Changes in the Meaning of Journalism Studies
On January 1，2017，Oriental Morning Post and Beijing Times，which are two major urban newspapers，terminated the publication of printed newspapers simultaneously.At a moment when the traditional journalism was in deep crisis，the two organizations ’ termination of printed newspapers became a “hot moment” in the Chinese journalism industry，and inspired the memorial narratives of news organizations，practitioners，readers and other subjects.In the past few years，similar key events or hot topics appeared many times.No matter the criticism caused by transgressive news，or the controversy brought by special contributions，the memory and commemoration caused by the retirement，death and career change of people in journalism，they all interpreted the public issues of journalism.The discursive practices represented by these interpretation phenomena have pointed a new direction for journalism studies，and the study of discursive practices reflects the change in the meaning of journalism studies to a certain extent.[1]This kind of meaning includes two levels: one is the meaning of journalism to journalists；the other is the meaning of journalism in the social context.[2]
Over the years，scholars in Western countries have explored the sources of journalistic authority and legitimacy by investigating journalistic professionalism，and formed two different research approaches: One approach is to investigate how journalism constructs social reality，explore the characteristics of journalistic expertise by presenting the news production process，and take the professional status of journalism as an established premise，and its “professional attributes” constitute the source of the journalistic occupational authority.The other one focuses on discussing how journalism constructs itself，and uses culture，discourse，narrative and other concepts to discuss how journalism make use of their unique narrative power to establish occupational authority，and pays special attention to the discourse strategies used by journalism in the face of internal disputes and external challenges.[3] It can be said that both of the two research approaches are mainly based on the long-term stable development of journalism，where journalism plays an important role and has important functions and status in the society beyond any doubt.Reese even considered that there was almost no external force that could pose challenges to the operation of traditional journalism for a long time，and the whole journalism industry stayed in a relatively stable state.[4] Therefore，early journalism researchers tended to pay more attention to the internal production and operational process of news agencies，and seldom analyzed external journalistic environment.[5] Based on this perspective，Anderson argued that “field”，a concept of social space proposed by Bourdieu，will be a useful analysis tool，which can be used to analyze the professional competition that focuses on different forms of occupational expertise in a specific social space like journalism.[6] The research on journalistic field shows that scholars began to pay attention to the external environment of journalism，and some had applied it to the journalism research in the pre-Internet era.After entering the era of digital technology，the stable journalistic environment was finally broken，and the existing research approach began to show deficiencies.The introduction of concepts such as field，network，domain and ecosystem indicates that journalism research is undergoing spatial turn.[7] In addition to journalistic field，news ecosystem has become another important concept of spatial analysis.[8] Both field and ecosystem are metaphors of space，and they all emphasize the positions of different subjects in the same space.However，the two concepts have different theoretical origins and application scope.[9] Journalism researchers used field to analyze Buzzfeed and Gawker，which are willing to accept journalistic supervision and seek recognition of journalism，and used news ecosystem to study Facebook，which refuses to recognize its media company identity，advocates automatic algorithm and excludes human intervention.[10]
Journalism should not only deal with the challenges posed by internal deviants to the existing news boundary or paradigm，but also pay attention to the impacts brought by many new outsiders.In the dilemma caused by increasing uncertainty of journalism，it is necessary to rethink the cultural significance of journalism，“whenever you want to redefine journalism，journalists and journalistic practice，or to reconcile the relationship between technological revolution，economic turbulence，organizational restructuring and cultural forces，you need to understand the new form of journalism from the perspective of meanings”.[11] In the past journalism studies，the meanings of journalism were revealed and interpreted from cultural perspective.Journalism research from cultural perspective has enjoyed a long history，although it has not become an influential research approach as the organizational or sociological approach of journalism research.Schudson classified and renamed the three orientations of news production research，which were political economy，society and culture respectively.[12] He separated politics from economy，and formed four parallel approaches，which are politics，economy，society and culture.[13] Obviously，the research approaches were namely after the actual research work was carried out，and the research from cultural perspective was not limited to news production research.Therefore，Zelizer put it in the journalism research in a broader sense，and systematically sorted out journalism research from cultural perspective.[14] However，for a long time，researchers only proposed that news can be viewed from cultural perspective，and called it “cultural perspective on the news”，[15] or “on journalism from cultural perspective”.[16] Meyers clearly put forward the concept of cultural school of journalism research.He divided the existing journalism research into four categories:individual journalism research，organizational journalism research，institutional journalism research，and cultural journalism research.The first three categories are called traditional school，while the fourth category is called cultural school，which takes news as the product of cultural tradition in a wider field.[17] It was considered that the cultural perspective or cultural analysis of journalism includes the journalism research from narrative，rite，text，discourse and other perspectives，but discourse is undoubtedly the most important approach.Anderson summarized the journalism research approaches in the United States after the 1970s and divided them into three categories，which were corresponding to three key words: professionalism，discourse and field.The core of discourse is “culture，narrative and discursive community”.[18]
