democratic process (pp. 158 and 159).
He then turns his attention towards scholarship on public or civic journalism (pp. 164-166)
and how this is seen as a variant of trustee journalism discussed earlier.
Finally, Zelizer discusses journalism’s large-scale relationship with its surrounding political
system and the typologies of interaction between them (pp. 167). He devotes this section to a
discussion about the ‘Four Theories of the Press’ (1956 postulated by Siebert, Peterson, and
Schramm – regulation, ownership, censorship, and licensing.
Before rounding off this chapter, Zelizer persuades us, if only briefly, to consider the role of
language and rhetoric in politics and journalism (pp. 170-171).
In conclusion, Zelizer says that existing ways of explaining how the political and journalistic
worlds intersect may not have captured the entire picture of what journalism does, though it
might have given us a fair idea of what it ought to be.
Discussion Questions:
1) Are journalists political actors or mere intermediaries?
2) Is the political influence of journalists overstated?
3) Should journalists listen and relay or tell and influence?
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Schudson, M. (2002). The news media as political institutions. Annual Review of Political
Science, 5(1), 249-269. [Library Gateway]
Schudson opens by asserting that political science has tended to neglect the study of news
media as political institutions. He defines what he calls the three general approaches that have
predominated sociological, communication, and political science scholarship on the news
media:
1) Political economy perspectives focus on patterns of media ownership and the
behaviour of news institutions in relatively liberal versus relatively repressive states.
2) A second set of approaches looks at the social organization of newswork and relates
news content to the daily patterns of interaction of reporters and their sources.
3) A third style of research examines news as a form of culture that often unconsciously
incorporates general belief systems, assumptions, and values into news writing.
Though these come from three traditional approaches – political economy, sociological, and
cultural, Schudson posits that all there recognize (or must) that news is a form of culture. He
qualifies this proposition by emphasizing that this does not mean that news resides in a
symbolic vacuum, but is invested with and in the political, economic, and social dimensions
of society. (pp. 251).
Schudson divides up the paper to discuss the following dimensions of the news media:
The Political Economy of News
1) The link between ownership of news organizations and the character of news
coverage, under which he discusses market-dominated and state-dominated news
systems.
2) The implications of the growth of news conglomerates.
3) Control of news by powerful elites.
4) What role the media play in social change?
The Social Organization of Newswork
In this section, Schudson deals with the journalists, their sources, and the ‘beat system’ and
what implications it has for the way journalism is produced. He argues that “the basic
orientation of social scientists is that political news making is a reality-constructing activity
that follows the lead of government officials.” (pp.255)
1) ‘Pack-journalism’, where in reporters of a certain beat function like a herd.
2) Reliance on government officials does not guarantee pro-government news.
3) ‘Resource-poor organizations’ have great difficulty in getting the media’s
attention (Goldenberg, 1975).
4) There has been more attention paid to reporter-official relations than to
reporter-editor relations.
5) Most research, then, has focused on the gathering of news rather than on its
writing, rewriting, and “play” in the press.
6) Some American scholars have insisted that professional values are no bulwark
against a bias in news that emerges from the social backgrounds and personal
values of media personnel. Lichter et al. (1986) made the case that news in the
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United States has a liberal bias because journalists at elite news organizations
are themselves liberal.
7) Little said about differences between print and television news.
Cultural Approaches
Here, Schudson makes an analytical distinction between the understandings of news
generation in the cultural and socio-organizational schema. These are the main talking points:
1) “The cultural view finds symbolic determinants of news in the relations between
“facts” and symbols. That is, a cultural view might help us understand symbolic
images employed to propagate stereotypes.
2) This prism also addresses journalists’ intuitions and descriptions of what is, or is
not, news.
3) News judgement is not as unified as the system of ideology (functional here)
suggests.
4) The cultural dimension of news concerns its form as well as its content.
5) Journalists operate not only to maintain and repair their social relations with
sources and colleagues but also their cultural image as journalists in the eyes of a
wider world. For instance, television news reporters deploy experts in stories not
so much to provide viewers with information but to certify the journalist’s “effort,
access, and superior knowledge” (Manoff 1989).
6) Journalistic objectivity is subjective.
In conclusion, Schudson urges us to contemplate over the role of elites in news media
communication, warns us against thinking about the media in ahistorical frameworks, and
debate the nature of media power and influence. Cautioning us against leaning too much
towards the debate over media effects, he says, in his words, “The primary, day-to-day
contribution the news media make to the wider society is one that they make as cultural
actors, that is, as producers—and messengers — of meanings, symbols, messages... It offers
the language in which action is constituted rather than the cause that generates action.”
