TY - JOUR
T1 - THE TENSION BETWEEN PROFESSIONAL CONTROL AND OPEN PARTICIPATION
T2 - Journalism and its boundaries
AU - Lewis, Seth C.
PY - 2012/8/1
Y1 - 2012/8/1
N2 - Amid growing difficulties for professionals generally, media workers in particular are negotiating the increasingly contested boundary space between producers and users in the digital environment. This article, based on a review of the academic literature, explores that larger tension transforming the creative industries by extrapolating from the case of journalism - namely, the ongoing tension between professional control and open participation in the news process. Firstly, the sociology of professions, with its emphasis on boundary maintenance, is used to examine journalism as boundary work, profession, and ideology - each contributing to the formation of journalism's professional logic of control over content. Secondly, by considering the affordances and cultures of digital technologies, the article articulates open participation and its ideology. Thirdly, and against this backdrop of ideological incompatibility, a review of empirical literature finds that journalists have struggled to reconcile this key tension, caught in the professional impulse toward one-way publishing control even as media become a multi-way network. Yet, emerging research also suggests the possibility of a hybrid logic of adaptability and openness - an ethic of participation - emerging to resolve this tension going forward. The article concludes by pointing to innovations in analytical frameworks and research methods that may shed new light on the producer-user tension in journalism.
AB - Amid growing difficulties for professionals generally, media workers in particular are negotiating the increasingly contested boundary space between producers and users in the digital environment. This article, based on a review of the academic literature, explores that larger tension transforming the creative industries by extrapolating from the case of journalism - namely, the ongoing tension between professional control and open participation in the news process. Firstly, the sociology of professions, with its emphasis on boundary maintenance, is used to examine journalism as boundary work, profession, and ideology - each contributing to the formation of journalism's professional logic of control over content. Secondly, by considering the affordances and cultures of digital technologies, the article articulates open participation and its ideology. Thirdly, and against this backdrop of ideological incompatibility, a review of empirical literature finds that journalists have struggled to reconcile this key tension, caught in the professional impulse toward one-way publishing control even as media become a multi-way network. Yet, emerging research also suggests the possibility of a hybrid logic of adaptability and openness - an ethic of participation - emerging to resolve this tension going forward. The article concludes by pointing to innovations in analytical frameworks and research methods that may shed new light on the producer-user tension in journalism.
KW - boundary work
KW - digital culture
KW - institutional logic
KW - journalism studies
KW - new media
KW - newswork
KW - participatory journalism
KW - professionalism
KW - sociology of professions
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84863899883&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84863899883&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/1369118X.2012.674150
DO - 10.1080/1369118X.2012.674150
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84863899883
SN - 1369-118X
VL - 15
SP - 836
EP - 866
JO - Information Communication and Society
JF - Information Communication and Society
IS - 6
ER -