According to Meyers and Anderson，both the cultural and discursive research in journalism studied the research paradigm created by Zelizer，whose book Covering the Body published in 1992 greatly improved people ’s understanding of the relationship between cultural authority and professional expertise of journalism.[19] In the book，Zelizer elaborated on how the emerging groups of television journalists maintain their professional status: firstly，through reporting the assassination of Kennedy，and then through their stories about the assassination.[20] This study created an important approach for current journalism research to discuss journalistic issues from the perspective of discourse；it was considered that journalism constantly constructs the meanings of journalism and its social status in a discourse field.[21] Many concepts introduced by Zelizer in this book，such as interpretive community and journalistic authority，have been widely used since then.The cultural school represented by Zelizer mainly used culture，narrative and discursive community and other concepts to study journalism，emphasizing that the authority of journalists as “interpretive communities” is related to the sources of narratives in culture，symbols，internal and external occupational space.[22] Therefore，researchers should search for the foundation of journalistic authority from journalists ’ discursive practices，which not only refer to the narration of news events，that is，how to present the news story，but also include the narration of their journalistic practice activities.[23]
In terms of previous studies，many studies have taken the discourse of journalists as research object and material.In addition to interpretive community and journalistic authority，scholars have subsequently introduced more concepts and theories，such as boundary work，cognitive authority，legitimacy，professional jurisdiction，field，discourse institutionalism，etc.，to conduct empirical research on specific cases.Meanwhile，a small number of researchers began to develop the theory of this research paradigm based on empirical research.Schudson and Anderson introduced the concept of jurisdiction in sociology into journalism research，and examined the jurisdiction competition among different participants in the journalistic field.[24] By analyzing the metaphors that are frequently used by journalists，Gravengaad discussed journalists ’self-understanding and their conceptualization of journalism work.[25] Hanitzsh and Vos established a process model to analyze journalistic roles.They regarded journalism as a discourse system，where different participants，such as journalists，organizations and institutions，negotiate the discursive power in the discursive field，and journalistic roles are formed through different mechanisms in the negotiation process.[26] Breese introduced cultural sociology into the analysis of journalistic discourse，explored the root cause of journalistic crisis in the United States，which he believed that it was not only the collapse at business level，but also the pre-warning of problems in the meaning system of journalism.[27] Vos and Thomas adopted the theoretical framework of discourse institutionalism to discuss the discursive construction of journalistic authority by American journalists in a post-truth age.[28]
The studies on journalistic authority basically discussed the position of journalism in the society.Most of the previous studies discussed journalistic professionalism: Some researchers argued that the importance of journalism is self-evident，so they did not pay attention to whether the journalistic profession produces authoritative knowledge or possesses professionalism，but focused on measuring the professional status of journalism through questionnaire survey；and other researchers were committed to exploring the nature or characteristics of news knowledge through long-term ethnographic research in the press room.The knowledge that is hidden in the background also needs to be made public to consolidate its exclusive position.The research from discursive perspective focused on the knowledge claim，discursive construction and discursive strategy of journalistic authority.[29] However，fundamentally speaking，most of the researchers still treated journalistic occupational discourse as a kind of research material，and explored other research issues based on the analysis of discourse，without taking occupational discourse itself as a research object worth discussing.It seems that there is little difference between taking it as the research material and taking it as the research object，but it reflects researchers ’ emphasis on occupational discourse.Based on the previous experience and research，Carlson put forward a theory of metajoumalistic discourse，which conceptualized metajoumalistic discourse as a tool to construct or challenge the legitimacy of journalistic practices，journalistic standards and news organizations.[30] Based on previous empirical research，this paper is designed to think about the concept of journalistic occupational discourse，and propose a feasible theoretical framework for the research methods that can define，classify and explore this concept in the Chinese context.