Andrews, K. T., & Caren, N. (2010). Making the News. American Sociological Review,
75(6), 841. [PDF]
This paper asks a specific question – what organizational, tactical, and issue characteristics
enhance media attention? The authors situate this larger inquiry in a case study in which they
combine detailed organizational survey data from a representative sample of 187 local
environmental organizations in North Carolina with complete news coverage of those
organizations in 11 major daily newspapers in the two years following the survey (2,095
articles). They seek to address the intersections of social movements, public agenda, and
media reportage.
Points of entry:
1) The news media can shape the public agenda and influence public opinion and elites
by drawing attention to movements’ issues, claims, and supporters. (Agenda-setting
and shaping)
2) Why are some movement organizations more successful than others at gaining media
attention?
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The article addresses the concept of media attention and the theories and evidence of newsmaking in its initial sections. An important question raised here is: “What drives media
attention? As part of their discussion, the authors cite Galtung and Ruge (1965) and their 12point formula of newsworthiness, which has been addressed in the summary of the first
reading for this class. Further, they emphasize the distinction between news values and news
routines (pp. 844).
Next, the authors discuss, in very brief, the theory informing protest and collective action in
the news, and movement organizations and media attention.
The authors hypothesize their study around two parameters:
1) Organizational Capacity (We… expect older organizations with greater staff, formal
committees, networks, and members to gain a larger share of media attention).
2) Strategy and tactical repertoire (Organizations that use outsider tactics should receive
less media attention. Confrontational strategies may generate colorful and dramatic
copy but have minimal legitimacy).
The greater part of the article is devoted to research design, data, analysis and methodology
(pp. 847-856).
Conclusions:
1) Overall, the findings… indicate that news media report more extensively on
organizations that are geographically proximate, have greater organizational capacity,
mobilize people through demonstrations or organizations, and use conventional tactics
to target the state and media.
2) More resourceful organizations are better able to establish and maintain relationships
with the news media and may also be better able to signal the legitimacy of the
organization and its claims.
3) Demonstrations are an especially powerful strategy for gaining media attention, and
this positive relationship is present even in models controlling for organizational
resources and issues.
4) Organizations working on issues that address economic and social dimensions of the
environment gain greater media attention.
Discussion Question:
1) What do the findings of this study make us think about the co-dependency nature of
social movements – within and between webs of traditional and innovative networks
and their equation with mainstream and de-centered media?
Robinson, S. (2011). Convergence Crises: News Work and News Space in the Digitally
Transforming Newsroom. Journal of Communication 61, 1122-1141. [Library Gateway]
Robinson’s inquiry, to me, as a journalist in India who started out in the profession without
the assistance of Google or social networks, with bare access to the WWW, and someone
could not afford a cell phone to communicate with my sources, hit all the right spots in terms
of the questions she was asking. The broad question, as I understand it, that she seeks
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answers and pointers to is how are systems of production in the digitally-driven, ‘convergent’
newsroom, impacting the production of information in contemporary news outlets?
Her abstract clearly states the methodology employed: newsroom ethnography and in-depth
interviews. She seeks to situate labor and power dialogues within the altered digital
newsroom, addressing changed hierarchies and the privileging of those journalists conversant
with contemporary technologies.
She asks how the new norms might fit, or not, with structures of old rules in legacy media
organizations and what implications the transforming workplace culture in newsrooms have
for the quality of journalism (specifically in the US). In an age when publishers and editors
have publically committed to incorporating interactivity, multimedia, social media, and other
digital cultural artefacts to create ‘‘better,’’ more relevant news products, what is the nature
of push-back from journalists trained in one medium (print) and how might this affect the
way the public receives and consumes news?
Robinson introduces us to the literature on spatial culture, and leads into a discussion on how
journalists negotiate their work and newly altered work spaces, which turned traditional
notions of hierarchy on its head while still keeping power systems intact.
The tensions between older print journalists and newer ‘techie’ journalists (conversant with
the dialects of the digital age – both technologically and culturally) are well documented in
Robinson’s ethnographic notes.
Much of the article is devoted to notes on what Robinson observed during her observantparticipant role at her location of study. It makes for interesting anecdotal reading, which is
beyond the scope of this summary. But it is a must-read because it helps us question our
media-user notions of news production.
Robinson is clear to situate her analysis in the changing world of print journalism and makes
no claims to extrapolate her observations to the news industry as a whole. But, her detailing
of the changing place and process of print journalistic production could well serve as a
template to investigate how spatial and labor changes are influencing the creation,
dissemination, and consumption of news products across other evolving media platforms.
Discussion Questions:
1) What is a journalist’s workplace today?
2) What does the digital age mean for newsroom culture and therefore quality of news?
3) Has the 24X7 news-cycle diminished the value of news?
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